Still at least 40 IQ points above you.

The other countries showing concerns have only started showing concerns after the US started putting pressure on them to show concerns. The other day Trump came out and tweeted that the Huawei situation could be taken care of as part of the trade negotiations. If there were really security issues then they wouldn't be able to be dealt with through talks. The US President is using "National Security" to put a stop to free competition.

Gee, Google not giving a 100% support to a dev version of Edge. Oh, the humanity.

You all were so worried about Google wasting their scarce resources on cold fusion... but you didn’t need to worry. They’ve still got plenty of money to be evil with!

Well, there's also the question of where you're going to get the massive amounts of energy required to flip your em-drive powered spacecraft across the couple of dozen trillion kilometres between the stars and back, so it might just have to be both

Every year we need a "no google day". Which day should we pick?

I think cyber monday would be impactful. But also not a good day to give up my google habit.

Maybe Groundhog day.

I want a USB-C charger for my Tesla. 100W will take for ever .

Privacy is not a luxury item.

Privacy is a counterfeit item.

Real privacy is achieved by buying less things. And more land.

There they go!
I must hurry after them,
for I am their leader.

Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, 1848 (as best I could find)

Consider the set of uninteresting numbers
This set must have a smallest member[1]
This number is the smallest, uninteresting number, and is therefor interesting. Remove it from the set
Now, consider the set of uninteresting numbers...

By extension, there are no uninteresting people.

[1]Oh all right, I guess that means that complex numbers are uninteresting.

"Building an OS that is secure can be done." Don't be stupid. I haven't seen one in 40+ years. Reminds me of the people trying to stop DVD copying.

Because it does work.

It is controversial because there was a double-fuckup in both the reporting, and in the response from science professionals. Because of the double-fuckup, the truth is so embarrassing that if you have letters next to your name and speak of the truth, you get blackballed from all STEM fields.

Basically, what happened was, there was a successful experiment. But it hadn't been repeated yet. And the media went apeshit, and famous people said all sorts of wild things about flying cars and the future from the Jetsons.

And then others tried to replicate it, and they failed. And the whole world, all the idiots who originally were talking crazy, plus all the ones who had been sagely insisting to wait and see, they all then came out at once with the bigger fuckup than the first one: Everybody started calling it a hoax, and blaming the original scientists.

And then in the period after that, for a couple decades, even talking about the research in a serious tone of voice got real professors fired. That's how bad it was, that is how bad it still is. Talking about it seriously is forbidden. By "scientists."

But it wasn't a hoax. It quite realistically might not have been a mistake, either. Because while most who tried to replicate it failed, a few, maybe 1 in 40, were successful. Once. But then not the next time. And so it turns out, it sometimes seems to work. Or if not, the actual experimental mistake has not been discovered. But it really appears to sometimes work. Of course, 1 out of 40 tries means it is a huge net loser of energy, not a power source. But there very well might be some important physical law or fact or whatever that is deeper and simply not understood; some inner clockwork that remains totally hidden to us that determines if it is ready to work or not. Discovering why the experiment usually fails would be absolutely huge, the biggest discovery across 3 generations of physics. But nobody in academia is allowed to talk about it, because falsely accusing scientists of perpetuating a hoax is a major anti-social transgression. And many, many people have engaged in it, and have already helped to blackball people over it, so they're all invested in the "conspiracy." But of course there is no intentional conspiracy, it simply works out in a similar way when so many people have the same malicious interests in play at the same time.

So anyways, if some company does the research instead of discovers something, it will probably have huge engineering implications. Whatever it turns out to be. Doubtful it would actually be a useful power source, of course.

Yup...I've been casually watching the Andrea Rossi E-Cat drama for years and he's always claiming that it's next week or next month or "real soon now". He's strung out the faithful for so long it's kind of like performance art.

And yet he never really shows anyone anything except a lot of graphs accompanied by claims and reports of progress. No independent tests or trials, just excuses as to why he can't actually demonstrate anything. At some point you think his followers would demand some kind of results, anything to show that there's actually something there...but nope.

they never really mentioned which phones would support these cables, and how much the ones in production would actually cost.

Authenticating the device you're charging is a new take on profiteering, since the fast charging cables probably are optional for an extra cost.

Hope this is as successful as Apples wireless charging.

I fully agree.

Except that we have widely used legacy of .com, .org, and .net.

A perpetual license from an industry standard licensing platform and from an industry which has already demonstrated its desire to ensure a smooth user experience in the case of the UltraViolet service shutdown.

I was going to make a comment about this being a great reason to spawn a "Mom and Pop Amazon". I think you're right, though. It's much more likely Amazon just sent Alibaba an engraved invitation to come and eat its lunch.

So what's the controversial part? That some people say it could work and some people say it can't?

Seriously?

If Google wants to plow a ton of money into it, fine. They'll likely come up with some data showing that one side of this "controversy" is probably correct and the other side isn't. So what?

I don't see what the shit is all about. Maybe they'll be able to conclusively show that it just isn't possible, and then we've learned something. Either way I think that Google spending their own money on it is fine. If it's all a load of bogus nonsense then the data is likely to show that.

If it turns out that there may be something to it, also fine. Personally I'm doubtful, but I'm smart enough to know that I don't know. That's what research is for. Maybe Google's research will be enough to put this thing to bed once and for all and people can move on to spending time and money researching something with more promise or improving an existing technology.