On the other hand, Microsoft trying to write an OS in Rust will reveal absolutely every defect present in the language.

Unless they write their own, which is quite likely as they'd rather have defects they can ignore.

I'm reminded of ancient Egypt, where each new Pharoah's first order of business was to destroy the monuments created by (and for) his predecessor, and then to start building new ones by (and for) himself. Have we reached that level of narcissism?

The word you're thinking of is "terrorists" (i.e. people who employ terror as a political tactic).

"Extremists" simply means people whose views lie at the extreme end of a range of views on an issue.

Sometimes terrorists are also extremists, and sometimes extremists are also terrorists, but they are nevertheless two different words with different meanings.

Do these scraper guys qualify as extremists? I don't know -- their position on copyright law seems to be that it can and should be ignored. Is that the most extreme position one can have on that issue?

I know of at least one company that was trying to do exactly that: have long tubes into which you pump air to some ridiculous pressure to store energy, and then run turbines from that compressed air when you want to draw back that energy.

Well, that, and because humans require oxygen to remain conscious. If there's so little oxygen in the air that your car won't start, your car won't be the worst of your problems.

OTOH your self-driving EV could perhaps evacuate your unconscious body from the area :)

Abandon hope, all ye who press enter here.

Now, yes, there are predictions that you could get a supermassive black hole launched into space, especially during a galaxy merger if the velocity of the smaller black hole exceeds the escape velocity of the combined galaxy.

But I'd be wary of assuming that it's a launched black hole, unless we can find the merger it comes from. There may be ways for such a black hole to form that cause the stars to be launched away rather than the black hole being flung, and if a galaxy isn't rotating fast enough to be stable, one could imagine that a sufficiently small galaxy was simply consumed by its central black hole. Both of these would seem to produce exactly the same outcome, if all we have is the black hole itself and a velocity.

I'm not going to say either of these is likely in this case, or that astronomers haven't examine them (they almost certainly have), but rather that we should be cautious until we've a clearer idea of what the astronomers have actually been able to determine or rule out.

No, the executive tells the civil service what it needs to do, but the civil service is wholly independent.

That's your tell that fusion has a promising future. Some people aren't like a stopped clock (broken but occasionally correct by sheer coincidence), so much as like a compass whose needle has been magnetized backwards and always points south (always precisely the opposite of correct, and therefore informative if you know to negate their indication).

You do not appear to understand what a republic or a democracy is, so I'll ignore the last sentence.

"Independent" does not mean unaccountable to the people. The President is independent of Congress, and vice versa, but both are accountable to the people. Well, the current president doesn't seem to think so, but legally he is.

The civil service is not a part of the executive but is a co-equal branch.

You are correct. In principle, presidents have no authority whatsoever to dictate how an agency runs. The executive branch should have zero authority over the civil service, which is intended to constitute a fourth co-equal branch of government.

In the US, in principle, the status of the civil service as co-equal to, and independent of, the executive should be added to the Constitution and enshrined in law for good measure. Not that that would help much with the current SCOTUS, but a Constitutional change might possibly persuade the current government that absolute authoritatian control is not as popular as Trump thinks.

That is the idea that, in Britain, entities like the NHS and the BBC have operated under. Charters specify the responsibilties and duties, and guarantee the funding needed to provide these, but the organisation is (supposed) to carry these out wholly independently of the government of the day.

It actually worked quite well for some time, but has been under increasing pressure and subject to increasing government sabotage over the past 20-25 years.

It's also the idea behind science/engineering research funding bodies the world over. These should direct funding for grant proposals not on political whim or popularity but on the basis of what is actually needed. Again, though, it does get sabotaged a fair bit.

Exactly how you'd mitigate this is unclear, many governments have - after all - the leading talent in manipulation, corruption, and kickbacks. But presumably, strategies can be devised to weaken political influence.

No. Tipping is the problem, and the problem has gotten entirely out of hand. Make tipping illegal, and employers will be forced to pay wages that will retain their employees, and then, in turn, raise prices to compensate. At which point, we will have the system that Europe has been using for longer than I know, where being a waiter is not a stop-gap employment option while you're trying to do something else, but a respectable profession. There are establishments I frequent in various parts of the Continent where I see the same waiters working there, year after year, and there is never any problem with the service. Tipping is not expected, and if you do, it's a couple of percent. The prices on the menu are the prices you pay. No extra taxes, no extra tipping. Completely transparent.

It is pure commercial greed that prevents the US from adopting the same rational standard, and instead we get the fraud where the price you see is nowhere near the price you pay, except in very specific, isolated cases like fuel and airline tickets.

No fan of Darth Cheeto, but that is simply not true. Cosby was deposed in a civil suit and admitted in his testimony to drugging women so he could have sex with them.

He totally did (see above). It is, in fact, why he is not currently in prison because, despite the DA granting him immunity for said testimony to remove his 5th amendment protections, that deposition was used against him in his criminal trial and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated his conviction as a result.