I agree with all of this except the part about making things pretty being a waste. Beauty has its own value, although far too often for pieces like this it was more for bragging rights as you said.

I rarely downvote, and even more rarely downvote and comment, but I can assure you that downvote was wholly organic. Perhaps if you feel like you're brigade all the time, you should engage in some self-reflection.

This proves that an infinite, non-repeating number needn't contain any given finite numeric sequence, but it doesn't prove that an infinite, non-repeating number can't. This is not to say that Pi does contain all finite numeric sequences, just that this statement isn't sufficient to prove it can't.

I finally saw one in person and I was a little ashamed to live near someone who made that kind of choice.

This is programmer humor.

10...

1...

0. Why are you still here?

This is probably the most charitable interpretation of this scenario. Good for you.

I figured his wife put him on a diet and he was having none (or three times) of it.

Also, the battery pack for a cell phone 30 years ago was about the same volume and weight of an entire smartphone, with a capacity of about 500 mAh. They are also far cheaper if you account for inflation.

Batteries have improved incapacity by about a factor of 10 and the cost per watt-hour has reduced by about 99% in the last 30 year. All without a single advancement in the technology, apparently.

/s

Every time I see her I'm reminded of the scene in The Office where Dwight is wearing the face of the CPR dummy.

Battery technology is changing all the time, but it's only highly visible when we switch fundamental systems. NiMH batteries had a number of improvements that increased energy density and charge cycles, but most users only saw they were NiMH batteries. The same applies to Li-ion batteries. Overall, rechargeable batteries have gotten 6 to 10 times as energy dense and cost has been reduced to about 5% per Ah over the last 30 years. This didn't happen because research wasn't leaving the lab.

Well, it can...

You can't mention those and not mention Larry Ellison. If it weren't for him, OpenOffice wouldn't have forked.

My retired mom had cancer a few years back, pretty bad. Surgery, chemo, radiation therapy, hair fell out and wore a wig. The only expense was for parking. Even the wig was provided by a charity adjacent to cancer care. Surgery, one to three weeks in the hospital, treatments spanning over a year, costing a couple hundred dollars in parking fees. No stress about losing her home due to hospital expenses.

I'd take that over what can be had in America any time.