I'm curious how the nuclear decay of sodium 22 produces antimatter to begin with. Does something transmute, for lack of a better word, into antimatter when its nuclear bonds are broken?

I love the idea of Facebook money being used to teach kids how to block advertisements. $25B should be enough to teach every single kid in New Mexico how to do it, going forward forever, as a permanent addition to public school curriculum.

I was going to suggest that maybe we could even use a tiny portion of the money to establish a state DNS server that blackholes the adservers the way pi-hole does. Then kids stuck running proprietary "apps," instead of accessing things through their Manifest-V2-compatible web browser, wouldn't have to install their own DNS server.

But then I realized the aforementioned ad-blocking curriculum ought to have resulted in every kid building their own pi-hole at school anyway, so a state pi-hole is unnecessary.

Only if you upgrade to goldtooth.

Yes, but probably illadvised. A drone is a LOT less stealthier than a squad of dudes crawling between bushes. That said, for getting restocked logistics to the front line, it could definitely be a winner idea. If you have a group behind enemy lines running low on ammo and food, then a drone dropping a bunch of ammo and ration packs to a dead drop is probably a lot safer than sending in Oleg the 18yo runner (who has knowledge of where those guys needing the re-up are and would fold under 5 minutes of car batteries attached to the nipples).

When I was a kid, my dad had a friend who was used as a runner in the vietnam war for sending intel back and forth from the front line. He had a nearly photographic memory but was completely illiterate. They liked sending him because they knew he'd never write the information down, and because he was a complete hard case they trusted not to fold under torture. The dude was completely mental though, lots of PTSD but was hilariously illiterate. They ran a chicken farm and would often put up signs advertising "mandurah $5Kg". Mandurah was the town we lived in, we all presumed he was selling mannure.

So they should prefer the Google Monopoly instead of the Microsoft monopoly? WTF?

No. They should prefer to have a choice. They don't because microsoft actively makes it diffiicult for non technical people to have that choice.

Also, I'm tired of hearing about poor old grandma and grandpa and their computer problems.

I don't understand how this is an argument. We aren't discussing your preferences.

Or better yet, fight with a pen instead of a sword.

Unless your proposing they get a guy in close enough to jam a ballpoint between Putin's ribs, I'm not sure angry words are going to be sufficient defence when an enemy is trying to murder your entire country.

Unfortunately to an extent your former roommate was correct; that having personal ethical/moral guidelines generally does reduce the amount of money one can rake in and attacking those who do have and advocate for morals in society to discredit them is one way to help secure that income stream.

Right now we seem to be living in an era when the amoralistic are generally winning, they've convinced millions upon millions of people to embrace their selfishness. But this only works out for a subset of those trying to practice it, particularly when they aren't smart enough to understand when they're easily manipulated by those who are much more experienced or are good at motivational speaking to compel the listener. Those late to the party end up going against their own interests to support those they idolize to their own detriment.

So every kid needs to have a brokerage account now?

No, each kid needs to get an X ("The Everything App") account.

Normally, you don't license media (whether it's digital or analog is irrelevant). That CD or tape or vinyl record is sold, such that you own that copy. Title is transferred just exactly the same as how title is transferred when you buy (not license) a loaf of bread, or a screwdriver, or a book. (WARNING: Though I say "normally," what's normal does change. I'm aware that a lot of people use proprietary streaming to consume media now, instead of playing locally-stored purchased copies, and those people likely did agree to a licensing contract rather than purchasing anything.)

But with software, they've been claiming that a piece of paper that they inserted into the box, retroactively causes the sale to not have really happened, even though the information that the sale was a fraud, is hidden inside the box until after the fraud has been perpetrated. The customer thinks they bought the box rather than licensed it.

