San Francisco has a strong Waymo presence (I think we were the first market to get public access to them). But we also believe in public transit; in fact, the Bay Area just voted for two important transit measures that will increase costs to taxpayers and property owners, but are designed to make up for badly needed funding from the state and federal governments that just isn't forthcoming anymore. The alternative, we were told, was massive cuts to buses, light rail, and passenger rail across multiple cities and jurisdictions. I guess we decided that wasn't what we really wanted. But there's still room for Waymo, just like there used to be room for taxis.

Some banks allow it. They give you a one-time code to take to an ATM.

Thanks, I think we all knew this.

Quite. Scientists and researchers have been using the term AI to describe this collection of technologies and algorithms since the 1950s. The field has (arguably) made great strides recently. Most of the current scientists and researchers have been perfectly content to continue to call it AI. But no! Now we're going to let somebody who was born stupid, dedicated his life to staying stupid, and now is seemingly in advanced stages of dementia tell us what we should call this field? What a bunch of bootlickers these tech execs are. I hope Trump has the good sense to walk through a cattle field before he asks these losers to get their tongues out.

No thanks on the light-up Apple logo for me. I think it started with the Powerbook G3 (I had one, it was a great computer) and it was sort of obnoxious even then. I'm not paid to be a light-up billboard everywhere I go.

No thanks on the laptop touchscreen, either. I understand it on something like a Surface tablet -- almost -- but most of the time I used my Surface with a keyboard, like a regular laptop, and never touched the screen. I think ramming touchscreens down everybody's throats was just a gimmick Microsoft came up with, both to A.) convince everybody that Windows 8 worked equally well on laptops and tablets (it sure did); and B.) once again, everybody needed to go out and buy a new laptop, even though their current one worked and served their needs just fine.

If employees of a company disagree with how the company is managing itself, disagree with how the company solicits its customers, they have several options. One time-honored possibility is to form a union. Another is to get yourself into a position of influence, such as an important position or even get yourself elected to the Board of Trustees. They may vary in level of difficulty, but they are possible. Another way is to quit in protest. There is no reason for an employee to continue working for a company that violates their moral perogatives.

For God's sakes, let them quit! Never discourage them. Don't stand in their way. Accept their resignation. Feign your disappointment. Make it easy. Open the door for them. Thank them for their service. Sever your ties with them as quickly and completely as possible. Take their keys. Erase their access. Do whatever you need to do to erase them from your systems forever. Then breathe a sigh of relief that they are gone.

Wow, BIND, though? Do a quick search on "history of BIND vulnerabilities." Sure, people run all these tests on it now, and in the past, and the history has been there's been a lot of causes of concern.

Yeah, that's pretty old-fashioned. In my experience, it's barely done now. Kinda like how nobody writes JavaScript like it's Pascal anymore.

"Important for our species" ... how? Trust me, our species ain't going anywhere. There's nowhere to go.

So while everyone seems to agree that building server-side applications with things like Node and Python is wrong, foolish, and that "there are much better options" ... does anyone care to tell me what those options are?

I mean ... aren't a lot of server-side apps basically just playing catch ("I'm tossing you a ball, now you toss me a ball back") and in between there, it interacts with a database? You really don't think you can do that with Node or Python? Does e.g. Java really give you so much more reliability, maintainability, performance, etc?

Well, it wasn't Unix. But it was inspired by Minix, a widely-taught teaching operating system that Torvalds decided to make into a thing you could use every day.

We obviously need to pass legislation prohibiting discrimination for robots and AI in general. This cannot be allowed to continue.

Exactly. And Vmware's calculus is that as long as it has a dozen gigantic clients (governments, huge enterprises) that it can charge whatever it wants, then the small fish aren't worth it.

We have bubonic plague infections every year in the United States. Very, very few, admittedly, but it's not like it's been eradicated. So there's still benefit in studying it.

The more I hear about this so-called "SF Democratic Party," the more I'm convinced they don't speak for the majority of SF voters. Seriously. They seem to be some strange, centrist organization that no voters belong to and nobody knows where they get their money from.