I'm going to go ahead and disagree, but not for the reasons you've assumed.

This isn't new, it isn't woke, and it isn't theater. For at least a half-century (my life so far), many women have objected to sexual imagery of other women. Being objectified has been something a significant portion of women are strongly against. Sure, this specific image doesn't have any nudity in it, but it was sourced from one that was. I can absolutely see the legitimacy of the question "you seriously couldn't find something that didn't originate from something objectionable?" That's a really valid question.

Anyway, the bottom line here is that your scoffing at the objectors' complaints is reductive and attaching it to anti-anti-woke sentiments is disingenuous. This isn't about modern sensitivity to identity and respect for things we don't ourselves experience.

Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. That sentence was in response to "how is this any worse?" We don't know exactly how this is any worse and we don't know what the concern is exactly but I was trying to demonstrate that categorically there are examples of how this could be a problem and that there's value in not just saying "everything's fine".

We only know possibilities.

If the signature is compromised (without Apple knowing yet), with OTA updates someone has to additionally man-in-the-middle to present the device a fake update. With this, they still have to man-in-the-middle, but that may involve merely being near the devices in question. Meaning that anywhere in the physical supply chain there's an opportunity for someone to modify a shipment of phones.

The armchair security expert talk here is really just noodling. Yeah, probably Apple will get this right somehow, but depending on how it's done there is room for exploit. And that's worth discussing. Thinking about security is always worthwhile.

And yet...

You've already pointed out the flaw in your assertion. To reinforce it, we've had a constant evolution of refrigerants for air conditioners since we banned using Freon. Sure, these are more expensive - at least at first - but having seatbelts is more expensive than not having seatbelts, and not having motorcycle helmets is cheaper than having them. But it turns out that if you have to regulate an industry into not poisoning children with lead-laced paint on baby toys, manufacturers find ways to make the replacements more efficiently, driving down the price.

As in... stuff like this is useful because while it may not be the final product, it's progress in the right direction.

No. And it hasn't been in thirty years.

FUD.

By volume EV batteries are massively easier to recycle than almost any other e-waste. They're relatively uniform in construction and - as you say - huge. Reclaiming some copper from a cell phone SoC involves a bunch of caustic chemicals to get at it. Reclaiming some lithium from a battery pack is comparatively easy. That's disregarding as-is cell reuse, where a car battery pack is disassembled and viable cells are repurposed for things like power grid storage, where it doesn't matter if the cell is down to 60% of its original holding capacity.

EVs may not be perfect, but the worry about what to do with battery packs isn't justified.

To be fair, the lie is that the assertion was absolute, or permanent immunity. Nobody in the medical community was promising or even hinting at those. It was the antivaxers that conjured that one out of the air to try to justify their stance. "They liked about that, what else did they lie about? Microchips? Infertility? Can't trust them." Same spew as "it wasn't properly tested."

What a bunch of word-salad. Has there ever been a vaccine that was 100% protection against any illness? What was said was "you should get the vaccine", which was the simplest, loudest, most important message. The wall of disclaimers weren't necessary and there's no way the antivax crowd would have signed up. The thing was safe, and the billions of doses administered show us that. That blood clot thing? Interesting thing is that COVID itself causes blood clots... in more cases than the vaccine does. Getting vaccinated literally reduced the odds - key words there - of developing them. Along with everything else.

It was always a personal decision. Not getting vaccinated - for the vast, vast majority of people - was (and still is) the stupid, pointless, selfish decision. The pro-vaccine crowd always respected your decision in exactly the same way non-smokers viewed smokers before smoking in public places was banned: it's your right but you're an idiot for doing it and your second-hand smoke is not appreciated.

I hear you. Honest. It's just the problem of yelling fire in a crowded building when there isn't one. Your right to fabricate stuff should be protected, up until the moment it's actively hazardous. And frankly that's exactly what "expressing views" about risks and efficacy is unless you're an epidemiologist: fabricating stuff. See, if that crowd started their stuff with "I don't have any actual background in this topic but...", we wouldn't be where we are. Experts are experts. They're the ones who are informed. In STEM they're the ones you should trust. (Ie. disregarding politicians and businessmen.) Not "did my own research". Got a lab? No? You didn't do your own research.

And that is where we finally actually agree. There's a huge potential for abuse. I absolutely don't think the current government intends that abuse. They're just pandering for votes. "Think of the children" and "protect the children" is always popular. And once you've got most of the sensible stuff encoded in law, all that's left is bullshit, which this one contains plenty of.

My favorite is that you ask poll questions like "do you think the fines for drunk driving are high enough?" You'll always get a high response rate saying "no". That's without any supporting stats about drunk driving. It doesn't matter if there were ten thousand drunk-driving collisions in the year or literally two. You'll always get told the fines aren't high enough and that not enough is being done. Because the idea of losing a loved one that way is obviously preventable... if only the fines were higher.

In this case it's worse, because the only person an astronomically out-of-proportion fine impacts is the drunk driver. With this bill, the impact as we try to protect kids isn't confined to those that harm them.

Anyway... good talk.

Somewhere along the line we woke up and learned that pithy little whiticisms aren't necessarily right.

On a individual level, we've learned that "harm" isn't isolated to physical wounds. Take as example: fraud. It harms its victim without a single punch being thrown. Solely with words you can significantly harm someone. Take as example: blackmail. Crank it up into sextortion, where (usually) teens are cooerced into doing something adult on camera and then pressured into doing more to avoid that original material being leaked. Again, significant harm where only words are leveraged. Take as example: suicide, especially teen.

