This right here is the problem. It barely does either. All is does is contain prisoners for a small amount of time and
the only thing most prisoners learn is usually more bad habits.

I have a friend who went to prison for 7 years as a sexual offender (for being 23 and dating a 17 year old coworker who already had a child).
In order to get out, he had to take a sexual offender's class. He gave some money to another inmate so his punishment was
to be banned from taking his class so he was not eligible for parole and served his entire 7 years.
At the end of the 7 years, he was released without even having taken the mandatory class.
So the little bit of rehabilitation that was supposed to have happened was taken away as a punishment.
Our prisons are containment. Actually, it's worse that that. It's almost gladiator training.
Take the worst of society, put them all in a giant room and have them fight for a few years and let them go.
They come out meaner, more calloused, with no money and no job prospects and a record so its hard to even get a job.

It would likely be much more cost effective to bury plastic.
Buried plastic supposedly takes thousands of years to decompose.
You can get tons of contaminated plastic from recycle centers for free.
Ironically though, that contaminated plastic already gets buried in landfills
which effectively serves the same purpose.

It makes no sense to bury trees while we still are removing dead trees in the form of coal or oil from the ground.
It would make more sense to buy up coal mines and oil fields and cap them and shut them down.

People in the middle know about those issues which is why they are in the middle.
People in the middle generally want some form of "safe, legal, and rare"
Complications and developmental deformities are generally not considered "elective abortions" and the vast majority of both sides want to remain legal.

He was referring to the side of the poster before him not himself. He clearly stated that both sides are crazy which somewhat implies that he is in the middle as people generally don't believe their own views are crazy.

Slashdot has always been about stuff that Nerds and Geeks find interesting. It has never been exclusively tech. Yes, Nerds and Geeks find tech stuff interesting so tech stuff tends to dominate but they also find other stuff interesting. Dates fall into this as it's notorious how complex dates and times get. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

The OP intentionally didn't pick a side. Why are you so quick to paint him as the opposition? He was rightfully saying that the extreme of both sides are crazy and we should let the sane middle decide.

I'm not sure this is even true. People don't go to facebook to see the news. They go to facebook to see their friend's posts.
News articles don't bring people to facebook, it actually takes people away from facebook when they click on a link.
If their friends post less news articles, it is a win for everyone, including facebook.
Facebook might get a tad less engagement as people no longer have news articles to post and like but I'm not sure that's even true.
News articles are a lot like ads. People tolerate and click on them but no one is there for the news.

Collective bargaining only works if the collective has something to bargain with.
Facebook could almost instantly block posting links to news articles and it would probably improve their service.
So threatening to block them or refusing to negotiate with the collective after it passes is basically the same thing.
I think news articles underestimate their importance to facebook.
Google news is a different story but it probably actually hurts facebook because links to news sites takes eyeballs away from facebook.
Facebook would be financially better off if it charged news sites to post on their site.

If they really want to prevent it, use an obvious watermark or unrealistic non-vital elements. If you are going for ultra realism, you might not want 3 eyed opponents or blue blood, but there are background things you can do that don't affect the realism of the battle like a watermark or having a purple squirrel or magenta colored grass.

I agree. They need to be common enough that you become familiar with them or there needs to be some pattern to them.
the letters currently are d,c,m, micro which is a backwards u, n, p, f, a, z, y, r, q
We would have be much better off using the alphabet and starting with a.
Even starting now, we would be much better off either adding it as either q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z
or sticking with the z,y doing z,y,x,w,v,u,t,s,r,q

And this right here is the problem. If an ISP starts charging netflix, netflix might decide to not pay and the ISP cuts the content or if the country makes it non-optional, netflix could decide to leave the entire country.

The ISP is charging the consumer for access to the internet. It shouldn't matter whether that is netflix, youtube, TOR, or something else. If the consumer is using too much bandwidth, either put monthly/daily limits or have some way to deprioritize based on usage or package. Just like a gym membership, it's really not unlimited as it's oversold. If everyone showed up at the gym on the same day, there wouldn't be enough room. No one likes overage charges but you could progressively slow someone down after they reach their daily or monthly bandwidth limit. Giving customers warnings and/or ways to control it better would also help. If consumers could save a certain percentage off their bill by watching netflix at a lower resolution, some would likely choose this option.

Charging Netflix for their customers using more bandwidth is like taxing a shower manufacturer for the number of showers a customer takes.

Some of them certainly act like employees but many of them like the flexibility of not being an employee and only work on weekends, on every other Wednesday, etc...

What Uber and other gig companies should be fighting for is prorated benefits. This is the way we should handle companies like Mcdonalds too. If we got rid of the fulltime/parttime designation and companies paid benefits proportionally then someone who worked two 20 hour a week jobs would have the funds to buy their own benefits.

We need significant improvement in technology before the "metaverse" is more than a gimmick.
No one wants to spend all day with a screen strapped to their head.
We might be able to get AR to the level needed to be useful.
Small form factor glasses with a heads up display with useful information I could possibly get behind.
AR could also be great in vehicles. The technology they have developed for self driving cars
could be added to a heads up display to highlight obstacles that a driver might not have noticed
yet giving them more time to react. AR in cars could actually have the potential to lower accident
rates and make it to market before self driving cars.

So you're agreeing with me that it is too expensive.
For SMS, there are services that charge only a few cents per SMS which $5 can buy way more SMS per month than this plan.
Then there are full blown cell phone companies like tello.com, usmobile.com, redpocket.com and other MVNOs.
Redpocket for instance currently has a plan for $2.50 per month with more minutes, texts, and data than this firefox plan.
These companies are providing phone, text, data, and a cellular connection for less.

Most of the cheaper solutions are just like this firefox plan and limited minutes. Your best bet for a "home phone" for kids would be a voip phone assuming you already pay for internet. You can get an unlimited voip line under $10/month

For desktop, your best bet would probably be a sms service where you are paying a cent or two per message sent or received.

When I was saying there were cheaper solutions, there are prepaid cellular services like tello.com, usmobile.com, redpocket.com and other MVNOs. Redpocket for instance currently has a plan for $2.50 per month with more minutes, texts, and data than this firefox plan. https://www.ebay.com/itm/2-50-...