The most interesting part of the story has been left out? I mean sure, engineers would start to quit, top-flight engineers would quit, etc etc.
But was there any impact to quality of service? Are people not getting Ubers, or waiting longer for Ubers? Were there new food delivery services delayed or did they roll out more or less on time?
Dr. Davies got a little carried away in his rhetoric :-)
//This is where Norton gets tricky with us. He posits another solution to the equation ...
Norton didn't posit this as a solution, it is a solution.
//This is baffling. It’s bizarre to stitch two different solutions to an equation
Norton never stitches together two solutions. I don't know if Dr. Davies is unfamiliar with a function defined using a case statement, but there's nothing Frankensteinish about it.
//but in fact the top equation is not Newtonian at the apex (clearly since it moves despite the absence of a force there).
Alas, Dr. Davies has missed the biggest delight of Norton's Dome! The ball can nondeterministically roll off of Norton's dome and yet still obey all of Newton's laws :-). It sure looks like it wouldn't be--after all, how can the ball start to move in absense of a force?
But at time t=T, the ball isn't moving yet. Its not even accelerating yet. So at time t=T its obeying Newton's laws. An at every time before and after that it also obeys Newton's laws.
In plain english, events "happen". E.g. "If this event happens, then...."
If you want to emphasize that the event has just been created, in plain english you would say the even has been "caused". E.g. "The user clicks the mouse button, which causes a GUI event...."