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Truth isn't truth.

Haven't you heard?

It's worth remembering that Kindle already has had something get poof'd despite being 'sold' to people--ironically enough, it was 1984. (NYT and this site.)

Oh, and Amazon still may use DRM like this despite having been forced to settle the lawsuit about the disappearing Orwell books.

Personally, I'm somewhat fine if the agreement on both sides is that yes, I'm just getting access to a lending library--fee-for-access is not a new model for libraries, having it be a digital one just makes it smoother. I'm just not a fan of DRM meaning I cannot trust that I actually own what I've bought on the understanding that I am being sold the item itself...regardless of if I'm getting a digital or a physical copy. (Breaking DRM and general DRM issues on both differ, and in some cases my preference is more or less set by "Which one can be more easily/successfully jailbroken?")

Oh, my sweet summer child... You have no idea what it means when the left has a stranglehold on culture

I don't? Oh you bloody fool, making an assumption like that just shows how badly you're arguing that point.

They're not. It's just that nobody gives a fuck in schools what your political leanings are. And why would they? That's not what a school is for

They're not? So why don't you explain why all those universities go out of their way to remove speakers they disagree with. And the students unions do exactly the same thing. I mean really, in the UK it's become so bad that the government is looking to get involved. And even the guardian is arguing against it. These are not one-off things. You seem to fail to understand the difference between what you linked, and what I'm saying. Universities in Europe are, have, and do actively remove/revoke speakers from speaking at their universities. Whether they're old school feminists who's view points no longer "fit" with the new feminist order. Or speakers who argue for more free speech in Europe.

You seem to fail to understand that universities are the place where your views should be tested, and in European countries your views aren't being tested because they're banning people who would challenge them. European universities have been doing this since the 1970's. This same infestation has been going on in US universities for the last 10-15 years, and the same in Canada.

First of all, this housing thing has been going on for quite a while now:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/...

Secondly, there are quite a few examples, such as:
https://consequenceofsound.net...

All this is just the stuff on the surface, where advertisers are abusing Facebook's targeting system. One abstraction layer further you get the Cambridge Analytica stuff. Databrokers taking your Facebook data, and then selling all kinds of derived scores to employers, insurers politicians.

Women don't see high paying job adds:
https://www.theguardian.com/te...

Getting red-lighted at job interviews:
https://www.theguardian.com/sc...

Easier to get a loan if you have 'good' friends:
https://trustingsocial.com/

IRS looking at social media posts to determine who gets an audit:
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...

Health insurers figuring out who they want to insure:
https://www.propublica.org/art...

As Cathy o Neill pointed out in her book "Weapons of Math Destruction", all this tech doesn't remove discrimination, it just hides it behind the facade of 'neutral math'.

First of all, this housing thing has been going on for quite a while now:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/...

Secondly, there are quite a few examples, such as:
https://consequenceofsound.net...

All this is just the stuff on the surface, where advertisers are abusing Facebook's targeting system. One abstraction layer further you get the Cambridge Analytica stuff. Databrokers taking your Facebook data, and then selling all kinds of derived scores to employers, insurers politicians.

Women don't see high paying job adds:
https://www.theguardian.com/te...

Getting red-lighted at job interviews:
https://www.theguardian.com/sc...

Easier to get a loan if you have 'good' friends:
https://trustingsocial.com/

IRS looking at social media posts to determine who gets an audit:
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...

Health insurers figuring out who they want to insure:
https://www.propublica.org/art...

As Cathy o Neill pointed out in her book "Weapons of Math Destruction", all this tech doesn't remove discrimination, it just hides it behind the facade of 'neutral math'.

Not only has millions of tonnes of greenhouses gases been produced due to mining

Where did THAT come from?

There were a couple of articles about Bitcoin and emissions last year.

• Nature
• Forbes
• The Guardian/
• Wired

The supreme court didn't "punt on the issue"; they ruled in his favour.

