> it isn't an absolutest point or mantra.

"Safety first" literally is an absolutist mantra; no part of its wording is conditional. Of course people read into it a less absolute figurative meaning that may be useful for thinking about safety. However it can be politically and legally useful to speak using absolutes.

Using the example of viruses and the economy, it has been politically expedient for politicians to state that nothing should be done which puts life in danger, while making actions which balance safety and economics.

The decision is usually guided by practical limitations, such as grip, or the tolerance of parts. Limiting torque to improve acceleration, prevent skidding off the road, or not burn out the motor is a reasonable motivation in-line with the interests of the driver. Limiting torque to make your car feel like a less capable one is not.

That said, I can imagine some people may want a familiar driving experience, although it would make sense to make that a configurable option, e.g. 'sport mode' vs 'comfort mode'.

It's trivial to do. Here: https://js.do/code/383036

I wonder whether a more effective alternative would be to station troops in space. The Outer Space Treaty prohibits the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in space, but not conventional weapons or combatants. An invasion from space could be made with virtually no warning. I'm not sure stealth would be possible due to the plasma created on entry, but decoys / countermeasures are possible.

With the potential for spacelaunch to become drastically less expensive due to reusable launch vehicles, a constellation of manned hypersonic glide vehicles may become economically practical.

It wouldn't need to land. Parachuting out of the vehicle is an alternative, as was done by Yuri Gagarin in the Vostok I flight.

> a mobile-platform-launched ICBM that you can climb into.

The Titan II GLV was a human-rated adaption of an ICBM. Conceivably you could even put people in a truck launch ICBM.

I'm not sure what you're making that assertion on the basis of. The note has redundant electrical connectors. You could melt the bulk of the note down and still claim the Etherium from the secure element. Hypothetically you could have redundant SEs.

That physical cash can become damaged is nothing new. Maybe this implementation could be easily damaged in some way, I don't think this threatens the concept of silicon cash generally.

Toll roads charge you for travelling over them. They don't charge the business you're travelling to based on how much value you have to them as a customer.

This is not the net neutrality argument. It should be a cost saving for both the CDN and ISP to connect directly, because this saves both parties needing to pay for IP transit. That the ISP may charge the CDN for this is because in a vacuous regulatory environment they have been allowed to ransom their customers.

The behaviour of discriminating based on application or financial potential is not tolerated (legally or socially) in other common carriers like mail.

As was mentioned in the article, monitoring isn't the only concern. Personal data stored on your work computer may still be problematic if your employer is involved in a lawsuit for instance.

I'll try to sum it up: Kong notes are electronic devices which allow whoever has access to them to use a smart contract which after a given date can retrieve a given amount of cryptocurrency. They hold a key which allows them to operate on this smart contract, but don't reveal it, and are designed to be physically impractical to tamper with (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_cryptoprocessor).

There's a distinction that Kong is not payable on demand, until after expiry, but I'm not sure it's a useful distinction. Unlike a conventional bond, there isn't a question of default by the issuer; the Etherium is locked up in a smart contract, rather than relying on the issuer honouring the bond at maturation.

Rarely do users of cash care about the property of it being payable on demand by the issuer (conventionally a central bank), only the property that it be practical for physical commerce.

I don't see how this is any more against network neutrality than regional mirrors / CDNs.

This is an optimisation which can be made by the game developer / host, where the alternative would be prioritisation by the ISP, which would go against net neutrality.

It may well vary depending on which C standard you're talking about. ISO C defines both a byte and a char as at least long enough to contain characters "of the basic character set of the execution environment". They must be uniquely addressable. Although it seems their definitions don't preclude them from being different, or from sub-bytes being uniquely addressable by pointers.