(Why did you [beelsebob] propagate the vacuum?)

My reaction to any "federal" mention these days is to wonder if they are getting paid for their work. If not, and they are just doing it for love, why should we ever bother to pay them? But I think it will be funny if the shutdown lasts until the next election...

Just joking, but...

Good comment and too bad you weren't FP--and thank you for your relevant Subject.

I still approach it from the perspective of "Would I donate money for that?" And the answer is a partial yes for some of your suggestions. Some of them would take some creativity in describing the project in a way that would attract my donation. But I also have a workaround for some of the other stuff. A fraction of my donation could be reserved for the Mozilla people to assign based on their "unsexy infrastructure" needs. Or maybe the time limit on donations would be sufficient? In the context of the imaginary CSB (Charity Share Brokerage), I would have deposited my donation up front and then selected projects for the CSB to route my donation to. So if the time limit runs out before I've selected a sufficient number of projects, the CSB (as part of its project management mission) could route that money to the "unsexy but necessary" stuff.

Just the ACK and mostly concurrence, though I think most names these days have no recognizable semantic value, in contrast to your two examples. In Japanese most kanji can't lose their meanings. (Exceptions are "illegal" or imaginary kanji.)

Thanks for additional hints about the latest Firefox bloat.

I think you were going for funny and I'm not sure if the comment you are replying to was a sincere solution suggestion or also going for funny.

Mostly the ACK, but I'm wondering if the new name should ring a bell. Has he written any books on this? Nothing came up in the meta-search of local libraries.

I couldn't find any of his books in any of the local libraries and I haven't used Coursera in some years... I did look over the course summary and couldn't figure out the basis of your recommendation. I'd guess something about leverage? But I don't believe in alchemy and I think the stock market has become completely detached from reality. Right now "legal tender" seems to be on the verge of "legal fiction" status.

Mod parent funny, but I'd like to know the kanji reference for "Shrine-Fork". Perhaps someone's name? The closing bit about the fox perhaps suggests an inari shrine?

The new prime minister's name consists of two kanji. The first one usually means "tall" or "expensive" and the second is generally for a "market". But that's not how people think about names? When I asked a Japanese person if it was from a market for expensive stuff or perhaps for high quality merchandise the response was "The name means nothing." (Previous prime minister was "rock break[er]".)

Related reading? Just finished It's Okay Not to Look for the Meaning of Life by Jikisai Minami. Also have the Japanese original version here, but can't input Japanese in Slashdot and the title is not even close to a direct translation...

As a native speaker of English, if I'm talking to someone else who speaks English, then I expect a one-minute message will take one minute to transmit with 100% comprehension.

Relying on my Japanese, it will take two or three minutes and comprehension will drop to about 80%. Largely depends on how well we both understand the context around the topic.

If it's a three-way session with a human translator who doesn't know the topic of the conversation, then best case is 10 minutes and lucky to get 60%.

But when you try an AI translator you should plan for half an hour and you are lucky if you get 40% of the message across.

As it applies to Mozilla, I've abandoned hope, but I'll throw out a question for the so-called wisdom of Slashdot's crowds. Lately I'm seeing freezes in Firefox. Workaround is to exit Firefox completely. CPU usage will remain very high for several minutes, but it will eventually terminate, though I usually lose my patience and just nuke it from the Task Manager. I've been unable to can the other side of the bug, the cause, but I suspect it's related to YouTube ads. Only one machine shows the problem, but I have not seen it on other Windows machines, on (Ubuntu) Linux machines, on Android smartphones, or on my lowly Chromebook, but I don't listen to many videos on any of those machines... Meanwhile, Mozilla has started nagging me to try new features that I did NOT offer to pay for. Nor was I asked what I wanted. Actually several of the new features sound like things I would pay for to make them go away.

'nuff said.

I'm quoting you against the apparent censor mods, though I think you should have made it clear that your concern is with misplaced priorities. But maybe I'm giving you too much benefit of the doubt in relation to the FP rush?

Most of the years I lived in Texas I owned a revolver... But I bought it for work. Can you believe that there was a time when you had to get some training before you could become a Private Commissioned Security Officer? Fuzzy recollection is that the instructor was a state trooper. DPS? Too long ago for me to remember the details, but I think it was only for open carry and I was supposed to have my registration with me at any such time (though I'm sure that was never checked).

No idea what AC or you are talking about. First guess would be something about eugenics?

So here's my attempted joke:

Human beings have intrinsic value. They aren't equal on any dimension, but we aren't qualified to go around judging each other using such terms as "better" or "worse".

The computer science perspective might be to call them all equivalent to UTMs. But a Biblical perspective might be to say that the "image of gawd" is also a UTM.

So how'd you like to buy an infinite tape? Or maybe you want a twelve-pack of them?

Good post and deserved to be FP.

My fantasy matchmaking website would have a business model aligned with long-term success in relationships. There would a nontrivial registration fee to establish bona fides and filter out the sock puppets. Additional payments would be based on value received from the website and should be related to income, partly to help confirm claims of personal wealth. But I've never heard of a relationship-oriented website where the website derives income from one-year anniversaries of marriage... Or even bonus payments for helpful relationship advice that may have saved a relationship.

If the market model is just sex, there are various alternatives. At least I've heard and read about them, though as a long time user of Slashdot of course I would have no relevant personal experiences.

Can't figure out your focus, but it may have something to do with virtual money (such as recursive futures). The vacuous Subject you inherited and propagated didn't help at all. Care to clarify your points? Or at least your main point? Maybe something about fiat currencies, old or new?

If you didn't actually want it, then it's a waste of money at any price--but that sure won't stop Amazon from trying to manipulate you into buying a dozen.

Out of my antipathy for Amazon now I feel like I should consider buying something at one of the other websites mentioned there. Oh wait, Shein is a spammer. Forget that one. But maybe Temu is worth a look?

Specific anecdote about my last online purchase from Rakuten Ichiba (Rakuten Market as translated into English). One specific feature that was most important to me, but I couldn't spot it in the product specifications. However the review summary claimed it was there. Suspicious as I am, I also checked some of the detailed reviews to try to check for sure. But when it arrived, the darn thing was missing the critical feature. Giving the merchandise and the shop lowish reviews scarcely seems helpful or fair given that Rakuten should get most of the blame...

I think there are a number of factors that are destroying retail stores. There are solution approaches, but not with the big boys (especially Amazon) standing in the way. Especially effective to bribe the politicians to keep rigging the rules of the games ever more in their favor. Solution space? "Sorry, we can't get there from here."