Not really. https://www.theguardian.com/la...

They ruled that the way the decision to require him to bake the cake had been flawed, but not the decision itself. Indeed, from the text of the decision:

"The courtâ(TM)s precedents make clear that the baker, in his capacity as the owner of a business serving the public, might have his right to the free exercise of religion limited by generally applicable laws"

So the question isn't settled either way, it looks like it will have to be re-examined.

By the way, even if you're going to insist that this is all "natural" and has nothing to do with man's activities, it still means that we need to figure out how to adapt to it. We also need to measure it, so we can understand what's happening. In the name of AGW denial, both of those things, sensible whether or not AGW is real, are being cut back.

You can get hit by a truck or by a charging bear. The latter is "natural", the former not. You're dead in either case.

https://www.theguardian.com/ci...

We know that software is inherently racist. If you're looking for the next Great White Hope to take sports back, then look no further than A.I.

For myself, I don't care that some people have much more than me, I am more worried that I don't have more.

It's funny that you don't see the connection between the two. This would please our C-suite overlords.

Recently Elizabeth Warren came out with a brilliant plan to make capitalism viable for the 99% for a while longer that could correct this madness:

https://www.theguardian.com/us...

This is so sweetly false-confident, it's hilarious. Let's pick up on one small piece to demonstrate:
"Pomo always wants to label victims and perpetrators. It is never women themselves making choices. Like how nurses are mostly women, and engineers are so often men. Nobody says women are oppressing men out of nursing."

Quite right, nobody says woman are oppressing men out of nursing. Why could that be, I wonder? Is there another, possibly more prestigious clinical profession which men have greater access to than women, and which may explain why men don't become nurses? Tough one, I can't think of any such profession. I mean, it's not like doctors are paid shit loads more than nurses, have greater prestige, and are a profession to which men have demonstrably better access, etc etc. Of course not.

https://www.theguardian.com/co...

It is a good point, but then why is almost every garbage collector I see a male? Men are supposed to be oppressing women into taking the worst jobs? Those garbage collectors can easily have female bosses at the city council.

Look, I don't mean to claim that there is no patriarchy. We know from history that there was a matriarchy for a loooong time, then power switched to men in charge. And apparently it had something to do with how food was produced. But that aside, the issue is, what things are just historical accidents (men in charge) and what things are ongoing biological differences?

The big problem is that, science has been used in the past as an "objective" way to bolster hierarchy and oppression. The very term "holistic" was coined by Jan Smuts, in South Africa, who used it as part of a colonial view that the white man's "natural" place in nature was at the top, and the natives were "below". That was "holistic". So that's the kind of fucked up pseudo-science which we must all fight against.

That does not mean that properly done, properly researched, stuff does not exist. And that is always the debate. If there is a claim that women, on average, gravitate to people, and men, on average, gravitate to stuff, and that women have no problem "feeding to the lions" the men, when it is a job they don't care about, and likewise, vice-versa, then in the interests of a better society, we better damn well understand what those traits are and whether jobs have to be polarised along those traits, or whether jobs can be changed to make them work better for both sexes, so that more jobs are done better, and not just done to a quota.

Not that I am unsympathetic to the slaughter of muslims in Myanmar and the destruction of their homes their, but there has been a lengthy genocide against the (mostly Christian) Kachin people in that country, and there is little reporting about it, most definitely NOT in Amerika.

https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

These details are in the paper. In particular, they did not test any device but just exposure to the chemicals which they note may not provide the same levels seen by actual people who vape. I think it's unreasonable to expect this level of detail in a popular news site given that they are writing a few paragraphs for a general audience. The paper is there for those who want this level of detail.

Also, somewhat ironically, cow flatulence actually is important for determining climate change!

Do you really think gamers and scientists are trying to eliminate non-white people? Because that's who the far left are going after. They've gone so far left even the socialists are "far right" to them.

