We were using them as fast as they could be made - a third one was being prepared when the surrender happened, and was later used in the Operation Crossroads test. Dozens more were in production (military command was split as to whether to continue firing them indefinitely, or to build a stockpile to use during the invasion they still thought might be necessary).
The atomic bombs alone did not end the war, simply because they were not all that powerful. All they really did was condense a massed air bombing (as in Tokyo or Dresden) into a single bomb. It is later, far more powerful bombs that established them in our cultural memory as unendurably devastating.
The man who effectively declared war on the USA by murdering 1/50th the amount of 'innocent' civilians as the USA did in Japan 66 years prior.
I really, really, hate people who point to the atomic bombings as proof that America is evil. The only way you can even remotely make that claim is by ignoring every reality of war and by using your modern knowledge of how things *did* happen to damn those who had to make the decision without the benefit of knowing how it turns out.
Believe it or not, there are often things that are justifiable in a war that would otherwise be unthinkable.
War - total war, on the scale of nations - is a constant question of choosing the lesser evil. There are very rarely good options to take - if there were, there would not have been a war in the first place.
We haven't had a war like that since WW2, so I suppose it's excusable that people forget just how much death and destruction it causes. The numbers can be a bit hard to wrap your head around, after all.
The two atomic bombings killed a quarter million people. On its own, that's horrifying. In the context of the Second World War, that's a rounding error. Some countries were literally decimated - over ten percent of their prewar population dead. Compared to Germany, Japan got off light.
Let's look at the alternative to the A-bombs. Japan was not going to surrender - even after losing Manchuria to the Soviets, they were still ready to fight. So we were looking at an invasion - and after Iwo Jima, we knew it would not be an easy fight. Estimated Allied killed were in the hundreds of thousands to millions - Japanese casualties, military and civilian, are incalculable, particularly since the plans that did not involve nuclear weapons generally involved chemical weapons in their stead. Some plans involved both, on top of the more mundane horrors of a million-man invasion force. Oh, and if you delay it too long, the Soviets will probably invade, and they barely cared about their own casualties, much less enemy noncombatants.
There *was* no good option there. Japan was going to get pounded. The least evil option was whichever one ended the war fastest - and that option is using whatever weapons you have available to force your opponent to surrender. If that means firebombing cities, so be it. If that means atomic bombs, so be it. Because if you hold back, all you're doing is making the war last longer, which means not only do more of your own people die, but in the long run, more of theirs do too.
There are plenty of justifiable ways to claim that America is evil - pretty much anything done in the past decade counts, really. You don't need to make shit up about the atomic bombings in order to wedge it into an unrelated argument.
PS: Hiroshima was a major military city during 1945, with both a major command center, as well as a supply hub and munitions stockpile. Nagasaki was a major munitions industrial center. Calling them "innocent civilians" is at best misinformed.
Rather than the cylinder driving a crankshaft, they're driving a linear alternator directly (basically an inverse solenoid - turning linear back-and-forth motion into electric current). That ought to lead to less losses from inertia and friction, as well as being more compact.
I've thought for a while now that the method of execution should be decided by the convicted.
He wants injection? He gets injection. He wants the firing squad? He gets a firing squad. He wants to skydive into an active volcano with no parachute? He gets it. As long as it's guaranteed to be lethal and isn't grossly impractical, it goes.
That has the obvious benefit of making sure that the execution is as humane as possible, because the person with the most interest in making it humane is the one making the decision.
It could have a second benefit. Namely, what happens if he chooses "execution by old age"? You could easily block that as "grossly impractical", but I see that as a feature, not a bug. It basically turns into life imprisonment with no parole, only way out is to actually overturn the verdict. So if you're truly innocent, that might be a good option. Otherwise, it's arguably a worse execution than many others, although that's a very arguable point.
Oh, no, I totally agree that the Star Wars 'verse needs a reboot, and now's probably the best time to do it. I actually would have gone further - redo the original trilogy (keeping the story intact, just using the new actors and modern technology in pretty much shot-for-shot remakes) and the prequels (substantially altering them to not suck). But after the reception of the last alterations to the original trilogy, I can see why even Disney shied away from that.
