War is awful, but, that doesn't remove the necessity of having weapons. And a military.

The threats are real, whether we approve of them or not. If we did not develop weapons, we would be wiped out by those who did. It's an unhappy truth, but a truth nonetheless.

There is precisely zero obligation on your part to participate in the development of weapons. That's what freedom is all about. But even so, ensuring the ongoing survival of ones' people is hardly a waste of time.

Supernovae can produce gamma ray bursts, and gamma ray bursts can wipe out humanity (and most other surface life on Earth).

So, I guess, fingers crossed?

You are trolling but I will answer this anyway because there are people who honestly think like you do.

If someone discovers an exploit in a major service provider, and immediately goes public with it, then that means every criminal in the world learns about it. And that, in turn, motivates them to focus on figuring out how to exploit themselves. That, in turn, puts every single user of the service at risk of being victimized. Such victimization can lead to severe losses of money and livelihoods.

Thus, by reporting the exploit publicly, you direct armies of criminals to victimize huge numbers of innocent people. And, quite frankly, that's on you. It's on the criminals too, but you lit the way, so you share in the guilt.

Responsible disclosure protects potentially millions of people from victimization by giving the company time to fix the exploit before any (more) criminals learn about it.

Fun fact, Microsoft's Azure cloud infrastructure is primarily based on Linux. Also, you can spin up Linux virtual machines as part of cloud services. Even the microservices ("Azure Apps") can run Linux.

Windows is the curse of the non-technical class.

I dunno. China is a "market socialist" system -- which is a contradiction in terms. If China is socialist, then for practical purposes Norway and Sweden have to be even *more* socialist because they have a comprehensive public welfare system which China lacks. And those Nordic countries are rated quite high on global measures of political and personal freedom, and very low on corruption. In general they outperform the US on most of those measures, although the US is better on measures of business deregulation.

It makes no sense to claim Chinese courts have a lot of power, although it may seem that way â" itâ(TM)s supposed to seem that way. One of the foundational principles of Chinese jurisprudence is party supremacy. Every judge is supervised by a PLC â" party legal committee â" which oversees budgets, discipline and assignments in the judiciary. They consult with the judges in sensitive trials to ensure a politically acceptable outcome.

So it would be more accurate to characterize the courts as an instrument of party power rather than an independent power center.

From time to time Chinese court decisions become politically inconvenient, either through the supervisors in the PLC missing something or through changing circumstances. In those cases there is no formal process for the party to make the courts revisit the decision. Instead the normal procedure is for the inconvenient decision to quietly disappear from the legal databases, as if it never happened. When there is party supremacy, the party can simply rewrite judicial history to its current needs.

An independent judiciary seems like such a minor point; and frankly it is often an impediment to common sense. But without an independent judiciary you canâ(TM)t have rule of law, just rule by law.

Hereâ(TM)s the problem with that scenario: court rulings donâ(TM)t mean much in a state ruled by one party. China has plenty of progressive looking laws that donâ(TM)t get enforced if it is inconvenient to the party. There are emission standards for trucks and cars that should help with their pollution problems, but there are no enforcement mechanisms and officials have no interest in creating any if it would interfere with their economic targets or their private interests.

China is a country of strict rules and lax enforcement, which suits authoritarian rulers very well. It means laws are flouted routinely by virtually everyone, which gives the party leverage. Displease the party, and they have plenty of material to punish you, under color of enforcing laws. It sounds so benign, at least theyâ(TM)re enforcing the law part of the time, right? Wrong. Laws selectively enforced donâ(TM)t serve any public purpose; theyâ(TM)re just instruments of personal power.

Americans often donâ(TM)t seem to understand the difference between rule of law and rule *by* law. Itâ(TM)s ironic because the American Revolution and constitution were historically important in establishing the practicality of rule of law, in which political leaders were not only expected to obey the laws themselves, but had a duty to enforce the law impartially regardless of their personal opinions or interests.

Rule *by* law isnâ(TM)t a Chinese innovation, it was the operating principle for every government before 1789. A government that rules *by* law is only as good as the men wielding power, and since power corrupts, itâ(TM)s never very good for long.

We can have shorter work weeks right now. Technological advances have enabled that long ago. The reason we don't have shortened workweeks has absolutely nothing to do with how productive tech has made workers, and everything to do with employers wanting long workweeks.

To most employers, the phrase "short workweek" means "I pay the same but get less out of my people, meanwhile my competitors pay the same but get more from their people." It is simply not rational for them to go for that.

If we want shorter workweeks in America, the means to obtain it is not new tech, but new legislation.

Corporations: We can afford to pay you much more, but we don't want to. We want to keep that money for ourselves. So, we will pay you only what you could get somewhere else, thus keeping your incentive to leave nice and low while saving money.