This is so sweetly false-confident, it's hilarious. Let's pick up on one small piece to demonstrate:
"Pomo always wants to label victims and perpetrators. It is never women themselves making choices. Like how nurses are mostly women, and engineers are so often men. Nobody says women are oppressing men out of nursing."

Quite right, nobody says woman are oppressing men out of nursing. Why could that be, I wonder? Is there another, possibly more prestigious clinical profession which men have greater access to than women, and which may explain why men don't become nurses? Tough one, I can't think of any such profession. I mean, it's not like doctors are paid shit loads more than nurses, have greater prestige, and are a profession to which men have demonstrably better access, etc etc. Of course not.

https://www.theguardian.com/co...

https://www.theguardian.com/co...

There are fewer women on boards not becuse women are less intelligent but because there are fewer of them at the top of corporations

If that is the reason then it is an obvious case where positive discrimination could temporarily be applied to break the vicious cycle. Corporations should, for a decade or two, be forced to employ more women at

The reason for that is not discrimination, it's that women overwhelmingly make different life choices

Yup, for instance in Japan women make the life choice not to become medical doctors.. And when we do experiments sending in identical CVs, but for a male/female first name, to job advertisements, and the male named applications overwhelmingly get offered interviews ... that the life choices women make too, yeah? Sorry mate, that's not only bullshit, it's obvious bullshit. You are fooling yourself (perhaps successfully).

What gets me is when women encounter the real level of competetive [sic] viciousness inside companies, they think they're being targeted because they're women. Wrong.

No, because no woman has ever been attacked in a highly highly gendered fashion, called "bitches" when aggressive (though less than their "go-get-it" male counterparts), accused of sleeping around, or of being pre-menstrual, etc, etc, etc. You're livin in fucken dreamland matey.

Women are smarter in a certain way. They see how bad it is and decide it's not worth it earlier than men do....

Oh FFS, get your hand off it man!

US ex-pat living in Japan here. They don't have mass shootings, they have mass stabbings, mass poisonings and sarin attacks. This in a country that take has very restrictive gun laws (basically it's a big NO) but at the same time has no problems with people walking around with swords (which they're cracking down on a bit) or bows (I see multiple people with yumi everyday). Both of which would be illegal in NYC (and a lot of other US cities). Yet the overall crime rate is much lower here and in general is infinitely safer than than most places in the US. The bottom line is that some people are just f*cked up and if they want to kill people, they're going to kill people.

Yeah, I utterly believe anonymous sources who "confirm" talks about "taking tesla private"...

Oh, so Bloomberg is in on the conspiracy now too! Where does this stop - are the Illuminati trying to help Musk as well?

from what I've read Musk was desperate, offered himself, had a deal drafted ... and was not bought. Eventually, he found money from other fools. https://www.theguardian.com/te...

Your article says literally the opposite of what you claim: "Musk broke off talks and the company has gone from strength to strength since, later launching in Europe, the UK and Australia."

All I see in this google search is a bunch of headlines from various people totally unconnected to Apple saying "Apple can buy Tesla".

No, saying Apple should buy Tesla. And I'll repeat the original claim, which you pooh-poohed: "Apple (has more cash today than they seemingly know what to do with, and we've seen a drumbeat of analysts over the past year opining "Apple should buy Tesla")"

Bloomberg from a few days ago, I'm sure you're capable enough to google it

1) Oh, so now Bloomberg is trustworthy? ;)
2) I did google it and came up blank. So let me repeat myself: Ref?

If you look at the graphs of atmospheric CO2 vs global temperature (whatever that may be) there is not much correlation

Let me guess, you've looked at carefully cherry-picked time windows...

Well actually I looked at the graph with a time window of a few million years, or was it hundreds of millions?

let alone causation.

Helllo? The 1800s called. It's Tyndall and Arrhenius on the line. They want some words with you about the thing called 'greenhouse effect' they discovered.

