The "square root of negative one" is just a convenient mathematical notation. Really, imaginary numbers don't do much of anything until you start using them with respect to vectors. It turns out that there is an operator * on vectors so that [0,1] * [0,1] = [-1,0]. This operator has properties very similar to "multiplication" that we use for regular numbers that we use to balance our checkbooks with. One particularly magical property of this multiplication (vs other options in vector math) is that *it has an inverse*. It also turns out that this operator makes representing "math on a circle" extremely elegant. That the equality [0,1] * [0,1] = [-1,0] looks kinda-sorta like i * i = -1 doesn't really provide anything except for slightly more compact bookkeeping.

Literally everything about complex numbers could be described using 25% more characters in terms of vector math instead of imaginary numbers. Imaginary numbers are not the crucial ingredient, nor do they provide any kind of deep insight into the world. That vector math is needed to describe reality shouldn't come as a big shocker to anyone.

I get 32.1% in the wealthiest 1% in US.

"They've been scanning your files al along" - Eh? Naturally, writing your files to their server requires a read operation. Anyone who thought that Google wasn't reading their Drive files doesn't know how computers work...

Governments regulate a lot of things to our mutual benefit as well, though, eh? For example, they regulate "killin people". You can't just go and kill people. The Government controls precisely when and how killin people gets done. Probably, when done right, this is for the best. Has it occurred to you that maybe "printin money" is something that isn't good for random shmos to be able to do? Money is pretty useful, and the Government has regulated printin money for millenia. I'm sure you can find good reasons for this if you were to look beyond your confirmation bias.

Why do you assume that they will be large?

Well, if the intarwehbs says it's so then it must be so!

This is not the generally accepted definition.

In the absence of other people, you could not read a book OR listen to a book because books would not exist. Pencils wouldn't exist. You would live a short brutal life in an unforgiving wilderness. The term "rights" would be meaningless, because you could do anything you wanted, but "anything you wanted" would be a cursed wish that you would certainly regret having been granted.

In the presence of other people, as the number of people grows, the probability that there exists someone who wants to take everything you have and enslave you approaches 1. In order to circumvent this sort of barbarism, we as a society determine what you are and are not allowed to do, and we punish or prevent such behavior (or empower others to do so on our behalf). For example, taking everything you have and enslaving you is not described as a "right", because we've decided that maybe you shouldn't do that thing. However, in the past, in the USA, taking everything someone had and enslaving them WAS allowed, and this thing was described at that time as a "right".

In fact, in the usual meaning, "human rights" include a number of things that, perhaps unintuitively, you the individual are NOT allowed to do, such as enslaving your fellow humans. We've collectively decided that not only do you NOT HAVE a "right" to enslave people, but you HAVE a "right" to not be enslaved, and governments are considered to have a duty to restrict its citizens from such behavior. So, your "right" is guaranteed not because the government allows this thing, but because is disallows it!

"Copyright" is actually, boringly, derived from the terms "copy" and "right". For one reason or another, we have collectively decided that when you create, for example, a literary work, then you have the right to be the ONLY person to copy that work. Your right to copy is guaranteed because the government disallows others from copying your work. Perhaps we as a society should decide that this should work differently. Last I checked, there were mechanisms that allowed this. In the meantime, you should amend your understanding of the word "right": You have the "right" to protection from my ill behavior in many ways!

I guess "literally nothing" is the simultaneous hope and fear of Americans. There is a dream that one day science will create a utopian world of abundance for all - but on that day either someone will still have a job enabling them to buy that coveted Ferrari, which will leave a cohort of humans unable to earn enough to buy those goods and services, or nobody will have a job leaving us in a state of dreaded Communism. How will our Capitalist institutions cope with the coming robot revolution?

There is no dark matter or dark energy in any equations. That is what the physicists mean by "dark". That they have equations for *regular* matter that we see and touch and feel, but the equations are off of what we observe by a factor of X. What is causing that X? We don't know. Instead of calling it "we don't know", we just call it "dark"

I could buy my own soiled undies from myself for $1B and then announce to the world that they are therefore worth $1B because they sold for $1B at Sotheby's. I just can't help but think that there MUST be some sort of shenanigans going on with these NFTs....

Do you think I write the code that I write because I'm a member of some sort of leisure class? I write code because I'm paid to do it, because someone paid money to my company to use that code. The only reason this article doesn't consider me a servant is because the corporate middleman keeps me hidden away in a cubicle instead of delivering software to your doorstep.

It seems that VCs are financing an economy of servants because an economy of service is the only economy that we have. I scratch your back, you scratch Alice's back, Alice scratches Bob's back, and Bob scratches my back. Everyone serves and everyone gets their back scratched. Welcome to Earth.

The problem here is that it destroys the second-hand market, because you can never really be sure that the original owner acquired the device legally. And if I can't *buy* the TV used, that means I can't *sell* the TV when I want to upgrade. So, I will not be purchasing any Samsung TVs new or used until this remote-bricking bug gets patched.

Citation needed. There is both a false positive rate and a false negative rate at work here. Frankly, I doubt that you have the smallest whit of information regarding either. But such is the internet that people love to make definitive statements about matters which they are wholly ignorant.

"sunlight *AND* oxygen" (emphasis mine), not "sunlight *OR* oxygen".

And your solution is to execute and subjugate them based on their race? I suppose the idea is to go ahead and exterminate the children before they can start a life of misogyny. I think that one can believe in LGBT rights without taking it to genocidal levels.