You mean the same Teapublicans who push for elimination of income tax in favor for sales tax? Except that sales tax only applies to poor people. Rich people don't buy things; they invest in things.

I don't agree with basing the tax on time held. That's just an extra pain to audit. A simple low flat tax on each trade will already stop HFT. Even with a tiny tax, trading multiple times per microsecond will add up very quickly.

Exchanges could easily make HFT unviable if they wanted to. But why would a private exchange ever want to do that?

TFA says 70 barrels, not gallons. A barrel is 31.5 gallons.

I've long wondered the same thing, but for that to be true, the antimatter would have to be outside our observational universe; otherwise, we would detect the matter-antimatter collisions.

One way to effectively accomplish the same thing without affecting freedom of speech is to assign copyrights of an electronic image where a naked person is the primary focus of the recording to the naked person. Then it becomes a copyright issue and not a free speech issue (that is, if you don't consider copyright to be a free speech abrogation!). This shouldn't affect normal porn since the actor would presumably agree to assign the copyright over to the business or photographer for a fee.

Now, sex acts would probably constitute a joint work, and would be fair game for either party to publish (although royalties, if existing, would be shared), but that means that one party would have to be willing to upload emself to the revenge porn site. Fine, if you wanna do that.

From the summary, it sounds like this theory is saying that a quantum computer is useless, or that it cannot be scaled up, because something in quantum mechanics is preventing a quantum computer from efficiently calculating an NP problem.

But it asks the question, what is the reason for this computational limit? It's not like atoms are actually using computer algorithms to calculate their behavior.

We are a longer way off from interstellar colonization.

More likely, you move 0 adults along with thousands of sperm and eggs, who will be conceived and hatched by robots.

This estimate seems to based on natural reproduction and natural selection of sexual partners. The first interstellar colony would be anything but natural. Clones, genetically altered humans, controlled mutations...

If we, as a society, are going to spend significant resources to execute a space mission, we would want to maximize our chances of success. That means putting the best and brightest astronauts on board the space ship. Somehow, I don't think we will find the optimal candidate on death row.

In the first article, the graph shows that agricultural yields for the North mostly increase. South of the Tropic of Cancer, not so lucky..., but we all know that they don't really get a say in anything.

That's just an excuse. A lot of people in poor countries do give a fuck, and (accurately) blame the West for most of climate change. China is not a role model, but they are making substantial investments in alternative energies. Unless you are in China, they are just a distraction from local efforts. Climate change is not some binary switch. Incremental improvements will reduce the impact, even if major devastation is unavoidable.

I think there are enough people interested in meaningful pollution regulation, but first it's necessary to get coal money out of the pockets of politicians.

They are leveling the field for bankers and brokers, but it would be nice to level the field for everyone, and let me personally buy stock without getting screwed by some broker.

The problem here isn't a trust between Comcast and Time Warner. Rather, the problem is a trust between Comcast/Time Warner and the local government.