Despite what some others have written, I have personally tasted the Japanese version of the Starbucks Oleato iced shaken espresso, and as an extra virgin olive oil connoisseur (I am very picky about the olive oil that I use in my cooking), I actually preferred it to their other cold drinks, including their Frappuccinos.

(Just for the record, I'm just a customer who occasionally drinks Frappuccinos, but who prefers Oleatos to Frappuccinos.) Here, they have a version reserved for Starbucks stores (primarily Starbucks Reserve shops) in Japan only that is called the "Starbucks Reserve Oleato Golden Foam Gold Brew." It includes Partanna extra virgin olive oil combined with Starbucks roast espresso. It is essentially a dark brownish-golden colored espresso drink and topped with Partanna extra virgin olive oil infused cold foam that trickles into the espresso as it is sipped. The drink is served very cold, and the foam has an aroma of nutty, slightly sweet extra virgin olive oil that contrasts with the bitterness of the espresso into a harmonious combination.

However, I can also understand the reason that some others may not prefer it. Enjoying the drink requires a certain fondness for extra virgin olive oil; those who do not enjoy this oil in an espresso may find the texture and flavor not to suit their taste. It is essentially a drink that chooses the drinker, who must be someone who can never have too much extra virgin olive oil (this description describes myself).

By increasing the distance at which quantum entanglement can be achieved, the researchers have increased the maximum theoretical scope at which a quantum Internet might eventually be realized.

If the distance is small, the only small quantum memory nodes can be realized, thus limiting the scope of a realizable quantum Internet. By expanding this distance, larger quantum memory nodes can be realized, thus increasing the scope of a this theoretically realizable quantum Internet.

While the speed of light is limited, restricting the speed of a non-quantum Internet, quantum entanglement potentially allows creation of a quantum Internet in which this restriction can be bypassed. This potentially allows more information to be communicated speedily across a much larger scale, thus theoretically allowing for a much larger and faster Internet.

Nothing that Facebook-turned-Meta has said so far has piqued my interest in their VR headset; however, this argument just did so.

All the discussion about NFT's and ways to earn a profit from VR-related technology never really spiked my interest; however, the idea of possibly creating a replica of myself to do my future research that I don't have enough time to complete in my lifetime actually does fire up my interest. My computer science professor in college once told me, "I don't think that you're cut out for computer science," and ever since then, I've always had a dream of proving the substance of his argument to be wrong, but I've never had enough time.

However, if I could create a replica of myself to continue my research after my death, that is a different story altogether (especially since I have a genetic defect that effectively prevents me from leaving any offspring).

One aspect that I find continually frustrating about gaming projects that purport to teach programming, such as this one, is that they tend to offer Python as the only available choice for students who wish to use any programming language that requires actually typing code.

Why only Python? Why not, say, Ruby, Scheme, or even Haskell?

In college, the first programming language that I learned in a course that counted toward the Computer Science major was Scheme, not Python. Furthermore, I learned to think in terms of functional programming techniques, for which Haskell, Scheme, and even Ruby are all more naturally applicable than Python.

Not everyone likes Python. Personally, I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole because I can't stand its funky whitespace-sensitivity; this is the main reason that I prefer Ruby to Python. (Also, generally speaking, I prefer Lispy programming languages (with the possible exception of Common Lisp) to any C-like programming language.)

In _Animal Farm_, Manor Farm is initially ruled by Mr. Jones, a drunken, irresponsible farmer. Old Major, an old boar on the farm, refers to the humans running the farm as "enemies," and after Old Major dies, two young pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, incite a rebellion and drive Mr. Jones and his family off the farm. They write seven commandments, the most important being "All animals are equal." However, Napoleon and Snowball later quarrel, and Napoleon drives Snowball off the farm. Then Napoleon becomes a dictator, using pet dogs to kill any animal that does not agree with him, and employs a pig, Squealer, to tell the animals that there is no problem and that the animals should all support Napoleon. The seven commandments are replaced by the sentence, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." The pigs start working with humans and even emulate them, living in the farmhouse and walking on two legs. Eventually, other animals watch the pigs talking with a group of humans and cannot decide which is which.

According to the article,

> Launched in March 2020, AlgorithmWatch provided a browser plug-in that would allow users to collect data from their Instagram feeds, providing insight into
> how the platform prioritizes pictures and videos. The project published findings regularly, showing that the algorithm encouraged photos that showed bare
> skin and that photos showing faces are ranked higher than screenshots of text. ...

> The NYU Ad Observatory, which tracked political advertising on the platform, saw its researchers banned earlier this month amid accusations of data scraping.
> In November, the company made similar legal threats against a browser called Friendly, which let users reorder their feeds chronologically. CrowdTangle,
> another popular tool for Facebook research, was acquired by the company in 2016.

The face that Facebook has repeatedly interfered with efforts to analyze their algorithms for managing news feeds on Instagram and Facebook indicates that they must have something to hide. Since their efforts seem most focused on data tracking political advertising, it is most likely that the data that they are trying to hide is related to that topic.

