Pure mathematical problems are rarely directly useful - but sometimes lead to unexpected discoveries that do turn out to be useful, and rarely turn out to transform entire scientific fields. Particularly for proofs - science generally accepts "we've attacked this a thousand different ways and can't find a counterexample" as truth, while maths won't accept anything less than absolute proof. And some people do care, otherwise there wouldn't be any new mathematical discoveries at all. Just that they generally don't care enough to throw millions of dollars at a problem with no guaranteed return. In this case, though, the return is not in solving the problem but in showing off their new toys, which is why we're getting things done that weren't looked at before.

A "pion" is a subatomic particle. They're highly unstable, with a lifetime of nanoseconds at most. Appropriate, maybe?

Already been done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
No computers, no darkroom tricks. The photos are entirely real - the thing being photographed isn't.

I've no idea what the regulations are in Korea, but I'd be very doubtful that would be legal in the UK. The instruments need to be in clear view of the driver without them turning away from the road. Usually cheap cars get rid of the centre screen not the driver's one.

What do they mean by "instrument cluster"? I'd consider the instrument cluster the thing with the speedometer, odometer, warning lights etc on it - and most of those are mandatory in most countries, so leaving it out would mean the car isn't road legal.

Sort of. There are a few differences:
1) A house isn't just an investment - people buy houses to live in. Even if the value of your house crashes, you can still live in it. While shares are just paper (or data), and don't have any use beyond producing money.
2) Generally, mortgages can't be called in. If the house value drops too far, you're in negative equity, which is bad if you want to sell - but you can just sit tight. Margin loans for investments can be and will be called in if the value goes the wrong way.
3) House prices don't tend to fluctuate too wildly. It's difficult to speculate on houses as they're slow and expensive to buy and sell. There's a steady base level of demand, as people need somewhere to live, and something of a ceiling as most people don't want and can't afford multiple houses. Shares meanwhile are valued on a small amount of actual assets and a large amount of hopes and dreams - which can evaporate in a moment or turn into a massive cash cow. Or both.

But it is the first "rival Android App Store" in the US Play store. Unless you know different?
As the summary says, you have always been able to have other stores pre-loaded or side-loaded, but not been able to install them through the Play Store.

The problem with Asimov's laws is the first law states that a robot "may not through inaction allow a human to come to harm". That obliges them to proactively work to protect humans, according to their own interpretation. And it takes absolute priority over the second law, so you can't order them to stop or do things differently. If you follow the later books, the robots derive the zeroth law, and use it to essentially take over running human society - for our own benefit, but according to their plan not ours. Which is rather ironic given the laws were intended to stop the robots taking over.

You can't simply delete the first part, either. Or your robot car can drive up to you, which is harmless, and then not apply the brakes - which isn't "causing harm" as it literally didn't do anything.

Really, the best we can do is probably make "obey orders" the highest priority - and ensure that a suitable moral and legal code is part of the orders. The problem being that current AI systems don't have the capacity to properly understand that kind of instruction.

Ikea is always very clear on similar parts. One piece I had used three similar screws in different sizes - obviously different when you see them together, but a picture of a screw could be any of them. Every time an instruction called for one of these screws, there was a little inset with the three sizes of screw and the incorrect ones crossed out.
And they do occasionally use worded instructions. They try to avoid it, as two sentences take up half a page with all the different languages, but if needed they'll do it.
As for tools - you only need a couple of basic tools (and anything slightly oddball comes in the pack - even Allen keys). If you really don't have any, they sell a tool set at the checkout. And why would you buy flatpack furniture if you don't have the tools needed to put it together?

Now as for other flatpack furniture - when I needed to buy something at short notice and couldn't get to Ikea, I got furniture from a well-known UK catalogue store. And it was a different world - you could follow the instructions, but they certainly could be clearer. The fixings were poor quality. And the provided tools weren't up to scratch so had to go rooting in the toolbox. The thing was fine when assembled, don't get me wrong, but the process seemed terrible for someone used to Ikea.

I suspect most of the flatpack jokes actually related to MFI, who pretty much started the flatpack trend. As they're no longer about, the jokes have transferred to Ikea as the best-known purveyor of flatpacks - despite the fact that Ikea has addressed most of the issues.

Except that when you get a bit further from the equator, it goes back to being "dumb". There's not enough winter daylight to go round no matter how you play with the clocks. Scotland only has six hours of daylight in the winter - so you're either going to work in the dark or coming home in the dark. And unless you're only going to sleep four hours a night, you'll be sleeping when it's full daylight for much of the summer. Changing the clock gets a brief respite in spring and autumn, but only for a couple of weeks before the sun overtakes the clock again.

I think there's still a subtle difference. These drones are not selecting targets. Their mission is "kill all humans in this defined area" - they make no distinction between friend and foe, or between combatant and civilian. "Everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead". The human setting the target area is responsible for ensuring that the area doesn't contain illegal targets. Which isn't that different to dropping a bomb on the area.

A truly autonomous drone would identify targets itself and decide whether they should be attacked or not - so far this hasn't (publicly) been done.

They do have a point. You're recording your recall data under your account. A malicious application running under your account can access that data. Which is pretty much how Windows security has always worked - it applies to the user not the application. Anything running under your account can access anything belonging to you.

Other systems such as Android have a different model, where things belong to the app, and an app can't look at other apps' stuff except in highly restricted circumstances. But that's not how Windows has ever worked, and such a fundamental change would probably break most existing applications.

The real answer to making sure people can't steal a recording of all your stuff is to not record it in the first place. Which is why Recall was a bad idea to begin with.

The Laws of Robotics don't work anyway - see basically all of Asimov's work as to the many ways they don't work. Though the most scary one is that "follow orders" is only the second law. If the robot/AI thinks that humans are better served by doing something else (and it may not be correct), the first law requires it to do so in preference to what it was told to do. Given enough intelligence and resources they can derive the zeroth law, and rule humanity for (their idea of) our own good.

That's just English being ambiguous as usual. They made oxygen (O2). They did not make oxygen (element 8).Everyday language uses the same word for both, though you could be more precise and say they made dioxygen or molecular oxygen.

Sending spam gets the email provider or ISP on blocklists. This adversely affects their other customers' ability to send email, and ultimately affects the bottom line when those customers go elsewhere to get reliable email. So it's in the provider's interest to disallow spam. As far as I'm aware, pirating music won't get any other customers blocked from services they need to use.