> 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.

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.

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.

If your goal is damaging them to be unsalvageable, ensuring they're more of a danger when released -- or perhaps keeping them locked up forever and thus costing far more in prison than they ever cost in crime -- then sure... your plan sound great.

However to anyone that's not an ignorant idiot on the topic, your plan sounds shit.

It's important to teach prisoners that property rights are bullshit and that fraud is perfectly acceptable. Glad they're on top of that. There's nothing like making people work for something then taking it away to ensure they don't bother trying to do things right in the future.

If our corrections/rehabilitation system can't follow the basic rules of ethics, why would they expect anyone else to?

Bingo. It's the same with patents. The law only helps those that are already in positions of power and wealth. It's funny because all the little guys think patents and copyright will protect them, so they cheer on the ridiculous extensions. But it'll never save them from a big team of lawyers and they're more likely to get bitten by it than helped.

> research-based approach ... they've just lost half the country.

Good point. But that really is a very tiny slice of the SJW pie. The term SWERF is generally a pejorative in SJW circles.

It is actually considered a "major world city" by this UK data center. And this list from a Japanese site. And even this GitHub project.

Tell me about it. I probably parked in San Francisco 50 times over the decade I lived in the area, and had my car broken into twice. I've also live in South Africa for a few years, parked hundreds of times in Durban and other "dangerous" towns and never had a break-in. Or any problems at all. Saw a guy get stabbed at Mission and 16th BART station, though.

There's a few things wrong with JPEG that are covered above and below, but the truth of the matter is this: practically speaking, it's plenty good enough and plenty ubiquitous enough to secure it's place for the foreseeable future.

Text and logos are already handled better by PNG and SVG. But for photos? A high quality JPEG will look perfect to nearly everyone, and just about nobody cares if they can save 15% on a still image when they're slinging tons more data watching HD videos. Especially when that file size saving comes at the expense of guaranteed support on every platform, application, and device made in the modern computing age.

At least as an end-user format, JPEG won't be replaced anytime in the near future regardless of it's fairly minor deficiencies.

I think the Pentium M, spinning HD, and shorter battery life kept it from being as much of a love affair as the MacBook Air (at least the rev I got). You're right that there wasn't any huge technology advancement, but sometimes you have to hit a certain sweet spot. I just remember this thing felt faster than any laptop I'd used before (primarily from the SSD subsystem), and the battery lasted so long I literally never had to think about it any more. I fell in love. It still feels like fast modern laptop all this time later.

You really can't compare desktop longevity with laptop longevity.