Facebook treats its users as products, not customers, by selling their data to advertising companies for revenue. Perhaps they sell their data on political preferences to lobbyists and/or political entities as well, and need to hide that aspect?

There is a difference between programming for a hobby, and programming for a living: Writing programs for a hobby for 5 minutes per day at home can be fun, but writing programs for work for 18 hours per day while sleeping overnight in an office for months at a time usually isn't.

Consider this analogy:

* Drinking from a glass of water at home can be refreshing.
* Drinking from a fire hydrant at work can be debilitating.

Personally, I would say that while writing a few lines of code in Scheme or Ruby to compute the factorial function or the Fibonacci sequence is easy, working with millions of lines of sloppily-written code in C++ written by a team of poor programmers can be a nightmare.

Do I like to write short programs at home in my spare time? Definitely.

Would I like to work with millions of lines of sloppily-written code in C++ written by a team of poor programmers at work? Never.

This is the reason that although I majored in computer science in college and enjoy studying algorithms and Turing machines for fun, I would never work as a programmer.

> And are today's Facebook or Google comparable to a 2013 Microsoft — so entrenched that they can thrive even if they're not the best?

While Google and Microsoft might share the similarity that they both have leveraged powerful computing platforms--Windows for Microsoft, and a browser (Chrome) and a related search engine (Google) for Google, Facebook does not share such a similarity.

In particular, Facebook made the critical mistake of tampering with the 2016 US Presidential election, and thus angering the currently incumbent President.

Joe Biden is extremely unlikely to forgive Facebook for its role in the results of the 2016 Presidential election, and is very likely to do whatever he thinks is necessary to prevent such tampering in a Presidential election from ever happening again.

While I'm not certain about Google, Facebook's days are numbered. It is only a matter of time before Facebook is either split into a number of smaller corporations, or severely weakened to the point of irrelevancy.

All for the better; Facebook does not serve any essential function, and the troubles it causes far outweigh any potential benefits. It is time for Facebook to go, and the sooner, the better.

> "browser.proton.enabled" set to "false" now.

Likewise: Entered "about:config" in the address bar, and then double-clicked on the "true" value, toggling it to "false." Problem solved.

In a way, Proton creates a problem similar to that of the Python programming language: Key functionality depends on something that cannot be seen.

In Proton, tab delimiters cannot be seen.

In Python, whitespace cannot be seen.

On my desktop, neither can be seen.

One small step forward for a Reddit board, one giant step forward for small traders overall.

This will teach big-cat hedge funds that even small-mouse layperson traders can occasionally jump together and bite the neck off a big-cat trader.

There is a tale that a mouse, when cornered by a much larger cat, will occasionally jump and bite the neck off the cat. Apparently, this can happen in trading as well.

Sorry, Facebook, but Apple will never agree to this one because doing so would undermine the basis of their selling point against Android: a controlled environment.

The entire point of owning an iPhone is to have an environment carefully regulated (and owned) by Apple; users who don't want that are always free to choose Android. Allowing users to set an non-Apple (competing) app as a default application when an alternative by Apple exists would undermine their entire philosophy of providing a controlled user interface in which everything is tightly controlled by Apple.

Therefore, Apple will never agree.

When Microsoft took over GitHub, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that GitHub will "retain its developer-first ethos, operate independently and remain an open platform." Furthermore, the staff at GitHub reportedly stated at the time, "We won't take down any of your content unless we really have to. Microsoft's open-source code-sharing platform's latest report places freedom of expression above all else."

However, Microsoft still forced removal of usage of such unpopular terms as "master" and "slave" from GitHub, countering their earlier claim to "place freedom of expression above all else," and, if I remember correctly, they have forced the removal of at least one unpopular and controversial project from GitHub.

Generally speaking, whenever Microsoft acquires a software repository/manufacturer, that is usually bad news for freedom of expression. Expect future titles from Zenimax Media and Bethesda to be bland, colorless politically correct titles free of any mention of "master" or "slave" in which, in contrast to tradition, the protagonist no longer starts out from a confinement cell.

The real reason that Facebook is facing off against Apple isn't the 30% Apple cut of the profits, but the user info that Apple hides from Facebook. Apple hides more user info from Facebook than most other app stores, harming Facebook's business model. Otherwise, they might as well go after Google as well.

This is simply bad strategy on the part of Epic Games. Not only are they suing for a practice that they themselves have used in the past; they are simultaneously suing two of the most powerful companies in the world--companies that almost never fight on the same side. This situation vaguely reminds me of how Germany lost in WWII for fighting bot the Allies and Russia simultaneously.

History has a tendency to repeat itself. It is very unlikely that Epic Games will win either lawsuit. In the most likely scenario, Epic Games will lose both battles and be forced either to be locked out of both app stores simultaneously, or to pay Apple and Google legal fees on top of extra fees to remain in the app stores.

Business strategy and military strategy have many parallels. This is the reason that wise business leaders also study military history.