Your explanation is perfectly taut.

> There is no USSR anymore.

Tell that to Putin.

> Also the UN is only so-so at best, since they can't seem to actually do anything.

The UN is a discussion forum. By design. Complaining they can't do anything is like complaining Slashdot can't do anything.

Mine just turned 2 - premature, but dodged NICU by a matter of hours. Also missed my birthday (and my mother-in-law's) by one day!

Also still here, looking forward to hearing your take on it!

Am I the only one old enough to think that RCS is the great-great grand-uncle to git, and that the message protocol theyâ(TM)re talking about now needs a different TLA? Can one of you youngsters help chase these kids off my lawn?

• * Literally this poll is the reason I am installing Chrome

Not that Google is much less pushy about switching to Chrome, but if you're going to force me to answer a question before I do what I want then you should at least let me answer that your question is the reason for my decision. The same as every app I've left a negative review for.

Me: [doing what the app is intended for and generally enjoying life]

App: [interrupts with a dialog box forcing me to choose an option] Are you enjoying App?

Me: No, I am not enjoying that you interrupted what I was doing with App to force me to leave a review for it. What I was doing with App happened to be time-sensitive and important. Your idiotic interruption just cost someone's life and/or inconvenienced me in some small but perceptible way.

Why is it necessary to have something floating around inside an unmanned capsule?

Wasting insane amounts of energy is not a bug in decentralized cryptocurrency. It is a feature. In fact, it might be the only feature.

91% of the time, it works every time.

And how was that the case when Xerox was paid for that tech? It's so strange to see such blatantly wrong tech history on a tech site. Jobs was very open about taking Xerox's tech, which they had no idea what to do with, and getting out as a product. He talks about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yraBG1s4gm8

Yeah, those guys are definitely ignorant on this topic. Thank you for setting them straight.

Everyone seems to conflate hyperloop and boring company. The hyperloop was a specific set of technologies that were supposed to do as you describe -- key points being partial vacuum, air bearings, linear electric motor, etc, resulting in some kind of medium-distance 700mph speeds. It's actually an interesting sci-fi engineering read, if you're into that sort of thing: https://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf

However the boring company just digs tunnels. They are supposedely working on a hyperloop project as well though we haven't seen any results, to my knowledge. Which is where the confusion comes from. There's also the idea is that at some point their tunnels can be used for hyperloop tech... but we're nowhere near that. So yeah, right now it's just tunnels. Not super exciting. Some might say boring.

Still here via post notification - following a few of the old Circle via Twitter, and I did try LJ for a while too. Missing Multiply though.

Patents are for fairly obvious, minimally useful inventions and/or junk. Real interesting discoveries are published as scientific papers for peer review. Money and control, the purpose of patents, are not what motivate the best minds. It's a passion for the science, the process of discovery, and possibly of fame for changing the world that seem to drive it. And you don't need patents for that.

As a consequence, I would say there's a 99% chance this guy has nothing.