If they confine their analysis to species that would leave fossils, would that satisfy you?

I believe mollusks and vertebrates would fossilize under the right circumstances. So, does the science indicate an extinction is underway among those groups?

The answer is yes. To the extent that we have relevant data, it suggests that a mass extinction is underway.

We really only have two choices: Pretend we know nothing, or compare the extant data with what we already know.

These social media companies are all private firms operating for a profit in a free market economy. They can censor whomever and whatever they want.

Anyone is free to create an uncensored social service, and some people have done exactly that---or at least claim they have.

As long as people are able to create alternatives, there is no need for new rules. The existing protections and restrictions on speech are largely adequate.

If you're not welcome on a mainstream platform, find an appropriate niche platform. Literally everyone here has done that, at least once.

Regarding this restriction:

A lot of those characters are used for wildcards, control flow, or escaping.

Security isn't binary, but it can benefit from simple yes/no rules most of the time. This is one of those cases.

If you cannot guarantee that those characters are safe for EVERY service which accesses that text, then you should prohibit those characters. This includes services deployed by any suppliers, vendors, VARs, partners, etc that may receive the data.

There may be cases where practical requirements or ease-of-use are more important than a strong security posture. But if there's no bona fide need for them, then the restriction is a reasonable measure to protect any upstream or downstream systems that will process that input---especially if they are not your own.

They'd make a copy of his hard drive and dig around with a dedicated tool like Encase, most likely. Even without specialist software, they could mount the HD image and grep for anything.

For instance... they could also do a hex search of his entire HD looking for Base64 strings of the appropriate length (because they'd know what to expect based on the algorithm/length of the public key). On any hits, they could see what file it is contained in, and ignore things that are obviously application-related data. Prioritize anything stored in user-generated text files... probably wouldn't take too long.

All they'd need is one copy of the key on unencrypted or weakly encrypted media. I'd assume they seized every computer, drive, and disc in his possession. And they'll get inside personal safes, storage units, deposit boxes, etc too if there's anything that ties them to the suspect.

It doesn't matter if you convert stolen USD into other assets or currencies... it's still getting seized. Buy a car with it? Seized. Purchase real estate? Seized.

They're just treating Bitcoin the same as any other currency. If he had moved the money into Euros in an EU bank, they'd start a process to freeze and reclaim those funds.

They'll be prohibited from processing transactions with US banks at a minimum, and the US can probably rope the EU into blacklisting them too.

That's on top of any potential contempt charges for defying a court order.

They can challenge a warrant or other orders as being too vague or lacking jurisdiction... but if and when the court decides that they must comply, the penalties can get very steep.

Maybe, but probably not.

The US government will undoubtedly return Sony's $154M once everything works its way through the courts. But they're not obliged to surrender the Bitcoins that the perpetrator purchased. Sony lost cash and therefore can be made whole with cash.

The USG could transfer those Bitcoins to Sony, but it's arguably wasteful. They could defray the operating costs of the agency by selling the BTC at market value, compensating Sony in fiat currency, and keeping the balance. Sony isn't entitled to a profit just because they were defrauded.

Seizing a computer and using forensic techniques to recover data is not illegal.

Recovering the private key for the wallet is clearly acceptable because it is a piece of evidence. It ties him to the stolen money---this would be in addition to any other ties that may exist from handling the fiat currency, but more evidence is always better.

If they did have to circumvent security measures to retrieve the key, that is legal with a court order. I'd assume the police/DA did the paperwork, but his lawyers can challenge it if they didn't.

As they say, the Devil is in the details. AND THIS IS A CHRISTIAN NATION. So you keep your details and your damnation, and we can live our lives like nothing changed.

Given how long it'll take to yield practical applications, I'm kind of wishing I was born today so I can see how it plays out

Now that Microsoft has essentially stopped charging users for OS upgrades, they are looking at other ways to monetize their platform.

I already use another browser, but if I used Edge in the first place then this would make me stop.

Make it an optional add-on, like everyone else. I assume this is transmitting sales and browsing data without user consent by default---because some things never change.

To enable ForceSync, you either have to use Group Policy, deploy Windows in kiosk mode, or manually set the registry key for it.

This should go without saying, but... If the user is expecting any privacy on corporate devices, they're wrong 99.9% of the time as a matter of law. Go ahead and sue an employer for breach of privacy on a company-owned computer if a lawyer will even take that case.

As intrusive as this "feature" is, ForceSync isn't relevant to personal, standalone machines.

Maybe in the US. The EU has sanctioned companies quite heavily for similar actions.

Microsoft had to release a special edition of Windows for the EU market (with less obnoxious media player and browser integration), so it's not unreasonable to believe they will be taken to task for this as well.

Not that it will mean anything for us in the States.

You're misunderstanding the descriptor "quite small".

Jupiter has roughly 11X the diameter of Earth, ~88K km vs 8K km. If we cube that ratio to compare volumes, we could fit about 1,300 Earth-sized objects into one Jupiter-sized object.

Even if Earth were 10X its current volume, it would still be tremendously smaller than Jupiter. So something could be significantly larger than Earth and still be small, in the grand scheme of things.

There are three things that affect the visibility of objects in the solar system: distance, size, and reflectivity of the surface. Since the distance is great, this hypothetical planet would have to be fairly large or reflective in order to be readily detectable.

Don't be a clown. The DoD is one of the biggest RHEL licensees

The article indicates the US Army is the largest, but it's a few years old at this point so I'll hedge it down to "one of the largest"---but bear in mind that the Army is only one branch of the DoD. The Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard probably have a RHEL footprint as well.

And that's not even considering other distros or custom builds for embedded systems.

All of these threats have been known and understood for decades. There are prevention and mitigation measures, which have also been around for years.

Yet these businesses continue to engage in piss poor security practices. The have little-to-no monitoring, prevention, or resilience.

Every single time I've read the details of a ransomware incident, there were at least three serious shortcomings in security or general IT practices. And being in a different industry is no excuse; if your business cannot prepare for a well-known threat, outsource to someone who can.