It's Microsoft. Their OS is spyware. Mission accomplished.

Try a law library next time.

"A common carrier is a person or a commercial enterprise that transports passengers or goods for a fee and establishes that their service is open to the general public."

Facebook (for example) is a private service. You have to have a membership and it can be terminated at any time and for any reason.

Facebook is NOT a "telecommunications company" — your ISP is, and whoever they get internet access from is, and whoever Faceboot gets it from is. Facebook's job is not carrying your packets.

Common carriers are also liable for the content they carry except for damage caused by an act of nature, an act of public enemies, fault or fraud by the shipper, or an inherent defect in the goods. Facebook has no legal obligation to you to deliver your content.

Facebook did offer a VPN service called Onavo (which was spyware) and THAT was a common carrier, EXCEPT that it was inspecting packages for non-legal reasons. Common carriers are supposed to deliver packages without inspection unless it is required.

Social media meets literally none of the elements of the definition of a common carrier.

We were discussing 3d graphics for Windows guests on Linux hosts, which under Virtualbox was always bad and is still bad.

1) InTRAnet of things. IoT devices on your network belong in an isolated VLAN. If something needs Internet access, you don't want it
2) Where possible, depend on standards rather than brands or services. With every component, ask yourself: "What if this stops working tomorrow?" ZWave / Zigbee are good. Google Home / Apple HomeKit not so much... use them as a subsidiary service if you must, but never as your core service. In that sense, Google opening up their service with an API means (I hope) that you can use it as a subsidiary service.
3) Your central hub should be open source with a healthy community. If not, you will be rebuilding everything before the decade is out.

In other words: use Google Home as a subsidiary service to whatever hub you are running, and have a think about what you'll do when the service is no longer available.

Sadly, Brother is now dabbling in toner DRM, so they may also have a dark future. Do extra homework... Sigh.

There is really no question whether you are making things up while accusing me of same. If you had been paying attention to discussions here on this subject you might be up to speed, though you probably wouldn't. Read the sibling to this comment for concrete supporting examples you seem to be ignorant of.

I'm all for that, but that's not what's going to happen. Or if it does, it will only be because it is being superseded by something worse.

Once again you have not the first clue what a common carrier is, or you are being disingenuous about it because you think I'm dumb enough to fall for that shit. Look it up, noob.

It's fair enough if they report what they deem suspicious transactions to the authorities, and if the authorities then open an investigation if necessary. That's their job. BTW I think the limit here is €2000 these days, and they want to lower the limit for transactions to be monitored (not necessarily reported) to €50 or something like that.

The problem is not reporting to the authorities, but the banks themselves taking action for fear of being fined (a fear that is justified). The banks should not be allowed to act without a court order or something similar, following an investigation that turns up some actual malfeasance. That is how the system is supposed to work, with checks, balances and accountability (well, depending on your country). A bank freezing your account because of a transaction that turns out to be legit can not be held accountable for such mistakes.

There he is again, proving that my punch line was apt since he's a giant pussy.

The way you rule is that corporations are legal fictions and therefore do not have rights. People working for corporations can and do.

Not being able to clip it out didn't mean that it was doing something though, hence further study was needed. It could have just been acting as a delay timer...

Cryptocurrency poisons everything it touches.

The same people who believe in it can be counted on to believe other stupid shit.

Enables? That's a funny word for "requires". It's obviously less free than what we have in the USA now, which oh by the way actually enables removal of bad content when identified.

Saying Citizens United was "dumb" is completely missing the truth.

Citizens United was evil and intentional.

The bulk of Democrats are at best corporate cucks, and some of them are solidly fascist. There's nothing left about them.

HahAHaHAHAHAHAHahAHAHA