Don’t give up a stronger position for a weaker one in hopes of avoiding a conflict. You’ve only undermined yourself when the conflict happens anyway.

I’m an apartment building superintendent. I once confronted a late night trespasser: a junkie looking for a place to shoot up or snort or whatever his thing was. I demanded that he leave, but realized that I was physically blocking the only exit. He was cornered. So I moved out of the way and suddenly I was the one who was cornered. It all worked out in the end, but for a minute there I was facing a large, angry, paranoid junkie with a knife and no way to escape.

I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t move to give him an exit, but I know that in doing so I gave up my own exit, and that was dumb.

I’ve had customers like this. Usually they just write their name in block letters. There’s no rule that says a signature has to be written in cursive so it still works.

Don’t you mean RDSM?

My champion:

Bride of Chaotica is my all time favorite Voyager episode. The cast all seem to be having so much fun with it, especially Rayner/Chaotica himself. The scene where Lunzak shoots Janeway and it just bounces off (cuz holodeck safeties) and she ad libs “ha, you’re no match for Arachnia!” is just so perfect. Satan’s Robot is hilarious. And I love how they merge the Chaotica-style music and Star Trek theme for the end-of-episode musical sting.

Not without their legs!

E099: PROGRAMMER IS OVERLY POLITE

My Yahoo email address is 27 years old.

I prefer Babylon 9: The Next Iteration.

Realistically, that would get annoying pretty fast and I’d soon learn to hate any song I chose. So I’d pick 4′33″, which is four minutes and 33 seconds of silence.

But otherwise I’d pick “One Bad Tank”, from the video game Left4Dead2. It’s the song that plays when the boss enemy enters a particular map.

My mom’s early 90’s minivan. I think it was a Voyager.

I bet they have good weed, though.

“Privacy” in the modern sense is less about protecting you from personal embarrassment or financial loss, and more about protecting society from the dangers of mass data collection.

Historical examples of mass datasets that were misused:

• The Nazis used demographic records (birth, death, marriage records, etc.) to identify Jews and other undesirables in conquered countries.
• Japanese Americans were identified for internment in part through illegal use of census information.
• The Rwanda genocide was facilitated by tribal information being printed on drivers licenses.

In none of these examples were the data collected for the evil purposes it was eventually used for. In some cases, the evil purposes were completely forbidden by the rules governing the data, but they were used anyway.

Information is a form of knowledge. Knowledge is power. And power in the wrong hands is dangerous.

When in doubt, shut up.

Surprised the article didn’t point out that the “Tim” axis is also pointing in the wrong direction.

The economic bubble being created between the AI and hardware companies is going to pop and take out huge swathes of the broader economy, a la mortgages in 2008.

Relevant Robot Chicken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf5BkEhJ5fI

Now wait a second. I don’t think Quark ever sold shoddy merchandise. Overpriced? Sure! Stolen? Probably! Contraband? Absolutely! But low quality merchandise doesn’t breed customer loyalty. It doesn’t generate repeat business.

Remember the 57th rule of acquisition: Good customers are as rare as latinum. Treasure them.

There are three things you need to remember as a starship captain: 1) keep your shirt tucked in; 2) go down with the ship; and 3) detailed knowledge of ornithology.