You forget to mention Fourier.
And yes, a greenhouse effect exists... in a greenhouse.
Greenhouses are those boxes with a transparent lid on top.
The earth's atmosphere has no lid somewhere in the middle. Convection rules up to 10 km height where it ceases to exist due to the low pressure (less than 0.1 bar).

It really follows straightforwardly from basic physics.

I've never seen a reputable physics textbook, like Feynman, mentioning (and supporting and explaining) a greenhouse effect on earth's atmosphere.
On the contrary, thermodynamics (Feynman lectures, lecture 40), in the absence of convection, predicts a negative temperature gradient (with reference to height) caused by the difference in kinetic energy of the air's molecules. However, convection in the lower part (below 10 km) of the atmosphere makes the effect unmeasurable.

Even coal industry shill Richard Lindzen called people who dispute that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas 'a bit nutty'.

I don't need a group of miners decide for me what is physics and what is not, thank you very much.

So let's see, a recently created account by the name of "slazy Rio" that contributed little of value to this community starts executing a Gish gallop of complete bullshit denialist talking points. Are you even trying to not look like a shill/troll ?

I really don't mind whether you consider me a shill, troll or what not. I'm just giving you my formed opinion. I'm not a 'climate denier'. Climate warms up. It always does after an ice age when the sun gets active sun spots again. But after a period, determined by the solar cycles, not the CO2 that we produce, it cools down again, and if you watch the solar activity recently (barely there is) you'd realise that we're heading toward a cool period again.

And, oh, by the way, did I already mention that human contribution to CO2 is undetectable?
Climatologist (99.7%? Yeah, right) Murray Lewis Salby pointed out this out in one of his lectures. If you look at the atmospheric CO2 graphs of the last century and correlate them with the anthropogenic CO2 emissions, you'll see that even in the 1920's-30's, where the global economy--and with that the carbon emissions--literally tanked, but the rate of rise of atmospheric CO2 didn't bulge. Also in the late 1900's, where emissions really took off, the rate of rise in atmospheric CO2 didn't bulge either.
This isn't really a confirmation of the AGW theory but can be explained with Henry's law, which edicts the vapor/liquid equilibrium of gases (CO2 is a gas) and liquids (like deep-sea water).
Due to our earth still coming out of the latest ice age, and the very slow,

If NSA "customizes" routers meant for foreign customers, why wouldn't Chinese government seek to do something similar? Unlike NSA, they can flat-out order their own companies to do that, while doing something more subtle with the Korean and Taiwanese manufacturers...

And in the world of spying, if someone can, you can bet that they do...

How can a camera cause an accident? Perhaps you mean that stop lights "cause" (air quotes) accidents because assholes speed up on yellow instead of slowing down? That's not the light causing the accident, it's the assholes.

As for "getting up to speed" in NYC, here are just a few within the last year or so:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/18/times-square-speeding-vehicle-strikes-pedestrians-new-york
https://abc7ny.com/traffic/19-year-old-dies-after-speeding-mercedes-strikes-her-uber-/3520238/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/thousands-of-serial-traffic-violators-in-new-york-city-go-unpunished-1521036000

In my neighborhood in the Bronx there's someone who regularly drives a Porsche at high speed (I estimate about 50 MPH) on the residential streets at night. A speed camera might make him think twice.

A different Porsche was thankfully eliminated from the "car pool" in that same area:

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/drunken-driver-loses-control-porsche-lands-playground-article-1.3727865

Oh wonderful, yet another post with a generous grab from the top-50 long-debunked climate myths. A bit like a Gish gallop by the looks of things, so I'm not going to give you a lot of my time. I'll just respond to a few of the more egregious talking points you bring up, and people can look up the rest at http://wikipedia.org/ and http://skepticalscience.com/ .

