> Where's the factory-reset button when you need it?

It's on the Chromecast.

> They need to be hardware buttons

It's a hardware button.

In addition to being extremely hideous they're just as bad as Slashdot for posting non-tech stuff. The other day it was something about food delivery in India.

> They only have permission to search for certain specific categories of
> evidence, despite having the entire archive, so they wouldn't be able to find
> them guilty of some minor illegal activity unless it was part of the specific
> categories the judge authorised.

Or unless the details of the minor illegal activity (or major illegal activity but unrelated to the investigation, come to that) are acted upon within a seperate investigation.

Free market (market free from government regulations) capitalist (as in, private ownership and operation of property) economy sets prices that are most efficient in that economy, and labor costs (wages) are also prices. Without government interference they are set where the market is willing to set them and this price discovery is what is important to allocate scarce resources correctly to push businesses towards productive output that the market desires.

You are saying that a business that does not pay your artificial price floor for labor is "a parasite upon the economy", however you are still assuming that people are willing to work for the price (wages) that employers are hiring at. If the business is unable to hire people at lower wages and the same business is unable to raise consumer prices to match its expenses on wages, then what you have is a market pressure for that business to find way to cut costs in some other manner or in fact to shut down, and that is exactly what economic activity requires: FREE MARKET ALLOCATES SCARCE RESOURCES IN THE MOST EFFICIENT MANNER. Without your government intrusion, free market signals to all the participants in the market as to what businesses should exist, what economic output is valuable and what the prices should be.

You are saying: let's force all businesses to pay artificial prices for labor and pretend that this does not hurt efficiency, does not hurt the actual market. It does, it eliminates free market price discovery, creates inefficiencies, prevents employment, prevents scarce resources from being allocated in the way, that market approves of most.

You are creating the parasite economy, not free market without price controls.

Since I do have artificial /. limits on the number of posts per day, I will reply to you from my backup account. Don't worry, I won't pretend to be somebody else, that's not what this account is for, it's the same user, just under a different name.
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Spending money on consumables does not grow the economy, especially the USA economy, which buys those consumables from abroad. It doesn't increase competitive pressures in the USA economy to produce, the only competitive pressures in the USA are in distribution and sales, but that's where a small number of very large economies of scale, such as WM dominate, specifically because they hire people at lowest prices and push suppliers to sell to WM at lowest prices as well.

Customers that get their income from welfare or from laws that steal that money from somebody else first are not real customers. The real trade is done between parties that produce, the so called trade between those, who live on welfare (or are benefiting from any type of theft, including taxes and borrowing that go towards minimum wages) is not real trade.

You see the point of trade is to exchange something, it makes sense for me to trade my productive output with others, who also have productive output, where I can get something from them I myself do not produce - comparative advantage is the name of the game.

When governments tell me (as an employer) that I must hit their artificial price floors, I cannot magically expand my overall earnings to provide any more money to anybody that I am already paying. I actually have a number of people that are paid below what you would consider a legal 'minimum wage', while vast majority of my employees are paid much more than any such price floor. The reason is very simple: productivity.

I don't throw people out if I can use their labour at the price, at which it makes sense for me to buy that labour. If the labour price is artificially raised, I would rather not hire anybody in that category at all, I would only be considering people that are definitely more productive than those, who are barely making it to the artificial price floor. There is a substantial difference between a worker that can produce high output and a worker that can barely move, however I can find use for those who barely move but they will not be making anywhere near what you think 'minimum wage' should be. They are fine with it, those are students and they do in fact need these jobs, they are getting experience that will help them to find better jobs later. Some of my student workers are very good, making more than what you think minimum wage should be.

My point is this: I will not have people at minimum wage, that doesn't even make sense. I will have people much below it and people much above it. Minimum wage is an artificial construct that has no meaning to me as an employer, there is nobody who is worth specifically that amount that I employ.

Now, the people that you are talking about, they are mostly in services industry, they are cleaners, stocking personnel, people with very little skills, not anybody with any real skills, those people command higher than minimum wage salaries. Placing artificial government price controls on labour price does a very simple thing: ensures that fewer people in that category are hired and those who are hired are going to be in higher categories of workers.

