Why should [Stripe] be forced to pick a side?

The reality is they probably were. Agreed it is probably not Stripe's choice -- but if it is, I feel that all payment processors have a duty to not pick and choose the businesses they will cut off. Trade and the economy are too important to allow payment gateways to act as a choke point for morality enforcement. If the business is illegal, it should be shut down. If it is not, all businesses should have equal right and opportunity to engage in trade.

Privately operated toll bridges shouldn't be allowed to ban FedEx trucks, electric companies shouldn't be allowed to refuse service to stores that sell cigarettes, ISPs shouldn't be allowed to throttle content providers who don't pay extra, and payment processors shouldn't be allowed to enforce morality.

But, again, I think this was more likely DOJ or ATF bullying, not Stripe's choice.

It's also a truly fascinating, troubling demonstration of how the ruling could work.

Yes, but not of how it does work. Libel law could work exactly the same way, but it doesn't.

It is important to find cases where this ruling does cause problems, so we can amend or reverse it. Pointing out cases where it could result in legally enforced removal of information that is in the public interest, but almost certainly won't, is crying wolf and is harmful to the goal of reforming the ruling.

According to New Zealand's current Trade Minister, Tim Groser, full disclosure of what is being discussed would likely lead to "public debate on an ill-informed basis before the deal has been done."

I do not understand the lack of clarity in his speech. He could simply have said, "The proletariat are too ignorant for their own good, and must be protected from their stupidity by the aristocracy, like dogs or goats."

But considering just how straight white male oriented the tech industry is

You mean demographic-wise or acceptance-wise? If the former, maybe, I haven't really taken a statistical sample. But if you mean the latter, where have you been working? I mean, when I was working in NYC and SF, and even Seattle, I suppose it would be expected that most of my fellow geeks didn't care about sexual orientation and were vocally pro gay rights, but even now in Phoenix almost all of my geek friends feel the same. I've always assumed it was a natural result of being future-oriented and of geekiness being an outsider culture. If your geek friends are homophobes, they'd strike me as statistically rare. Maybe you just need new friends.

What happens when we start tuning our restraint systems for the obese? Will they continue to function properly for trim people, will they work less effectively, or might they actually become harmful, like airbags for kids?

Perhaps there will be restraint system option packages. The Kid-Size, Fit-Size, Fun-Size, and Super-Size. Of course, then there might be size inflation like women's dresses, so eventually fit people will be driving size zero cars and slender people won't be able to buy off-the-rack at all.

In exchange for the major corporate backing, tech reporters at SugarString are expressly forbidden from writing about American spying or net neutrality around the world, two of the biggest issues in tech and politics today.

You gotta admire the chutzpah. Even as they are saying to the FCC that they can be trusted with the authority to be the gatekeepers of the Internet, they put on a public display of their intent to inhibit public policy debate on the very issue of Net Neutrality itself.

The extraordinary lack of self-consciousness is difficult to fathom. It rises to the level of, "Let them eat cake."

My personal choice now is Gentoo. Maybe it would be good for you, maybe not.

Others who have similar tastes to mine have recommended Gentoo. I'll probably give it a try. Thanks for the getting started tips!

I would rather run a server OS on my desktops than a desktop OS on my servers. That's why I use Linux as my main OS instead of Windows or OS-X. And I'll keep doing so, though I may, sadly, have to leave Debian after more than a decade.

Read this previous article so you can more fully appreciate the extent to which Elon Musk either is misinformed or is misrepresenting what it takes to drive a car. Computers are amazing at playing chess or doing math. They still can't compose a sonata. Driving a well instrumented path in the most predictable conditions is like the former. Reacting to the unexpected without exacerbating the situation is much more like the latter; and the latter is where most of the accidents happen.

News of the event caught MSU's scientific community largely by surprise. Creation Summit secured a room at the university's business school through a student religious group, but the student group did not learn about the details of the programâ"or the sometimes provocative talk titles â" until later.

Don't Feed The Trolls. They like when you feed them, making you part of the problem. Stop paying attention to intentionally provocative attention whores.

When soldiering becomes less of a duty and more of a way to delay starting out your life of dismal poverty, you start making the wrong kind of army.

Wait, we can do worse; how about making enlistment an alternative to a prison sentence for newly convicted criminals? (actually, that sounds so awful, I'm surprised it isn't already in place)

I suggest we find out why there is only one fast ISP per area,

Here's a hint: It's the same reason there is only one electricity provider in most areas. Generally, it is not cost efficient to run multiple sets of wires, but everyone wants electricity.

and fix that problem.

The solution is the same as with electricity. We've tried all the other solutions, many, many, many times over, and we keep coming back to the same small set of best answers; all over the world, in all kinds of cultures and every shade of Western economics.

That's just endless buck-passing. The reality is that the kind of fuck ups that could happen, did happen, like a storyline from some cheap zombie/biothriller novel.

And only two people got infected. Yes, errors in protocol happen, and can be expected to happen, and did happen, and will happen again. And only two people got infected. That is because of exactly what the CDC has said from the outset. Ebola is hard to get. Even with the errors in protocol that we know can, do, and will happen, particularly at the beginning when some people have there guard down, Ebola does not magically leap tall buildings to infect everyone within a thousand yards.

More people in the US will get infected, and more will die. But if you want to reduce your risk of death, worrying about Ebola comes way further down the list than, for example, eating healthier, exercising, and keeping your blood pressure down by not worrying about insignificant threats like Ebola. Wash your hands, cover your mouth when you cough, and if it's wet and it isn't yours, don't touch it; but those are always good ideas. Now go on about your business and tell people to stop being panic-addled nitwits.

even if we were to go 100% solar tomorrow, we wouldn't have enough energy for this world. Period.

You're way off.

As such, the trust is left to the open source community, and is that really so different than leaving it to a corporation with closed source?

Yes, it really is so different. Open Source provides an additional avenue for security auditing. With closed source software, any auditing body must be authorized to view the source code by the owner of the software. With Open Source, anyone can audit it. That does not mean that anyone has audited it, but being able to do so without having to contact the software distributor and get their permission is a substantial difference.

If you want highly secure software, you have to verify that one or more trusted third parties have audited the code. You can't skip that step with either kind of software, it's just easier to get it done with Open Source.