This study in no way outs men impersonating women. In fact it specifically identifies gender for analysis by comparing it to the linked blog/website profile information and assuming that "the effort involved in maintaining this deception in two different places suggests that the blog labels on Twitter data are largely reliable". Basically it assumes that anyone attempting to impersonate the opposing gender is a tech ignorant moron that has made no effort to create a persona - something that is contrary to pretty much every piece of information we have on people who do this.

Overall, a poorly constructed study that oversells what it discovers and is then exagerated and stretched by the media who claim things that even the study isn't pretending that it does - in other words a typical day in research and scientific reporting.

They also had a handful of Amazon Mechanical Turk users identify gender for the same tweets and they were 67.3% accurate for single tweets compared to the automated system's 67.8%.

They claim 75% accuracy when they analyze every tweet the account produced.

According to the study's (dubious) technique of identifying the gender of tweeters, the breakdown is 42% female, 35% male, 23% unidentified.

To be fair California (and all the other states) don't trust their citizens to pay the use tax with good reason - the vast, vast majority don't. Not only is it complicated and time consuming for the individual consumer to do so it also results in things online costing more than they appear to and thus less money in their pocket.

Amazon also trusts the citizens aren't going to pay the use tax - their entire business model requires it and thus why they are fighting so hard against it. Without being able to avoid paying taxes the goods Amazon (and other online retailers) sell aren't particularly better priced than those you could buy at your local brick and mortar store - so instead of the purchase tradeoff being something like 20% cheaper on Amazon but more convenient at a local store it would become only a 5-10% price advantage at which point they start losing a lot of sales due to convenience. I'm sure brick and mortar stores would love to be able to use Amazons 'the customer is responsible for paying the sales tax' line and drop all their prices too. However we don't do that for two major reasons (1) It is completely rediculous and wasteful to force the customer to track and record all their purchases and once annually pay the accumulated tax amount rather than having the retailer collect it at the time of purchase with minimal cost or imposition and (2) People won't pay it and the cost of tracking purchases down and litigating non-payment would be prohibitive, just like doing it for online purchases is.

Amazon can not be nearly as profitable if they had to charge customers the real cost of items so their business model relies on encouraging widescale fraud in order to maintain a price disparity. It is unethical and immoral and probably illegal too. If it isn't actually illegal than it should be - something that these laws intend to address.

So in addition to outsourcing manufacturing and customer service, we can also start outsourcing retail jobs?

How exactly do you think the American economy is going to continue to function when there are no jobs on a permanent basis rather than just a temporary one? Already the wealthy avoid taxation on a vast scale, without the middle class and poor paying taxes (something that requires an income) how will the government avoid collapse?

That might make sense if we were talking about a single study but the data is consistently out, in the same manner, across hundreds of studies over several decades. You can't just accidentally miss the really promiscous women every single time (well you could but it is statistically improbable).

The only two viable explanations I've ever heard (and I use the term loosely for the second) is that either there is consistent incorrect self reporting or extremely promiscous women have such a higher rate of death that they are able to rack up huge numbers of partners and then throw the reporting off by dying and thus no longer being counted.

Personally I really wish there was a way to ensure routing so that my traffic would never enter or be processed by a particular jurisdiction to avoid legal problems and illegal (but commonplace) monitoring.

I would happily accept the potential for greater latency to keep anything that does not have an end destination in the US from passing through that country. The madcap laws and privacy invasions don't even recognize the token acknowledgement of the constitution that citizens get for us foreigners and I'd feel much better not being hostage to the American governments descent into totalistarianism.

I actually agree with you on governments having the right to control their own TLD and leverage that towards employment but lets be honest that this is not why Kazakhstan has made this law. Nazarbayev the (first and only) president, commander of the armed forces, and head of the political party which controls the 'democratic' legislature is a dictator in all but name. The reasoning for this law is to place Google's data where it is physically vulnerable to being seized, blackmail, or some similar tactic. The government there is interested solely in suppressing opposition and increasing personal wealth and power rather than high minded concepts like ensuring their populace has jobs except insomuch as it impacts their real interests.

Because it wouldn't let them punish Kazakhian internet users for their governments foolish behaviour. As a result it wouldn't allow Google to implicitly threaten any other country (due to lack of economic clout and small internet using population) where a law like this might actually have a non-negligable effect with unhappy constituents as a means of preventing them from excercising their sovereign rights and obliging Google to abide the laws outside the US.

Mostly because unlike the US the system is not designed to encourage corruption. You get people making bad decisions because they are wrong rather than because they were bought off by commercial interests who don't want restrictions to impair their ability to make money.

-Lobbying is tightly controlled and restricted with real criminal penalties levied against both the politicians and the companies who violate the restrictions.
-Revolving doors between regulators and industry are often illegal and even when not are considered highly inappropriate causing major social suffering and diminishing their ability to abuse their previous contacts.
-Money is a less significant player in elections. Most countries have some form of public financing and thus the legal bribery of the US does not occur.

So very true.

On the other hand Europe does have its extreme right which is a touch to the right of any US politician who actually is capable of getting elected. The simple fact is that in European countries that have minimal visible minorities due to lack of imigration the extreme right can get away with extremely overt racism and still occasionally grab a seat or two in a way Americans can't. Instead the republicans and tea party just have to look on with awe and stick to using dogwhistle language and covert racism.

On the other hand compare the quality of news programming available in France and the UK which 'restricts' them to producing relatively unbiased, non-promotional programs to the US which does not.

US news programming varies wildly in quality from Fox News,a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican party (or vice versa), to ABC, NBC, and CBS which compete with each other for the position of television tabloid. At best in the US you are getting wildly pro-corporate news typically focused on extremely rare crimes in far away places, this weeks sex scandals, and junk filler that oftens is promoting a product. In France and Britain you get in-depth analysis of real issues, opinions and info from non-partisan sources, and less tabloid fear mongering.

Removing bias from newscasting may not be why the European news networks produce content that is head and shoulders above Americans but the lack of restrictions in the US certainly does not ensure that anything resembling news is actually produced.