5) British cuisine.

Amazon sells most goods from China, but Alibaba will be able to underprice Amazon.

I totally agree with your point, but so far the move of listing on a U.S. stock exchange seems to mean just raising capital - not necessarily a greater expansion of U.S. sales.

I wouldn't want to be hanging onto Amazon stock right now...

I'm not sure why given that revenue drops seem to only make Amazon stock go up in value, not down. A strong competitor should REALLY raise the AMZN share price... :-)

On a personal note, I would really welcome a strong competitor to Amazon, because right now there just is not anyone filling that role.

Because any geek who knows his/her science knows what forever means AND thus logically won't want to live forever

That does not follow, at all.

I doubt people are psychologically able and stable enough to _enjoy_ a mere billion years of existence. A thousand years, ten thousand years, maybe

Statistically speaking even if your body can live forever, some kind of accident will almost certainly kill you in that ten thousand year timeframe. So a real geek knowing that would have no problem with any technology that lets you live "forever" knowing the actual range of life will be "reasonably" short due to many other circumstances.

Everyone assumes similarity to themselves and their lives.

This is why rich people look at poor people and don't see how poor people live, but how absolutely lazy or irresponsible someone who grew up rich would have to be to wind up in those straits. They cannot assess the huge differences in opportunity, education, social connection, or positive expectation. They can't imagine seeing the world from a place of limited opportunity. Even the best-hearted of them can take a "poor vacation" and try to live the subsistence life, but growing up feeling you can't just walk away from that is one of the biggest aspects.

So what to Eric is expensive college tuition is ridiculously impossible for many others, especially considering that jobs aren't even available to that many college graduates anymore.

Higher education has been made the tool of class stratification. You're lucky to be born with the funds to have the odds on your side. And even if you give education all you've got, heaven help you if you're one of those who doesn't have health care coverage - recent changes being a bit late for those I know who tried to bootstrap when college was all they could afford.

Having memory manufactured in quantities reflecting powers of two makes perfect sense.

Hijacking well-defined metric prefixes to express something that they do not actually represent, however, is a problem. Hence the recent introduction of alternate prefixes to describe powers-of-two based values. (Yes, they sound silly, because we're not used to them, but not nearly as silly as e.g. using "kilo" to mean something other than 10^3)

All genuine degrees have value in getting a job....But the practical advantage of the skills they've gained, and the character that has been built.

I personally think all degrees of any kind can have value in getting a job - but not many have value equal to the expense it took to get the degree.

The problem is that a degree itself matters more to getting a job very short term - say three to five years after the degree. After that point what matters more is skill and "character" as you say.

But both skill and character are easily accumulated without amassing college debt. And lack of debt gives a young person a lot more choice in how they can gain skill and build character, in a lot of cases if someone applied themselves they could easily be in a better position to get a job at the time most people are leaving college, than the college graduate would just after leaving school.

The places where a toilet like this would be most useful are not known for their strict observance of building codes.

And let's stop this crap about how all unemployed college graduates majored in English or some other liberal or fine arts. EVERY major is having issues with employment in this economy.

From what I can tell that simply is not true. CS majors are not having issues finding jobs. It doesn't seem like engineering majors are either. If you learn a valuable skill you can still find a job.

there many more with equally good ideas that tried a similar path, and through worse luck ended up going bust.

But they at least had the experience of running a business. There are PLENTY more people that finished college, amassed crippling debt, and ALSO went bust - only they ended up with a degree that had no value for getting a job, and debt that is impossible to discharge. At least the dropout who failed had a debt that could be shed in bankruptcy, if they even amassed debt to run a business!

Human culture existed for thousands of years before copyright, and during that long expanse there has been no lack of music, drama, prose, poetry, painting and sculpture. Strangely enough "content creators" did make a living.

You do realize that the sustainable rate is around two kids/woman because the oldest generation dies off, right? If we were effectively immortal, the birth rate would have to drop to zero to be sustainable. Not a big deal if we live to be 150, it'll just cause a slightly longer delay but true immortality would really throw a monkey wrench in how society works.

That makes sense.

Yeah, it was more a case of trying to attack a weak spot. They knew MS was doing all kinds of anticompetitive stuff, but thought the browser bit was an easy target. In actuality, I think the bundling prosecution poisoned the well for the possibility of prosecuting for the real problems.

Why fight child poverty in North America when kids are starving in Africa? Why fight deforestation when global warming can do far more damage.

We can fight more than one battle at once, maybe these people are content enough with their lives that they really don't want them to end so that's the quest they're pursuing.

Btw, at any age being healthier probably translates into being happier.

Which isn't all bad... after all, the Bedouins didn't invent nuclear weapons.