Uh... maybe I'm rooted in a quaint past, but traditionally the people who bail from toxic companies are the ones with the best options to land somewhere else. There's usually a strong correlation between that group of employees and the "rockstars" to which you refer.

So no, it's more likely that it's the dead weight being left, and the high-performers getting the hell out of Dodge because they are in a position to do so.

I'm sure there's a technical answer, but I'm having trouble picturing what kind of orbits these satellites must be in such that only land masses are covered. Not like they get to the edge of a continent, decide they're rather not swim, and just turn their orbit around in the opposite direction.

Anyone know the real reason? A quick Google didn't turn up anything obvious....

Ah yes, the golden days of VC++ and the tight integration into the MSDN docs. These days it's Russian Roulette as to whether you'll get a meaningful answer when you hit F1 in the code

Going back even further, I remember reporting an issue to MS about QuickC. Somehow the conversation got around to the fact that nobody at MS used QuickC for "real" development. They used the "big compiler" along with their homegrown ED editor. I was flabbergasted that they didn't see what a productivity win it was to be able to click on the compiler output and instantly be brought to the source of an error or warning. That plus having both the source code and error message on the screen at the same time.

But then, the VIM vs IDE wars continue to this day, so color me unsurprised I guess...

Can't wait to see the Conspiracy Theory Meltdown on this one. Which will be worse: evil vaccines, or evil Big Medicine that doesn't acknowledge that Lyme Disease is the cause of every ailment known to man?

I know this was a typo, but "Uniformed Spherical Cows in a Vacuum" has all sorts of possibilities for humorous mental imagery...

Silly question that I honestly don't know the answer to... wouldn't the intubation be done after the patient is transferred to the ICU? Ya know, out of the ER dept's purview? In which case it's not all that surprising that an ER doc could make that claim without it meaning a whole lot.

Actually, my understanding is that a faction of theologically-minded people proceeded to run with it using the angle "well, why is FSM any more absurd than mainstream religions?" Which resulted in rigorous debate between FSM and mainstream theologists, with FSM holding its own surprisingly well.

So, unclear whether anyone was enlightened exactly, but it did spur some rather novel discussion that might not have ordinarily occurred.

From my experience, the obviousness test is essentially never applied. The USPTO will look in the existing patent base for prior art, seemingly subscribing to the fantasy that if there is no patented prior art, then no prior art exists.

That was how it worked when I filed for a patent: the only feedback from the USPTO was to point to patents that were vaguely similar and we easily refuted why they didn't constitute prior art. When I was in a defensive position against a very weak patent, it didn't take much digging to find commercially available prior art that had existed for a decade before the patent was filed. Literally the patent covered a feature that was built into OS/2, among other places.

Of course, the name of that game is that it's often not worth trying to invalidate the patent after the fact, when the patent owner can just charge a nominal royalty. As such, we ended up doing a royalty contract, disabling that one small feature via the license key. If a customer absolutely needed it, we could issue a key that enabled the feature and we owed a small royalty. The irony? Nobody ever missed the feature in question, hence we never paid a dime to the patent holder.

18 is an adult only by social contract. Executive function in young adults doesn't fully mature until six years later. Exposing them to a situation where they are allowed to make such risky decisions without guidance is what makes them vulnerable, and we now have a system which exploits that vulnerability.

If the student is lucky enough to have parents or mentors who can help guide them, then they are fortunate. Those who do not are easy pickins' for a system which profits from their lack of readiness to weigh the consequences.

Agreed. Most games (to my older eyes) are barely playable on the built-in screen as they are clearly optimized for readability on a large TV. I tried playing a couple of the games I have on the built-in screen and quickly realized the user experience was greatly diminished. So I just leave it in the dock 99+% of the time, and a nicer screen has no real utility for me.

Caveat is that I originally bought the switch solely to play RingFit during the height of COVID lockdowns, and only have a few other things on there as I'm not really a gamer.

Point taken, the analogy is loose, but Apple still isn't the only manufacturer to branch out from their original architecture. People ran Windows on Alpha for quite a long time, but of course the difference being that it was by choice.

Agreed though that Apple's move away from Intel to a chipset that wipes the floor with it from both a price/watt and price/performance standpoint is stunning. And doing it as seamlessly as one could hope for.

Unlike Microsoft, with Intel, MIPs, DEC Alpha, and now most recently their very tepid foray into ARM.

Yup, you're right, only Evil Apple would consider alternate CPU architectures.

I know, like, this is supposed to be News for Nerds. How could the sudden upending of several CPU monopolies in the laptop and desktop space with far-reaching consequences be relevant?

After decades of "Year of the Linux Desktop" failing to deliver, nobody even bothered to wonder when it would be the "Year of the Non-Intel Powerhouse". Yet here we are, merely a year away from seeing a major manufacturer expunge Intel from their product line. Head-spinning comes to mind.

Oh, wait, you're right. That manufacturer is Apple, so therefore it's not news. (/sarcasm)

Calling vaccines "a product of abortion" is a bit of a stretch: https://www.nebraskamed.com/CO...

That aside, I guess you're ok with murdering other people by becoming an asymptomatic carrier? So a willful act that causes multiple people to die in the present, is on principle, more acceptable than benefiting from science that became feasible as a result of (in COVID's case) a single death that occurred nearly 40 years ago?

You've answered your own question: the problem is that there is a huge percentage of people who will refuse the vaccine. Why these people want to prevent us from reaching herd-immunity is anyone's guess, but that's essentially the consequence of that choice.

You make this sound insurmountable, when we have existing examples of common-sense rules to guide us. Schools and camps require proof of MMR vaccination, airlines do not. Per your example, yellow fever vaccination is required to travel in high-risk parts of the world, but your grocery store will never stop you at the door to demand those papers. Instead, it may take 6-9 months before grocery stores and other high-traffic venues loosen mask restrictions, which is the more reasonable course of action for that particular case.

So instead of "we don't know how these will be used so let's not do it", it should be "let's put in place some common-sense guidelines to ensure that these are used equitably." Was that so hard?