He died? Perfect time to convert him to an NFT! ...and my condolences.

Just because a man manages to surprise us at times does not negate the need for healthy skepticism. Just look at Zuckerberg sinking $11 billion into his metaverse; this is what happens when a successful man surrounds himself with lackies and thinks he is above all skepticism. The real problem with the metaverse is that no one needs it. Musk's electric cars succeeded against the odds because, in the end--beyond hype and flash and autopilot--we do need to stop relying on gasoline. But does anyone need an "everything app"? One can at least suggest that the answer may be no.

In other words, Microsoft is bringing new meaaning to the Blue Screen of Death.

I usually think "the exception that proves the rule" is utter nonsense, but you actually managed to use it in an insightful way. By being rare, the exceptional case still manages to be a sort of luck and thus validates the claim that luck is the primary factor, despite also involving effort.

Microsoft's approach makes sense. People can call out lies for what they are. Microsoft itself does not need to be in that business. If a platform makes censorship a policy, it becomes easy for biased parties to misuse this policy to silence fair opposition. Instead, if Microsoft simply makes data about the post clear and accessible, it's not complicated for most sane people to identify absolute bullshit. At the same time, more complex gray issues can be decided by readers, without undue censorship.

Well said.

Really? Because I've not experienced that with my own handwriting. Even something simpler like OCR often falls short. I've been using OCR a lot and I find that it still fails to recognize some very obvious text even at 1200 DPI. I know I don't have the cutting-edge technology, but I think it's premature to declare that computers have surpassed human competence here.

He'd be perfect for the job: immoral, self-centered, and lacking in any clue about how the world really works. That's real electible material right there by American standards. Unfortunately, though, he wasn't born in the USA.

I get what you're saying, but the end doesn't justify the means. A vigiante who steals from a criminal still commits a crime, even if it's less morally evil; they violate the legitimate order by taking justice into their own hands. It might be possible for their culpability to be effectively 0, but that does not make the action good. (This is different from a revolution or a case where the authorities have lost their legitimacy due to systemic corruption.) Now in this case, the unfair distribution of wealth is evil but not necessarily a crime, and the hackers thus have even less legitimacy for attacking their victims. It is an attack, too, because it actively forces the transfer of wealth. It cannot be morally good. It can only be less evil. Exactly how evil is not something we can measure for sure, especially because personal motives are secret. For example, we cannot be sure that they are not doing it for non-monetary rewards. They might ultimately desire to be seen as heroes, which is a selfish goal all the same.

I agree. In fact, the problem is not the policy that encourages diverse hiring, but rather the practice of promising a job to someone before conducting proper interviews. In my experience, when someone uses their authority to priomise a job to someone it allows bias, personal preference, and intimate relationships to play too large a role in the process. Yes there are times when there really may be only one perfectly suited candidate and his or her name is known beforehand, but even so one should not assume that interviews will reveal nothing of importance. It may be that the dream candidate is not really commited to the position, or plans simply to use it to immediately step up to another position, or the candidate has toxic work habits that won't suit the environment, etc. So the boss may love this dream candidate and may decide that no matter what he or she will get the job, but then it turns out that the person gets along terribly with everyone else or performs poorly despite looking perfect on paper.

As a minority myself, I admit that enforcing diversity is not a good idea (e.g. California's law mandating female executives). However, encouraging diversity is not the same as enforcing it. A policy that mandates interviews before decisions is not only good practice in general, but good for the company, so long as it does not force anyone to hire a diverse candidate simply for being diverse. Diversity is not merely about skin color, either. Different backgrounds and experiences can contribute in positive and unexpected ways. So a company should definitely strive for diversity in interviews and do so with openness and honesty--not promising the job to anyone until the interviews are complete. Only after a good interview process is it really possibly to say with certainty that this or that person is most suited for the job.

Your argument makes sense, and could work in some cases, but the basic facts of the current situation indicate that this is not the case with video cards right now. Is the bitcoin market subsidizing improvements in video cards? Well, (1) with short supply and outrageous prices, there's no competition driving Nvidia to produce better cards for crypto mining, (2) To my understanding, Nvidia doesn't even want to cater to the crypto market, (3) Improvements in the card's ability to hash does not directly translate into improvements in its gaming capabilities, so even if this led to improved cards, they would not be as improved in terms of their gaming function, (4) The rise of crypto mining has indeed coincided with a monstrous increase in prices; though other factors, such as supply issues, are also to blame, this rising cost means that even if card technology has improved, value-per-dollar has seriously tanked; the bare fact is that it can cost $1000 today for a card that cost $500 only a few years ago; (5) today's cards have made relatively slower progress, such that for example the 3080 does not outclass the 1080 by as much as one might expect. A brand new 3080 can cost 3x as much as a 1080 did a few years ago (when I last upgraded my own card), but a 3080 is not 3x as powerful as a 1080 in actual in-game performance.

That's my question. I don't see any logical argument for a one-time cost, so I worry it's monthly.

Good point. If it were municipal, it would make a lot more sense.

Yeah, I liked the idea of Powershell, but the syntax is even wonkier than Visual Basic. It shouldve simplified things that were hard to do in cmd and batch, but instead it made even many easy tasks harder.

Fascinating case, thanks for pointing it out. IANAL, but the situation described in the cited case still sounds quite different, e.g. the bankrupt party was not holding the money at the time of its bankruptcy, if I understand it correctly, so I wonder whether this judgment would still apply if Coinbase were to fail.