Multiple credit card companies are already doing this. Our merchant services company offered us this same data. Of course Google is tracking everything you do. But they can only do it with the willing help of Visa/Mastercard.

It's too late for everybody who isn't named "Tesla". Tesla's got over 100,000 charging stations installed already. Tesla's chargers are going to be the de facto standard at this point.

Unless you buy brand new hardware, hardware is absurdly cheap. Our hardware costs are somewhere around 1/20 of our software costs. It might even be less. I don't see any costs savings on hardware.

What I do see with "microservices" is crossing your fingers that whoever you're buying from knows what they're doing (ie: backups, non-faulty hardware, non-faulty sysadmins, etc.)

The other thing is that you have to rely on Internet access, which, in most of the US, is spotty at best. We're in a major metropolitan, high-tech area, and neither of the ISP's can provide us with reliable service. Hence, all of our software is built to run off-line during our very regular Internet outages. With "microservices", we'd just be stopped from doing any business at all every time the Internet dropped out.

Reddit's management structure is toxic, heavy-handed, and one-sided. And I say this as a proud leftist.
Authoritarianism is not exclusive to the right wing. Left wingers can be equally authoritarian.
And a lot of the time, we forget this. We are so proud of our ideological purity that we squash those who disagree with us.
And as a direct result, they rejected us in the elections. Because we stopped being liberals and started being the Fairness Police.

If these companies even tried to end "hate speech" or whatever nebulous crime where a specific group of pigs are more equal than another group of pigs, we will see the end of these platforms and companies full sail.

Banning trolls will hurt their business, how? As an employer, I'm MORE likely to advertise on a platform that wasn't full of screaming, stupid Trump people. Those are not people that I want to advertise to, anyway.

How can Uber have trouble turning a profit? What expenses do they have? Are they literally wiping their asses with money, or something? I can't imagine how maintaining a few little apps would cost billions of dollars a year.

Wow. That's neat. In return for those cute little gimmicks, Amazon has a complete recording of everything that happens in your house. And, then they sell that to other companies. You're OK with that? Really?

I feel bad for kids these days. The world is going to be a nastier place to live in than it is today in many ways, environmentally, notwithstanding. Go, Trump!

Terrestrial radio uses frequency division AND geographic separation in order to provide communications ability to the users on this planet. To tinker with the ionosphere would increase propagation even for those signals for which propagation beyond line of sight was not a significant concern. Not every user needs over-the-horizon signaling. To a very large degree, we use the horizon effect for useful things- for one, it allows us to have multiple 100KW television transmitters all using the same channel all on the same continent. Ionospheric changes will have negligible effect on the power needed to adequately cover a metropolitan area with signal, and may actually INCREASE the power needed to swamp a distant signal that's intruding spatially into another market.

I think the real problem is that there's a minimum required to not be homeless in most developed nations. There are ZERO apartments in most areas that would be described as "basic", having just a bedroom and a bathroom and a kitchenette. We are therefore burdened with having to have middle-class income to even live within the law. Nobody builds basic, poverty-level housing anywhere. This means that while you work in a gas station or restaurant, or wherever you're underpaid or not employed within your primary career, you're shit out of luck. This affects college students whose parents do not contribute, or can't, and disproportionately affects teens who grew up in state care as orphans or wards of the state. In those circumstances, when you turn 18, you're turned out onto the streets. If you make it, fine. If you don't, nobody cares. Having a brother in law who grew up in state care and who is currently homeless, I am always surprised at the sheer number of homeless people who have similar circumstances, and cannot get out of it because to maintain a job, you have to have a place to live, and to have a place to live, you have to have maintained a job long enough for first and last month's rent, a security deposit, and you have to miraculously have a decent credit rating, somehow, after being homeless. It's one of those things where there's a crack in society, and once you're in it, unless a miracle happens and someone offers you a place to stay for basically free, you'll never get out of it on your own.

You ask why we don't generate a video frame that's halfway between the current video frame and ONE THAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE. That is quite probably the stupidest question I've heard a nerd make.

Several emails sent through the server state in absolute terms that the reason to operate a private email server is to avoid Freedom Of Information Act compliance and other Federal requirements and data requests. The entire purpose of that server was to avoid legal compliance and transparency. The reason she had her own server rather than a Gmail or Hotmail account is that Google or Microsoft could be subpoena'd and would comply and turn over records, but you can wipe or destroy a server that's completely under your control and utterly avoid recordkeeping for criminal or incriminating correspondence.

The Gros Michel banana is not extinct. It just is rarely grown because it's vulnerable to a blight, and growing an entire field of it practically guarantees that you'll lose your crop. It is grown in smaller crops to guard against this. You can get them, but not cheaply, and not at your store.

It's actually NVIDIA that doesn't have something in the 200 dollar price point that's even remotely new. It's completely inappropriate to compare a 200 dollar card to a 325 to 350 dollar card. Most consumers don't buy 400 to 800 dollar cards. AMD knows VR cannot succeed without a mid-range mainstream card that is capable of VR, and without capability, people won't experience VR, and if they don't experience it, they won't demand better hardware, and AMD won't have business. But- If both vendors make VR capable cards at the 200 dollar price point, then there WILL be demand for VR, and after that, demand for even better hardware to run VR with, and then both AMD and NVIDIA make money. Nobody demanded video games on computers until computers with video games capabilities hit an accessible price point, and VR is no different. It is NVIDIA that decided to launch their 700 dollar card and 450 dollar card first, and delay the MAINSTREAM card. AMD instead launched the mainstream card FIRST, with the 400 dollar cards coming later.

The argument that companies would rather have nobody rather than pay more is ludicrous and is NEVER USED with any other commodity such as fuel or flour. It exists purely to allow fiscal hegemonies to keep a vendor (us) from raising their prices. If your employer could make do without you RIGHT NOW, you'd be out the door. But there are certain times when you need someone's help in order for you to make money. And that's not going to change. There will always be times when the owner of a business needs a human being to do something for him. And what we have to decide on is whether it's gonna be that guy who pays the worker, or whether it's going to be the taxpayer.

Because starving potential thieves existing in large numbers is simply not an option, never has been. If 20 percent of your population falls into danger of starvation, your wealthy will be murdered and your government overthrown. No amount of Apache helicopters can fix a nation that has that kind of problem, and automation WILL bring us the potential for that level of problem. All that's required is a tiny dip in ambition among the investor class at this point.

Someone's going to be feeding the working people of this nation. I propose that it should be the employer.