But, really, there has to be a degree of cognitive dissonance between the hope you'll do well and be super rich ... and the actual reality that, it's a tough slog, you might not get there, and you might have to trade away some equity to someone else to get there ... in which case your payout might not be as big as you hoped.

The difference between con-man and entrepreneur can be a thin line.

I've known a few people who fancied themselves the latter, but had worked themselves into such a feverish pitch trying to get there ended up as the former.

Sometimes people convince themselves things really are going to work out OK, even when completely unfounded. The human brain doesn't always like lying to itself.

Only a hard core fundamentalist who was deliberately mischaracterizing evolution would say that. You cannot be a decendant of your cousins.

If they can stay up for 80 hours, they should be able to do a "round-the-world" flight too.

It's going to take several days to fly from Japan to Hawaii. In the process he's beaten the record for longest solo flight ever.

P.S. Are you 12?

Are you asshole? Or do you just play one on the internet?

It's a single person aircraft, travelling at an average speed of 50 to 100 km/h (31 to 62 mph).

Yes, it's not a continuous flight. But it will, nonetheless, be the first time a solar powered aircraft will do it, and every leg is pretty much an epic task.

It's still circumnavigation.

So, boo hoo, you disagree with the terminology. Nobody else gives a damn.

I don't care about a plane making a series of relatively short flights under optimal conditions (daylight), and I don't see why anyone else does either.

Well, that doesn't seem to be what is happening:

Solar Impulse 2 took off from Nagoya, Japan on Sunday for its audacious five-day flight across the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii with Swiss pilot and Solar Impulse co-founder Andre Borschberg at the helm. It has since stayed in the air for three days and nights without using a single drop of fuel, grabbing the distance and duration records, 5,663 km (3,518 mi) and 80 hours respectively, in the process.

This isn't some jet engine which does this in a few hours.

You can whine all you want, but the records are real.

They're for solar aviation, which means it's a lot harder and a lot slower.

Call us back when you've done better.

Spoiler alert: Kevin Bacon already has access to everything.

The Audi/VW group has waaaaay more money than the robot manufacturer. I bet I know who the deceased's family sues for compensation.

Well, should that happen, then all the people who have been demanding their 2nd amendment rights be recognized will know what to do.

Yup, if we showed you the level of abuse we'll be doing you'd get scared off and not use our service, and our IPO could be in jeopardy.

For now they're trying to pretend they won't start acting like assholes as soon as they can.

Can't tell you how many times a day I hear or say "The 9".

You mean the Nazgul??

I always thought IBM was evil, but I never expected that.

I have no idea if it was the government or not.

I'm just no longer willing to dismiss out of hand that it was, and no longer wiling to accept the dismissal of the government being involved as crackpot.

As I said, stuff which used to be tinfoil-hat-crazy is now pretty much a daily reality.

Do I think they're beyond sowing some fear to be allowed to declare it under their control? Not even a little.

In fact, given everything else we know has actually happened, it's disturbingly plausible.

You simply can't be paranoid enough these days, because reality keeps trumping fantasy. And what used to sounds ridiculous is now pretty much established as fact.

Honestly, things which 10 years ago would have been the domain of crackpots is now 100% fact.

These days it seems like no matter how paranoid you are, what is really happening is even crazier.

When law enforcement commits perjury in the form of parallel construction, when they withhold knowledge of their surveillance technology, when they lie about what they're doing without a warrant, when they lie about how many times a technology has led to an arrest .. honestly, it's hard to not assume shady dealings by a three letter agency.

You can't make up stuff anymore which is as crazy as reality.

And given that these guys have cut into everybody else's telecomms ... why wouldn't they be doing it here?

It really is hard to dismiss "crackpot" these days, because the reality is shit like that is actually happening.

You can't prosecute someone for possessing/using an authorized copy. You can sue them, but that costs more than you would collect, and in many cases you'd be trying to get blood from a turnip.

Horseshit.

When the tray icon appears, there is no dismiss. There is no "piss off and go away".

There "upgrade now" and "reserve your copy". There is no description of WTF not reserving my copy does, there is no dismiss. There is "I am going to sit here reminding you to upgrade to Windows 10 until you do".

The average user is going to read that and think "Oh, I guess I have to do this". It took me 20 minutes to identify the source and figure out what I had to remove.

When that crap is presented to you, there is NO indication it is optional, that you can cancel it, that you can choose not to do it .. in effect it presents itself with two choices "now or later".

And it means Microsoft is acting like they own the machine, and it's up to them to decide when to make changes to it.