achenet

the original business model was, if I'm not mistaken, licensing the search technology.

Then they found that showing ads with the search results made them a lot more money.

They started optimizing for money made from ads, which depends on user data - letting advertisers show ads to targeted customers.

I suspect "Linux ISOs" are not actual Linux .iso images but ~pirated~ movies, music, and digital books ;)

Ceasar's assassination was politically motivated, and performed by many of the most powerful people at that time - other Roman Senators.

I'd describe it more as a power struggle between 'elites'/the people running the country that got violent (indeed, it led to a civil war), rather than a "even the rich are at the mercy of random violence".

In other word, Ceasar dying is basically 'the system' at the time, the Roman Senate, or at least a large part of it, deciding that, actually, Ceasar had a little too much power, and the way to fix that was stabbing him.

I view it closer to Louis XVI being guillotined than Franz Ferdinand being assassinated - the former is a violent transfer of power between elites, the later is an elite being killed by a member of the common people. The former happens because the elites (and sometimes the people as well, although AFAIK Ceasar was quite popular with the commoners in Rome) are unhappy, the later happens despite the elites being happy. The Vienna upper-class probably quite liked Franz Ferdinand, but that wasn't enough to save him. The Parisian upper-class, however, did NOT like Louis XIV, and that got him killed. Similarly, the Roman aristocracy (or rather, a large chunk of it, obviously Ceasar had his fans in the Senate) had an issue with Ceasar, which got him killed.

While civil administration, police, courts, infrastructure and army all do cost, wealth, I would argue that they also help to create it.

It's a lot easier to create a software company when you live in a world where the power station cannot be held for ransom by bandits, where everyone is educated and speaks a similar language, when there are laws governing the creation of businesses, a financial system, backed by the government, which enables trade to happen easily, etc.

For example, the Roman Empire, in unifying the Mediterranean, led to a large increase in trade - you can estimate shipping volume across the Mediterranean by counting shipwrecks, and the period of ~0-150AD when the Empire was at its peak had a much higher volume of shipping than preceding and following periods.

I think of administration, police, legal and financial system as something like a capital investment - a bit like buying a widget producing machine - you spend the money/effort/resources on it because you expect to get more out of it than you put it.

They had a more technologically advanced society than anyone else at the time, which enabled their empire building.

The Industrial Revolution started in England, which gave them a technological leg up on everyone else, somewhat like playing a strategy game where you get to unlock certain techs before everyone else. If you have factories producing steamships while your opponents are still building sailboats by hand, you're probably going to win a naval conflict, which you can then use to start a colony.

Looking at pictures of Churchill, who was admittedly a bit after the Victorians but seems to have followed a somewhat similar lifestyle, he doesn't exactly strike me as skinny.

I imagine they did have a fair amount of obesity in the older members of the population, although it's also possible that the sportier ones (which I'm guess would have entailed things like polo and horseback riding) would remain fit into old age.