It is the only reality, my point is related to the story at hand, which proposes launching people into space for hundreds of years, where they will die obviously and they *may* decide to breed and have offspring who will at least have an explanation as to why their parents and grandparents, etc. decided to move from this planet in an attempt to find something else. If there is no story there is no reason for them to continue either breeding in space or continuing their journey rather than turning back or doing something else entirely, once they are off this planet there is nothing anyone here can do to prevent the people there from making other decisions.

(a << 16) + b.

What I typed to get that was "(a &lt;&lt; 16) + b".

funny, because it is true. The living never cared about the fate of their offspring, that is why they exist. Once species starts caring, it stops existing, which is good, that is what should happen once you stop putting next generations into this reality because this reality is miserable. This reality is miserable because it is full of people who are given instruments to make it miserable, instruments like voting. This instruments in the hands of the people cause reality to get worse with each passing year, since we consistently elect people who set agenda driven towards the lowest common denominator in every category. We get the worst outcomes due to us being stupid monkeys on average and we get this with an ever increasing efficiency of robotic execution, especially now driven with AI.

The only reason to move to another planet is a iron clad, rock solid way of governance that does not rely on voting and removes humans from government roles completely. I cannot imagine what other justification would someone accept for forfeiting their lives in space this way except for escaping the stupid miserable reality we are so busy building on th8s planet.

do you really want this civilization? I mean this is the civilization we have built, these are the people populating it, these are the people in the government, this is the level of understanding, of common sense or lack of it, these are the consequences of democratic system that promotes the descent into the lowest common denominator. When I drive, I see most other cars around me, they are obstacles, it is as if nobody is in any hurry, everybody is exactly where he or she wants to be. Taking off at a green light, I look in the rear view mirror, 300 meters later, cars only started moving, it is not normal. Is everyone asleep or is the world really not in a hurry to do anything? So I believe everyone is comfortable, nothing will change because of some girl being dragged through the worst the system has to offer because of her words or text, be it a bad joke or an actual cry for help. Nobody helped her.

Not one person helped her, there is 0 help, everything was thrown at her as if she was a disease, an enemy on the front line and as if this made the rest of the people safe somehow. Maybe they should just put her down for the words, that would really make the world safer from her, no more words from that girl. She wouldn't be able to take any action either, when she is 6 feet under the world is safer. Why not? What is the real difference, treating her the way she was treated or just eliminating her? Less expense, less room for error, I mean at this point, after she has been through this, is the rest of the people safer from her in the future? What if this situation actually turns the key in her mind that makes her want revenge later in life? I would bet she hates everyone more today than the day before the incident.

If she had the button to push to take out everyone involved in this now, maybe she is more inclined to push this button after the system put her through the works.

The civilization breeds people who are not in a hurry to do anything, who believe they need the governments to protect them from everything, including this girl.

This civilization cannot survive its own complete lack of humanity, it is rotten, it is the system of robots acting on the dumbest impulses of monkeys.

This is the economist view, but it's really not true. Companies are made of people, and people make decisions for all sorts of reasons, almost none of them purely financial even when the justifications are argued in financial terms. In this particular case, Steve Jobs was a UX purist who made all sorts of decisions on the basis of his taste for elegance and simplicity, even when they didn't make much financial sense. Most of his worst ideas were stopped by the people around him -- often with financial arguments -- but many weren't.

The "homo economicus" model is useful, but don't confuse it with reality.

I was traveling last week and missed it, so this is cool.

I don't think it counts as a dupe unless the original is still on the first couple of pages.

The president is the boss of the executive branch, and he has to be able to give orders to them to tell them how to do their jobs. Of course, those orders should only be about how they're supposed to go about executing the law, as defined by Congress and the Constitution. The problem isn't the ability of the boss to give orders, that's as it must be, the problem is that Trump is giving orders that tell the executive branch to do things that that exceed and sometimes defy the laws defined by Congress and the Constitution.

When that happens, it's the responsibility of the other two branches to rein him in or remove him. The courts are mostly trying to do their job to rein him in but their ability is limited. The intention is that when the executive gets out of control, Congress should give him the boot. Instead, the GOP leadership in Congress is cheering him on.

To be more precise, it's backed by the enforceability of debt contracts, i.e. the judicial and executive branches of the nation state. But that's only what makes sure the value is provided, what actually backs fiat currency is someone's legally-binding promise to do some sort of productive work. Fiat money is created by banks when they issue loans (including but definitely not limited to the Federal Reserve bank), so every dollar created is balanced by a dollar of debt that is created at the same time, and when the debt is paid off, the dollar ceases to exist.

Suppose you want to build a new house. You go to the bank and borrow, say, $1M. Many people think the bank loans you $1M that they have sitting in their (virtual) vault, money that was deposited by people with savings accounts at the bank, but that's not true. What happens is that the bank invents $1M to lend to you. It's not quite that simple (but note that we've abandoned fractional reserve lending; there are no reserve requirements any more), but we'll gloss over the irrelevant complexities. The core point is, the bank creates (a) $1M and (b) a mortgage contract, which offset one another. $1M came into existence, but there's a promise to repay, and therefore destroy, that money.

