I disagree. They were way more than a plot device. They *were* a plot device, but they were also, broadly speaking, Asimov's reaction to the visceral anti-robotics fears of the early days of sci-fi, a way of speaking out against the idea that AI would invariably go crazy and start murdering people for the luls, or because they wanted us out so they could take over, or whatever other reasons. He very intentionally wrote stories in which robots were not just intelligent, but intelligently *designed*, with rules explicitly created by humans to prevent the sort of chaos one saw whenever robots showed up in the media he was responding to.

Then, yes, they *were* a plot device, as he spent the next forever finding all the different ways the simple laws could go wrong, but there *was* a broader message.

That said, I do find it irritating when people who are *not* living in the Asimov robot fictional universe, seem to imagine they're "laws" in the scientific sense, as opposed to, obviously, laws in the "obey the law" sense. Asimov's fictional robots were designed with those laws baked in, but we can design robots however we like. (Heck, on a few occasions, people found ways of messing with the laws at the root level in his fiction, too, if I recall.)

And yes, in this case, it's all totally irrelevant, as there's no intelligence. There isn't even any goal-seeking, which *would* be more amusing and at least more likely to cause discussion, if it just wandered around randomly looking for humans and jabbing them (though the result of the discussion would be "wow that guy is a dick for making a machine that did that.")

One neat thing I just learned this morning: "Alexa, have a nice day" is an alias for "Alex, stop".

I hate it too, but Firefox has been slowly getting slower and slower, to the point where a couple weeks ago I said screw it, and switched to Chrome at home.

I'm thinking about seeing if I could set up Chromium from source, though, then I could probably fix at least a couple of the really minor irritations (like context menu items that should, but don't, have keyboard accelerators) in my own build, even if probably not any of the big ones.

You don't technically *need* both a keyboard and a mouse on your computer, either (one can *technically* do everything the other can, just a heck of a lot slower). Slide-out keyboards are a lot more convenient for enough things that I really, truly don't understand the hate people have for them. I'm going to be really sad when I can no longer replace my slide-out phone with another one when it dies. It's not really that much smaller or lighter than it would be without it, and way smaller and way lighter than a phablet, which enough people do seem to like (personally that's something I can't understand, I would have no interest in a phone remotely that big, but I still support more choices for people who do like them.)

Yes, I *do* want a physical keyboard. I know there isn't that much demand for phones with physical keyboards anymore, but there is still some. I absolutely want to know that when my current phone dies, I'll be able to replace it with another phone with a physical keyboard.

My current phone cost about 90 bucks, though, and I'm not going to pay like 8 times more for my next one. I'm also not a big fan of the blackberry style keyboard - the form factor I like is the slide-out kind where the keyboard puts the phone in landscape mode - easiest to hold while typing, and generally what I'd want anyway if I were doing something that required much typing.

> "Firing the bottom 20% of your work force every year is no different than YOU, as a consumer, not purchasing another good or service again because it didn't give you what you paid for. It is assigning value via your wallet. "

That's a pretty terrible comparison. It would be more like, if you went to a fast food restaurant you loved, that had, say, 20 items on their menu, but they forced you to rank the menu items from most-liked to least-liked, and then whichever 4 items you said you liked least (even if you still liked some of them!), they refused to let you buy them ever. Just crossed them right off the menu.

Firing people because you think they're not giving your company sufficient value, that's equivalent to what you described. Firing a bunch of people every year because they're in the bottom arbitrary-number of your current workforce, even if you'd prefer not to because they're still fine, that's balls-out crazysauce.

Is a dictionary going to have, for instance, the phrase "Clark Kent"? I can't imagine, or at least not something it'd try right off the bat, right? But "Clark Kent does 44 situps" (not my actual password to anything) is at least as easy to remember as "correct horse battery stapler" or whatever. So, that's what I do. (For passwords to places I'm actually worried about. For everything else, I have a fairly easy to guess, but also super easy to type, password, because... so?)

#2 is exactly why I *would* support it - because it's completely absurd that if you're just barely making enough to survive, you are told that you have two choices: either work a crap job for crap pay and be treated like crap, *or* alternatively, just take this money and go home, people will look at you like crap, but if you even *think* about making any extra money so your life isn't as crap, we'll take that other money away so it is just as crap again (unless you lie, which honestly, I'd be tempted to myself, if I were in that position).

Universal Income would mean the poorest of the poor would still have their food stamps, but the *slightly* less poor, and those with little money but some drive, would actually have reasons to look for jobs and to try to better themselves, instead of the current system, where they pretty much have the opposite, cause screw you, poor people.

Lovecraft, clearly.

I don't like Chrome's UI. I don't like that it's got a very Appley "we know what's best and refuse to let you change anything" philosophy. But dang if it isn't noticeably faster pretty much across the board - Chrome keeps getting faster, Firefox keeps getting slower, it's gotten to the point where I just don't have a choice anymore. So I've been slowly moving things over to Chrome. :(

No, it's clearly written in perl [/obligatory xkcd]

We've already been living in that era for at least a decade - I've definitely had *multiple* instances where I couldn't tell if the crazy guy on the subway was mumbling to himself, or mumbling into a bluetooth headset. I suppose this does make it even less obvious though.

Congratulations on having a job you love, presumably. But you're the one with a warmed view of what work is. For most of us, even if we don't downright *hate* our jobs, we'd certainly rather be doing something else with our life. For many people, that something else would even be far more "worthwhile" - I would much rather everyone with artistic talent be allowed to let loose those talents on the world, rather than only a tiny fraction of them (the ones that either got super-lucky, or more likely, have rich parents supporting their dream), because the rest of them need to work soul-crushing no-individuality-allowed jobs so they can afford to eat.

More than that, I'd *certainly* rather that anyone with a brilliant startup idea have the freedom to make *that* a reality, over the aforementioned daily grind. Sure, there are plenty of people who would probably just sit around bored and not contribute anything if given the choice, but... so? I'm not seeing how that's necessarily worse than what we have now, where those people (and plenty of other people who wouldn't do that!) are forced into doing menial tasks to make someone else rich, or starve in the street.

How many Super Mario Brothers *are* there, let alone ones that want to buy those drives?

I disagree.

The days of execs making money on *other* peoples' music are definitely disappearing fast, cause screw that. The days of actual artists making money on their *own* music are just getting started.