I've worked with consultants in a large international corporation, and almost all of them appeared to have been brought in for the second reason: to provide justification for decisions already made. But the real reason was almost always something else (though similar): they needed to sell their decision to upper management. A manager might have come up with a project beneficial to the business, but needed sign-off and sponsorship from those higher up in the chain. So he'd get a consultant to pitch the project to upper management; putting problems, solutions, impact and risks in terms that they'd understand.

And most of those consultants were good, very good... Though it does say something about your company if your middle management needs help in communicating with upper management, and if upper management is incapable of understanding the needs and want of the departments they are managing, without a specially crafted shiny slide deck.

As for the few consultants who were brought in to research and advise, some of what they produced was really valuable. If you get a good firm, you get a consultant who will activate their network in the consulting firm and/or academia, so it's never just 1 expert you're relying on.

Can one CEO, jock or movie star actually make that much of a difference? Maybe... and with the jocks it is actually measurable to a degree. So it will be with these employees.

Trump wasn't the first... The EU lowered the de minimis threshold ages ago. On a lot of imports we have to pay duty now... and worse: the shipment will languish for weeks in some warehouse, and then the carrier will charge €50 for "customs fees".

Here, that heart rate monitor is replaced by a small disposable device the size of a 1x2 LEGO brick, which you tape to your index finger before you go to bed. It connects to your phone via Bluetooth and sends the data to a clinic. I suspected sleep apnea some time ago and had the test done. Turned out I had a mild case, no medical necessity for it to be treated, but the doctor said national health care would pay for either a CPAP or MAD, if I wanted one. I opted for the latter.

Technology has made some strides there as well... Didn't have to bite down on those decidedly unpleasant metal molds filled with nasty gum. The dentist moved a small wand around in my mouth which created a 3d scan on the fly. Took 3 minutes, results mailed directly to the manufacturer, and the MAD arrived a week later.

Oh yes, some governments love the idea of censorship-by-proxy: instead of issuing unpopular laws against free speech or free commerce, they come up with rules to make companies responsible for countering money laundering, human trafficking, or what have you. Rules with vague criteria but very stiff penalties, in order to scare companies into erring on the side of caution.

But in this case, it is quite that simple. Banks and payment processors should be declared to be a Common Carrier, especially since their services should be considered essential, these days. Which means they cannot deny service to anyone, unless there is a clear indication that they are running afoul of the law.

That's a bit like being on a cruise where the breakfast buffet offers only eggs prepared a 1000 different ways, and you're telling someone who is allergic to eggs "if you can't find something good, maybe lower your standards". For the record: I do like eggs.

A tiny handful? The problem is that they pretty much dominated the Blockbuster niche for the past decade or two. The kind of movie many of us turn to for a few hours of dumb escapism: usually with a simple but solid plot, some explosions and eye candy, uncomplicated characters, but big ticket actors and good production values. For those of us who enjoy that sort of thing, but dislike the premise of superheroes, it has been woefully slim pickings the past years.

At least the damn thing apologized. That's pretty impressive. Though not quite what we want from AI.

It's not like it's the first time either. Here they caught a lady taking a wee behind a parked car. They did blur her face though...

It's doable, if he gets a couple of Chinese engineers to help. Designing and building factories is an art in itself, one we've largely lost in the West. But in China, they know how to set up an automated factory, producing goods to the right tolerances, and applying automated QA. They do that pretty much every day.

MacOS runs on non-Apple bare metal as well: Hackintosh. And it runs very well. I built a top end "Mac" for a fraction of what Apple would have charged for similar performance. The only issue is that keeping the OS and software up to date can be a major PITA.

No kidding. But "si vis pacem para bellum". Many nations aspire to lasting peace, but as it turns out there's always some ambitious a-hole who thinks their neighbour's land is there for the taking.

The way to do it is to drum up hype for some fantastic product or service, but disclose enough uncertainties to make it a long shot. With enough hype, enough buzzwords and slick videos, and a few big ticket celebs to endorse your launch, investors will still come. They figure it as a high risk/high reward deal, they have several on the go and hope that one or two of them will pay off to make up for all the others that fail. When your business inevitably fails, you'll have extracted enough money for yourself from it (there's several ways), and your investors will chalk it up as just another loss on something they didn;t do sufficient due diligence on.

Outright lying about your product though... that's bad enough and opens you up to prosecution. But lying about the numbers? That is a big no-no... They will come after you for that, with a vengeance.

"According to the video, officials are not required to disclose what exactly the charges are or who has brought them until the initial investigation is complete under Italian law. "

Then why does the title say he's being charged for reviewing games?

Those have already been deployed. They are flown to the front by the operator, who will in most cases also designate the target, after which the drone will engage it autonomously. Jamming is most effective at close range, so that's when you want the AI to take over.