If you look at the graphs of atmospheric CO2 vs global temperature (whatever that may be) there is not much correlation

Let me guess, you've looked at carefully cherry-picked time windows in order to ignore the blatantly obvious fact that both are steadily going up.
Sure, there's no year-to-year correlation; the temperature data is so (inherently) noisy that only an idiot would expect to see that. But over a relevant time span, yes, yes, it's going up.

let alone causation.

Helllo? The 1800s called. It's Tyndall and Arrhenius on the line. They want some words with you about the thing called 'greenhouse effect' they discovered. It really follows straightforwardly from basic physics.

Even coal industry shill Richard Lindzen called people who dispute that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas 'a bit nutty'.
So let's see, a recently created account by the name of "slazy Rio" that contributed little of value to this community starts executing a Gish gallop of complete bullshit denialist talking points. Are you even trying to not look like a shill/troll ?

We believe a corporate oligarch hell bent on profit over people (as proven by work force conditions in Foxconn plants) less than we believe an appointed government official / ex-lobbyist when he says his department's public feedback was taken down by an attack .. oops.
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
https://arstechnica.com/inform...

Oh, wait, this took place on the Obama adminstration's watch?

Not another one. No, this didn't happen during the Obama administration's watch. It happened the first week of May, 2017. Someone else tried to use the "Obama's fault" card yesterday when Ajit Pai first admitted that his agency had not been hacked. How many times does this have to be shot down before you guys give up trying to lie about it?

https://www.theguardian.com/te...

Here's the story from last July, so you can track Ajit Pai's weasily and pitiful lie in real time.

https://gizmodo.com/fcc-now-sa...

And here's the Slashdot story from yesterday.

https://it.slashdot.org/story/...

Medical bills & chance of being bankrupted by sickness or denied treatment - zero.

Hah, you wish. People are literally dying from the delays in treatment as the NHS is completely oversaturated with patients, more and more people are being driven to private health insurance every year, and nurses/doctors in the UK keep getting longer hours and less pay, which is why you hear about an NHS strike every few months. Over 70% of healthcare workers in the NHS end up doing unpaid overtime each week because they actually care about the patients and helping their coworkers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-...
https://www.theguardian.com/so...
https://www.theguardian.com/he...

The NHS is collapsing and open boarders, along with hundreds of thousands of refugees (of which most don't work even after being there for 4 years), is only speeding it up.

University education - not cheap but a helluvalot more affordable than your 'freedom' prices.

Not exactly useful when degrees are nothing more than expensive toilet paper now. Unless you're a genius in some field, go to trade school instead.

Actual consumer protection laws so you can expect your purchases to function.

The US has the most amazing and generous return policies I've ever seen, it's far easier to justify a return in the US than in the UK.

Medical bills & chance of being bankrupted by sickness or denied treatment - zero.

Hah, you wish. People are literally dying from the delays in treatment as the NHS is completely oversaturated with patients, more and more people are being driven to private health insurance every year, and nurses/doctors in the UK keep getting longer hours and less pay, which is why you hear about an NHS strike every few months. Over 70% of healthcare workers in the NHS end up doing unpaid overtime each week because they actually care about the patients and helping their coworkers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-...
https://www.theguardian.com/so...
https://www.theguardian.com/he...

The NHS is collapsing and open boarders, along with hundreds of thousands of refugees (of which most don't work even after being there for 4 years), is only speeding it up.

University education - not cheap but a helluvalot more affordable than your 'freedom' prices.

Not exactly useful when degrees are nothing more than expensive toilet paper now. Unless you're a genius in some field, go to trade school instead.

Actual consumer protection laws so you can expect your purchases to function.

The US has the most amazing and generous return policies I've ever seen, it's far easier to justify a return in the US than in the UK.

It was the Strava incident that brought this problem into light.
The Guardian article on Strava

Absolutely. We should get rid of all legislation governing housing density and apartment size. Then we can get the population living in converted drain pipe "coffin homes" like Singapore:

https://www.theguardian.com/ci...