I was merely remarking on the surprising scarcity of nerd rage over what would normally be a nerd-rage-inducing decision.
Most fandoms would be furious at literally the entire storyline beyond six films being tossed aside, and new sequels commissioned using only a handful of the original actors and one original writer.
*Most* fandoms didn't have to go through the prequel trilogy and a series of bad retconny rereleases being made by the original creator himself.
Add the fact that the SWEU is remarkably uneven in quality - while some parts are downright brilliant, there's wide swaths of crap that were still canon because the movies didn't contradict it - and I can completely understand why the general fan reaction to this is "cautious optimism" or "reserved pessimism" rather than nerd rage (there's *some* nerd rage, but not much). My own response is "interested apathy" - it might be good, but I really just can't force myself to care anymore, not the way I used to.
I think they'll treat it as a partial reboot. They'll re-use the good ideas from the EU (Thrawn, Rogue Squadron, the Corellian trilogy, etc.) and ignore the bad ones (the Sun Crusher storyline, for one). But the only "canonical" things would be the movies and maybe the TV shows.
Just like how most Batman continuities have similar events re-occur, I expect they'll re-tell the good EU stories simply because they're good stories and the fans want them. The chronology and specifics may differ, but if they're even remotely smart they'll use some of the good EU stories. Of course, "even remotely smart" might not be a low enough bar for Disney to clear...
"As netcat, Brandon Lucia (drums, Chango, computers), David Balatero (cello, computers), and Andrew Olmstead (synthesizer, computers) explore the intersection between technology, complexity, and free improvisation. netcat's music brings together seasoned performance on conventional instruments -- cello, synthesizers, and drums -- combining it with computer generated sounds and computer instruments, like the Chango, a novel synthesizer that is played with light.
The mixture of these ingredients is textural, long-form structured improvisations. netcat's music is the kind that calls for laying down on the floor with expensive headphones on and enjoying the solipsism. The flow of the round, sinusoidal bass of the Chango and synthesizer carry the listener on an electric current, through a confluence of sweeping, dramatic arcs on the cello and tympanic drumming. Among it all manifests speaking computers attempting, with futility, to master spoken language and a sonic embodiment of the flurry of bits and bytes traversing a computer network."
Translation: "We bought a bunch of really expensive, weird-ass MIDI controllers, and brought out a random string instrument from [middle|high] school so we could get the "explore the intersection of ___ and ___" music groupies ("explore the intersection" is music's "synergy" or "cloud" - meaningless catchphrase). We did so by playing a couple simple intervals really, really slowly, because we never figured out how to play above 30bpm with any of the aforementioned expensive, weird-ass MIDI controllers. We named everything after random linux terms and published as a kernel module in order to get some free publicity, which Slashdot dutifully provided."
I half suspect that if I actually nabbed a copy of their synth programs, I'd find that they just used default voices for it. Sadly I use less obscure programs and fewer weird-ass MIDI controllers, so I cannot tell for sure. Also I never want to waste another minute listening to that droning to compare.
You want some real "explore the intersection between technology and music"? Go listen to Machinae Supremacy - they combine modern hard-rock/heavy-metal with Commodore 64 chiptune, and it actually sounds good (regular personal taste disclaimers apply). Or any of the other dozens of chiptune crossover musicians - I can recommend "The Black Box" by aivi & surasshu for people who want more tranquil music that's still, y'know, music. And chiptune actually requires a good bit of technical knowledge to write, rather than simply using a computer as just a funny-sounding synthesizer.
Re:Alternative to one tough tablet
on
The $5,600 Tablet
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· Score: 1
When you're shipping everything across the globe by C-130, HMMWV, and raw human horsepower, you're a bit bound by volume and weight.
Intel has a hardware RNG (RdRand) as well, although I don't think AMD does (and I'm sure there are ARM implementations that have something similar). There was a spat a while back over it - because neither Intel nor VIA's microcode for it is public, they can't be trusted as a sole source of randomness. AFAIK nobody uses them as the sole source of randomness - they're either ignored, or mixed into the entropy pool with other PRNGs.
