Build a wall around it.

Yes, but this trope is modelling the outside view, where earth is just one of many origins.
Of course there are a million flavors of ale/coffee on earth, but ask a random alien on the other side of the galaxy, they only know the one kind that earth is famous for (because of best marketing?).

It's a trope based on real life. Just replace earth with *exotic country*.

Still the whole 'the majority of those who are successful programmers are mostly self taught'-idea is an artifact from when there was no formal programming education and all the programmers were electrical engineers.

Weeding out is done in any technical subject at the university level as far as I can tell.
Still that never kept schools from teaching everyone the basics of maths, physics, chemistry and so on. And if you are on a good school and a certain subject is to your liking, you can delve deeper into it.
I do not see why this subject needs to be treated differently.

I'd rather choose my train based on where it's headed.

Being on time at the wrong destination is kinda useless.

-- individual marked for termination...
-- reason: insulting the prophet of the great robotic overlords...

Did you even read the link you posted there?
It says right at the top: 'The "mini" connector has a diameter of 3.5 mm [...]'

Looking at my headphone's plug right now, this seems to be correct. The upper part of it (the part without the pinch) is exactly 3.5mm in width.

If the worst thing about drugs is that buying them helps criminals, I think the solution to that would be easy...

Here, over here! I am Impressed by this.

You know how it is soo difficult to find a good idea for your hobby programing project?

This guy has ideas man. I am so envious. He knows how to waste time for good.

If the judge is clearly siding with one party ahead of trial, shouldn't they be able to get him off this case on grounds of being biased?
Or is this also not a thing in the funky US justice system?

What I simply don't understand with these projects:

If they fail to meet the specifications, why are they paid?
Why are they paid even more afterwards?

If the company could not deliver what was specified, sure the forms are not there which is bad, but it should also cost nothing.

You can only download so much in a month given the limited bandwitdth, so there is still a physical limit.
Yes, that amounts to a lot of data for a single user, but averaged over all the millions of other users, a single user does not count for much, even downloading 24/7.

... don't have my data.

I wrote develop, not produce.

You need to hire and pay people with high-tech skills, at least some of which should have experience, otherwise you pay more for failed attempts.

You go through multiple iterations of prototypes, each costing much more than your mass produced final product would.

You need to aquire several certifications depending on the product, each requiring a lot of paperwork, pretests and costly official final tests.

Setting up production and QA may also take some rounds until you reach the desired production cost.

The argument that this is of no concern to a startup because it runs on loaned money anyways is a bit odd.
Anyways, the possibility (it's still a contest) of gaining 250k $ once you finish all of the above is a pretty weak encouragement.

250k to develop a commercial electronics product, let alone a robot is a joke. You need way more than that.
The only way this could (maybe) work is if this was a reward for bringing any such device to the market, no strings attached. No need to hand it over to them for 250k (haha).

Of course, if the goal is to just come up with the best concept, I'd get right on it. Ideas are cheap.

Just now 60k people are watching Bob Ross paint happy trees on Twitch.
Their definition of 'gaming' is not very strict and is only enforced when it suits them.