23skidoo

> Further down the social hierarchies, there are plenty of "Santa Claus fans" - really Wanting To Believe that their FBI / CIA / police / etc. are paragons of morality and competence - who react poorly to messengers bearing bad news.

I'll take this opportunity to plug the Iron Law of Bureaucracy which states that in any organization there are two kinds of people: those loyal to the goals of the org, and those loyal to the org itself. Organizations tend to get captured by those loyal to the org itself, even though the people loyal to its goals are the ones you actually want running the show. Eventually you end up with a top-heavy organization that's divorced from its stated goals and exists only to further its own influence and existence. You'll find it in schools, cancer charities, government, etc.

That's Lao Tsu, I just happen to be reading him right now.

> Few developers know how to code software that is nice to install and maintain anymore.

NetBSD is refreshing for precisely this reason. I'm not sure why it doesn't get more love tbh, it's not glitzy but goddamn that's how you code.

> and allows for new metrics without the most serious issues present in the Alcubierre solution.

...like violating causality?

What did anyone expect? Everyone's been getting smoke blown up their ass for years now by 'revolutionary' app makers that did very little except skate around regulations and make speculators money. The entire industry looks sleazy no matter which way you cut it. My only surprise is that the editors felt the need to say anything.

I agree with you but it shouldn't be overlooked that industry makes shortcuts which are disastrous for the environment to pad their margins very slightly so the executives can get a bonus.

The crux of the problem is the costs we allow to be externalized and the arduous legal process involved in getting a small fraction of the real damages paid. You shouldn't need a lawsuit to make a company pay for every penny of damage they did.

I'm a little perplexed by the ISBN system. The whole centralized affair, where you have to purchase ISBNs seems like a racket. ISBNs cost more in some countries (America) than they do in others (Canada). Not for any reason other than that they can get away with it.

Much better would be a UUID generated from unique values, like a hash of the timestamp and publisher of a book. If you limit the length and number of the fields you hash to generate the UUID, you could even prove there will be zero collisions and eliminate any need to collision checks and thus an organization that charges money.

Wikipedia for almost the past decade has reminded me of those televangelists that would beg for donations to keep the lights on and that Uncle Sam was kicking the door down to seize their assets. Then they'd drive home in a brand new Cadillac.

Police are people and people make mistakes, this needs to be recognized on some level, but QI as it is now is positively un-American. We're supposed to have checks and balances and recourse for misdeeds. Nobody should be above the law. You literally need circumstances like those surrounding George Floyd to hold police accountable in this country.

2A was supposed to be insurance against nonsense like this.

Let's get rid of qualified immunity and add stronger protections against eminent domain while we're at it. Also, we need to address corrupt judges, we have very few legal mechanisms for that.

It reads funny, but fewer people drive at night and still make up about half of accidents.