But I thought Canada was better than that

Really, why? We were talking about Echelon here more than fifteen years ago.

Hosers.

(sorry)

It's just an example of a solution looking for a problem

Is your claim that nobody is frustrated by having to frequently re-enter a passcode? You do realize that most people's "solution" to this problem is to have no passcode at all, right?

Most of them are flat.

The steel industry in France is gonna love this rule!

Name one instance in history where the weather has been bad over the entire area of either US grid (east or west) at the same time.

Name one time electricity has been generated in Arizona and used in Maine.

Yeah, that superconducting backbone that runs along the Transcontinental Railroad ... maybe the Chinese can build that one too!

The irony there is that it's these same member banks that have been avoiding a crypto upgrade for over 20 years, forcing Target to manage valuable strings of numbers.

Let's play "who's more wildly negligent here?" It'll be a tough call.

Meanwhile Iceland had marketable torts 1000 years ago and Americans still allow themselves to be screwed over by the class action system.

4K TV is happening ... hang onto your hat and wait for the 4K 60Hz 4:4:4 panels later this year. Almost there.

Of course I'm buying the first 50" 8K display I can get my hands on for less than $2K. After 30 years of upgrading displays, I think I will be done.

No kidding. I made the switch myself 14 years ago, nearly the same comparison. I was an msql user, found MySQL, then took a job where they used Pg. "Let me show you subselects" and that was that. I'm a total software "liberal" - show me a better solution and I'm there. The degree of software "conservatism" amazes me.

What?

"Editors"

While admiring Cisco's efforts here, this seems hard. At least these criteria would need to be satisfied:

1) the order would have to come in over an actual secure channel and be handled on known-secure systems.
2) the payment could not be processed until the delivery was made. Once the payment is made, the delivery location is compromised for future orders.
3) the shipment would have to be to a location that does not appear on the MLS. The receiver would have to follow tracking and send a courier out to meet the delivery driver (a easy expense for the right customers).

Driving to a distributor for pickup also seems like a good idea, so long as #2 is adhered to, since it amplifies the required effort of an attack to intercept several palettes of gear.

What other attacks are there on such a secure-delivery system using a common carrier?

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded - here and there, now and then - are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck." - Robert A. Heinlein

End of story.
Hydrogen is a volatile gas that is EXTREMELY difficult to store and transport, making it very impractical.

Sound like you got the Reader's Digest version of the story. Methanol fuel cells are the practical version because we already know how to handle liquid fuels. You can even make it from air+water+solar by running the cells in reverse (scaled to factory levels). Look into George Olah's work.

In the US, already, various government agencies have defined "terrorists" as people who store food like the Mormons, support political candidates like Ron Paul, or prefer not to use the banking system.

Disappearing these people under the NDAA is already legal. I guess they could block their website too.

I dont know if this is available in the USA.

It's not. Wire transfers typically cost $30-40. Paypal is much preferred for small amounts. One 'hack' for larger amounts than Paypal will allow is to have an account at national bank and have your friend go to one and deposit cash into your account. Except the national banks usually charge a monthly fee for small accounts, so it's not cheap and it's certainly not easy. Facebook money will be very popular here.

We can't have nice things 'cause terrists (used to be "drugs and mob crime and pedos"). Land of the Free and all that jazz.

"That's just laziness on the part of a manufacturer," Paterson said in a phone interview. "This is cardinal sin."

Then it deserves at least social shaming and ostracism, if not worse than those minor responses to venial sins. Protecting the manufacturers only creates an environment where the incentives are aligned for them to do it again. If manufacturers aren't keenly aware that they need to protect their reputation, then they will cut every corner that doesn't provide them a competitive advantage.

binaural = stereo
3d audio = surround sound (5.1/7.1/8.1/etc)

No, binaural is one presentation modality for a 3D soundstage. You could do it with any given set of speakers if you have the right convolution matrix. Stereo imaging was what I worked on for an undergrad project in the early 90's. We had 5.1 available at the time and nobody called it '3D audio' - "Surround Sound" was the common parlance.

Except, if you read even the summary, you'll discover that they're taking half of estimated spending money, not half of your income.

Let's not be naive - the working poor don't have any "spending money" - they have high debt and have to figure out which bills to pay this month and if it's going to be beans or Ramen tonight.

I doubt the working poor pay no fines, so @SuperKendall is right on this one. If somebody can show that this is, in fact, not true, then by all means prove the Finns to be enlightened (the article does not do that). Until then it's fair to assume that nothing is unusual here and that low-level-crime prosecution is universally used to keep the lower classes down.