"It is now easier to stream music than to pirate it"

I'm sure, some of the drop really is due to legitimate alternatives appearing. Yet, those alternatives still cost some money, so the criminal and civil prosecutions of the illegal downloaders and download-facilitators must've helped too.

Must it? Do you have evidence?

How much of the observed drop is due to those, law-based measures?

An excellent question. Do you have an answer? Since the next question kind of depends on the answer to this one.

This isn't any tree-falling-in-the-forest philosophical puzzle. Someone said it. Someone heard it. It's valid.

Even if the trees begged before the lumberjack's saw sliced into their tender woody flesh?

Sorry for triggering your empathy neural pathways like that, but if stories can manipulate human emotion, I'm sure one day sufficiently intelligent machines will have no problem doing it as well.

Facebook already experimented with just that https://www.theguardian.com/te...

Scary stuff.

"It is now easier to stream music than to pirate it"

I'm sure, some of the drop really is due to legitimate alternatives appearing. Yet, those alternatives still cost some money, so the criminal and civil prosecutions of the illegal downloaders and download-facilitators must've helped too.

How much of the observed drop is due to those, law-based measures?

And, if these measures' really did prove a significant deterrent, thus contributing to what we now seem to agree is a good thing, maybe, Slashdot ought to collectively apologize to the MPAA, RIAA and the like organizations collectively denounced here as "MAFIAA" for years?

Nestle has used modern slave labor for years. They came up with using block-chain to prove they're coming clean. Of course that's just as good as the people making entries on the chain.

They are working to cleanse themselves of the slavery image.

They've used it in their cocoa and coffee supply. They pretty much act like it "slips into the chain" these days, but when they were first found out they seemed more upset they were caught than anything. The older articles are getting harder to find.

News Link A Fields medal belonging to Caucher Birkar went missing just half an hour after he was jointly awarded the prize

The G1 news site said Birkar had left the medal in a briefcase with his cellphone and wallet on top of a table in the pavilion where the event was being held. The event's security team later found the briefcase under a bench, but the medal was missing.
Rio's O Globo newspaper said the thief had already been identified from security camera footage.

Yes, nuclear is greener than coal and NG. But even with coal, power plants are greener than ICE engines. Your post is disingenuous at best.

No, that's not true. An electric car charged from the grid in an area of the country that relies heavily on coal will have increased CO2 emissions per mile as compared to a gasoline burning car.

https://www.theguardian.com/en...

Graff Zivin, along with economics researchers Matthew Kotchen and Erin Mansur, waded into this contentious territory in a 2014 paper. Zivin concluded that a plug-in electric vehicle, such as the Nissan Leaf, always produces less carbon dioxide emissions than a hybrid electric- and gas-powered car - but only in selected regions that rely on less coal, like the western United States and Texas. Charging from the coal-dependent grid in the upper midwest of the US at night could generate more emissions than an average gasoline car. And, in some US regions, plugging in at different times of day could even double an electric car's emissions impact.

I think you're both right. Omnichad's point is that the sum of policy actions make the 'national socialists' far-right. Then you're correct to argue that declaring fascism to be synonymous with far-right isn't valid either, due simply to association fallacy.

Somewhat like how the 'Democratic Party' has lawyers that argue it is actually a private organization that is not beholden or liable to any such principle. Branding is important, but not accurate or even honest.

The same Democrat, who started the day firmly rejecting Nazism as the greatest evil, ends the day admitting, he likes the Nazi ideas... I'll leave it at that...

Which is why everyone should just understand Association fallacy. Particularly the yellow journalism media that refers to Antifa as 'anti-fascists'.

I thought that no voting machines were hacked, and no vote tallys were changed. Is that no longer true?

That has never been true.

All that has ever been said is that they have not found proof, not that they have disproved anything. Much of that is because the states responsible have not even been looking for proof.

Furthermore, there is tons of circumstantial evidence to indicate that there was vote tampering. For example in 2015, russians secretly bought the company handling Maryland's voting machines. We also know, because they were caught at the last minute, that the russians tried to change votes on Ukranian voting machines in 2014.

