This requires one of the two computers to have an infrequent hardware error. If one assumes a low error rate (1 in a billion) and a multi-core processor, then it should be possible to fix this class of bugs in software.

Theoretically, it should be possible to create a compiler that takes any given encryption algorithm, compiles it in two different heterogeneous ways, confirms the calculation, and only sends correct information out over the wire. This is already done in some safety sensitive applications, often with two processors to run each of the two different programs.

For software like SSH, the software would need to move to coding security sensitive algorithms with language / compiler / toolchain that automatically confirms the results before sending them out.

Which do you trust more, the government or Comcast?

Regulation is a double-edged sword. But when dealing with a monopoly, it is often better to have a regulator than have nothing.

For many areas, it would be really nice to have two broadband ISPs. It would be a big thing for the local small businesses, startups, and business development organizations. Think about the marketing possibilities for small municipalities if servers could be set up almost anywhere.

Currently, well connected servers can only go into a series of third-party datacenters located at the few specific geographical locations where 2+ carries both have fiber interconnects. There are places in the world where I can set up a home server, on two 1 GB pipes from two different providers for about $200/month. Or I can be in the majority of the U.S., and have only one choice of provider and with some slow package.

The Unearthly Child had ratings so low, that the plan was to cancel Doctor Who after the next story.

The next run featured the "Daleks" which were the most iconic Doctor Who monster ever. Doctor Who became the BBC's new hit show ...

It is chump change, and Microsoft has already won. The issue stems from taxes in 2004. If Microsoft can stall this out sufficiently, the cost of money means that Microsoft got a taxpayer subsidized loan.

In 2004, Microsoft's stock price was about $25. Microsoft stock is currently at $332. So by keeping the money, Microsoft netted a 10x return, against whatever the final reduced settlement with the IRS might eventually be.

What was the opportunity cost of the IRS for this effort? After spending 19+ years getting Microsoft for this issue, how many other issues with how many companies were missed???

Electronic devices clobber mechanical devices in terms of reliability. I expect that the current crop of EVs to have extremely long lifetimes, limited primarily by design defects, availability of spare parts, and corrosion.

Having said that, modern manufacturers appear to be inserting design defects to make money from over-priced replacement parts ...

Up to about 22% of oil production goes to the really difficult to replace things, like plastics and lubricants. About 75% of oil production goes to fuels of various forms. Source: Page 3 of this document gives a good breakdown of the uses of a barrel of oil.

The easy to switch oil uses are:
1. Small Vehicles - switch to EVs. With the smaller vehicles being easiest to switch.
2. Diesel Electrical Generation - Solar is becoming cheaper than coal for electrical power production, and oil is much more expensive than coal. As such, for remote locations, diesel used to be primary power and is now backup power. Depending on application and location, cost arguments can be made to switch to solar and batteries.
3. Some large transport can migrate off of diesel and oil.

The harder to replace uses of diesel and oil are:
4. Jet fuel (they are working on it.)
5. Ships (again, working on it.)
6. Military, special purpose (again working on it.)

It is at least theoretically possible to make a large dent in global oil consumption with reasonable cost initiatives and current technologies.

As long as the authors are training and testing on stock images in various databases, a sufficiently large AI model should be able to losslessly compress any image down to a handful of bytes (less than 100). The neural networks are fully capable of storing and reproducing known images.

At a certain point, any AI compression algorithm boils down to an image recognition / database lookup algorithm, with the "details" hidden in the neural network model.

It's really hard to know precisely what these researchers built ...

The big problem the government with this line of thought is that people have tried to usurp Google as the dominant search engine by changing the defaults. Thinking Microsoft with Bing; Apple with Safari and Apple's Maps product; and Samsung with forks on Android.

Google is the dominant search engine, because people like it.

A better argument might be that Google is like the yellow pages. The yellow pages dominated local search before the internet because everyone had them.

My understanding is that only England and possibly Wales have local authorities. It's kind of like advertising that your "the largest town in the state", and not mentioning that the state capital is a city.

the trinity test which was supposed to be one of the high points of the film fell very flat on the big screen.

Real life explosions tend to bit flatter than what is portrayed in movies. Practical explosives explode so quickly that the explosions are over before anyone can comprehend what happened. The only thing interesting about a nuclear fireball is the shear scale. A sufficiently far away observer sees the fireball expanding slowly because of the distances involved. For anyone nearby, the blast is instantaneous.

It can seem like some real-life explosions take a long time, for instance mining blasts and demolishing tall buildings. These processes seem slow because they are a series of high-speed blasts separated by time-delays. Normal video cameras have a hard time capturing the action of any individual explosion.

Real-life explosions tend to happen so fast they fall flat on film, and look a little strange even on high-speed camera. Hence, the extensive use of propane mortars on film sets. These give an interesting fireball, and a slow moving shock wave. In comparison to real explosives, they do much less damage to structures and equipment, making filming much safer.

The rims can also rust on the brake rotors. I asked a mechanic how to solve that problem. They said "use a sledge hammer". That works.

The issue is that it isn't desirable to load the car down with enough stuff to deal with every problem. My car has some tools including a real spare tire, with the remaining "good" tools stored at home. My wife will call me or road-side assistance if she gets into trouble.

In an age where we have more access to information than ever, counterfeiting is easier than ever. This makes it difficult to establish and maintain a "reputation" for good product. The European solution this problem is country-of-origin laws for certain categories of product. But even then, if 1000 glass bottles with a "Champagne" label is worth $30,000, then some counterfeiter is going to figure out how to add the labels of a fake winery. So there is an ever increasing labelling race in Europe to try and develop better labels to detect fakes.

The problem is world-wide and affects entire categories of products. This is an article describing how all 16TB SSDs on Amazon are fakes. In some categories, there is so much knock-off product on Amazon, that people aren't sure what is a good deal and what isn't. Thus even if someone has a genuine "great" product, it is tough to differentiate it from complete crap. The only solution for the customer is to assume it is all cheap fakes. This squeezes out the good vendors, increases the proportion of counterfeits, and further worsens the customer experience.

I never really understood why it was in Amazon's interest to sell fake stuff. Amazon must have done a calculation that more money is to be made selling knock-offs than good reputable products.

I remember asking a cd duplicating company about there copyright policy. They informed me that they don't duplicate copyrighted material. When I asked how that worked fir the original author, they seemed quite certain of it.

Any good printing company will be paying attention to what they are printing. They are also likely checking that they aren't unintentionally violating copyright law. So take the privacy claims with a grain of salt ...

It seems like the question fell victim to two things:
1. The question is longer than the answer. English is so imprecise that it becomes difficult to accurately understand the question under pressure. There are so many ways that it is possible to code roughly the same thing, that it is very easy to miss a subtle detail. For this question, there are lots of details.
2. Last question on a time-limited test.