B1FF_PSUVM

the real answer might very well be a musician or filmmaker, not a writer.

Walter Disney, obviously.

Well, it will probably take at least another century for the fact to hit.

make a lot of money off of interest

Looking at the debt numbers (something like 150 billion over 90 days delinquent) that may not even be the case, if you cover unpaid defaults with interest paid.

The mentioned idea of capping interest at 10% would probably mean credit cards not being issued to a large swath of the population.

Bullshit guilt-tripping logic. Just the 150 billion from "interchange" (merchant fees) would be enough reason to fund the 15 billion (estimated) rewards.

What next, supermarket coupons as a wealth transfer mechanism?

And car engine control software.

Bosch developed the "experimental" ECU software that VW used in the Dieselgate vehicles.

In September 2008, the first Android phone went on sale—the HTC Dream,

Excursion: HTC would later sell the HTC HD2 with WindowsMobile (a predecessor of WindowsPhone), which could be "dual-booted" with Android ROMs from the XDA-developers forum or similar.

The 2009 HTC HD2 was basically the modern glass slab, except for a discrete bottom line of physical buttons, which hadn't yet been eaten by software at the time.

Not far. Not even MS had the clout to impose a third alternative in phones, and it was needed.

And WindowsPhone was actually a good design for user interaction, with the exception of some underlying clunkiness of settings.

my identity got stolen

I've seen it argued that "identity theft" is the way businesses with poor fraud detection make that your problem.

I.e. there's no "identity theft", there's fraud, and the company that was defrauded tries to weasel out like it's not their laxity at fault.

Not Mary Berry, then. Or anyone else who ever baked a cake. Or cooked, really.

I hate sugar in food, but some recipes use sugar to balance acidity (e.g. tomato ketchup).

imagine the possibilities!

Space elevator?

Does a 35,786 km "strand of [slug-tooth] spaghetti" hold its own weight?

"They trust me, the dumb fucks"

this form-factor

"It must be pointy".

The photo is so murky you only notice the shiny propeller cones.

It was erroring out 12h ago.

Toss P.K. Dick's "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" at that essay.

(Hey, sixty years of publication. And it may not even be the first "implanted memories" story around, googles give an 1892 precursor.)

scale will solve

I have a bad feeling about this, and it's about us, not AIs ...

(I fear that we're #$&@%!## most of the time, and just oblivious about it)

They're also missing the winter bit, where an AC heatpump needs three ou four times less energy than a resistive heater ... oh well.

You're doing it wrong. I bumped into this 'Short Guide to Russian literature':

"Russian literature consists of suffering. Either writer suffers, or protagonist, or reader. If all three suffer simultaneously--then it is a masterpiece. In every difficult situation always read Russian classic literature--it is even worse in there."

cared for the environment

It wasn't "more CO2" grade, it was "more NOx" grade. This in urban settings will actually kill more people with respiratory problems.

VW's "clever hack" probably, statistically, killed people.

Europeans from 5am-2pm PST

Well, the EU is putting the kibosh on that PDQ. The precious stays at home.

Read. Guy knows what he's doing.

Do you have anything on those TRW floating point chips that used to titillate junior engineers in trade mag advertisements before that?

For example, an adder's total delay depends on a carry chain. If you have N 4-bit slices, the last slice has to wait for the carry to propagate through all N-1 previous slices.

But if you duplicate all your slices, you can have the results for both carry = 0 and carry = 1 inputs. Then just switch which one is correct - total time 1 add plus N-1 switches.

Just for double (and change) the hardware. Cheap.

pedestrian cars.

That's an interesting turn of phrase ...

Now you've made me think of the Mac Portable, aka Boat Anchor.

("Am I chopped liver?!" yells the shade of the Osborne 1)

"Human dignity does not depend on a person's abilities"

That should be a hard line no one is allowed to cross. If you do, no logic will keep you from ending up in a very bad place.

For instance, I'm a big fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld stories, where his humorous and compassionate tales comment on much of human experience. It's a fantasy world with wizards, trolls, dwarfs, vampires, etc.

In one book he goes into ghouls - obscure, despised and persecuted almost to extinction, but in the story it is found they secretly make beautiful ethereal music. So a concert is arranged to present the music, and all is well, the end. Except for my doubts - I mean, if they didn't make nice music, then it would be alright to dispose of them?

Benthamite utility has a particularly ugly underside to it, and it is easily converted into "disposal of negative value" of the nastiest kind. Which can only be stopped by a moral hard line, as stated.

superpower

That's an anachronism, from the 19th to mid-20th century there were just "great powers", not perfectly matched but considered to be in the same class. The Ottoman empire falling off the league ("sick old man") was a bit of a shocker.

bringing refuse facilities into the home

Well spotted. India is apparently going through that, and they have a joke - older people complain that new generations are lost: "They dine outside and shit inside!"

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Ahah, China going Adam Smith on the EU.

Peacefully, so far. Let's hope they don't go "opium war" on free trade.

I remember one business class anecdote, where the conclusion of changing workplace conditions (light, music, etc. both ways) was that productivity studies increase productivity ...

I was never convinced by the "vision only" approach - I don't see the point of throwing out or refusing to have additional data from other sensors.

I suppose that with modern ML they can just toss it in the blender and reap the benefits ...

(Camus quoted)

He will hereafter be known (and forgotten) not for what he is, but for the picture that a hurried journalist has given of him. To make a name for oneself in the literary world, it is no longer necessary to write many books. It suffices to have written one that the evening newspapers have talked about and on which the writer’s reputation will henceforth rest.

Ah, the days of morning and evening newspapers... A foreign country, they do things differently there.

(I also find fascinating those early XX century English letters/bios where Londoners send invitations by mail in the morning and get replies after lunch. Take that WhatsApp )