So, even if the russians have not yet successfully altered votes, it is not for a lack of trying.

Also, fuck off you shitstain antipatriot. I've read your post history, its clear you would be happier living in russia so just fucking move already and leave our country to real americans.

I don't have quite the faith in Wikipedia that you have. Here's one mention of Mayer's involvement, from 2012:

"Eleven years ago on Thursday, Mayer was one of 15 Googlers behind the company's famous motto: Don't Be Evil."

Admittedly that declares it was more of a group effort.

Regardless, all of these "origin stories" occurred well after Google was founded, and none of them involve Larry or Sergei.

Whaa? Investment from the government is not socialism. Socialism is government control of the means of production. The internet was started so that US right wingers could nuke the Soviet Union and survive the retaliatory strike. That's not even close to socialism.

What's a good example of socialism? Venezuela, for one. Jeremy Corbyn said: "Chavez ... showed us that there is a different, and a better way of doing things. Itâ(TM)s called socialism". https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

You're going to tell me Jeremy Corbyn doesn't know socialism when he sees it?

Tourists flock not to the beaches, but the slums to see '21st-century socialism' From a trickle a few years ago there are now thousands, travelling individually and on package tours, exploring a leftwing mecca which promises to build social justice in the form of "21st century socialism". https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

Citations needed and provided.

Or, she could just live in her car, like other Amazon workers are doing.

The UK supreme court has agreed that the police can tell a potential employer about a case where the accused was found not guilty. https://www.theguardian.com/uk...

At first yes... we will do the same as well... at first! But like I said... how do you get them to ONLY do that? Look at what is going on now. The EU now wants to add more regulations... like the ones I said would come after these making my very point. Again... how are you going to keep them from doing more than what we want? You can't. They will quickly become drunk on the power of regulation.

https://www.theguardian.com/me...

There is at least a double whammy to this issue. One is the opening of the flood gates to regulate now... each and every time a group of politicians get their knickers in a wad they will think of ways to control social media, they are already visible salivating over the prospect. The other whammy? That will be social media quashing anything that looks suspect, anything that can even be construed as false or fake news and whammo... the government has just "indirectly" but still successfully stifled free speech even more.

Of course they are going to start with the good stuff first... it's the same strategy from since before any of us where born. You get the nice tasting stuff fed to them and make them happy... and right as they open their mouth for the next bite you powerslam a plate full of shit right down their gullet!

Works most of the time too!

when 80% of your populace is living paycheck to paycheck

The productivity gains from the last 40 years have gone completely to the top 1%. When you're barely getting by and your parents did just fine and we've doubled productivity then you better believe you're underpaid. Folks are getting to the point where they notice they've been had.

without money

And what happens when you buy stock in a company like General Motors and they fold the legal entity rendering the stock worthless? Or how about Hostess where they sold the brand and machinery so they could raid the pension fund and bust what was left of the Union?

Workers can't absorb the losses that ruling class have. And they can't buy off politicians the same way to get bail outs. The working class needs to organize or they lose. That's exactly what's happening now and what every single economist (who doesn't work for a right wing think tank) says is the cause of declining wages.

As for organized crime, would you shut down our banking system because sometimes somebody robs a bank? Or would you throw the bank robber in jail? The whole organized crime thing is a red herring to distract from the points I made above.

> Who'd have thought that employing people based on their genitalia rather than their skills would end so badly...

Uh. NO. I'll bite, since much is wrong with that flimsy cause-and-effect troll and it's a nice excuse to research for numbers:
1) 'They could allow hackers to steal sensitive data without users knowing, one of them affecting chips made as far back as 1995.'
SOURCE:
https://www.theguardian.com/te...

2) Give credit where credit is due. There are still more MEN in the workforce than women. There is still 60+% majority in the workforce. Pretending there is no lazyness in the white male 60% majority is naive.
SOURCE: https://www.americanprogress.o...

