I'm not sure that 8% of global contributions to CO2 emissions per year (Source) is a "tiny" contributor, but you are correct in that it's one of the harder areas to optimize compared to energy generation.

Having actually sat through the entire hearing, the questions from the law makers was actually pretty telling. Most were not focused on cover-ups and "little green men" but on more practical concerns of "Are there SAPs that are not subject to oversight?", "Is the DoD spending money on programs of little value?", and "What is the response if a pilot reports seeing seeing something odd? Is this a national security threat?"

That last question is actually really important because drones exists, can have very unusual designs, and they get lumped in with other UFO reports. So if pilots are afraid to report things then it's entirely possible for an adversity to be gathering intelligence with impunity simply because someone is afraid to report seeing something odd. It also doesn't help that the US intelligence community is actually documented as having encouraged the "giggle factor" associated with UFOs as a way of covering up flights of the U-2 and later testing of the F-117.

I can safely say that the TI graphing calculators kept 8-bit processors though the 90s to the present with a fairly robust Z80 programing community still around.

Vinyl LPs still suck though, only thing I can give GenZ is that they do tend to have better album art.

The latest - sold out! - eBay listing had them going for US$119.99. For new old stock that actually doesn't seem that bad considering that MSX computers are going for more on eBay used and hobbyists have managed to get MSX games running on NABU computers now.

Depends a lot upon how you define "developing nation" there's a lot of debate about if China should be included on the list or not, and if you wanted to cherry pick your metrics then the United States has regressed into a developing nation.

However, with regards to your broader point. It's really hard to say if developing nations, in general, would be kneecapped. Developed nations had to learn a lot to get where they are, but developing nations don't necessarily have to go through the same process - for example, some nations jumped straight from virtually no telephonic infrastructure or Internet access, to fairly widespread access in a short amount of time by skipping POTS and going straight to cellular towers.

It's more likely to be the work of other nations: hence the term "Unexpected Arial Phenomenon" and trying to get people away from the giggle factor and more towards serious reporting in the interest of national defense.

We know that the US has been experimenting with all sorts of exotic aerospace technologies, ergo it's reasonable to presume that other nations are doing the same and a fair number of UFOs or UAP derive from the same. Particularly since there is historical evidence that UFOs reported in the US in the where in fact misidentification of airframes such as the U-2, SR-71, etc.

This is a bit of a trope and there's still a ton of videos and photographs out there of unusual things taking place. Some things are easy to explain (e.g., shutter speeds) but some stuff is also unexplained. You just don't hear about it as much since it's buried under everything else being produced, it a lot easier to fake it, and there's still a really high "giggle factor" involved with it.

That's a nice sentiment, but you seem to forget that not everyone is even capable of getting through high school without significant assistance. For a not insignificant part of the population, there is an upper bounds to where they can go in terms of education that effectively excludes a lot of the higher maths you need to get into CI/ML. As such, we have a lot of people for whom skilled labor is going to be the best they might hope to achieve in terms of employment. If you get rid of those jobs that leaves a lot of people with no prospects for work.

Not quite. The seigniorage is the profit that the government derives from minting money below face value, or if the currency is withdrawn from circulation (ex., by collectors). If the a $100 note is destroyed and replaced by another one then there is no net impact. However, if the note goes into international circulation then it is very profitable since tangible goods and services were exchanged for the note and it likely doesn't return to domestic circulation.

The US Mint does the same thing and part of the reason that the United States has had commemorative quarters since the 1990's is the seigniorage. In fact that seigniorage is one of the avenues of revenue, although not as much as taxes are.

I'm going to push back because what you are saying is extremely dependent upon what you are writing. For your basic business line web-application that is mostly CRUD, there's very little math. Even the parts of a business application related to accounting and finance don't really progress past basic algebra. These also tend to be the jobs that the majority of programmers have.

You step out of that sphere though and math and science starts to play a much bigger role. If you look at the code for something like Unreal Engine there is a ton of math involved (linear algebra, calculus) in making it work. A lot of my background is in bioinformatics and there it's not just a matter of knowing how to code, but you also have to understand biology at more than the basic level. Generally when it comes to software development, the more interesting a project is, the more likely you are going to need some advanced maths and some domain specific scientific knowledge.

Not to be pedantic, but a lot of the research being done in universities is by graduate students. Even national and industry labs tend to have lots of people with BS and MS degrees assisting the PhDs in the work.

I'm still being too lazy to look up the studies, but you are correct in that they didn't have just a random group of people working on something. Usually it was diverse groups of professional peers. So the studies do try and narrow the variable set down to cultural background as opposed to just any background.

I'm too lazy to dig up the links, but most of what I've read argues that diverse groups are better at problem solving. One a basic level this makes sense. Groups with varied backgrounds have more information they can bring to a problem in aggregate. In contrast a group with a very narrow background doesn't have as much information. Given that science is about problem solving, having more information to throw at a problem is always better.

When I heard the announcement I thought of "Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race" by Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson (Amazon Link, Condensed Version on Amazon, Wiki Article). The book basically says the same thing: there has been some weak archeological evidence to support the theory that humans (or hominoids) have been around for a lot longer than currently recognized, and in places where people didn't think they were. Obviously the book is controversial and much of the argument is dependent upon scattered artifacts and their interpenetration. A finding like this could booster the books argument though, some interesting stuff to keep an eye on at least.

The biggest problem is actually this:

This effectively means that the landlord is always incentivized to start the bidding at the highest reasonable price they can. If the bidders push the rent higher, they win. If the bids are below their asking rent then they also win since the tenant has to pay their rent plus a 25% fee.

The current model where you just pay a $25 matching fee isn't unreasonable, it's when you start to collect in perpetuity that it's a problem.