1. It's a waste of resources to put every student through an AP CS class. As the article notes, most won't get anything out of it. Moreover, most have no interest.

2. While AP CS is only offered in 10% of schools, you have to remember there's some self-selection going on with respect to which school a student attends. The sort of students interested in CS and likely to benefit from an AP CS class will seek out a school where it's actually offered.

3. While students and their parents have some agency with respect to what school they attend, they don't have complete agency so some students will undoubtedly fall through the cracks. I mention self-selection only to point out that the # of students falling through the cracks is likely less than the "only 10% of schools offer AP CS" statistic would suggest.

"...or uses ARM-specific processor features..."

I'll count byte order as a processor feature.

Basically there's C code and then there's architecture-optimized C code. The former should be easily ported between architectures. So, if an app's native code is architecture-agnostic and the dev doesn't include x86 (and MIPS, for that matter) versions then he's just being lazy.

Unless the native code includes ARM-specific inline assembly or uses ARM-specific processor features then the lack of x86 libs is just due to laziness on the part of developers. All the dev would need to do is compile his native code for x86 and include it in the APK. Devs feel free to be "lazy" in this way because ARM is so prevalent relative to x86.

Motorola should totally cut a deal with Lucasfilm (or Disney, or whoever owns the rights now) and put out a commercial that plays off that line from Star Wars. Could maybe make some fake desert footage of a guy looking for a phone and splice it in with clips of Alec Guinness from the movie. People would eat it up.

especially because to function in society today you have to be online.

First of all, no you don't. Second of all, what percentage of low-income families without home broadband have at least one smartphone with a data plan? Voila; they're online.

Can we add large-scale interstellar colonization to the list?

Which, apparently, is distinct from what we commonly think of as "scientific literacy", i.e. what they're trying to measure.

Yeah, I didn't mean to suggest Clinton said the bit I quoted.

...which is undeniably the most important 21st Century skill...

Computer science is not a skill. Even if it were, however, I'd regard its status as undeniably the most important 21st Century skill to in fact be fairly deniable.

If all the authors go out of business because they can't make a living and have to get day jobs then Amazon has no new books to sell. So Amazon has a vested interest in keeping at least some authors afloat. It may well be that Amazon can do without Stross, however, and a great many other authors. But creating an environment in which nobody bothers to write books anymore isn't in Amazon's best interest.

Doubt it would be that low.

Hopefully a lot. We need some more smart people.

In other words the dollar has lost 50% of it's purchasing power.

Maybe if all you bought were Big Macs and you owned no assets whose value was also inflated. It's also worth noting the Big Mac Index suggests the official figures actually overestimated inflation from about 1987-2001. That is to say, the cost of a Big Mac rose more slowly from 1987-2001 than the official inflation figure would have predicted. From 2001-2014 its price has risen more rapidly than the official figure. But how much more rapidly? Well, the official figure would project the dollar to have lost 36% of its purchasing power over that period.

That you're surprised by the fact that basic food items haven't seen their prices skyrocket like gold speaks volumes. Hint: gold isn't valued at $1300 because a dollar is worth (400/1300) what it was in 2004. Recall also that gold was around $1900 in October 2011. Does that mean the dollar has experienced deflation since October 2011? (No).

Annualized inflation rate expressed in percentage form. So the cost of bread in Dec-2013 was 1.02837^18 what it was in Dec-1995.