Won't impact anyone.

10 years? We'll all have long past starved to death. Yellowstone blowing big is a mass extinction event, period, for many species. It's probably safe to say that most large carnivores, globally, wouldn't survive.

How so? Is this just a mindless anti-American rant, or did you have a point?

This is a pre-pay card, so it's not like it's a devilish scheme to tempt the innocent into the evils of debt, and it's is in a country where is can be difficult to use a credit card because there's little trust that the card wasn't stolen. This is a clever solution: for once, the merchant will actually see a picture ID associated with the card! When's the last time that happened? Should cut back on fraud a bit, and make day-to-day commerce a bit easier.

The real question is: will there be some way to easily transfer money between people directly, using the cards. That would put Nigeria one up over the west!

Not sure why someone chose to make ten torrents out of the leak

Maybe that makes it easier to do traffic correlation on Tor.

They're against addiction, and they're against recreational drug use. Agree or disagree, why not take them at their word?

Because the evidence is all to the contrary.

Portugal ran the biggest experiment - 8 million people - and upon legalization, their drug use fell in half. The UK experienced the same thing in the reverse direction upon criminalization of e.g. heroin. The result is consistent with rational views of human incentives as well, so no logical surprises.

People who are pro- drug criminalization are for increased addiction rates. That's what reason predicts and that's what the empirical results are.

Whether or not these people are rational is immaterial to the consequences of their actions. We shall not give them a "pass" on "good intentions" if they lead us down the Road to Hell. The JAMA research suggests they're responsible for a minimum of one 9/11-scale effect every year.

It's like there's some kind of morality subtext that's really "pro pain" and opposed to feeling better

Yes, that's exactly right - Puritanism is a terribly destructive mindframe and thoroughly-ingrained in American culture.

Three things:
1) there a slight chance that these patients could have some fun or pleasure on these drugs. That's reason enough to put a foot down on society.
2) suffering is a virtue. God will lessen the suffering of those who are themselves virtuous, but for the same reason people whip and crucify themselves "for God", those suffering horribly from disease should not be brought from that blessing.
3) people with these afflictions may deserve them.

and those who profit handsomely from such ugly undercurrents in society are all too happy to exploit them for wealth and power.

c.f. A Renegade History of the United States for more on this. The author was fired from a university professorship for publishing such "radical" views on the failures of Puritanism.

people need to get out and start protesting and getting people on ballots to oust the cronies.

sorry, but that's the strategy which has been employed for the past two hundred years. The very best that could be said for it is that it has slowed the decline into totalitarianism. Even that is hard to prove.

I suggest a new strategy, Artoo.

I've known some backwoods types, but when you start confusing a deer's hindquarters and a woman's pelvis, it's time to get into town more!

I bashed Apple before idevices even had a name. I still remember when slashdot used to praise how great Apple computers were compared to Windows systems, how open Apple is, etc. I remember even then saying then that if Apple was in Microsoft's position, they'd also own the hardware which allows them to lock things down so tight you'd long for the old Microsoft days.

Hate to say I told you so, but...

Virtually every walmart, walgreens, CVS, and mcdonalds I've seen has one.

This is a long time coming IMO, but I can still see the tinfoil hat crowd rejecting it. Too much FUD goes around about RFID (like those little credit card faraday cages that some infomercials sell) to make it seem somehow dangerous (I remember when the internet itself was considered dangerous by these types...anybody remember the Sandra Bullock movie "The Net"?)

In reality though, RFID payment, at least in the Android implementation I've seen, is by far more secure than magnetic strips as it isn't susceptible to skimming or any other type of replay attack.

You can buy flashcards you know. Some have colorful animals!

I'm sure there's an XKCD on that.

... watching American lefties' discomfort in all this. Especially older American lefties.

"Can't ever say that Russia is the bad guy, but Russia clearly is the bad guy all too obviously ... head must explode now like a 1960's sci-fi robot caught in a contradiction ..."

That's like when people used to talk vaguely about "talk radio" while somehow studiously omitting Rush L.

Just querying, ya know ...

But we're talking about a free online service. Why would you imagine the service provider has some moral duty to keep providing it indefinitely? "indirectly fund a franchise" - really? They owe you because you took their gift? Entitled twit.

Nothing ever entitles you to future work from another. You can have a contract that sets some penalty they'll pay you if they don't do something, but nothing can obligate another to keep providing a service. (You do know slavery is out now, right?)

As Ukraine is under military assault by Russia at the moment, they should abandon any complaint monitoring for the time being.