It's the simplest life form, and so very, very plentiful.

The even more peculiar conclusion that can be drawn from this is that these "law-enforcement experts" think there's something wrong with offering criminal defense advice in the first place.

To be fair, South Africa is now the rape capital of the world.

Which is not to say that a system of racial oppression was to thank for keeping rape down, but rather to point out that strict policing can be associated with safer streets.

As some others have said in more colorful ways, being a good cop means doing everything you can under the law to get bad cops off the street. Bad cops doesn't just mean those taking bribes, planting evidence, etc. Bad cops includes police officers who unnecessarily approach situations with undue aggression and who unnecessarily escalate situations. I understand that much of an officer's interactions are either with people who aren't at their best or are with people who are just pain rotten to the core, but if that drives them into a pattern of cynicism and aggression not warranted by the situation, they can either self-report and get behind a desk and get counseling until their head gets back to a better place or they're bad cops.

I'm a law-abiding citizen. Minus some exceeding the posted speed limit here and there, I'm not causing trouble. I also happen to work late quite a bit, which has led to numerous interactions with the police. Nearly all of those have been completely reasonable where everyone was decent and the situation was handled without any issue (usually just a "why are you here at [late time]?" followed up with a reasonable explanation, maybe running plates, in and out in 3 minutes kind of thing). In a very small number of cases, I was met by an adrenaline-pumped idiot who was very obviously itching to rip me out of the car and beat the Hell out of me. I've been berated and goaded by a cop who was doing everything he could to escalate the situation to where he could take stronger action. As I said, it's a very tiny number of issues out of all the times I've had contact with officers and I've always kept my cool and been in the right to the point where it didn't turn into anything. But all it would take is one of those adrenaline-pumped alpha assholes deciding I looked at him wrong and but for a camera recording the incident, he could very easily write up the report such that I was the aggressor and was threatening toward him and resisted arrest, thereby justifying any injuries. With that report and the word of the sworn officer, I end up with a criminal record and losing everything I've earned in life.

And that's why it doesn't matter if there are 99 good cops for every one bad cop. Because that one bad cop can ruin so many peoples' lives. We as citizens are second-class when we file a report or step into a court room trying to stop a bad cop doing bad stuff. What's really needed are for all those cops who are decent people to start standing up against the ones who aren't, start calling them on their bullshit, start reporting them at work, and start testifying on behalf of people who are wronged by them. I understand that that hyper-aggressive adrenaline junky alpha asshole is great to have by your side when you're under fire, but you have a duty and a responsibility to either see that he gets right in the head or see that he finds a new profession where he doesn't have any legal authority. The more you protect assholes like that, the more of them you'll find around you and the more the citizens in your community will distrust and even hate the police.

I support the good cops out there trying to help good and decent people and do the right thing. As for the bad cops out for a thrill? Well at the very very least, I want them off the streets and getting help. Stop protecting them. Stop protecting people who protect them.

One advantage is orbital construction. Aside from some rare metals, its probably best to use Asteroid material to construct space vehicles and fuel. The expense of bringing materials from the ground up to orbit is $10,000 per pound or so.

Escalation is the only thing that changes things. Maybe what this country needs is a white nerd to get murdered by a cop. Maybe then the right wingers will be like "Oh, shit, you mean the cop problem is real?"

Then again, the "am I free to go" guy gets ridiculed by the social justice types. They want to pretend that civil libertarians are all bravado, but when those civil libertarians routinely cash the checks their mouths write, somehow they're still in the wrong.

Why limit it to nations? Major corporations are as capable as most countries, and only a little bit more endangered if caught.

Despite the "only security through obscurity" meme, you need to understand it, not just say it.

There are only two types of security:
1) security through obscurity,
and,
2) security through inaccessibility.
They can, however, be intelligently combined.

Please note that private key encryption is security through obscurity. Cutting the phone line is security through inaccessibility. Saying that "it's secure because they can't get the prime factors of that key" is security through obscurity.

Despite the meme, security through obscurity is widely and properly used. What's wrong if false obscurity, which is common. If you don't properly assess just how obscure your secret is, then you have a security failure.

So having a monoculture is reduced security, because that means that there are a much larger number of entities seeking to discover the secret...and any breach in security cannot be easily contained. If you don't have a monoculture, then a single breach cannot be as widely damaging, and is thus also less valuable to find. This is a sort of network effect.

OTOH, a diverse community means that more effort needs to be devoted to security, because each branch is a separate thing to be maintained. So it's not all benefit or all loss, it's a mixture.

FWIW, I choose not to have flash installed on my system, despite the fact that it would have some utility, because I consider that the weakness that it presents is not worth the benefit. The ability of refuse to have such a service installed allows increased security...at a cost. For some people the cost is higher than they are willing to pay. This reduction of the attack surface is a form of security through obscurity mixed with security through inaccessibility, i.e., I have become inaccessible to some forms of attact, and I have reduced my visibility to many attackers.

I'd argue that Slashdot is a website with a national presence and has better topics to cover than a hack in some parent's basement, but apparently not.

68000? Easier than 8086, absolutely, but probably not easier than ARM. People should be learning assembler on an RPi, or clone, or arduino.

Its probably just as cheap as buying a Raspberry Pi or clone. Its probably more useful to start out on assembler with a fully functional computer unit like the RPi. I would see doing assembler on a 6502 more like "embedded" programming, and that's going to be a lost art at some point in the next decade. (The low end with the FPGAs/ASICs and the high end with Artificial Intelligence will eat up most of the market.)

Holy shit you're right, that's actually a pretty cool idea! Last I checked you can still buy ISA connectors from Digi-key.

I'd personally disagree that its a problem. In fact, one 16x9 still isn't wide enough. Two of them is ideal for me. The main monitor for my coding tool, and the 2nd monitor to have 2 web pages loaded side by side. In my main window, about 1/2 to 2/3 of the width is used for my actual code, and the rest used for other panel (project file list, debug panels, etc). If my 2nd monitor wasn't so wide, I either wouldn't have access to the extra panels, or I'd have to put them across the bottom (negating the advantage of making it taller).

Forget square monitors, I'd be happy if 4:3 made a comeback. Yes, I know they still exist, but they're a lot harder to find than they used to be. Go to any Best Buy or Staples and all you see are 16:9. Those are great for watching movies, but I prefer to watch movies on my TV and do work on my computer. And for pretty much all work except video and movie editing, 4:3 is better. I'm currently working on an old Samsung 4:3 which is starting to give me trouble (making strange noises and going dark at random times requiring me to cycle the power on the monitor.) I hope I won't have too much trouble replacing it when it dies.

How do you get the different countries committed to the same climate change ... and to hold their decision long enough to have a desired effect?

I think the politics are too chaotic and short-sighted to make geoengineering feasible, even if there weren't a great need to avoid mistakes.