fixedd

Nothing else to offer except "agreed".

Another way to think about it is this:

There's two types of advertising (probably really more): 1) We don't care where you buy the thing we make, just buy it. (Mazda) 2) You want that thing in #1, come buy that thing from me! (Mazda dealership)

I don't think there's ever been a question of the efficacy of #1, but #2 is probably nearly useless online. Anecdotally, an advertisement might remind me I want something, but it isn't going to change my habits in how/where I buy it. Bob's House of Laptop Batteries could offer me a price that's $2 less than Amazon, but if I see Bob offering the exact battery I need at exactly the moment I need it, there's still a pretty good chance I'll buy it from Amazon because of 1) ease, 2) trust, 3) Prime, etc.

> And more importantly why would anyone send anything to anywhere?

You're assuming everyone is rational. For instance, if I were a future billionaire I'd totally do it... knowing I'd never see even a glimmer of return on the investment... just cause.

The whole Fermi Paradox thing bugs me too, but in a different way. It assumes we have the capability of detecting the presence of other intelligent life.

The largest radio telescope we have (the 305 meter diameter Arecibo) would need to have it's sensitivity increased by around two orders of magnitude JUST to pick up our TV/FM/AM signals from outside the solar system. If we move into the narrowband signals then, depending on the source-strength, it could pick up signals at up to a few thousand light years... if it happened to be pointed in exactly the right direction at exactly the right time. So, our most sensitive instrument is only capable of measuring a fraction of a percent of a fraction of a percent of the galaxy.

I just straight-up don't believe that we're even remotely approaching the capability of asserting that the galaxy is sterile of higher life that's constantly dumping EM noise... and that's without assuming they've found ways to transmit data that we're ignorant of or that we've seen it and just haven't noticed it.

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The other thing (and I feel a bit like a religious person saying this) is that we have exactly zero basis for asserting that the type of machine you're talking about haven't been here. Given that if one of these machines came here, and stayed, the Earth itself would annihilate all traces of it (especially on the surface) within short order we shouldn't necessarily expect to find evidence of a visit.

Taken to the extreme, you could even reason that all life on Earth could be the product of one of these machines.

Not to mention that every vendor has different formats.

And it's only 5 people if you're offering below-industry pay, not paying taxes, no benefits, no office, no equipment purchases, etc. I'd figure 150k/person minimum, with more like 2-300k in more contentious areas.

* They built everything with DIAMONDS... because it was cheap.

Schools and teachers should be amongst the easiest to test since we have so much data... measured multiple times a year.

Reference: The Princess Bride :P

I swapped all of the incandescent bulbs that run for more than ~ 15min/day out in our house for some 80+ CRI "warm white" LEDs I got off Amazon. My wife didn't even know I'd changed them till I told her. I noticed the difference for the first day or so, but I got used to it really quickly. I wouldn't hesitate to do it again, and any bulb that fails in my house will be getting replaced with an LED from now on.

Maybe you could slowly transition... replace one bulb a week over the span of a year and she may not even notice :)

Maybe it's because I've been working "alone" in the quiet for so long, but I can not force myself to not stop and listen when other people are talking. I can, however not switch windows/tabs over to the chat client until I'm ready.

At a former job I worked from home where I had peace and quiet pretty much all day. I only really worked 4-5 hours in a day, but I was significantly (in the order-of-magnitude realm) more productive than my in-office teammates. On the occasion I'd go into the office for a few days my productivity level would similarly plummet, even though I was working for more hours each day. I can only attribute this to the incessant interruptions of the open-office plan.

I don't know why I was being quite so aggressive when I wrote that. I'm sorry... I think I was taking frustration out on you when you had nothing to do with it.

I still disagree with the assertion that "how many friends you do or don't have is entirely up to you". It may be true in some extremely narrow sense, but if it came down to it how many people would give up the spouse they love because they were the problem, or their children because they were, or drop everything and move to where people were more similar to themselves?

... says the non-married person who doesn't have full-time kids.

If a country starts throwing atomic weapons at it's enemies then it will soon find that it's enemies are "everyone". There are treaties and such.

I guess I'm thinking of the EU nations, to which I thought about moving.

These are largely true for most developed nations.

Maybe I've just been lucky with the coworkers I've had, or maybe the problems I've been working on aren't as hard as they seem, but in all the jobs I've worked we have never needed someone specifically trained on how to (per your example) manage a MySQL database running on one or more Linux systems. I think I'd argue that any mid-to-senior-level developer who can't manage to figure it out in a few days is underexperienced or undereducated, where "database use" is within their domain.

What, precisely, is a "linux database"?

As long as CEOs of the companies screaming that "there is a shortage and we desperately need H1Bs" have compensation packages that could pay for thousands of engineers I'm going to just go ahead and assume they've decided where their priorities lay.

You must have missed the revelation back at the beginning of the year that some of the biggest players in the tech world were caught in an illegal cartel to suppress tech-worker wages. So, there's that.

I really haven't kept up with this at all (I saw the articles, but didn't read), but I'm wondering why saying to journalists (and I'm happy to be corrected if I'm mistaken) "if you try dig up dirty laundry on us as an attempt to discredit us, we'll do the same to you" is unfair? Isn't this just a "reap what you sou" type scenario?

There's also been shown to be an inverse correlation between wearing a helmet and safety. It seems that motorists correlate "having a helmet on" with being safe, and so are more aggressive around those who are wearing.

It's also impossible to talk to someone miles away... Oh, electricity!

It's also impossible to travel 30mph... Oh, Petroleum!

It's also impossible to go to the moon... Oh, RP-1/LOX!

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Stop pretending we know everything about the universe when we clearly do not. The best you can claim is "No... with current understanding".

Don't forget GPS... GPS lock murders.

Ingress can do this on a Galaxy Nexus with a 2A external battery pack (or, ya know, car). I was only able to help with about 1/2 of an Interitus event cause my phone kept dying and I'd have to wait a bit to bring it back online.

I hate my phone.

Quite a lot of our Sci-Fi's "FTL drives" are actually "Jump Drives". Take, for instance, Battlestar Glactica. They don't move through space, they jump to a new place within it.

You've got places like The Summit and The Pinnacle which are basically just scaled-up strip malls. Then there's places like The Shopes at Grand River (is that what it's called??? the place in Leeds)that really ought to just be enclosed as they're designed just like the malls of old.

Considering eighty-something percent of people who responded to the survey despised Australis, I could see a lot of people choosing it for #4 alone.

Sadly, I can't find the link now, but I was reading about this yesterday. According to someone who worked there, there was no insurance.