The totals for #2 are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2012. Considering past progressions, stats for 1995 when the chips were designed would show an even larger share --thus, onus-- towards that non-diverse group.

Samsung isn't a US company (the other 2 you mentioned are Californian). The world mostly looks at SJW concerns and laughs at the theatrics going on in North America.
The gender identity fight plaguing the US internet today is diversity politics. Funnily, the same source claims there's only 6.3% gay and trans employees in the US, with 7 of 9 million of those workers belonging to the private sector.

Another view of diversity is that of disabled persons. The same source in 2012 claims that while approximately 11% of americans have actual disability, almost 80% of those disabled folks are OUT of the workforce. This is leaving nearly 6 million present, in a world with a total 300million Americans (I don't have the numbers for total workforce participation out of that 300m)

It's not, nobody said it was...

This guy said it:

https://www.theguardian.com/en...

I fail to find the quote you claim is in there - or was that another straw man you just set on fire?

It's not, nobody said it was...

This guy said it:

https://www.theguardian.com/en...

Obama using social media in 2012? Groundbreaking and innovative https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

  Trump doing the same thing in 2016? Congressional hearings!

Individuals cannot be trusted to do the right thing for the greater good

Found an Authoritarian... So I can not be trusted, and therefore it is Ok to compel me. All for the Greater Good[TM] — because common interest before self-interest, correct?

there is a government body that knows what is good and harmful. It's called the FDA

Yes, and only a few years ago the FDA were telling us, we should not eat fat and cholesterol. And now the same organizations tell us it was all wrong. "Healthy habits" my tail — Western world is horribly obese because we trusted the government, that "fat is bad".

helping people have safe eating habits

That's what parents are for. Parents might know better, than their children. The government does not know better than we do, it does not consist of omniscient selfless and benevolent wizards. Government officials have the same passions, flaws, and vices as the rest of us. Working for NASA does not make anyone more credible than working for Exxon-Mobil.

You can choose to trust someone else at your own peril, but your Authoritarian insistence, that I trust him (and submit to him!) too makes it my peril as well. No way

1) If Sweden has a Deep State or oligarchs like the US does, parties don't really care who trades positions of power in public as long as hegemony is maintained.

2) Not backwards...soon as Svartholm was in Sweden, he was interrogated for the alleged crimes in Denmark, which means it was their plan to do so all along. Just swapping Svartholm for Assange and the Americans for the Danes, as soon as Assange lands in Swedish custody, the only people he'll see for weeks are his interrogators. Interrogators who will probably consist of a Swedish official for proprieties sake, and some agents from the CIA and/or the FBI. Only after that will Sweden step back in for what he was arrested for, the alleged sexual assaults. After Assange is cleared of charges or serves a prison sentence, he'll be deported again and end up in US custody. Either because Sweden hands him directly over to the US, or goes through the motions of deporting him to his native Australia, who then hands him over to the United States.

3) Didn't you say that officials in Sweden don't have to worry about criminal consequences for their actions? They haven't cared much for domestic or international law in the past, nor have the other two countries involved. Besides, as it's been the UK that has been pressuring Sweden to keep this farce going, they're not likely to protest too much if some rules get broken. If Sweden really wants to make a show of it, they can skirt this issue by the aforementioned deportation to Australia. Then Australia arrests and deports him at the request of the United States.

4) Because the US has done many heinous things, from torture to deliberately bombing MSF hospitals, openly kidnapping a journalist from a first world country is still a bit far. Thus the psyop of the assault allegations and INTERPOL arrest warrant. If Assange had instead been taking refuge in, say Lebanon, they probably would have bagged him and blamed it on Hezbollah, or something. Little harder to do that in London or Stockholm.

In any case, if these reports are to believed, this stage of Assange's life is about to come to a close, and we'll see what the three countries do.