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The same could be said of much private medical information. Guessability, or someone else knowing the information, are not the controlling factors in what is considered private information.

Think about how large of a lens you're talking about. Even if it were one hundred meters across and was able to collect 100% of the sun's energy passing through it, the amount of energy produced would be utterly insignificant compared to the problem we're discussing. And how would you get a one hundred meter lens to mars orbit? Even after that, you have to consider that we want an oxygen atmosphere, not one made of water vapors.

I don't know what you mean by "too far removed from current capabilities", but I doubt we'll even start working on the problem for two or three centuries.

No, it seems more likely to me that we'd use our growing knowledge of genetics and psychology to hack out the part of ourselves that needs to be outside, and opt for a purely enclosed existence on Mars.

-1 => "Not even wrong/conspiracy theory"

Honestly, this isn't the sort of thing that needs to be fact-checked. It just needs to be tagged as being baseless. It's a little different than the types of things this solution is aimed at.

That said, the earth's atmosphere has a mass of about five billion billion tons. For reference, as a species, we produce about ten billion tons of concrete each year. This is just to give a sense to the scale of effort involved in replacing a planetary atmosphere.

You haven't been in many internet arguments about economics, then. There are a lot of us who think that various targeted types of regulation and government market participation can actually lead to better markets. I'm not sure it's the case this time, but the general sentiment is common.

Quick Google searches indicate about three watts. To a first approximation, you are not concave when talking on a cell phone, so figure at most 1.5W travelling in your direction. Humans are definitely not opaque to radio, but let's suppose I am. Personally, I weigh 90kg, so for me it's something like 15mW per kg at most, for the small handful of minutes per day I spend on the cell phone.

My level of concern about this could not be lower.

I'm not so sure about that. Citation? I believe in general (at least in the US), it would be really unusual for a corporation to get a tax break for money that was never theirs. The chief factor in how corporations are taxed in the US is their domestic profit. Whether you donate to charity or light it on fire, it shouldn't matter at all to the corporation's profit, and therefore it shouldn't matter to their taxes.

I'm happy to be convinced otherwise, though. Let me know.

I did not get the sense that the author was ostracized. Rather, they were put off by other people's enthusiasm. "Am I the only one here who can see this job is crap?" I can totally understand that feeling being crazy-making, but it's different than being ostracized.

This was my reaction too. Mike Rowe would probably look dimly upon the author's complaints. Sometimes, companies hire people to do unpleasant jobs, and convince them to do these jobs by paying them.

But, it's tough to have that conversation from the position of privilege one sits in when one gets paid even more to do an interesting job, because of the scarcity of people capable of performing in that role. Presumably the kid understands this harsh reality, and the complaint is more reflective of a general disillusionment that the situation is as it is, rather than an aversion to the particularities of this role at Google.

I think what you mean is, "why do so many high end laptops have thin, metal, unibody chassis?"

But, when you ask the question that way, it kind of answers itself. People like metal, because it feels more high end than plastic. Unibody chassis don't need to be fastened together, which is good for manufacturing and looks. People like thin laptops because they are more portable than thick ones.

It's not really "strange." The chances of us ever going to a proportional system en masse are near zero. The chances of making extreme gerrymandering illegal are significantly better (the Supreme Court recently heard a case about it).

Many people prefer to spend time thinking within the context of what is likely to happen. That's not to say we don't need folks who dream big, but we need more than just those folks.

Well, you're criticizing him for only acquiring things and slapping his brand on them. But the criticism is leveled in the context of him investing in an unproven technology. It seems like your comment would be more apt if he were taking an action that follows the pattern you are criticizing. For example, if he were acquiring a computer company and calling it Virgin Computing or something.