If all you need to be rich is a college degree, then hot damn I'm already rich! When do I get my mansion, limousine and trophy wife?
It sounds more to me like "the educated now work longer hours", or maybe "the middle class now works longer hours" if you want to keep it related to income.
And those owners a) are out there suffering as well, and b) are taking proper care of their horses, if they have even an iota of intelligence.
Horses are *expensive*. Even if you're a heartless bastard, you take care of them because they're expensive to replace. Most of the horse owners I've met take better care of their horses than they do themselves.
If it's cold, you put blankets on them or take them inside. If it's too hot, you give them more water and don't ride them as hard (and I really doubt it will get too hot for horses in New York - we have wild horses down here in VA, and they deal with the heat just fine).
They gave the electric golf cart an old-fashioned, high-class feel, which is honestly the only reason people still use horses in NYC. Which means it's a viable replacement for it.
And that's $500k in R&D, not in per-unit cost, which doesn't seem too bad.
OK, the car actually seems like a decent idea, and might work well. But their motivation seems a bit ridiculous.
I've ridden horses. Anyone claiming that riding horses is automatically animal cruelty is quite simply a moron. Fortunately, these people do not seem to be pushing that particular agenda - their claim is that NYC is inhospitable to horses.
I haven't been to NYC, other than driving through, so I can't personally claim either way. However, if NYC is inhospitable enough to qualify as cruelty to horses, then NYC ought to be abandoned as unsafe for human habitation as well. After all, homo sapiens is a species of animal, so shouldn't animal cruelty apply to us as well?
You're missing the point. The point is, right now they make a relatively small amount of money by selling off what would otherwise be waste. The regulation doesn't force them to do anything unless they're selling that "waste" as animal feed. If the testing and equipment make it unprofitable, they can simply dispose of the waste, losing an income of $30/ton. Relative to their profits from their actual core business, that's negligible. Beer will not suddenly double in price - beer is roughly $1000/ton (based on a 150lb keg costing about $75). You're looking at maybe a 5% rise in cost.
I'm curious to know if this first stage had landing gear attached (maybe not because of the additional weight, drag). Also, in the future when they DO try to land it on land, where will they be aiming? If the flight profile of the first stage is mostly vertical then, without much fuel I guess they could return to Florida, otherwise would they be going for a Caribbean island? The Azores or Canary Islands? Africa? I'm sure they've got this figured out, I'm just curious.
This test did have the landing gear attached and deployed during landing, as the aerodynamics of it are potentially problematic (one of their tests failed when it entered a spin before landing).
The first stage flight path doesn't seem to be mostly vertical - I'm having a hard time finding solid info, but based on images of the first-stage separation, I'd estimate it to be no more than a quarter of the way across the Atlantic. I do know that their plan is to return the rocket to the launchpad for landing, which wouldn't make much sense if it was much further away by stage 1 separation.
Their flight path does seem a bit weird, though - of the Space Shuttle abort modes, Return to Launch Site was the riskiest and most difficult, compared to Transoceanic Abort Landing (landing in a European or African site) or Abort to Once Around (doing a full orbit then landing as normal). Either the Falcon is accelerating far faster once they break the atmosphere, or the Space Shuttle accelerated horizontally a lot earlier than it may have needed to.
Perhaps I should have said "significant elemental oxygen" - Mars' 0.14% oxygen is by no stretch of the imagination a significant amount nor a sign of life, and Venus has even less.
Maybe it's not the longest-lasting on the list, but it's definitely a very sturdy product in its category. I have a launch-era model (with the digital a/v out, although I don't have the cables for it), and it's still running flawlessly. It's not even really showing its age - it still looks fine, with the only yellowing being a slight tint to the front plastic. It probably helps that I have a black model.
Come to think of it, none of my Nintendo hardware has ever failed on me - they've lasted until I've sold them off. Some of the Game Boy games died (battery-backed SRAM - battery only lasts so long), but never a console or even controller.
