Depends on your definition of market value. If they went to multiple companies I'd say CMU was paying below, but the fact they all went to Uber suggests that Uber paid well above market value to make sure they accepted the offers.

I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing but it's different from how we usually evaluate market value for employees.

The fact they were working at CMU suggests they were already paying them market value.

What I think actually happened is that Uber treated the Robotics Engineering Center as a startup with a set of internal working relationships and expertise that they wanted. Since they couldn't actually buy the Center they just hired away all the researchers.

Partially.

Tesla costs too much because the tech is new and somewhat experimental, but if rich people keep buying them the tech will mature and costs will come down until it's mass market.

Ferrari is different in that it's a luxury brand, so it will always be good quality but more expensive. I'm sure it drives technology forward as well, particularly is design and manufacturing, but maybe not to the extent of a Tesla.

So it goes for virtually any new product.

That's one thing the rich are actually good for, buying the sometimes dubious new inventions and supporting product development until things are mature enough for mass market.

I think it's a bit of both.

There are wildly delusional advocates for almost any position, I don't see why Russian foreign policy would be any different. Especially when you consider that Russia does have some legitimate grievances against the West (I get why people wanted the NATO expansion, but expanding an anti-Russia alliance into the former USSR was more than a bit provocative).

At the end of the day Russians are just like anyone else, and they'll be willing to swallow a boat-load of BS so they can cheer for Russia. Some of them will go online and undergo crazy rationalizations on comment boards to convince people why Russia is in the right. They're largely following the same pool of newspapers, blogs, and pundits, so they'll all repeat the same arguments and crazy theories.

I have no idea how to differentiate these people from the actual trolls.

Maybe, though I'm guessing a lot of people only watch shows from 3-4 channels on a regular basis and watch only a very small amount of programming for the rest. HBO is a very exclusive channel, but even if you did that for all those 3-4 channels you'd pay $45-$60 for almost all the programming you get currently, but commercial free and on-demand with a back catalog.

Russia would like for us to continue gifting them with cash for 40-year-old missle motors, it's our own government that doesn't want them any longer. For good reason. That did not cause SpaceX to enter the competitive process, they want the U.S. military as a customer. But it probably did make it go faster.

Also, ULA is flying 1960 technology, stuff that Mercury astronauts used, and only recently came up with concept drawings for something new due to competitive pressure from SpaceX. So, I am sure that folks within the Air Force wished for a better vendor but had no choice.

This ends a situation in which two companies that would otherwise have been competitive bidders decided that it would cost them less to be a monopoly, and created their own cartel. Since they were a sole provider, they persuaded the government to pay them a Billion dollars a year simply so that they would retain the capability to manufacture rockets to government requirements.

Yes, there will be at least that Billion in savings and SpaceX so far seems more than competitive with the prices United Launch Alliance was charging. There will be other bidders eventually, as well.

If Britain exited the EU we would be subject to an economic disaster.

However the problem is we look set to be steered into this be minority interests of the likes or Murdock and Barclay Brothers that control the UK media and see their old school power base slipping away under increased integration. The mass media is full of fabricated up news about the EU banning bent bananas and imposing the 'French' metric system which as in reality invented by John Wilkins, a Brit.