Except that...

They booked it so they could actually go see it.

McDonald's had those when I worked there. I'd wager the difference is that this thing also independently monitors meat temperature and also removes them from the grill. I can see value in the temperature check alone.

One day when I worked at McDonald's, the meat hadn't been taken out of the deep freeze early enough and so the burgers weren't fully cooked after their preset cook time. They looked fully cooked on the outside (thanks to the double-sided grill press), but were quite raw in the middle even on the thin patties. We had a lot of complaints that day. Part of the problem is that the kitchen staff are not trained to cook burgers - they are trained to put frozen burgers on the grill, push a button, and take the burgers off when it dings. The managers occasionally verify the internal temperature, though I only witnessed that a couple times in a year of work.

Nothing. Nova hasn't posted since January, but in his/her 2 posts today there are 3 links to their own blog... so we can assume they will take any excuse to put in a plug.

It's not even that, it's just the same fear-mongering that Apple was trying to push when they wanted to criminalize jail-breaking iPhones a number of years ago. Back then it was claimed to be risk to the mobile infrastructure allowed by having users install third-party software on a device connected to the network. All they really wanted was to maintain full control at the expense of the consumer because it's part of their business model. The difference is that today the fear-du-jour for devices is privacy and there are more players in the market.

Except that's not actually how it works. It's the same company selling a drug to both the US and everyone else. For example, in the listing below Mirapex is owned by a German company.

A better argument would be that drugs cost less for everyone else BECAUSE they are able to charge more in US markets. As in premium US prices allow them to give discounts to others. But in reality it's simpler than that - drugs cost more in the US because the US health care system gives the drug companies a huge negotiating advantage compared to single-payer.

You are making the presumption that there are only two courses of action - assume it is real or assume it is a drill. There are other actions, like taking 10 seconds and speaking to one of the other people who is within 20 feet of you. Based on the information so far, there were numerous people involved and only 1 of them thought it was real.

... it's a drill. 100% of all times they previously received any message, it was a drill.

It was still a failure of the officer, but it might also be a small failure of someone higher up. A message that begins and ends with "EXERCISE EXERCISE EXERCISE" is pretty likely not a real event regardless of what is said in between. The officer said he didn't hear the exercise part - so why didn't he hear both the beginning and end of the message?

I wonder about this one. My assumption is that the person who fired was near to the door, and fired because they thought themselves or their team was in danger. My question is - given what they presumed they were getting into (a threatening situation), why did they immediately put themselves in a position where they would likely have to defend themselves?

It reminds me of that teenager flashing a fake gun at a park, and two officers show up to confront him. The driver of the patrol car stops the car less than 10 feet from the guy, and the cop in the passenger seat is now placed in a position where he's immediately vulnerable to the presumed armed individual and shoots him. I don't blame the cop who shot the kid, I blame the driver. But all the media coverage was about the shooter.

Isn't the first encounter in the book a mission where he reflects that what they are doing is military bullying to achieve a specific political outcome?

I think sovereign immunity applies to criminal acts, not monetary liability. In Canada, our citizens have certain rights, and if the government doesn't respect those rights then they can be sued. I'm sure this varies by country. Best example for us was quite recent.

Notch sold Minecraft to Microsoft and left. The guy being promoted is (I guess) the guy Microsoft put in charge of the product after they bought it from Notch. But you're right, Minecraft has had continued success under Microsoft. However from a layman's view you might compare this to putting a guy on a train that is already moving at top speed, then later rewarding him for not fucking it up.

Deciding which data points are predictors of a certain outcome in regards to crime has nothing to do with software, programmers, or designers. That's the job of statisticians, who probably weren't involved in the creation of this software.

I agree, but it wouldn't work. NK would then use the same strategy against Trump and it would be 100x more effective.

I don't think the results are directly comparable, though the article doesn't elaborate on what the test is like. The question quoted in the article is "what causes rain". Do you score a point if you understand the question, or do you only get a point if you can both understand the question and provide the answer? AIs would parse the question and then return a result based on a massive knowledge base. Are human's allowed to look up the answer? Was the human score a single smart human or was it an average over many humans taking the test? If a smart human can't understand the question but a computer can, doesn't that mean the question is poor?

Except that the US isn't the only one with the ability to detect missile launches. Japan is often the first to identify a missile launch because the missiles tend to fly right past them.