Yes, which is why the best compromise is a private disclosure to whoever can *fix* the bug, followed by a public announcement alongside the fixed release. That limits the disclosure to the minimum necessary while the flaw is unfixed.
have known at the minimum that Earth has liquid water, oxygen, and chlorophyll
Chlorophyll doesn't need to be detected - the presence of elemental oxygen alone is evidence of life, as it is too reactive to remain elemental unless some reaction is replenishing it, and as far as we know the only such reactions are biological in nature.
Does Valve know any time I've played such and such games,
Yes, if you are playing in online mode (and maybe only if you launch it through Steam - I'm unsure on that point).
This data is in fact shown on your Steam profile, although you can set that to private to let only certain people see it. That will prevent people outside yourself, your Steam friends list, and Valve itself from seeing it.
on which servers and so on?
If it's using Steamworks, I believe so. They often use this for matchmaking - if people often quit a server after only a few minutes, it's counted as a mark against the server. For some games they record even more detailed stats - I've seen heatmaps of player deaths in Orange Box games.
Games that are merely sold and launched via Steam, but do not integrate with it, most likely have no data other than start/stop playtime.
Are data anonymized when surveys or such sociological studies are made?
Valve's own public data is presented only as a summary. This was an "unofficial" study done by randomly sampling profile pages.
While it is disconcerting, there is one point of interest - while most game developers want to gather data like this (or in even greater detail), they want it so they can make better games, not to sell as advertising data. I've actually never heard that come up in discussions on game metrics (as they call it), and I honestly don't think it would be that useful to any marketers.
It can be skewed the other way, though, by offline mode. I have some games listed as unplayed that I've played to completion, but in offline mode so nothing was recorded.
And then Half-Life 2 can be skewed back up because, at least as of several years ago, Source mods would log as HL2. I don't think that's still the case, but I also don't think they could retroactively fix that data.
It is completely valid to say "a car is powered by an engine". The engine is powered by fuel, but the car's power comes from the engine. Replacing the reciprocating engine with a thermoelectric engine allows for the headline to, in fact, be an accurate statement.
Slashdot Mirror
We were using them as fast as they could be made - a third one was being prepared when the surrender happened, and was later used in the Operation Crossroads test. Dozens more were in production (military command was split as to whether to continue firing them indefinitely, or to build a stockpile to use during the invasion they still thought might be necessary).
The atomic bombs alone did not end the war, simply because they were not all that powerful. All they really did was condense a massed air bombing (as in Tokyo or Dresden) into a single bomb. It is later, far more powerful bombs that established them in our cultural memory as unendurably devastating.
The man who effectively declared war on the USA by murdering 1/50th the amount of 'innocent' civilians as the USA did in Japan 66 years prior.
I really, really, hate people who point to the atomic bombings as proof that America is evil. The only way you can even remotely make that claim is by ignoring every reality of war and by using your modern knowledge of how things *did* happen to damn those who had to make the decision without the benefit of knowing how it turns out.
Believe it or not, there are often things that are justifiable in a war that would otherwise be unthinkable.
War - total war, on the scale of nations - is a constant question of choosing the lesser evil. There are very rarely good options to take - if there were, there would not have been a war in the first place.
We haven't had a war like that since WW2, so I suppose it's excusable that people forget just how much death and destruction it causes. The numbers can be a bit hard to wrap your head around, after all.
The two atomic bombings killed a quarter million people. On its own, that's horrifying. In the context of the Second World War, that's a rounding error. Some countries were literally decimated - over ten percent of their prewar population dead. Compared to Germany, Japan got off light.
Let's look at the alternative to the A-bombs. Japan was not going to surrender - even after losing Manchuria to the Soviets, they were still ready to fight. So we were looking at an invasion - and after Iwo Jima, we knew it would not be an easy fight. Estimated Allied killed were in the hundreds of thousands to millions - Japanese casualties, military and civilian, are incalculable, particularly since the plans that did not involve nuclear weapons generally involved chemical weapons in their stead. Some plans involved both, on top of the more mundane horrors of a million-man invasion force. Oh, and if you delay it too long, the Soviets will probably invade, and they barely cared about their own casualties, much less enemy noncombatants.
