I don't think you replied to the comment you think you were replying to...

Examples of things that couldn't care less: streaming large assets that are decompressed in realtime, like audio or video files. Loading a word processing document. Downloading a game patch. Encoding a DVD. Playing RAM-resident video games.

Yes, any one of those things. However, if you're downloading a game patch while playing a game and maybe playing some music in the background, at the same time as perhaps download a few torrents or copying files, whatever... SSD's kick ass.

Why? Because singularly those things aren't IO-bound, but once you start doing 2+ things that require semi-hefty disk access then on an HDD you're going to have a lot of thrashing and speed goes out the window.

"How many 62 year olds do you know who ... diagnose their own problems before going to the doctor"

A lot, unless you mean "correctly" and without being a huge PITA ;-)

Generally evolution isn't going to go on a per-decade rate, especially for humans that live for 50-100 years. That's something that happens over generations. It's hard to measure in the long-term because the standards of measure have also changed.

There's also the upbringing factor: development is not only genetics, it's tied to health and nutrition. Your average "poor" person might not have a great outlook in that regard due to malnutrition etc.

I'd say that "anyone can make it big" but "most people won't" and "being wealthy helps improve the odds a lot"

history is rife with examples of men with questionable looks and stunning women

How many of those had average income?

Complaining "Your service sucks, your employees are rude, and etc etc" isn't going to be a big deal. If they want to publish somebody saying they suck go ahead

Saying to an employee (to paraphrase) "you're an ugly, fat uneducated idiot with no usefulness as a human being blah blah and I'm going to use my power to RUIN you" is not so open to interpretation. I've gotten ticked off at people in stores, but I don't resort to personal attacks because I'm not an asshole.

And there a difference between "government and industry watching your every move" versus "portable recording devices easily available"

I don't want to be recorded and tracked 24/7 by government/industry, but I don't particular have an issue with the people around me having cameras. Yes, somebody could catch me at a bad moment, but they can also film a lot of good things such as abuse of power (e.g. cop shooting fleeing suspect in the back and then planting a taser on the body), he-said-she-said (dashcams of car accidents, somebody assaulting a cop and saying it was abusive police), etc.

Public shaming of true a-holes isn't a terrible thing as well, so long as we don't get to the point where neighbours are posting our pictures wanted-ad style because a cat crapped on somebody's petunias once.

Perhaps somebody has a patent against using a cellular wireless chip to tune FM frequencies?
It's weird, because my old Samsung flip-phone had a nice FM tuner which worked with the headphones, but here (Canada) I haven't seen any such thing in newer smartphones.

One thing I note is that the particle effects are quite impressive, including explosions and sparks, etc. I'm guessing those are PhysX enabled or possibly Mantle? Whatever is being used, it definitely helps lend a bit of a Starwars/movie feel to things.

I wonder if this might apply to ragers/trolls as well? On games that are free (DOTA2) etc, there is a system for reporting, but at the moment it just seems to temporarily put you in the "slow queue".
I'm actually had some people say "go ahead, report me, I'll be back" (generally these are not even necessarily trolls, but people who spend the whole game screaming on the mic and spewing vile profanity at team members). If you could have a steam-account perma-banned, that would be nice, but obviously the bigger a-holes/trolls are just going to go from account bob1222 to making account bob1223. A $5 block to prevent them from certain in-game activities might be nice too.

There's been a lot of discussion about the sexist/misogynist/racist trolls online. My personal take is that - in the gaming community - it's not really a particular problem with any of those mentioned categories, but rather a problem with trolls/assholes in general. If we can reduce that issue it'll probably make life nicer for everyone.

"ex-Kennedy and ex-Kitty Hawk are currently in long term storage"

How exactly does one do "long term storage" on something the size of an aircraft carrier
Serious question, it's not like you can just park it in the garage/barn and cover it with a tarp.

Believe it or not, I did read the article.
It said she regained consciousness after drilling her skull and removing half the tumour. It's after that that it says they did chemo, radiation, and more surgeries which lost 80% of her left brain and paralysed her. After that she regained some vision and mobility, but the cancer still spread to the remaining brain.

So from the sound of it, there wasn't a whole lot of brain left. 80% of the left is gone, and the right had already been eaten away by cancer as well.

Yes, and it's pretty much just a brain, because the other half was already destroyed by cancer.

That part doesn't make much sense to me at all.
Spinal Damage. Stopped Heart. Sure.
Brain injury that prevents consciousness but doesn't seem to impact primary function, maybe.

But half her brain is gone. What are they preserving, exactly?

Australia has corporate tax rates that are in general lower than those in, say, the United States.

How do the laws/loopholes allowing companies to "write off" such taxes compare?