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Comment Qualified immunity is a bitch (Score 1) 44

One of the things I've been noticing lately is that the kind of people who didn't use to get hassled by the cops are now getting hassled by the cops...

Crime keeps going down but we keep putting more cops on the street. People expect them to arrest people. So they're looking for guys they can hassle like yourself.

Comment Re:Horrible education system (Score 1) 209

Not really wrong, but on reading it is easy to fake. Usually just retelling in some form what the teacher said will do the trick. (That approach also works later in life, unfortunately...) On a math question, if you do not understand it, you do not get the result in most cases.

Now, actual reading comprehension where you have to give an informed and insightful analysis and then takle a position and justify that rationally. Yes. But from my experience, you need an exceptional teacher for that to happen in school.

Comment Re: Marketing (Score 2) 41

I think that the best marketing comes from Microsoft rendering older fully functional hardware unusable and with the overreach by adding ads, requiring M$ account and forcing bitlocker just tipped the scale.

Zorin is based on Ubuntu too, and that means that if it works there it works with Zorin too.

Comment Oh there are people worried (Score 2) 44

Recently a municipality had lost a fight to prevent a freedom of information request for flock camera data.

They instantly canceled the program and shut down the cameras.

Remember that Steve Jobs would buy a brand new Mercedes every couple of months so that he didn't have to have a permanent license plate.

The rich and powerful are very concerned about having their movements tracked.

Comment So that's not the point (Score 2) 14

What they are talking about is specifically abuses of the technology that people are on aware of.

The concern is that people are going to use the tech to get information and it's going to be bad information.

In politics there is a concept called a low information voter. This is someone who pays very little attention to politics and ends up with a lot of poorly informed opinions and makes poor political choices because of it.

This is Been supplemented by a new phenomenon call the bad information voter. Someone who has actively bad information and is making decisions on it. The decisions they make tend to be catastrophic.

Llms are bringing that same energy to every other aspect of people's lives. Basically people are awash in extremely bad information. Things that are just absolutely objectively false in every way shape and form. And they are likely to make decisions based on that information that are going to be very terrible.

A proper civilization would recognize this issue and work towards education but we have become obsessed with personal responsibility to the point where we can't even consider the effects on ourselves of other people having that much bad information.

We have all forgotten that no man is an island. Probably should be teaching that poem in schools...

Comment This might be what proves Free Will exists (Score 1) 13

There's a concept of determinism because of some of the consequences of how physics work. Basically the idea that every decision is already made because if we're made of molecules you can predict what those molecules have to do moment to moment.

Like how your body has already decided to move by the time you do it.

But quantum mechanics kind of throws all that right out the fucking door. My favorite fact is if we try to create a complete vacuum we still have little particles popping into existence out of nowhere and we can't explain it.

Comment Re:Who thought this was a good idea? (Score 1) 44

How many people did they get to harass just because they were having electricity usage, that they are paying for, which was "too high?" Some peoples' usage is going to be higher just because they work from home, enjoy their air conditioning, and maybe have a server farm or something.

Consider this additional California-flavored extra-special stupidity; it's currently legal for grown-ass adult homeowners to grow their own fucking weed in their own home. Even being caught with a massive grow is a misdemeanor.

So they really went out of their way to annoy the shit out of taxpayers already paying through the nose for electricity. And California wonders why it was forced to charge an exit tax.

Comment Re:Doesn't matter (Score 0, Offtopic) 91

Russia can't really force it if they could then the war would be over and Europe wants to keep it all going so they can wear Russia down some more.

So nothing is really going to change in the war will just continue unless and until we get a democrat in the white house again with a clear majority in Congress.

It is incredibly fucked up that the world is just kind of standing by letting Russia do this so that they can wear Russia down and reduce their ability to function as a global superpower. Then again this shit we are letting happen in Yemen and Sudan is even worse. And Jesus fucking Christ if you read the history of what America did in South America during Ronald Reagan...

Comment Re:Wasted resources and money (Score 1) 44

Yeah you're not really supposed to think about how expensive the drug war is versus just giving people support and addiction treatment.

America especially is really into punitive and revenge-based Justice. I wonder if it will start to fade if religious extremism continues to fade. It's not hard to draw a line between puritanical bullshit and wanting to do as much harm as possible to people who commit crimes or do drugs.

Comment Re:Tipping point (Score 1) 84

Climate change is a participant in their water supply problem, but not the sole cause.

It's this, the answer is often "all of the above", but there is no drum to beat for that answer.
Anyway, that region has been in a major rainfall drought for some time, and that will amplify abuse of poor ground water management.
As to why rainfall has decreased ...

Maybe they can use their uranium to build desalinization plants on the Caspian sea and pipe water to Tehran.

Comment Re:He is in good company, after all... (Score 1) 34

...if professional cryptographers lose their password, he is in good company....

Better to take advantage of the oblig xkcd suggestion!

I suggest he hire someone to beat the password out of him, or offer a prize to any successful assailant.

https://xkcd.com/538/

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...

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