The TOS is arbitrary. Every TOS is arbitrary, if you read it. There's always a clause roughly amounting to "We can do whatever we want, whenever we want.".

While there are problems with monarchies, this is not one of them, not relative to modern society. Gaps in inequality were much less in feudalism (though everyone had less overall, too), and the life of a serf.... Really actually wasn't that bad, no worse than your average modern wage-slave (and serfs actually tended to work fewer hours each day than we do).

Class is still present, it's just less formally structured than it used to be. Despite what "the American dream" tries to get everyone to believe, it's nearly impossible to actually make any significant change in social class throughout one's life. The exceptions to this are all that you hear of (and especially all you remember), so it gives the illusion of being much more possible than it really is.

And there are many rules just as arbitrary as the ones you listed, including hunting laws (still, especially considering that these have never been that arbitrary), laws against gay marriage (in some places), and some restrictions on clothing (such as forcing people to wear it).

Was monarchy and feudalism problematic? Sure, but the economic aspects of it really weren't terribly awful, not in comparison to 'democratic' capitalism.

You know why there's been so many "Worst. Storm. EVER!" incidences lately?

Climate change. This is not going to help them.

The SHA-2 family are still unbroken, and I don't believe there are even any substantial weaknesses known. No reason to drop support for them at all.

There's a big difference between telling someone the end goal and having them get to that goal largely on their own, and having to hold their hand through every single step along the way. The latter seem to be the type that the grandparent is complaining about.

Not to mention that science, math, and engineering degrees are all-but-worthless in IT, as being able to design a circuit board, or optimize a search algorithm, or sequence some DNA has little-to-nothing to do with your average IT department's concerns about practical matters. I'm not entirely sure what a "tech" degree even is (I've never seen a university offer a "bachelor of technology", for instance), so I can't say anything about that.

IT, especially as defined by the linked article, is not programming, after all.

This has been adopted by some more self-aware schizophrenics to not look crazy, now that it's commonplace.

Actually, yes, it does.

...It just also needs to spend it on worthwhile things, such as a proper healthcare system, a proper social insurance system, and proper infrastructure (roads, water, sewage, etc.). Sadly worthwhile things isn't what get people elected anymore -- it's military/'defence' spending and lowering taxes on the rich that does. The American Delusion is that anyone and everyone could make enough money to take advantage of those lowered taxes, so they're fooled into believing its in their best interests.

The expanded universe novels and other media are hit and miss. Really hit and miss in some cases. Though you'll probably have most fans agree on at least one thing: Timothy Zahn's works are the best of the lot. Especially his original Thrawn trilogy, which was the first post-Return of the Jedi stories, and he had quite free reign as to how to handle the entire universe. His later works suffered somewhat for being saddled with baggage from some of the ... less-than-good novels. Though this wasn't all bad...

If you've read (or at least read summaries) of most of the works between his original Thrawn trilogy and the later Hand of Thrawn duology, it gets rather amusing to see him duck around and, ahm, reinterpret some of the works by others. He and a couple other authors tended to do this a lot when some of the stories got rather over-the-top (indestructible star exploding ship, Hutt with a Death Star laser, the Force being able to rip capital ships apart with a thought, etc.), and only he and one other author (Michael A. Stackpole) seemed to have a really solid grasp on how to write the Force without it becoming absurd, and with it feeling more in line with how it was treated in the original trilogy of films.

We'll eventually need to move to ECC or something similar to deal with the rapidly-increasing key sizes required in more traditional asymmetric encryption, but as far as we know that need won't be for at least another decade or three.

I agree that this looks like it's intended to replace a keyboard/mouse, rather than a controller. The only major drawback I can see of the design (presuming it works as well as intended) is that it'll be unusable for games that either expect a 'normal' controller layout or that tend to use a significant number of keybindings (it looks like anything expecting more than eight keys and a mouse will likely be unusable).

It was really, really fun to play with a group of friends back when it was released. Except for that one fucking friend everyone had that would always pick Oddjob.

Why would it be at all surprising to anyone that various foreign groups (I wouldn't even say 'enemies', as that's too specific) would be trying to infiltrate an intelligence agency that operates internationally? The CIA isn't domestic spies, after all -- it makes perfect sense that everyone else's non-domestic spies would work to figure out what you know about them (and maybe get some information about other countries as a bonus!).

It's not the Cold War, no. But the very existence of the CIA is enough to warrant attempts at infiltration -- their entire purpose is to spy abroad, so why would it be surprising that others are doing so?

All I can say is... Micro SD.

Size of a quarter? Too big! Try size of a dime, give or take -- but thinner and lighter. If it was tucked away anywhere without a case or whatnot, I imagine it would be almost impossible to find, unless they were specifically combing through your everythings to find it.

The only reason there's no proof either way is that it's almost impossible to prove a negative...

The most sane position to take, in my mind, is assuming that there is no god, no afterlife, and no soul. But if I die, wake up, and have an omnipotent being saying "Hi!", I'll re-evaluate those assumptions based on the new evidence.