There *was* no good option there. Japan was going to get pounded. The least evil option was whichever one ended the war fastest - and that option is using whatever weapons you have available to force your opponent to surrender. If that means firebombing cities, so be it. If that means atomic bombs, so be it. Because if you hold back, all you're doing is making the war last longer, which means not only do more of your own people die, but in the long run, more of theirs do too.
There are plenty of justifiable ways to claim that America is evil - pretty much anything done in the past decade counts, really. You don't need to make shit up about the atomic bombings in order to wedge it into an unrelated argument.
PS: Hiroshima was a major military city during 1945, with both a major command center, as well as a supply hub and munitions stockpile. Nagasaki was a major munitions industrial center. Calling them "innocent civilians" is at best misinformed.
Rather than the cylinder driving a crankshaft, they're driving a linear alternator directly (basically an inverse solenoid - turning linear back-and-forth motion into electric current). That ought to lead to less losses from inertia and friction, as well as being more compact.
I've thought for a while now that the method of execution should be decided by the convicted.
He wants injection? He gets injection. He wants the firing squad? He gets a firing squad. He wants to skydive into an active volcano with no parachute? He gets it. As long as it's guaranteed to be lethal and isn't grossly impractical, it goes.
That has the obvious benefit of making sure that the execution is as humane as possible, because the person with the most interest in making it humane is the one making the decision.
It could have a second benefit. Namely, what happens if he chooses "execution by old age"? You could easily block that as "grossly impractical", but I see that as a feature, not a bug. It basically turns into life imprisonment with no parole, only way out is to actually overturn the verdict. So if you're truly innocent, that might be a good option. Otherwise, it's arguably a worse execution than many others, although that's a very arguable point.
Oh, no, I totally agree that the Star Wars 'verse needs a reboot, and now's probably the best time to do it. I actually would have gone further - redo the original trilogy (keeping the story intact, just using the new actors and modern technology in pretty much shot-for-shot remakes) and the prequels (substantially altering them to not suck). But after the reception of the last alterations to the original trilogy, I can see why even Disney shied away from that.
I was merely remarking on the surprising scarcity of nerd rage over what would normally be a nerd-rage-inducing decision.
Most fandoms would be furious at literally the entire storyline beyond six films being tossed aside, and new sequels commissioned using only a handful of the original actors and one original writer.
*Most* fandoms didn't have to go through the prequel trilogy and a series of bad retconny rereleases being made by the original creator himself.
Add the fact that the SWEU is remarkably uneven in quality - while some parts are downright brilliant, there's wide swaths of crap that were still canon because the movies didn't contradict it - and I can completely understand why the general fan reaction to this is "cautious optimism" or "reserved pessimism" rather than nerd rage (there's *some* nerd rage, but not much). My own response is "interested apathy" - it might be good, but I really just can't force myself to care anymore, not the way I used to.
I think they'll treat it as a partial reboot. They'll re-use the good ideas from the EU (Thrawn, Rogue Squadron, the Corellian trilogy, etc.) and ignore the bad ones (the Sun Crusher storyline, for one). But the only "canonical" things would be the movies and maybe the TV shows.
Just like how most Batman continuities have similar events re-occur, I expect they'll re-tell the good EU stories simply because they're good stories and the fans want them. The chronology and specifics may differ, but if they're even remotely smart they'll use some of the good EU stories. Of course, "even remotely smart" might not be a low enough bar for Disney to clear...
"As netcat, Brandon Lucia (drums, Chango, computers), David Balatero (cello, computers), and Andrew Olmstead (synthesizer, computers) explore the intersection between technology, complexity, and free improvisation. netcat's music brings together seasoned performance on conventional instruments -- cello, synthesizers, and drums -- combining it with computer generated sounds and computer instruments, like the Chango, a novel synthesizer that is played with light.
The mixture of these ingredients is textural, long-form structured improvisations. netcat's music is the kind that calls for laying down on the floor with expensive headphones on and enjoying the solipsism. The flow of the round, sinusoidal bass of the Chango and synthesizer carry the listener on an electric current, through a confluence of sweeping, dramatic arcs on the cello and tympanic drumming. Among it all manifests speaking computers attempting, with futility, to master spoken language and a sonic embodiment of the flurry of bits and bytes traversing a computer network."
