While I won't claim it happens in practice, especially for the 'big' players gaming the system, the fundamentals of insurance include, 'you can only insure a pre-existing risk' (so you shouldn't be able to get a policy to insure your next game of poker before entering a casino), and 'you can't get insurance on someone else's risk' (like a fire policy on someone else's real estate when you don't have a personal stake in it).

Of course, if you let finance bros near the regulators and legislators, and it's a matter of time before those are suggestions instead of rules. At least half of the rules for investing in the market these days are just to make things more complicated so the bigger players have more options and the smaller ones can't catch up to them. The other half seem to exist to indulge the compulsive gamblers so they can be milked of all available funds.

Capitalism is a lovely motivational system for a few generations, until the wealth concentration is too great.

That's why to make it last, you need a regulated market that includes a wealth tax to prevent the runaway wealth concentration issue. And why you need a decent education system so the population understands why it's necessary. And a combination of responsible free speech and a free press to keep everyone up to date on those who are trying to subvert the system. And an adversarial legal system divorced from the political system. And a proper democracy to allow the population to throw out bad leaders.

When you allow obscene wealth concentration, you get a handful of people who can control speech, kill education, subvert the law, and end democracy. Any civics teacher or historian could tell you that... but you have to be willing to listen.

Insurance is a fundamental necessity for any system with private ownership. It allows risk to be shared so that everyone pays a little bit to protect them against bad luck wiping them out economically. It is fundamentally the same as the concept of a company, or investing in a business venture - multiple people coordinating their resource use to allow them to achieve things no individual otherwise could.

Without it, the big projects only happen under despotic rulership and that's really not great for the average person.

Right, no argument there - just like you need to know what kind of power supply your PC build will need based on what you're plugging in to it.

However, for the typical consumer they want to know the case is shinny, it's going to be faster than they're used to, and it's going to last longer than they're used to. They don't understand Watts, amps, or amp-hours or anything else that has to do with moving electrons.

For everyone else, the more meaningful standard numbers we have in the spec sheet, the better.

Consumers will not measure the power of their electronics by the maximum current draw on a battery.

A standard for measuring average runtime from full charge is what really matters, mAh only matters when comparing two devices where the only difference between them is battery capacity.

If you are content to churn out crap for minimum wage because you're slightly better than an AI (for now), by all means do not bother learning to code. You will, however, be less likely to progress in your career, extremely unlikely to ever achieve anything interesting, and first to be let go when AI improves enough to surpass you.

For non-IT people, learning basic coding is an awesome method for learning how to problem solve and think logically. It will absolutely improve your ability to handle life even if you never write a line of code after learning how to do so.

The propaganda tool is getting an upgrade, might as well combine the two entities involved. Musk also gets to buy it well over its worth to pump up the official value for his ego's sake.

We have to start containing social media within national boundaries, make it difficult for the average person to access across borders and at least make the agitprop campaigns require some effort to insert and control content.

It's pretty trivial to get an old small form factor PC and load Linux on it. There's probably a more elegant solution, but I haven't bothered.

I used to buy task-specific devices, but I got tired of them falling behind as codecs changed and resolutions increased. I have a few little mini desktops that would otherwise have gone in the trash that do a fine job feeding video to my screens.

1) Politicize it

2) Deny there's an issue

3) Defund the reporting agencies

4) Don't tell anyone the wealthy will import their water

You don't have to worry about the clone's feelings or dignity... it's literally brainless.

Put it in a sling over a treadmill and use NMES to make it walk for eight hours a day while you feed it an optimal diet through a tube.

The difference between a body and a person is the presence of a mind. No brain means no mind.

A lab with a mindless body being experimented on is extremely disconcerting, but if you can overcome that feeling it is a great idea.

Imagine cloning yourself, with genetic corrections made for any issues you have, and then having a nice set of spare parts. If we get better at connecting nerves this could mean replacement limbs, eyes and ears in addition to internal organs. Of course, it'll be expensive and keeping brainless clone bodies in peak heath for harvesting is likely to be a very macabre process, but as long as there's no chance of the body thinking, I'm all for it.

That's just not correct.

> Or a straight line with a slope that changes over time.

You MAY want to look at an elementary-level geometry text and see if you can find a definition for 'straight line' and 'curve'.

I tend to root for the democracies... but ANY country that cares about its security should have its own OS (even if it's just its own Linux fork), hosting platforms, and social media.

If Amazon, Google, or Microsoft are your provider, you are under Donald's thumb... but regardless of current politics, I wouldn't expect the US to throw all its IT infrastructure to another nation either. It's just not a wise move.