quatrefoil

Revenue increase of 10 billion is about 3%, essentially tracking inflation.

And nothing of practical consequence is learned from exploring the tombs in Egypt. We might be able to decipher some tidbits about everyday life thousands of years ago, but one would be hard-pressed to explain what tangible benefits it offers, beyond "well, it's a part of our heritage / it's cool to know". Just like many other human activities, it's glorified idle curiosity.

I find it odd to see geeks, on a site essentially devoted to idle curiosity, speaking out against idle curiosity.

There is value in showing respect for the dead, mostly for the benefit of those near death and the grieving families, but the arguments made here seem weird to me. Do we seal homes and turn them into tombs when a person dies inside? Do we leave car wrecks on the side of the road?

We're OK with disposable alkaline batteries, so what makes lithium worse? If anything, alkaline batteries might have a slightly worse environmental footprint due to the use of manganese.

The problem with lithium batteries is that they can catch on fire, but that's a problem only when charged (or charging). A fully discharged battery shouldn't do much.

Sure, but there's no reason to suspect that low gravity does anything interesting to fungi, of all things; and there's ample evidence that it doesn't from previous experiments, intentional and not. Other comments cite instances of the crews dealing with mold on the ISS.

I'm a bit perplexed about experiments like that. I get it why we did a lot of this in the early years of the Space Age to validate our assumptions about the hazards of outer space.

Then, there was some scientific curiosity about how certain life forms, such as complex plants or insects, might adopt to near-zero gravity. This was a bit harder to justify in practical terms, but interesting and hard to replicate by other means.

But what's the objective with this test? We can easily recreate similar conditions (pressure, temperature, illumination) here on Earth. So what have we learned to justify the cost? I'm not trolling, it's a sincere question.

That was the whole gimmick here, though. They pitched it as "AI-generated George Carlin". They used his likeness for the thumbnail. They faked his voice.

Nothing is stopping you from writing a novel in the style of Harry Potter, but if you put "Harry Potter" in the title and use the same typeface, you're probably gonna get a call from a lawyer, because you're clearly trying to capitalize on existing IP instead of letting your work stand on its own merits. Is that wrong?

There's plenty of people bashing the concept of intellectual property here because Disney or whatever, but most artists aren't fat cats, and copyright protects their livelihoods without forcing them to rely on state sponsorship or private patronage - both of which are pretty problematic for artistic expression.

It doesn't cost $10M in equipment costs to create a basic fabrication facility for short-run metal parts today, right? You pay for land, permitting & compliance, construction, etc. Machinery to cut "consumer-sized" parts out of metal stock, or to stamp sheet metal, usually costs six figures or so.

Lost wax casting, which is done with CNC-machined molds, isn't a capital-intensive process either.

> I don't understand why people insist on paying hundreds of dollars for a "name", when the watch you are describing is only worth $50, give or take.

Why do people pay for The North Face, when you can have knock-off brands for 1/5th the price?

Part of it is paying for better quality assurance, more predictable and coherent UX, and so on. But a big part is that yeah, this day and age, watches are fashion / status accessories. They do nothing your phone can't. That doesn't mean they have no value to the buyers: the continued popularity of pricey mechanical watches is proof that there's more to this story.

The problem is that smartwatches never really positioned themselves as particularly... interesting. They don't signal social status, they aren't pretty, they don't do anything mind-blowing. They're just somewhat cheap-looking and oversized black slabs that display messages from your phone, clumsily.

So far, the closest to a "killer" application for the tech is trying to gamify everyday activities by tracking steps, sleep patterns, or heart rate. But how many people stay fixated on this and really keep it up in the long haul? As for the fashion part... there's only so much mileage you can get out of the ability to change wallpapers or bands.