You pay the money to the construction company, who pays it to their workers and suppliers and investors, and they build you a house. You move in and all is good, except now you have an obligation to apply your labor for the next 30 years to generate value so you can make your monthly mortgage payments.

That is what backs fiat currency: The future labor of borrowers. The exact nature of the labor is undefined, of course, but that doesn't make the labor itself any less of a very real, very productive (by definition!) asset, and it is that productive asset that gives the currency its intrinsic value. And, of course, the legal system is backing the contracts, so you can't just decide you don't want to pay, not without significant negative consequences. That's just one of a number of crucial roles the government plays. Another is the laws that mandate that all debts public and private be denominated in and payable with the nation's currency.

Obviously, crypto assets (they really aren't currencies; even ignoring their lack of intrinsic value, they suck as currencies) have nothing remotely comparable to that sort of solid foundation. Less obviously, so-called "hard" currencies don't either. The classic hard currency, gold, does have a little intrinsic value because it's pretty and has some useful physical properties, but the vast majority of its value is "pure magical thought". It has that value only because everyone believes it does, but there's nothing behind that belief but tradition, not even anything as abstract as contractual obligations. Unlike fiat currencies.

The phone number thing has nothing to do with tracking, it's about account recovery. IMO, they should offer an option to skip it that makes you promise repeatedly that if you ever forget your password, or if your account is ever taken over, that you'll give up and make a new account instead of demanding some other way to prove your identity and recover your account. "I promise to take responsibility for maintaining access to this account and will never ask Google to reset my forgotten/stolen password".

Probably people would still pester them for a way to get their account back, though.

Why female?

Why hasn't that already happened, then? It's not like the market force in question are new.

Top 10 US states by manufacturing jobs:

1. California (D)
2. Texas (R)
3. Ohio (R)
4. Illinois (D)
5. Michigan (split)
6. Pennsylvania (split)
7. New York (D)
8. Indiana (R)
9. Wisconsin (split)
10. North Carolina (split)

The R / D / split designations above describe the current state government, "split" meaning that control is divided between the parties. So of the top 10, three are Republican-controlled, three are Democrat-controlled and four are divided (though the Michigan split is a very recent phenomenon; Michigan has been quite blue for a long time).

The pattern that I see is that the blue states generate most of the new ideas and products and manufacturing naturally springs up around them, then over time manufacturing of now-established products gets moved to red states for the reasons you pointed out. This is an ongoing process that keeps the manufacturing output relatively balanced over time -- but keeps the blue states richer and maintains their dominant position in US GDP.

Also, it's worth noting that the federal minimum wage is irrelevant these days; market prices have risen above it. Even in low-income states unskilled jobs pay more than the federal minimum wage. (To me, this isn't an argument that the minimum wage needs to be raised, it's an argument that it should be abolished and that we should trust the labor market to set wages.)

Do you also not know how percentages work?

If I'm understanding the article correctly, the conference room window mitigation wouldn't work against this. It doesn't rely on vibrations of the windows. Instead, you'd just need a piece of paper inside the room, lit by ordinary lamps. As long as the light reflecting off the paper could pass through the windows unmodified (i.e. the windows provide clear visibility) the white noise vibrations of the windows would have no effect.

On the other hand, lightweight curtains that blocked the view through the window would stop this technique, but probably wouldn't significantly reduce what was detectable from a laser bounced off the windows (assuming no white noise).

I think we're talking past one another. I'll try to be clearer.

Sure, but that's not the point. The point is that Android does prevent most users from using anything other than Play. Not by actually blocking them from using other app stores but by simply not offering the option. And that's a good thing, because most users have no idea how to decide whether or not something is safe.

I think perhaps the confusion here is because you and I are looking at this from different directions. You seem to be looking at it from the perspective of what you or I might want to choose. I'm looking at it from the perspective of an engineer whose job is to keep 3B users safe, most of whom have no idea how to make judgments about what is safe and what isn't. Keeping them within the fenced garden (it's a low fence, but still a fence) allows them to do what they want without taking much risk. The fact that the fence is easily stepped over preserves the freedom of more clueful and/or adventurous users to take greater risks. I think this has been a good balance.

I'm pretty sure that the ability to allow unknown sources is required by the Android compliance definition document, and that a manufacturer who disables it is not allowed to call their device Android, or to pre-install the Google apps or Play.

Until Epic decides that they want their store to be able to install and update as seamlessly as Play can, and gets a court to order that. Still, your point is valid, there is still some friction for other stores. Is it enough? I guess we'll find out. Will it be allowed to remain? I guess we'll find that out, too.

goo.gl links are a significant abuse vector, so Google has to maintain a non-trivial team to monitor and mitigate the abuse. I'll bet there are several full-time employees working on that, and that the total annual cost is seven figures.

Even if it weren't an abuse vector, the nature of Google's internal development processes mean that no service can be left completely unstaffed. The environment and libraries are constantly evolving, and all the services require constant attention to prevent bit rot. A fraction of one engineer would probably be enough for something like goo.gl if it weren't abused, but that's still six figures per year, not pennies.