While the nominal tax rates were higher during that period (1930s through '70s), the tax code was full of all sorts of loop holes that got closed during the 1980's (as part of the deal to lower the nominal tax rates). The actual tax rates paid by the wealthy hasn't really changed much. Here is an interesting article explaining this. https://mises.org/library/good...

Thankfully, here in the US the Supreme Court unanimously disagrees with this "hate speech" BS. Letting governments censor any sort of political speech is just a bad idea. https://www.washingtonpost.com...

This article is silly. The real enemy on the internet is Russian hackers. There is no need to discuss the Glorious People's Republic of China's hacking and social media campaigns.

I will run my bitcoin exchange however I want to. ;)

RAM speed does make a difference in some games; Arma 3 will run about 20% faster using DDR4 3000 RAM versus DDR4 2133. Fallout 4 is also rather sensitive to memory speeds as well. Still, going beyond 3200 mhz RAM seems to have some seriously diminishing returns, and isn't worth it.

Some games really do benefit from having faster memory. Arma 3 for example, really benefits from higher memory speed; in The Techreport's test, for example, moving from DDR4 2133 RAM to DDR4 3866 RAM increases the fps from 46 to 56. http://techreport.com/review/3... Of course, the DDR4 3000 kit they tested got 54 fps; that is probably about where diminishing returns kick in for most games. Fallout 4 is another game where having faster memory can make a 10-15% difference in certain areas.

With a drone, you can get by with much less maintenance since with no pilot, you can have a much higher acceptable failure rate. That changes the cost equations massively.

The law says auto makers are specifically not allowed to have a "defeat device" (like this software) that causes the car to run differently when being tested.

This could be the plug-in hybrid version of the Pacifica, which has a 33 mile electric range, and is rated at 32 mpg combined when the battery runs out. That is vastly better than any competing minivan or SUV that can carry a similar number of people.

That is exactly what AMD is doing with Ryzen; top models will have 8 cores, each with a integer & FPU. A French PC magazine benchmarked a low-clocked engineering sample (3.15ghz base, 3.4 ghz boost) and found for productivity work it was faster than an Intel 6800k. The one AMD was showing off at CES is clocked at 3.6 ghz, with 3.9ghz boost.

It will probably be a long time before truck drivers are completely replaced - take a look at railroads, for example. It would be technically possible to automate railroads right now, but the rail companies haven't done so; having a person onboard is very useful for legal liability, security, and fixing all the minor, odd issues that come up, and so on. I guess that we will probably end up with "freight stewards" in trucks, where the computer does most of the driving, but the steward takes over for odd cases, and gets out and fixes minor issues to keep the truck on the road, provide physical security to the freight, and help with loading/unloading at the end points.

Africa is where most of the population growth is coming from, so that is where it makes sense to focus efforts on awareness of birth control, and get people to chose quality of children over quantity of children. China, for example, doesn't need any additional birth control programs since their birth rate is already below replacement level. The UN estimates China's population will decline from its current 1.4 billion to 1 billion by 2100. The UN also estimates India will grow from 1.3 billion now to 1.6 billion by 2100. By contrast, Africa is estimated to grow from its current 1 billion people to over 4 billion by 2100.

It is sad that it is apparently difficult to breed cheetahs in captivity - they need large open spaces to run and do their courtship rituals. Which is particularity bad, because they actually are one of the easier wild animals to tame, and would be fairly easy to turn into pets (and thus in no danger of extinction) if that breeding issue where solved. I know I would love a pet cheetah.

Start sending lots of birth control devices (condoms, IUDs, birth control shots, ect) to Africa (where most of the world's population growth is going on), and start some education/propaganda efforts to convince them that having one or two kids per woman will result in a higher quality life for them. As it stands now, most estimates are that Africa will have 4 billion people by 2100, versus the 1 billion they have now. I don't see much of the African megafauna serving that much of a population boom.

When the article says changes in land tenure in Zimbabwe, that means the racist thug Mugabe seizing lands from whites, and passing it out to his political cronies, who apparently, in addition to being shitty farmers are also bad at wild life management.