Because you never tried to gift it?

You can. Money markets are available for you to invest in.

Maybe the law in Russia that says you can't sell things in US Dollars? Otherwise Steam could just set a US Dollar price and let the exchanges sort it out.

... for completely different reasons, which are now irrelevant. And today's government could recognize that these laws are outdated and irrelevant, and eliminate them. The fact that they aren't is the problem right now, not the history of when things happened before.

As opposed to end-of-term term-limited politicians who will vote which ever way will get them a good job once they leave office? Or as opposed to new term-limited politicians who won't know what the hell they're doing and will vote however their career staff and lobbyists tell them to?

I respect a politician more who wants to die in office, because that means he's never looking for another job. He is having to run for office, and yes, campaigning is expensive and corrupt. Let's fix that instead of ruining the system with term limits.

You can just look at the garbage that is the Affordable Care Act to see that negotiation and compromise is alive and well - all within the Democratic party. If they were united as a block (as Republicans were in 2000-2006 or so), we would have gotten a much better single-payer system out of the law. If Republicans were to just disappear, the various groups that make up the Democrats would likely fracture into a few parties - all admittedly to the center and left of today's America - and start to negotiate more on those differences.

That same degree that says you were willing to sit through tech classes with idiots will also show your future employers that you are willing to sit through meetings with managers.

If nothing else, a degree shows you are capable of tolerating a certain level of bullshit in exchange for an otherwise meaningful career. Those incapable of tolerating that bullshit don't belong in corporate jobs, unless it's a corporation they helped found.

Obviously it depends on the news organization, but I haven't seen any major news site reporting on the actual salaries of various employees, or on the medical reasons claimed for leaves of absence. That data exists and I wouldn't be surprised if some "news" site (be it X Report, Wikileaks, or a Slashdot comment somewhere) contains that data, but it's not being blatantly reprinted by the New York Times for example just for gossip.

On the other other hand, I do bet that there's a reporter somewhere poring through that data, looking for signs of systematic discrimination against (insert minority group) and emails from (asshole executive) that imply intent to discriminate. Were they to find that material, the public interest is served to publish it, even if the source documents aren't included.

By leaving, they are happily giving up their position as leading Spanish news aggregator. That seems to avoid the monopoly issue entirely, as now there's space for other competitors to grow.

I think calling something "Malware" implies malice, something that's not indicated here as I see it. This is probably a case of incompetence, releasing poorly thought out, poorly written, and/or poorly tested code. Maybe we need a term for that - "bugware". (Or, for the cynics in the audience, we already have a term - "software".)

"quality" is subjective. If the goal of the audience is to experience the higher noise and lower dynamic range of vinyl, then vinyl is of higher quality to them.

You can't look at this as just a technical discussion and evaluate the options on their data sheet metrics. This is a sociology discussion and you have to at least partially empathize with the consumers.

(Yes, "SNR" and "dynamic range" are objective measures, but when you start using the term "quality" that has a lay meaning things start to get fuzzier.)

That "warmth" is the noise, in particular the noise envelope typical of record albums. Some people grew up with that, and to them that's what music should sound like.

Given that "what music should sound like" is pretty subjective (even saying "it should sound like the artist intended" is subjective), people who like vinyl are most welcome to it.

I don't think you really understand how DACs work. The output of almost every DAC is discrete steps based on the size of the LSB. Later filtering (either in the hardware, or in your ear) removes those steps, but they do exist at the actual DAC's output. Sometimes a DAC and a filter are bundled together and called a "DAC", so you never see the steps, but it's erroneous to claim that they "don't exist" or that they can convert into the "complete and smooth and "original" signal.