How pathetic that people act like this is the end of the world or on par with nuclear war.

So who's acting that way? Or are you simply trying to set up a strawman to distract from Netflix's failure to deliver what its customers pay it for?

I predate the internet, so old farts like me just go, "Eh" and find something else to do.

Thinking other people's problems are insignificant because you don't share them is an equal opportunity character flaw. Don't blame it on your age.

Get a hobby, get a girlfriend, set fire to your neighbor's house, I don't give a shit- just stop whining about your life-giving movie stream isn't working right now.

Those are mighty words for someone spending their weekend whining about other people on Slashdot.

They are authoritarian followers, that fight anybody that disagrees with them with violence.

Authoritarians who want Trump to rule with an iron fist, or anarchists who want him to bring it all crashing down? And then there's likely to be the occasional idiot who actually takes anti-Hillary propaganda seriously.

Once again, we're being asked to believe that Trump is at once totally stupid and really good at The Cyber.

No, the AC is asking you to believe Putin considers Trump a useful idiot. Which he probably does, whether you think he's right or not.

As the rich see it the poor are just being lazy so giving them money will not encourage them to try harder.

You confuse cause and effect. The rich don't want to give up the power economic oppression gives them, so they see whatever helps excuse it. Just like every ruling class ever.

Pointing to another person's wrong NEVER justifies the wrong you're doing.

No, but pointing to someone else's acquittal does give you grounds to demand to be acquitted as well on the basis of equality under law, to which you are entitled.

Popularity of a language is immaterial to the usefulness of a language,

Popularity = developers = tools and libraries = usefulness.

No matter how inherently superior a programming language might be, if nobody is working on it its ideas will never go anywhere except by being grafted onto other, popular languages.

When Brendan Eich was "outed" as an opponent of "gay marriage", the online bullies forced his resignation from Mozilla's top job.

Perhaps you shouldn't advocate for causes that do nothing but cause harm to innocent people and then pretend to be the victim when you're treated like the villain you are. Good riddance.

Resigning is no different from suicide in this case â" a person is driven to an unpleasant and unwanted action by the words of those, who hate/despise him...

Aside from the obvious fact that losing a job is not even remotely the same as dying, there's also the difference that Tiziana was innocent while Brendan Eich is guilty of wronging - or at least trying to wrong - a lot of people.

There's actually a Change.org petition demanding Instagram give all users the ability to disable comments "to stop bullying." I've considered finding the user's Instagram and creating several sock puppet accounts, then using them to post content (with comments disabled) bullying the user, with no recourse to defend themselves.

So basically your plan to shut up someone asking for anti-bully feature on Instagram is to give them plenty of examples of bullying conveniently located where Instagram not only sees them but also cannot avoid taking a position.

I can get past libel by just heavily-criticizing them on factual things--like their idiotic demands to restrict people's speech and give them no recourse to comment on images which assault their character.

You're going to get past libel because nobody cares how buthurt a pseudonymous Instagram account is about another such account's feature requests.

Also, they have the recourse of telling Instagram a stalker is making sock puppet accounts for the sole purpose of attacking them. Instagram, not being the government, can then completely ignore how carefully you skirted the edge of law and simply permaban you. Or, if they're feeling nasty, sue you for using their system in breach of the user agreement, which forbids harassment.

But, hey, who knows? Maybe companies forcing good behaviour online for business reasons will end up teaching the next generation to debate without resolting to volume or insults, thus saving our democracies. It's a longshot, but any port in a storm.

You can either have all that, or you can have straight up meritocracy, which Google was famous for in the years past. You can't have both.

Your ability to interact with different people without causing problems - or unintentionally insulting your customers - is part of your merit nowadays. As the world changes, so do the requirements it places on businesses and their employees.

So, speaking time should be determined by genitals?

It shouldn't be. According to the summary it is: "The reporter noted that at iPhone 7 event, women spoke for roughly eight minutes at stage compared to men, who spoke for 99." That is what's being criticized.

Think if you had 250k nand gates to build the control logic for something that can walk, fly, build a nest, explore, gather food, herd other creatures, fight, flee, communicate, follow a trail, cut leaves, balance and carry things, and mate, you could do it?

A neuron isn't an nand gate, not even close. A neuron is a living microprocessor. You're vastly underestimating just how much raw computing power even insects really have.

You'll probably enjoy this ... it shows how SQ3 rendered a frame piece by piece

Interesting... I wonder if this means SQ3's graphics are, theoretically at least, resolution-free? They seem to be some kind of vector graphics, after all.

Hands off means we have to learn how to deal with our world not merely ape what we are told.

It's being told rather than having to learn by yourself which allowed humans to transcend mere instinct and develope culture. Indeed, that's what culture is - a stream of acquired knowledge being passed down to the next generation.

Then there's the concern that the budding civilization might jihad your ass, if they knew about you.

A budding civilization might want to jihad your ass, but how are they're going to do that? You're the interstellar empire and they've barely reached their orbit, if that.

Also, once you are manipulating less advanced creatures, you create the incentive to exploit that relationship. I'm sure there are some directives I could insert on that stone tablet to increase my net worth or future advantages, for example.

Both material and energy are abundant in space, and we're already automating our manufacturing so manpower shouldn't be an issue either. So what form would that exploitation take? The only thing of value I can think of is information - the ideas and cultural memes produced by the unique viewpoint of an alien civilization. Maximizing the production of those seems to entail maximizing both the material wellbeing and freedom of citizens, so it's not at all certain if such exploitation would, in fact, be bad.

Why do you assume they are smarter than us?

If they're spacefaring, they're further along technological development than us, which grants them better communications and computers, which make them effectively smarter. Which, of course, helps them design still better comunications and computers. Universe seems to like exponential growth.

Consumption without production means you're printing money somewhere. That can only lead to inflation and eventual collapse.

Consumption without production leads to prices rising which leads to companies increasing their production capabilities which leads them to hiring more people. You can't run a market economy if you're afraid of prices fluctuating, since it's that fluctuation which guides production.