Free is a France startup that is doing really well. Others like OneAccess started in France in the boom, and are still around and growing.

I've supported fraudsters, getting enough information to protect myself from them. Someone offering to kill for you isn't right in the head. Pissing them off by rudely declining "fuck off" would probably not be a wise move. Failing to rebuff immediately someone who approached you is far from soliciting them, or transacting with them.

The US has officially weaponized anthrax without violating any treaties. The official story is that they needed to weaponize it to develop effective countermeasures. It's not a biological weapon. It's a biological defense. It's just indistinguishable from the weapon of the same name.

The world has more than enough food, even if a particular person doesn't.

The current barrier to divorce is that you must sue the government for permission. Why would people make a self-harming contract?

I don't think that would work. After 9/11, the coverage showed unbroken windows removed from the rubble at the pentagon. The windows were designed to withstand a hit from any man-portable weapon system. This included the most powerful sniper weapons, as well as RPGs. I'm assuming the White House is no worse than the pentagon, but I didn't build either.

So we shouldn't place control on non-LOS 50+ lb drones because there exist 2 lb LOS-only drones? I can put enough C4 on a 2 lb drone to cause problems. The glass on the White House is designed to stop a .50 cal armor piercing sniper bullet. If you wanted to shoot the president, you'd be better off shooting through the wall. But a pound or two of C4 on a small drone, landing at the base of the wall may damage it enough for a clear shot, or dislodge one of the supremely heavy windows. Though I suspect that wouldn't work, for other reasons.

My phone charge does 5A at 5V without an issue, and my laptop doing 5A at 20V does so over tiny wires.

You answer the question, then immediately forget the answer. You have AC at 240 (sigh, 110, if you must) and have outlets in some strategic areas (kitchens and for major appliances), and 12V or 48V everywhere else.

I think we should have a 48V internal wiring standard, with some 240V appliance plugs, for vacuums, refrigerators, washers and driers, and such. The dual-standard will complicate things slightly, but result in a large overall savings, as wall-warts are eliminated, and all their waste.

More sense is 240 AC for appliances, and 12V or 48V for everything else. DC-DC stepping in the wall jack isn't hard. So you go to the jack at 48V, and there to 5V for your wall-wart voltages. With some for 12V or 48V for higher powered things.

If it were me, I'd design a mechanical switch in the plug that activated the circuit, so it would have zero loss when not used, unlike current wall warts. We use 110 VAC because it's what we've always used, not because it's a good voltage or current type.

Some don't put out any. an RC drone will put out trivial spurious emissions. Only the live-camera type would be sending anything. So if you rely on RF for drone detection, there will be many ways around it.

Gene sequencing is not open to interpretation, thus never gets it wrong. Gene testing is not science.

You've said that the free lollipop given by a friend is free. Then you imply that the same exact lollipop transaction is no longer involving a "free" lollipop if your kid's friend stole it.

Free that requires unknowable knowledge of all previous owners of something before it's "gifted" to be able to determine whether it's free is a silly distinction.

Feral kid stole it from his idol, Mad Max. Note he was reluctant to give a name. He was thinking up which to give. Feral Boy sounded silly. So he went with Max.

So taxes are theft, so free doesn't exist?

I've never seen anyone confused by it. Just the argumentative people on Slashdot

Ah, the real objection. It doesn't give a sufficiently evil connotation for those who hate the term.