There was some monumental decision reinforcing this a while back. I'm not sure this is the best example, but it's well-illustrated in this decision in favor of Blizzard against a cheatbot named Glide, where the judge supports the outrageous assertion that WoW purchasers actually did not purchase what they thought they purchased. And then instead of throwing Blizzard's executives into prison for a decade to deter future fraud, he found in their favor instead. Dirty judge. He actually fucking says this:

section 3 of the EULA provides that Blizzard explicitly retains title to “all copies” of the game client software

[emphasis mine]

For whatever reason, nobody's tried that outside of software (that I know of). I still haven't seen a EULA packed in a loaf of bread or a music CD case. But maybe some day....?

You wouldn't necessarily be wrong to expect this form of fraud to happen some day, so perhaps you're right that Congress should nip it in the bud ASAP. Sure, ok. But Congress is normally reactive so it also makes sense they're seeing it just as software problem. None of their constituents are complaining about media companies defrauding them, just software companies.

From what i gather about the ideological leanings of anthropics founders, I do believe them that they want to do good. The problem is their definition of good is hopelessly entwined with the "Effective Altruism" movement that seems to be more Sam Bankman Fried than mother teresa.

less "Lets donate a billion dollars to distribute aids medicine to central afraica" and more "Lets donate a billion dollars to prevent Rokkos Basilisk" (if you dont know what that is, pour yourself a beer and google it and be prepared for a very funny read)

This, by the way, as an australian, is why I think the teenage social media ban, while poorly implemented, had its heart in the right place. Social media is doing *terrible* things to boys sense of moral judgement and girls sense of self esteem. At least back in the fashion mag days, the teen girl magazines used to at least have articles on why girls should resist the hormonal advances of teenage boys and why they shouldnt judge themselves on unrealistic fashion standards (the slogan was usually some variation of "there are only 10 women in the world that look like supermodels". Theres not a lot on instagram telling them that now.

I'm not really in favor of locking up children forever, so I think this probably warrants a more nuanced rehabilitation effort than you're suggesting.

When I worked in the courts, the judges never threw teenagers on the sex offenders registry, but would happily give them a few weeks in juvie to understand the world that awaits them if they keep that shit up. That seemed reasonable to me. Give them a good scare, but keep their name off the registry (Also, in australia the press cant name teenage offenders unless its serious enough a judge authorizes it).

But from what I observed, teenage victims of teenagers where just as messed up by it as teenage victims of adults.

Still, your right, rehabilitation ought be the first priority until their brains developed enough that adult sentencing makes sense.

The problem is, Microsoft addresses the Edge concerns by saying "But Edge isn't in a monopoly position. Chrome is still more popular". But when it does that it wants you to ignore what got in trouble the first time around.

Back in the 90s/early 2000s , Microsoft didn't get so badly busted that it almost got split apart by the regulators because IE was a monopoly. Microsoft got in trouble because it abused its windows monopoly to illegally obtain its browser monopoly at the expense of Netscape.

Its doing the *exact* same thing again. I am seeing countless, mostly elderly, folks using Edge because they dont know how to convince windows to let them use chrome by default. Its actually harder to find those defaults than it was back in the 90s/early 2000s.

Its just they are brazen about it now, becuase they know the current admin wont go after them, for the same reason George Bush ordered the justice department to stop going after microsoft back in the day.

Which won't make a lick of difference to the EU, if it decides it wants to impose silly-money fines again. But the EU can only regulate EU business, so microsoft is playing different rules.

So we should ask ourselves, why do europeans get a choice and not us.

My bio on linked in for a while had the words "IF YOU MESSAGE ME ABOUT A JOB I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN , SKIN YOU AND EAT YOU". It made absolute zero difference to my job (until the boss told me a client looked me up and was upset lol).

And it defintiely didnt stop all the bots messageing me offering me shitty jobs.

Oh I understood the power of linear algebra as a kid when my uncle showed me various ways of using them and matrix maths to solve various problems and my little brain exploded at the possibilities.

And I am *very* certain we are in a bubble. Wall street is has been doing pretty frigging insane things for the last 4-5 years, with absolutely irrational valuations of various key stocks, and the thing with markets, is the *always* correct eventually. And sometimes those corrections involve entire markets catching on fire and stock brokers running around in circles shitting everywhere in terror.