Translation: "We bought a bunch of really expensive, weird-ass MIDI controllers, and brought out a random string instrument from [middle|high] school so we could get the "explore the intersection of ___ and ___" music groupies ("explore the intersection" is music's "synergy" or "cloud" - meaningless catchphrase). We did so by playing a couple simple intervals really, really slowly, because we never figured out how to play above 30bpm with any of the aforementioned expensive, weird-ass MIDI controllers. We named everything after random linux terms and published as a kernel module in order to get some free publicity, which Slashdot dutifully provided."
I half suspect that if I actually nabbed a copy of their synth programs, I'd find that they just used default voices for it. Sadly I use less obscure programs and fewer weird-ass MIDI controllers, so I cannot tell for sure. Also I never want to waste another minute listening to that droning to compare.
You want some real "explore the intersection between technology and music"? Go listen to Machinae Supremacy - they combine modern hard-rock/heavy-metal with Commodore 64 chiptune, and it actually sounds good (regular personal taste disclaimers apply). Or any of the other dozens of chiptune crossover musicians - I can recommend "The Black Box" by aivi & surasshu for people who want more tranquil music that's still, y'know, music. And chiptune actually requires a good bit of technical knowledge to write, rather than simply using a computer as just a funny-sounding synthesizer.
When you're shipping everything across the globe by C-130, HMMWV, and raw human horsepower, you're a bit bound by volume and weight.
Intel has a hardware RNG (RdRand) as well, although I don't think AMD does (and I'm sure there are ARM implementations that have something similar). There was a spat a while back over it - because neither Intel nor VIA's microcode for it is public, they can't be trusted as a sole source of randomness. AFAIK nobody uses them as the sole source of randomness - they're either ignored, or mixed into the entropy pool with other PRNGs.
If all you need to be rich is a college degree, then hot damn I'm already rich! When do I get my mansion, limousine and trophy wife?
It sounds more to me like "the educated now work longer hours", or maybe "the middle class now works longer hours" if you want to keep it related to income.
And those owners a) are out there suffering as well, and b) are taking proper care of their horses, if they have even an iota of intelligence.
Horses are *expensive*. Even if you're a heartless bastard, you take care of them because they're expensive to replace. Most of the horse owners I've met take better care of their horses than they do themselves.
If it's cold, you put blankets on them or take them inside. If it's too hot, you give them more water and don't ride them as hard (and I really doubt it will get too hot for horses in New York - we have wild horses down here in VA, and they deal with the heat just fine).
They gave the electric golf cart an old-fashioned, high-class feel, which is honestly the only reason people still use horses in NYC. Which means it's a viable replacement for it.
And that's $500k in R&D, not in per-unit cost, which doesn't seem too bad.
OK, the car actually seems like a decent idea, and might work well. But their motivation seems a bit ridiculous.
I've ridden horses. Anyone claiming that riding horses is automatically animal cruelty is quite simply a moron. Fortunately, these people do not seem to be pushing that particular agenda - their claim is that NYC is inhospitable to horses.
I haven't been to NYC, other than driving through, so I can't personally claim either way. However, if NYC is inhospitable enough to qualify as cruelty to horses, then NYC ought to be abandoned as unsafe for human habitation as well. After all, homo sapiens is a species of animal, so shouldn't animal cruelty apply to us as well?
tairsts
For a minute I read that as "tsarists", which was arguably more interesting.
You're missing the point. The point is, right now they make a relatively small amount of money by selling off what would otherwise be waste. The regulation doesn't force them to do anything unless they're selling that "waste" as animal feed. If the testing and equipment make it unprofitable, they can simply dispose of the waste, losing an income of $30/ton. Relative to their profits from their actual core business, that's negligible. Beer will not suddenly double in price - beer is roughly $1000/ton (based on a 150lb keg costing about $75). You're looking at maybe a 5% rise in cost.