I definitely can see some business hiring an overqualified person with no job experience even to clean toilets, rather than hiring much less 'learned' counterparts, so the only thing that minimum wage does in that category is it prevents people without experience and without any extra qualifications from entering the work force.

Of-course the modern 'mainstream economists' will muddy the waters and try to sell you all sorts of nonsense as to how they think the economy works and how higher minimum wages will grow the economy, it's all nonsense and propaganda for the political elite that is in power, it has nothing to do with the actual economy and hiring and pricing. The actual economy will find a way to work around these price controls - hiring people that are much more qualified than necessary for jobs that shouldn't need those qualifications, ensuring that jobs go to the more connected people rather than considering people from the entire job market, etc.

As to your 'negative sum' and all that, sure, one way to deal with the increase in minimum wage is to raise your prices. Well, that IS happening. What do you think news like this are all about? It's inflation and all the price controls and laws and regulations, taxes, that's what it is. And Hershey's raising prices by 10% that just one tiny drop in a bucket of the overall prices going up, they are going up much faster than any government numbers indicate or admit to.

Product quality and portion sizes are going down, prices are going up, gov't can even claim that this is somehow indicating a 'growing economy'. But if you spend 10% more on Hershey's it doesn't mean your standard of living is better, the exact opposite is the case. To listen to the mainstream nonsense, you are in danger when prices fall. Well, I hope you are getting your fill of the great economic news, prices are not falling, they are going up just fine, so don't be scared, your wallet won't be emptied slower, it will be emptied faster, so you are all good.

I think businesses will find time to focus on security when fines for leaking customers details bankrupt them.

So I am honestly asking, what is BSD good for.

When exactly did "honestly" become a synonym for living under a rock? This question comes up on almost every thread where FreeBSD is mentioned, though granted this is barely more often than its major releases.

The first answer in every such thread for years now is always ZFS, but actually this just disguises how many people have been using it for years or decades and just plain like the way FreeBSD does things even if nine out of ten, or ninety nine out of a hundred, or nine hundred and ninety nine out of a thousand have different tastes.

I get intensely piqued over the implication that there's a nuisance hurdle that needs to be cleared just for existing. When "honestly" becomes a cover story for living under a rock (or an equivalent not-be-bothered-hood) this ultimately seems to resonate as the main implication.

It's especially irritating when FreeBSD predates all the Johnny-come-latelies. It would have needed to be clairvoyant to have correctly decided to not exist, so as not to strain the reputational resources of open source groupthink.

I used to use an axe, but I stopped using it when I had to cut down a tree ten-feet wide at the base. I am presently using a Husqvarna and I am perfectly happy with it but for some reason the axe retains a magical "hard core" allure. So I am honestly asking, what is an axe good for?

I have and there is no secret. The press release does a good job of summarizing the results.

Now that is a gross mischaracterization of the data. 10,000 scientists were contacted. Their expertise ranged from many disciplines. 3,146 responded. The two questions were asked with 90% and 82% voting "Yes" respectively (2831 and 2579). Out of the 3146, then the list was narrowed down to scientists who were actively publishing and more than 50% of their papers in climate science. That eliminated most of the respondents down to 79 which are basically the experts in the field.

Even if you discard the 97% number, the 90% and 82% are hard to ignore.

Yet two experts did. There are biology professors like Michael Behe who argue for Intelligent Design instead of evolution based on very little evidence. Thankfully there are in the minority.

The move to USB was a practical matter. One interface for low bandwidth connections: USB. One for high bandwidth ones: FireWire. It was about future proofing than legacy. And it had the effect that it brought down costs when you could use the same peripherals for Mac and PC if the drivers were there.

It also wasn't well supported until way after Apple made their change. Oh it was there. But adoption was poor. Drivers were non-existent or poor. Even Windows didn't have proper USB support til Windows 98. As for the dark ages, yes you can still get MBs with PS/2. I haven't used that port in a decade or more like I haven't used a serial or parallel port. I don't have a need.