The reason credit card rates are high is that almost no one chooses a credit card for the rate
so they can basically charge whatever they want.
Most people never intend to carry a balance but then life happens.
Any one who can will quickly pay it off or refinance.
The only ones left are the extremely high risk and/or not very bright people.

It's like the ridiculous high rates on "no interest for a year" furniture purchases.
Everyone intends to pay it off before the year is up but many don't so they end up with a huge fee at the end.

Not only painful but not much different than how normal development works without AI.
It might speed things up slightly if it doesn't introduce hidden bugs but the human is still the architect
who is breaking it down into small parts and making those small parts work together and work
with external 3rd party APIs and libraries.

Even if it was inappropriate words, who exactly is the customer offending if they sprinkle in cuss words in their conversation
with an artificial agent? Why can't the AI respond to the question "Cancel my fucking account" or "Where is my fucking money?"
Let the customer vent a little bit or ask questions using their natural vernacular.

Even when it does happen, a $500 bonus only costs the company once where a $500 raise costs the company $500 every year.
A $500 bonus can be given every year and it feels like they're getting something where if they give a $500 raise, they'll be expected
to give a raise the next year as well.

Although I would mostly agree, they do still provide some value to society.
It's a form of arbitrage allocating money to companies that are more likely to use it well.
They are giving more money to companies that are providing better services to society
and less money to companies that are not.
They are also investing in startups which are bringing new products to market that will
benefit society.
It's doubtful their benefit to society is anywhere close to their compensation but there
is some value to arbitrage activities. Even high frequency trading has some benefit
as it makes the market more liquid although the negatives might outweight the benefits.

Those jobs still are providing the person doing the job with money and also usually is making money for the investor whose funds they are managing. Presumably these investors think that the funds managers are worth it or they would manage their own money or hire someone less expensive.

The jobs are there for a reason. Some bean counter thinks the job is not worthless or they would have been cut.
But more importantly, this is not a counter argument. This pretty much agrees with the "work harder" sentiment
or maybe "work smarter" instead. If much of the work done is bullshit and doesn't contribute to GDP,
standard of living, or happiness of the person or country then the work needs to shift to jobs that do help
improve the person or country.

Assuming they have enough supplies, the type of person who spent the time to become an astronaut
would likely be thrilled to spend an extra 6 months in space. Because it's unscheduled, they likely
also don't have many assigned duties or experiments to perform so they can likely do whatever they want.
Most if not all astronauts would love this opportunity.

Viruses and malware need to install themselves and/or replicate to be effective. They typically have a purpose. That purpose is installing an ad server, replicating to another machine, etc... An unprivileged user can't install anything so there is no way to make them accidentally install an ad server. An unprivileged user can also not modify applications. Sure, it can modify your personal documents but that doesn't allow them to run or replicate or do anything useful. So there is no real way for it to spread. It's the same for iphones. All the apps are sandboxes so they can't affect other apps or install other apps. The best you can do on Iphone is a trojan horse if you can somehow trick the user from downloading a fake app that is on the app store and after that, you still have to somehow gain enough permissions to transmit to another user.

The problem with pointing the finger at ultra-processed food is the self selection bias. Someone who eats ultra-processed food every week is probably also making other bad health choices. Likewise, someone who rarely eats ultra-processed food is probably also making other good health choices. It would be really difficult to find a cohort of people where eating ultra-processed or not is the only good or bad choice they are making. Just off the top of my head, I guarantee that the people who eat more ultra-processed food also consume more soda. Dementia is closely linked to diabetes. Alzheimer's disease is sometimes even referred to as "type 3 diabetes" So it could be that ultra-processed food is not the culprit at all but rather soda or sugar but the people who are eating ultra-processed food are also consuming more soda or sugar. There are many other things like the amount of exercise, the amount of free time available for meal prep, their mental health, or a million other things that could also be co-morbid with eating ultra-processed food.

Technically, no software is "built in" to linux or even windows for that matter.
There are malware and virus scanners for linux that are included and you just have to install
but they are typically not needed because malware and viruses are almost non-existent in linux
because the desktop user tends to be an unprivileged user.
I've installed linux virus scanners before but mostly to protect windows boxes.

Even in states that don't have the concept of mineral or wind rights, it's easy enough for one party to lease
to the other two parties to achieve a similar triple use.

This is where mineral rights came from. You can get a farmer to sell you the rights to the oil and let them still
use the land for cattle or farming. They also do the same thing with radio towers. Radio towers have guy
wires but still leave most of the land usable for farming. Air rights already exist to some extent as well.

You wouldn't need that much force to be useful.
Even a minimal non-propellant force in outer space would be useful.
The voyager 1 is coasting but if something like Voyager 1
that has a RTGs powered by plutonium and could continually gain
momentum year over year using nothing but the electricity it generates,
it could continue to accelerate every year and cover a lot more distance.
The voyager 1 is going about 38000 miles an hour but in space with no
vacuum, even a tiny thrust could increase that significantly.
If you truly had something that could produce 1g of force, you should
be able to get to 90% of the speed of light in a little over a year.
The voyager 1 has been travelling for 45 years so even at 1/45 of a G,
it would be at 90% of the speed of light in the same amount of time.