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It would be easy enough to use the SQLite DB for normal read/write and search, and also save a human readable .txt dump periodically such as when making backups, or asynchronously on every save.

On top of that, rather often other people sign up for accounts using my email address, which is my first name + my last name at gmail. I'm guessing they missed a number or middle initial. I could password reset their account, but that seems legally/morally dubious.

Fortunately nobody's signed up for an account for anything I'd actually care to sign up for myself. It's usually some grocery store in Malaysia or something.

Focusing on the short term also seems like it'd make paperclip/Skynet scenarios less likely.

I think it might be better to say that's not beyond our current level of scientific understanding (it doesn't require any exotic materials or new physics). However it's likely beyond our practical engineering capabilities.

Early spaceflight up through Apollo was done with an army of humans with slide rules and rivet guns. We did it because there was a political imperative to do so. A lot of new technology was developed as a result. But it ended up being unsustainable because it was too expensive.

I think the key to making O'Neill cylinders feasible will be large scale outer space resource mining and in-space manufacturing. Both will require advanced robotics and AI. We could throw a bunch of money into developing that ... or we could just wait for the technology to develop here on Earth and then apply it to space.

Likewise, as much as I'd like to see a Mars outpost in my lifetime, it would be a lot cheaper and safer if we didn't rush it. Maybe by 2075 we'll have cured cancer and radiation won't be an issue, and we'll have self-repairing life support systems and one of those automated medical pods from the Alien movies.

I think the traffic gets proxied (not sure if it's encrypted) back to servers run by your home carrier. So conversely if you use a China Mobile SIM in Hong Kong or overseas your traffic gets firewalled.

I think some people treat optimizing spending as a hobby that they enjoy doing, even if it's not strictly rational.

The other scenario where I would find "poaching" somewhat unethical is when the primary purpose is depriving a competing company of talent.

In that scenario, in order to entice them you might offer bonuses and salary that are disproportionate to the value those employees would contribute to your company, but the loss of those employees would cripple the competitor (loss of institutional knowledge, schedule delays and cost of finding replacements, morale, etc).

The company can counter-offer but that costs them money they wouldn't otherwise have to spend, to protect their "investment" -- the sum of the parts as you mentioned. Ideally a company would be resilient against the loss of employees (e.g. getting hit by a bus) but smaller companies like startups don't often have that luxury, which makes them more vulnerable to poaching and other shenanigans instigated by large companies.

People used iTunes despite its terrible performance on Windows so they could sync their iPod and buy music on the iTunes music store.

GIMP is arguably no more complex than Photoshop, it's just badly designed. And the UX is inconsistent with the look and behavior of pretty much every other app on Mac/Windows.

Popularity is the sum of a number of factors, and simplicity is just one of them. It may not even be the primary factor. I think we've had a bit of a reset, spearheaded by Apple, because bad UX got out of control, but phones are still gaining more features not less. We just have to make sure that the race for features doesn't get too far ahead of the UX teams having time to make it good.

I'm not sure about the old days, but I believe Costco has stated they cap their markup at 15% -- which along with membership fees pays for employee salary, operations, and profit. I'm guessing that's overall and some products are more profitable while others (like their rotisserie chicken) are subsidized.

Chip binning is something of a special case. Most of the time, when part of a product fails, you have a useless/unsellable product that needs to be reworked or scrapped.

It's good for a single round of shots, just to add some variety and the shared experience thing. It's definitely not something you'd want to drink all night.

I don't like the taste of alcohol, but clearly some people do, so I'm thinking it's either an acquired taste (or psychological dependency) or some people just have different taste buds or something. I think it's recently become a bit more acceptable to admit that you only drink to be social, though.

Depends on the brand. Some of them are pretty neutral, like a cheap knockoff of fish and chips. Others are much more fishy tasting, which I would not describe as a good thing.

Not on purpose, anyways. In the past they were too lax about letting third-party apps get your data, hence the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

If you're paranoid, definitely use a throwaway email for the opt out. They already have so much info on me that I'm doubtful that confirming my identity would add anything to that.

I guess we're lucky that most of these SEO-saavy brokers seem to at least pay lip service to US/EU laws (or even do so voluntarily, since I think only a handful of states actually restrict selling your publicly-available or personal information online).

I shudder to think about what's floating around for sale on the dark web or companies hosted in countries that don't care about US law.

While there are probably things that would be improved in a "proper" free market, I feel like that's overestimating the average person's ability to make informed decisions.

There will always be an information and power asymmetry between ordinary people/consumers and special interests/corporations.

Sure, people could form consumer rights groups, boycott companies with unconscionable data collection policies, demand a sane and afforable health care system, etc. But people have a limited attention budget. It's just too hard to care about everything, so people don't.

That's also why we don't have proper regulation; if we cared about having a functional, efficient government we would, but we don't really care that much.