On the other hand, our rate of population growth has been dropping so quickly that many people are alarmed. So, the "there aren't enough jobs" problem and the "there aren't enough people" problem seem primed to cancel each other out.

I am sure it won't play out as neatly as that makes it sound. It never does. But after a generation of suffering it looks like it will balance itself out.

Though the "nobody wants to breed anymore" problem is likely to continue and get worse, since none of the root causes are being addressed (nor even admitted-to). So it may eventually overpower the "too many jobs are being automated-away" problem and leave us in dire straits. Hopefully by then the singularity will have happened and our enlightened future borg selves can solve the problem easily.

Oh you are just trolling. Ok. So that is why you accused me of saying things I didn't say, and believing things I don't believe. And also that's why you keep changing the subject to things outside the scope of my statements (but that are clearly more interesting to you).

Though I suspect there is a big hearty dose of generalizing in your responses, too. You seem to have lumped me in with a group of extremists, based on basically zero evidence.

So, it's clearly a discussion in bad faith. You are going to continue to "put words in my mouth" that I did not say, so you can then attack those words, and then get some kind of emotional payoff from that. You seem lucid enough to do better, but disinclined. I think that is unfortunate.

Indeed, "accelerating a space ship" is no way to get anywhere. What we need is to figure out how to open up holes in the warp so we can transport ships into and out of it. Travelling short distances through the warp equates to enormous distances in normal space. Though navigation through it is difficult, and the exposure to chaos can cause insanity or encounters with demons. So, we will need to develop defenses against those things as well.

Class 1 and 2 e-bikes limit assist to 20 mph, not 15. You can ride them faster than that, but you have to provide the power. 20 mph is well above what most recreational cyclists can maintain on a flat course, so if these classes arenâ(TM)t fast enough to be safe, neither is a regular bike. The performance is well within what is possible for a fit cyclist for short times , so their performance envelope is suitable for sharing bike and mixed use infrastructure like rail trails.

Class 3 bikes can assist riders to 28 mph. This is elite rider territory. There is no regulatory requirement ti equip the bike to handle those speeds safely, eg hydraulic brakes with adequate size rotors. E-bikes in this class are far more likely to pose injury risks to others. I think it makes a lot of sense to treat them as mopeds, requiring a drivers license for example.

What are you even talking about? I didn't say anything at all along the lines of what you are calling my "thesis". I am not blaming your for anything.

I was talking about historical use of words. "Aunt Jemima" as a slang term; the female version of "Uncle Tom." That is what the company wants to distance itself from.

You are making a mountain out of a molehill.

Would treating them as mopeds be so bad?

What weâ(TM)re looking at is exactly what happened when gasoline cars started to become popular and created problems with deaths, injuries, and property damage. The answer to managing those problems and providing accountability was to make the vehicles display registration plates, require licensing of drivers, and enforcing minimum safety standards on cars. Iâ(TM)m not necessarily suggesting all these things should be done to e-bikes, but I donâ(TM)t see why they shouldnâ(TM)t be on the table.

I am a lifelong cyclist , over fifty years now, and in general I welcome e-bikes getting more people into light two wheel vehicles. But I see serious danger to both e-bike riders and the people around them. There are regulatory classes which limit the performance envelope of the vehicle, but class 3, allowing assist up to 28 mph, is far too powerful for a novice cyclist. Only the most athletic cyclists, like professional tour racers, can sustain speeds like that, but they have advanced bike handling skills and theyâ(TM)re doing it on bikes that weigh 1/5 of what complete novice novice e-bike riders are on. Plus the pros are on the best bikes money can buy. If you pay $1500 for an e-bike, youâ(TM)re getting about $1200 of battery and motor bolted onto $300 of bike.

Whatâ(TM)s worse, many e-bikes which have e-bike class stickers can be configured to ignore class performance restrictions, and you can have someone with no bike handling skills riding what in effect is an electric motorcycle with terrible brakes.

E-bike classification notwithstanding, thereâ(TM)s a continuum from electrified bicycles with performance roughly what is achievable by a casi recreational rider on one end, running all the way up to electric motorcycles. If there were only such a thing as a class 1 e-bike thereâ(TM)d be little need to build a regulatory system with registration and operator licensing. But you canâ(TM)t tell by glancing at a two wheel electric vehicle exactly where on the bike to motorcycle spectrum it falls; that depends on the motor specification and software settings. So as these things become more popular, I donâ(TM)t see any alternative to having a registration and inspection system for all of them, with regulatory categories and restrictions based on the weight and hardware performance limitations of the vehicle. Otherwise youâ(TM)ll have more of the worst case weâ(TM)re already seeing: preteen kids riding what are essentially electric motorcycles that weigh as much as they do because the parents think those things are âoebikesâ and therefore appropriate toys.