I'm curious to know if this first stage had landing gear attached (maybe not because of the additional weight, drag). Also, in the future when they DO try to land it on land, where will they be aiming? If the flight profile of the first stage is mostly vertical then, without much fuel I guess they could return to Florida, otherwise would they be going for a Caribbean island? The Azores or Canary Islands? Africa? I'm sure they've got this figured out, I'm just curious.
This test did have the landing gear attached and deployed during landing, as the aerodynamics of it are potentially problematic (one of their tests failed when it entered a spin before landing).
The first stage flight path doesn't seem to be mostly vertical - I'm having a hard time finding solid info, but based on images of the first-stage separation, I'd estimate it to be no more than a quarter of the way across the Atlantic. I do know that their plan is to return the rocket to the launchpad for landing, which wouldn't make much sense if it was much further away by stage 1 separation.
Their flight path does seem a bit weird, though - of the Space Shuttle abort modes, Return to Launch Site was the riskiest and most difficult, compared to Transoceanic Abort Landing (landing in a European or African site) or Abort to Once Around (doing a full orbit then landing as normal). Either the Falcon is accelerating far faster once they break the atmosphere, or the Space Shuttle accelerated horizontally a lot earlier than it may have needed to.
Perhaps I should have said "significant elemental oxygen" - Mars' 0.14% oxygen is by no stretch of the imagination a significant amount nor a sign of life, and Venus has even less.
Maybe it's not the longest-lasting on the list, but it's definitely a very sturdy product in its category. I have a launch-era model (with the digital a/v out, although I don't have the cables for it), and it's still running flawlessly. It's not even really showing its age - it still looks fine, with the only yellowing being a slight tint to the front plastic. It probably helps that I have a black model.
Come to think of it, none of my Nintendo hardware has ever failed on me - they've lasted until I've sold them off. Some of the Game Boy games died (battery-backed SRAM - battery only lasts so long), but never a console or even controller.
Yes, which is why the best compromise is a private disclosure to whoever can *fix* the bug, followed by a public announcement alongside the fixed release. That limits the disclosure to the minimum necessary while the flaw is unfixed.
If you'll look beyond simply the next quarter's profits, you'll see why he probably is quaking in his boots.
have known at the minimum that Earth has liquid water, oxygen, and chlorophyll
Chlorophyll doesn't need to be detected - the presence of elemental oxygen alone is evidence of life, as it is too reactive to remain elemental unless some reaction is replenishing it, and as far as we know the only such reactions are biological in nature.
Does Valve know any time I've played such and such games,
Yes, if you are playing in online mode (and maybe only if you launch it through Steam - I'm unsure on that point).
This data is in fact shown on your Steam profile, although you can set that to private to let only certain people see it. That will prevent people outside yourself, your Steam friends list, and Valve itself from seeing it.
on which servers and so on?
If it's using Steamworks, I believe so. They often use this for matchmaking - if people often quit a server after only a few minutes, it's counted as a mark against the server. For some games they record even more detailed stats - I've seen heatmaps of player deaths in Orange Box games.
Games that are merely sold and launched via Steam, but do not integrate with it, most likely have no data other than start/stop playtime.
Are data anonymized when surveys or such sociological studies are made?
Valve's own public data is presented only as a summary. This was an "unofficial" study done by randomly sampling profile pages.
While it is disconcerting, there is one point of interest - while most game developers want to gather data like this (or in even greater detail), they want it so they can make better games, not to sell as advertising data. I've actually never heard that come up in discussions on game metrics (as they call it), and I honestly don't think it would be that useful to any marketers.
It can be skewed the other way, though, by offline mode. I have some games listed as unplayed that I've played to completion, but in offline mode so nothing was recorded.
And then Half-Life 2 can be skewed back up because, at least as of several years ago, Source mods would log as HL2. I don't think that's still the case, but I also don't think they could retroactively fix that data.
It is completely valid to say "a car is powered by an engine". The engine is powered by fuel, but the car's power comes from the engine. Replacing the reciprocating engine with a thermoelectric engine allows for the headline to, in fact, be an accurate statement.