I vaguely recall from the first Neuralink presentation that the cameras used on the robots are fast enough to take the pulsing of the blood into consideration and compensate for it.

Personally I think even though it's an amazing technical accomplishment, the robotic electrode installation might be the simplest part of this whole thing. Once you have the electrodes installed, you might be able to pick out certain patterns, and maybe even restore motor function to people who have lost it.

But the part about being able to replay memories seems incredibly far-fetched. We have no idea how to really interface with the brain. We can only really talk to a small fraction of the neurons, because you can only fit so many electrodes and threads compared to the billions of neurons. It might end up being incredibly challenging to connect a new interface, like if you suddenly grew a tail and had to learn how to control it.

The problem is that the box asking you to enter your email is the most prominent feature on the page before you scroll, which is reminiscent of those sites that try to get you to sign up for their newsletter before you can read the article.

Personally I'd be annoyed having to enter my email to check out a demo; I don't want to receive emails about something until I have a better idea whether it would be useful.

It might be far less than ideal, but I was under the impression that's pretty standard. Unless you pay for an enterprise plan (and possibly extra on top of that depending on your SLA requirements) at best you'll get a billing credit for the downtime.

I imagine companies like Apple spend time scouring Amazon and other websites for unauthorized sellers or even buying one or two to check for fakes. But clearly it's too much for many brands to keep up with, especially if Amazon is only minimally cooperative.

Taken a step further, train an AI on existing cities and have it imagine a new one. Ideally, you could sketch a basic outline (this part is waterfront, this part is the downtown, this is on a hillside) and it would fill in the details.

To a certain extent they can increase total bandwidth by launching more satellites, although it's unlikely to ever make sense for urban areas where you could roll out fixed infrastructure much more cheaply. With satellite constellations, you can't just add satellites only where they're needed.

But when you're done with it, you can just dump it in your Mr. Fusion and get it right back.

For what it's worth, retail stores have been consolidating over the last several decades (and longer, but much less than thousands of years). If you want to sell your product at Walmart or Best Buy they're going to squeeze you on the wholesale price. Sometimes the savings get passed on to consumers, sometimes they don't.

It's not the concept of retail is somehow unethical, but certain stores are certainly less ethical (in how they treat employees, customers, environment, etc) than others, and some of those stores are very widespread.

Also the thousands-of-years argument holds up pretty poorly for a lot of things.

One time, we had an update rejected for having the word "Android" in the app.

While technically mentioning "other mobile platforms" is prohibited in the review guidelines, in this case it was in user-submitted content that you could only find through search.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#2.3...

I'd call it a duopoly, which is not as bad as a monopoly but it's definitely enough to set market prices and arguably should subject them to antitrust scrutiny for anti-competitive behavior.

They have more than 50% of global app sales revenue; Apple's App Store revenue is about 80% higher than Google Play. They also have about 57% of the "premium" ($400+) smartphone market. That has a strong impact on the ability for developers to create and sell apps.

Not to say that Google is innocent either; they've started adopting some of Apple's practices as well. Unless you're a masochist, going outside the Apple/Google ecosystem is not really a viable option.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/03/app-revenue-tops-39-billio...

https://www.gsmarena.com/counterpoint_flagship_smartphone_sh...

The developer agreement states that you're only allowed to sideload apps that you're responsible for developing yourself. Maybe if it's open source you could make an argument for that being allowed, but it's not a general purpose install path for consumers.

I think part of the problem is the difficulty of challenging these inconsistent decisions -- and not just Apple; Google Play is probably just as bad at dealing with escalations. If developers and major companies have to resort to complaining publicly to get a decision revisited, there's a problem with the process that isn't simply due to getting a bad reviewer.

For reading code, which arguably should happen more often than writing code, having the variable name first makes it easier to find, since it's right near the beginning of the line and it's a single word. If the type comes first, I have to scan the line to figure out where the type ends and the variable name begins.

Also, having "let" at the beginning of the line makes it immediately clear that it's a variable definition, whereas if it starts with some arbitrary type I haven't seen before I have to spend more time figuring out what's happening. Good syntax highlighting helps, but I think starting with types like C/C++/D is less elegant than starting off with a keyword that clearly identifies what the line does.

Similar applies for function definitions. It's nice when the function names are all lined up and not buried halfway across the screen because it has some long return type.

It's worth noting that Hong Kong has very few coronavirus cases, and most/all the current known cases are from travelers who are being closely monitored.

The risk there is much thus lower than places that have already have tens of thousands of cases, although it also depends on how long the protests continue and whether an outbreak can be caught early through testing.

Companies closing their doors doesn't necessarily mean ceasing to exist. Sometimes it ends up in a holding company with one person (a lawyer) to close up any loose ends and liquidate assets.

Although in Star Theory's case, their development contract was coming to an end, so it's possible it had already expired at that point. And the contract may have also had certain required metrics like development progress and financial health that would lead to it being terminated in cases where the company was effectively defunct.