Wow, I had no idea that the economics of international trade were so simple. So all we need to do is match our employment taxes with that of competing nations, and we win? No, of course not. Economics is complicated. So complicated that even the most complex modeling routinely fails to accurately predict things. This is just the kind of overly reductionist pseudo-analysis that drives conversations into ideological corners that have little bearing on reality. Anyone peddling the 'it's this simple' explanation is a salesman. A snake-oil salesman, and a pretty poor one at that.

FTA: "driving one requires the ability to correctly predict what's going to happen far out ahead." ...or you just say 'fuckit' and tailgate passenger cars at = 1 car-length, cut in front of passenger cars at the same distance, pass other trucks on a 4lane highway with a speed delta of ~1mph and probably wonder why most cars do whatever they can to get as far away from you as possible on the stretch of I-40 between Gallup and Albuquerque, NM.

It's not so much the USB port as the frame that surrounds it that will dictate durability. If the frame around the port properly stabilizes the plug so as to take all stress off of the actual contacts, then the USB-C ports should be quite durable. I've noticed issues with *some* micro-usb ports, and those are the ones that were very poorly stabilized by the frame of the devices (I'm looking at you, 2nd gen nexus7!).

Most likely, the mandate for the latest major versions of packages comes from STIG. The STIG is a guideline, and more often than not, requires an explanation as to why you have chosen not to comply. I've been able to get around the broken STIG assumption that only the latest major version of a package contains the required security fixes by writing up a vulnerability assessment that includes the patch-level of the package from the vendor (RedHat in my case), and the changelog of that patch that almost always includes the CVE for which the fix was provided.

The intent of the STIG issue is to close a security hole, *NOT* to force you to dangerously track the very latest major/minor version of a package. If you can show that you are closing security issues by suing the latest version from your vendor, then you are complying with the goal of the STIG.

I love all the spur-of-the-moment-statisticians come outta the woodwork when someone suggests being a little over-protective of their children. Yes, you and your 'n' of 1, with a statistical significance of absolute '0' will provide all the insight anyone will ever need. 'back when I was a kid... and I turned out just fine!' damn, it must be true!

Fact is, there are three things you need to balance here, not just the probability of something bad(TM) happening:
1. probability of bad thing happening
2. morbidity/mortality of said bad thing (a badness factor, say)
3. the cost of providing various levels of protection against said badness.

I can't prevent all possible bad outcomes from driving a car, but I'm willing to spend a certain amount of money to limit the badness of driving myself and my kids in my car. I pay for a safe car, snow tires, car seats, etc. and I make sure we always wear our seatbelts. Also, I don't drive like an asshole.

oh, gawd here we go again... 1. bacteria coat just about every surface of the planet. washing your hands with anti-bacterial soap to help reduce the transmission of disesase will *NOT* ever change that fact... ever. 2. The levels of triclosan in anti-bacterial soap is so low as to have a minimal affect. Keep in mind that most bacteria are killed and/or washed off the skin with proper soap+water hand-washing. 3. ignorant, knee-jerk, extremist ranting (ie. anti-bacterial soap will end our exposure to bacteria and thus ruin our immune systems) has a far greater potential to adversely affect the public health than anti-bacterial soap. Everyone knows everything on the internet is true. Just look at the anti-vaccine sheep... you rant about the public not caring about science, and prove your own lack of this very care in the process. nice one.