From Google's FAQ

Will Android Debug Bridge (ADB) install work without registration? As a developer, you are free to install apps without verification with ADB. This is designed to support developers' need to develop, test apps that are not intended or not yet ready to distribute to the wider consumer population.

Obviously, ADB can't distinguish the cases of (a) an app developer who just wrote an app using ADB to install an APK on their device for testing and (b) any random person using ADB to install an APK on their device for whatever reason they like. This means that random people can use ADB to install APKs from unverified developers.

Well, if that were the point of the system, you'd be right, but it's not. The point of the system is to make it hard for malware authors to distribute malware to large numbers of users without getting quickly shut down. This system doesn't "scan apps" at all... Android just won't install downloaded APKs that don't have a Google-provided signature on them, but it will install ADB-installed APKs without a Google-provided signature because app developers need to be able to build and test apps without having to send every version off to a Google server for signing.

I don't know about more explanatory power, but here's another theory for you: Consciousness doesn't really exist, at least not as far as we know. What we perceive as our own consciousness is just a result of the effort of one part of our brain to generate explanations for the results of computations by another part of our brain. The process of generating explanations requires a little bit of recursive analysis that looks like introspection and self-awareness, except that nearly all of what it's allegedly introspecting is actually completely opaque to the computation that generates the explanations. Note also that there needn't be any actual correlation between the generated explanations and the computation that is being explained (there's actually pretty good empirical evidence that our explanatory systems are just as good at explaining something we actually disagree with as something we decided, BTW).

Now, why did we evolve such an explanation engine? Because it was adaptive for a communal species, of course, especially when coupled with another ability that co-evolved with it: Rich, detailed communication (speech, and more). We developed the explanation engine so we could use the explanations to convince others in our community that our unexplained computation results (decisions, actions, etc.) are better than theirs. This development was both communally adaptive, because battling explanation engines (people arguing with each other) actually result in the construction of better joint computations, enabling the community to make better collective decisions and thrive, and individually adaptive because the better explainer is able to get their way more often and increase their status within the community.

So, within this theory, your questions are all pretty easily answered: (1) Consciousness is just an illusion that arises from the layered structure of our brains, which are, indeed, purely physical objects, though incredibly sophisticated. (2) This apparent consciousness and the logic circuitry that underpins/enables it closely matches evolutionary adaptiveness because it is actually an evolutionary process: The explanatory engine operates by generating, testing and selecting postulates, just as evolution operates by generating, testing and selection genotypes. (3) Consciousness is illusory so the question of where to draw the line doesn't make sense, but you can also clearly see that rocks don't have anything that might appear to be consciousness because are no computational processes going on in them. Cities might, however, especially when you note that human cities contain institutions that both compute (make decisions) and attempt to explain those computations, but we'd really need a much more precise definition of "consciousness" to attempt to answer this question. Such a definition is impossible, however, because consciousness is just an illusion anyway.

From the summary:

In its blog post, F-Droid warns about the impact on users and Android app developers. "You, the creator, can no longer develop an app and share it directly with your friends, family, and community without first seeking Google's approval,"

You can still develop an app and share it directly with whoever you want without registering, you just have to convince them to use ADB to install it, rather than clicking a link on a web site or downloading from an app store (like F-Droid). This adds a lot of friction and requires your potential users to trust you quite a bit more, because it feels like they're taking a bigger risk, even though there isn't any actual difference in risk. I expect that we'll start to see apps packaged with ADB for a "single-click install" from a Windows machine, to reduce the friction as far as possible. Users would still have to do the dance to enable developer options, enable USB, then tap "accept" on the ADB key popup, though an installer could (and probably will) walk them though that.

Also, although I don't think details are available yet, Google says there will be an option for "limited distribution accounts" which don't require any fee or ID verification, but can only distribute their apps to a limited number of devices. For people who just want to share with friends and family, this should cover them.

Food was a significantly larger percentage of disposable income in the 60s and 70s. And, as I mentioned before, that steady decline in the money spent in food was actually offset to a large degree by an increase in eating out (or ordering in). If we still ate at home as much as we used to, the drop would be even larger.

Yep, once upon a time it was hard to get enough food to get fat, especially with all of the exercise that was required just to live. People didn't change, the environment did. I'm not sure why you think it's now a moral failing not to exercise the personal responsibility that was previously unnecessary. Why not just accept GLP-1 agonists as part of the new environment?

No, it has to do with food -- good, bad and indifferent -- getting far cheaper and more abundant. Americans spend a much smaller percentage of their income on food than they did, even in spite of the fact that we eat restaurant-prepared food far, far more often than we used to.