Sure, sure, it's important to grow a thick skin because words hurt. But to pretend that they don't is emotionless.

On the mass level, we know how harmful organized disinformation campaigns can be. International election meddling for example is horrid and revolting, and entirely words. Where did the anti-vax sentiment come from that literally led to excess deaths, and economic impact? Maybe it was a few conspiracy nuts but more likely it was organized, weaponized words.

I'm not saying there's an easy answer here. But death-threats are already illegal. Precedent is set and most people are pretty comfortable that's the right choice there. Society evolves and learns, and sometimes our understanding takes a while to catch up, and maybe it is time to suppress teasing-to-death and conspire-to-death type speach. Maybe. Maybe not. But again, not clear.

Agreed. Russia could have stayed on their side of established international border. If they were concerned about "ethnic Russians" being oppressed and eradicated, they could have brought some evidence to the international community and it'd be Ukraine under sanctions, not them. Ukraine is not China, so odds are pretty good someone in the world community would have taken it seriously. Y'know, if it was that bad.

Hey look, random words.

There's no way this administration wanted this war. Sure, it makes Trump's allies look like suicidal zealots to anyone who doesn't get a hard-on when they hear "remove term limits". So that's good PR with their own base. But it obligates the US to spend, spend, spend in an economy suffering global record inflation because compassion, which immediately triggers the political right into a frenzy only rivaled by the words "she, hers" because the Never, Ever Be Caught Being Nice To Anyone party can't stand compassionate spending. Graft? Sure. Charity? No way.

He didn't? You mean other than this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0...

As for why? Because... well, see previous comments about his party and charity. It doesn't matter that having friendly countries between you and your enemies is in your best interest. It doesn't matter that helping the oppressed is moral. It only matters that some countries (full disclosure: my own included) aren't contributing as much as they agreed to.

All he pushed for is you are wrong. That's all. But that's how it goes with his followers and apologists. Lies, misinformation, and ignoring the truth whenever it's inconvenient. As in... pretty much always.

Uh-huh. Look, very close to every single day Trump was in office he said or did something that had the international community throwing a Picard WTF in the air. The guy was unhinged, and still is. It doesn't matter - for instance - that there's effectively zero evidence of Democrat meddling with the election results and that there's actual evidence of Republicans tampering with voting machines, but... he still doesn't understand math well enough to get that he lost. Since the Biden administration came on board, other than some occasional something, something his kid's laptop something, something, there's almost no scandal. Why? Because not a sociopath. That's why.

Sorry for the rant, but man, this post rubbed me the wrong way and I couldn't let it stand as-was.

To be fair, that's not what happened.

They found plenty. The difficulty some people are having is that what they found identified previously unidentified items, and identified them as terrestrial in nature. Just like every other investigation, ever. Just like almost every UFO image, ever. When someone with understanding takes the time and effort to investigate the claims and images, they always have mundane explanations from unintuitive lens effects to unintuitive weather effects to human-made technology that isn't public knowledge to fraud.

While it's not impossible alien cultures will be exploring the universe flying in image artifacts, it seems unlikely.

That's exactly what I figure will happen. Every blade of grass we're accustomed to seeing hand-crafted in glorious 4k will soon be an 800x800 AI-generated blending of every other blade of grass ever uploaded to the Internet, up-scaled back to 4k by another AI trained on the same models. Then the models will start training off each other's output, and every blade of grass we end up seeing will be the same lifeless lump of recursive blandness. Which admittedly is quite efficient.

Exactly, and I've never thought about it this way.

I'd hate to have to work with a police sketch-artist, because I can't really envison faces. I can recognize my wife, but no, I don't "see" her in my mind when I try.

There was a MadTV character which today we recognize as a racist depiction, but the primary line in her skits was effectively "he looked like a man". She was exuberantly, enthusiastically desireous of being helpful describing people, but she just couldn't do it. I now realize I'd be in the same boat, minus the racism. "She looks like a woman. Just the two legs, and her hair is uh... somewhere between this length and that length, and is on top of her head, except where it comes down."

You'd totally have to show me pictures and ask "like this?"

That's a load of hooey.

Is there a shop somewhere that IT is so incompetent they can't schedule and implement a maintenance window and yet has the clout that their whining is heard and their arguments about patching override the real-life lost income due to undesired reboots? Sure. There are probably several. Nepotism exists.

Is it common? Hell no. IT departments almost always have to give in to arguments ranging from "this cost us money" to "the users don't like it" to "it doesn't look nice" to "I don't have to explain myself."

I guess my point is that the OP's histrionics about reboots being a problem isn't due to an OS problem... it's due to misconfiguration.

Sure, but to a certain degree that's sensible. Ease-of-integration is a feature.

What this complaint is about is bogus. Microsoft's cloud environment is open. They have a robust API for a massive pile of functionality, and anyone who wants to can interact with it. You don't need to use Microsoft's tools for everything... you just need to work if you want to use something else. Want to integrate Drop Box with Sharepoint? Fine. Learn some code. Do it. Don't expect Microsoft to do it for you though... because why is it their job?

Google is spreading PR FUD on this one.

Ah yes, "everything bad that happens is because of the political party I don't like".

You're thinking maybe that if the other guys had been in power interest rates wouldn't've been raised to combat worldwide crippling inflation? I mean, maybe the price of everything in America would have stayed low despite almost every other country charging more for the components required to make the everything, right?

Some problems are beyond the blue/red divide that has turned American politics into a Stupidbowl rivalry.