Actually, conservative economics requires that you provide appropriate incentives to corporations and then they will act in their own economic best interest. If you provided a right to sue to people whose informatin was stolen, or a set $$ cost that would go to the injured party, then if the $$ is fixed appropriately, they shouldn't care whether their information is hacked. If it is, they get the $$ which is what it costs them to get the problem fixed appropriately. If they don't get hacked, no problem. But D&B has no economic incentive (other than its own corporate losses) to keep the data safe, so they are not putting much effort into safeguarding it.

People's data currently has no value in this economy, it seems, that is worth anyone protecting.

The women's march was about going from complacency (Obama was great, Hillary is great) to political activity (Trump is an a**hole). It was women who were not politically active saying, now I'm going to be politically active. The women who marched are now making phone calls, sending postcards, attending hearings at the state house, and sending checks. The women's march was I guess, if you're a guy, Tarzan banging his chest before he gets down to business.

Sorry, you are quite correct. Many people have a problem with the high prices of pharmaceuticals in the US. The point I was trying to make was that Pharma/governments have figured out how to differentially price the same product in different countries and to a first approximation, make that differential pricing stick. This is what the subject was about, is it possible to do it, so I gave an example where it's done.

Another example, closer to the point, is people working for a university: we all get much software (and access to otherwise paywalled websites) free under the University's site license. So, differential pricing of software is in fact operating in the US already in a way that software producers don't mind. Imagine a world where your employer provides you not only healthcare, but also software for personal use . . .

When it comes to pharmaceuticals, no one has a problem with high prices in the US and regulations lowering the prices of the same drugs in other countries. I understand IP is different in that there's no physical pill, but the overseas pharmacies are doing quite well. So if it could work for pharmaceuticals, it should be able to work for software.

For example, University in Country X gets software for low price, and will lease it to students in Country X, while assuring publisher that it can control it is giving it only to students in country X.

I have noticed much profanity-laden language by my family members staring at computers - and they're not even admins. Joking aside, the study is bullshit science (not real) and should not have gotten past the reviewers.

Lame duck Congress can act more rationally than Coming Up for Re-Election Congress. Maybe not fully rational, but better.

Most of my friends won't/wouldn't use Signal, and if you are always talking to people with default Apple/Android, nothing is encrypted anyway and the fact Signal doesn't attach photos easily and couldn't handle group texts made it not valuable. So I quit using Signal.

Other option of course is ditch the friends/family who won't use Signal for friends/family who do.

OK, so I'm an amateur, and I don't know squat, but even I know you don't ever run Adobe Flash for any reason on your browser. And if you really really feel the need to run Adobe Flash, you do it in a throwaway browser that you only use to run Adobe Flash. So is this really news.

No worries, the European Convention on Human Rights is a separate treaty than Brexit so GCHQ et al will still be out of compliance for this type of snooping, even after Brexit goes through (whatever that ends up meaning).

You do know Lethal Weapon is set to be a TV show next year.?.

The problem is far different than VWs because it is so easy to verify. Fill car with gas. Drive. Refill. Divide miles driven by gallons used. My Nissan never gets the mileage it says it should, nor what it claims to be getting with inboard electronics. BFD. It's like almost not cheating when it's that easy to check. Consumer Reports will even check for me. But they don't check emissions.

To build the world and everything in it in 6.5 hour days. Wow.

I find your argument that religion and all spirituality etc is a poison of the mind to be factually inaccurate, given the scientific although circumstantial evidence that people with religion tend to be healthier, happier, live longer, etc than people without religion. If you extend religion to spirituality and meditation practices, there is direct evidence of lower levels of stress hormones and even beneficial epigenetic changes that are caused by meditating.

Perhaps you have a problem with the specific term religion, similar to creationists' problem with specifically human evolution.

1) we knew what the wolves were saying, and by the way, do dogs howl in different languages? and

2) the poster sent us to a non-firewalled version of the story, which the authors can do but apparently haven't. (Grr. Elsevier)

Brevity is the soul of obfuscation. "Can a program designed to obfuscate author identity defeat a program designed to verify author identity?"