There's not some mythic unattainable "truth" surrounded by complete lies.

Every statement is a mixture of truth and lies, the goal of decent people it to not only call out the lies in every statement, but to still recognize that an imperfect statement can still contain a great deal of truth.

Right now Russia is telling egregious lies. The proper action isn't to stand back and act like it's fine because everybody lies, it's to drag them out and discredit them so that they have a reason to start telling the truth.

And when someone else lies you should drag them out and discredit them, but to brush off misdeeds as something that's normal is how Russia became the joke it is today.

No it doesn't.

The evidence points to Russian special forces and regular army being responsible for the annexation of Crimea.

In the war in Eastern Ukraine the evidence points to Russian paramilitary organizations operating with the backing of the Russian government and some level of direction. But there's no evidence of actual Russian soldiers in East Ukraine. To be honest they'd be dumb to send any. There's more than enough Cossacks and Chechen militias they can direct over unofficially. No point in sending over official soldiers who could be killed, identified, and drag Putin into an actual war he doesn't want.

Putin still bears full culpability for every death that's occurred, but he's keeping official Russian soldiers out of it.

Honestly I'm not entirely sure what to call them, but terrorists isn't it (though the Ukrainian government has called them that all along).

Generally I call them rebels or separatists, but that doesn't really apply. To be a rebel or a separatist it's implied that you're fighting your own government, but in this case many, if not most, are Russian citizens motivated by a combination of nationalism, adventurism, and wealth. Guerrillas maybe? What do you call a paramilitary organization that invades another country to try to steal some of its territory?

Don't worry, they all came away just as convinced and reassured as to the irrefutability of their conclusions.

He also left Obama a healthy economy and a basket of puppies!

If I were Christian I don't think I'd care about anyone's portrayal because Christianity is so strong that people would know my beliefs regardless. But if I felt Norse mythology was a part of my heritage I'd be pretty concerned about what Marvel did because that would be the major exposure a lot of people got to my heritage.

I think black Thor is tacky, objecting has nothing to do with being racist but the fact they're screwing with other people's mythology. Now if they made Spiderman a gay black man? Or Professor X a female? Now those are changes I could endorse and the resulting changes would make the character's fundamental characteristics more compelling.

As for this case I'd say Marvel is the one being misogynist. The basic implication of this stunt is that the only way they can see to make a flagship female character is by taking a male flagship character and turning them female.

A woman shouldn't have to piggyback on a man to gain fame.

The previous changes were necessary to integrate Thor into the Marvel universe.

This change unnecessarily alters a core characteristic of who Thor is.

It would be the same thing if they turned Thor into a telepath or a pacifist, if you're going to change a core characteristic of Thor then don't call it Thor. Or if you do do it then you should have a proper motive such as an artistic twist as opposed to pandering.

And why is it Norse Mythology they're screwing with anyways? It's one thing to base a character off of a Norse god, but screwing with that bit of heritage for blatant pandering? That strikes me as disrespectful.

If Marvel really wanted to be bold and challenge readers they should have made a female Professor X. A woman in a position of intellectual authority? Now that's a change I could respect.

Not necessarily, there's a real question whether ./ got paid or suckered.

Just because someone sets some random people up for a five minute interview with a chatbot doesn't mean they're running a Turing Test.

Give people enough time to conduct a proper conversation, hell give them time to ask the chatbot for some original content. Do that and you'll be running a real Turing Test.

The reason you keep hearing about these simplified Turing Tests is those are the only tests people run because those are the only tests computers can pass. But passing a true Turing Test is still a great standard for detecting real AI, and something no one can even approach doing yet.

It seems you can be compelled to reveal your passwords in the US if they're looking for evidence they already know to exist rather than information they may not know about.

I don't agree with her suing Tor but I disagree that this is necessarily an instance of the Streisand Effect.

Not taking action would be succumbing to a form of the heckler's veto. I suspect in a lot of cases they start out trying to get rid of the info and most stop when it becomes obvious they'll only make it more public. But in a case like this she might be willing to face the publicity because she thinks seeking justice is more important than giving up.

I'm playing a bit of the devil's advocate but I'm assuming that the US has an extradition treaty with Maldives.

The US has a fairly responsible justice system when it comes to this. If a person from Russia/Nigeria/a country with a dubious court system is stealing credit card info in the US/Canada/EU I think it's absolutely appropriate for one of the latter countries to seek that individual's arrest when that person enters a jurisdiction with an extradition treaty.

So for me the US having the Maldives' police arrest and extradite this guy would be fine.

The iffy part is the US using it's own law enforcement. I can understand the US wanting to run the show so nothing goes wrong, but it definitely speaks to a general disrespect to the sovereignty of the country in question.

There's also the possibility it's there to help Russian companies (and the economy).

Facebook wants to operate in Russia? Well then they need to open up a Russian server farm and put all the Russian data in there, or pay massive arbitrary fines, or get blocked. Lots of Russian companies probably use Amazon's EC2, now Amazon either needs to put up a region located in Russia or those Russian companies need to use a Russian cloud company.

It's the same fundamental reason why Putin has been working so hard to keep Ukraine away from the EU. Russian companies suck and can't compete against the west, if cheap high quality EU goods can flow into Russia then the current Russian industry won't be able to compete. Similarly if high quality tech companies can serve Russians then the Russian tech companies can't compete. Solution? Screw with Ukraine to try and keep the EU physical goods out, and pass data laws to keep foreign websites out.

I did read the details of the case and I have to disagree. He's not ranting, he's fantasizing, but there's no evidence that he ever planned to go further.

He offered to kidnap someone, he never did kidnap them, nor did he or anyone else complain when these plans didn't happen. He said he built a pulley in the emails but he didn't actually build it, nor did he make any chloroform. Surely if you're making a criminal conspiracy involving chloroform, a human sized oven, and a pulley system then actually obtain chloroform, a human sized oven, and a pulley system.

Ok, here's another scenario.

You really hate John and claim you want to kill him on FB. You look around for information on poisons because you're curious, or you're fantasizing about how you could kill him. And because the guy really pisses you off you become mildly obsessed and gather information using a work database (even though doing so for this purpose is unauthorized and illegal).

Yet under no scenario could you actually imagine yourself doing so much as punching John.

I wouldn't, not because he's a criminal, but just because he'd creep the hell out of me.

This is a guy who might commit a serious crime in the future, perhaps even wants to. But he has never done so, nor has he specifically planned to do so. All of his previous plans were merely elaborate fantasies that he never took a concrete step towards implementing.

Personally I'd recommend a mandatory psychological evaluation. IF that suggested he could take the step towards moving those crimes into reality then I might consider watch and mandatory counselling. Otherwise he's innocent of everything except the misuse of the database.