Yes, the availability of cheap, convenient, tasty and empty calories is a bad thing, and its cost has fallen faster than fresh food, but all food is much, much cheaper than it was when America was much slimmer. It's also relevant that Americans are more sedentary because transportation is cheaper and more work and entertainment activities are sedentary.

And with this you undercut your whole argument. Grades provide a way of sorting the student body by ability, whether said student body is composed of elite students or low-middling students (like my alma mater). As long as people want to know who the best of the best are -- and they do -- it's in the best interests of Harvard and the students to sort them effectively.

Note that the fact that Harvard Law has renamed A, B, C and D/E as High Honors, Honors, Pass and Fail, doesn't change that they are still giving those grades. My guess is that they did this renaming because rampant grade inflation everywhere has made people believe that A is good, B is bad and C is awful, and by renaming they enable professors to give C's without the stigma. It's a way to fight the grade inflation problem -- give new labels to the grades to shake off the negative connotations of the lower of the old labels.

Perhaps the rest of Harvard should do the same, and then their professors could go back to applying proper grading curves, so most students will get C, er, Pass.

Of course, unless the school can convince the students that hard grading is a feature, not a bug, this will just produce a renaming treadmill. Everyone will start thinking that only losers get anything less than High Honors, so they'll push professors to give mostly High Honors, so High Honors will lose its meaning and another round of renaming will be needed.

Even if the people who know how didn't move on over the last few decades, surely they would have been fired some time in the last few months as part of the overall effort to weaken the US economy, health, and defenses.

Is there anyone left who knows how to do the job? Can they be hired back, after the Epstein shutdown is over?

Apple could just stop being evil.

Problem: adversary has you in a headlock.

Solution: wait for the adversary to change allegiance.

This sure sounds like something that can be completely solved by getting a new account. But then there's this hilarious excuse for insisting that the problem remain:

Although users can "abandon the accounts and start again with new Apple IDs," the report notes that doing so means losing all purchased apps, along with potentially years' worth of photos and videos.

If there's any risk of losing photos and videos, then they should already be working on fixing their backup system immediately, before something bad happens. This isn't so much a problem as a wake up call that they haven't yet done one of the most basic first-things in using computers: get data backups going.

Loss of access to an external data storage account is just one of the risks they aren't protecting themselves against, with regard to that data. (And geez, since they're already cloud-storage enthusiasts, what was their plan for what they were going to do if they ever found a better cloud provider?)

As for proprietary apps: same problem, they already faced the risk even without this parental splitup. Either stop doing that, or accept that you occasionally have to repurchase your proprietary software. Given how much crap is monthly subscriptions now, I suspect there's very little loss here anyway, since having to continuously repay is already the status quo for an increasing number of .. [sighing and trying to remember to be nice] .. inexperienced computer users.

But if it's not (yay! it shouldn't be), then either suck it up that you have to re-do a "one-time" purchase, or [gasp] contact the manufacturer of that software and tell them the problem.

Oh, it's some company who is unresponsive or says "fuck you, pay me?" Well, then you're the one who decided to do business with an unresponsive company. You were already fucked and just hadn't run into the already-looming disaster anyway. Glad you're learning about how stupid that was while you're a teenager instead of later, when the stakes are going to be even higher.

All objections to "get a new account" are bullshit. And worse, they just point out problems that these people can/get-to/should face now, before anything bad happens.

The best way to innovate in gaming is to have..

.. more game-makers.

Kids, become a programmer. You can write games yourself, or you can join an existing project. There are many to choose from, but also, there's always room for one more.

He's gotta leave us guessing because like other competitors MS has bought and killed countless studios and the games they produced.

a high accident rate will cause them to get less rich

I'm reminded of a scene from one of my favorite movies:

[ED-209 kills someone]

Dick Jones: "I'm sure it's only a glitch. A temporary setback."

The Old Man: "You call this a glitch?! We're scheduled to begin construction in six months. Your "temporary setback" could cost us fifty million dollars in interest payments alone!"

It's not clear to me which of the two you're saying is bad. I assumed that you were opposed to grade inflation in STEM fields at first, but your last sentence makes it sound like your concern is grade inflation in "useless" degrees.

The companies like door dash etc do not care if you do not deliver. They list you anyway, pay full price for the food, slap a 35% fee on top and sell your food.

Then something doesn't add up. My understanding is that the fees that the delivery company charges the restaurant are what is hurting the restaurants. But if your restaurant doesn't have a contract with the delivery company (i.e. "they list you anyway") then that fee is $0, isn't it?

So what's the harm? It sounds like any fees the restaurants are paying, are something they've opted into.

I can see how bad experiences (caused by the delivery service which otherwise wouldn't have happened) could reduce order frequency, but that doesn't seem to be what people are talking about here.