When Commerce Secretary Hoover got Congress to create the FCC's predecessor in 1927, it explicitly required spectrum allocation to be based on "the public interest", overturning the private property rights common law had been developing. This was done at the behest of the new radio network cronies. This led to all sorts of censorship, eventually enshrined as the fairness doctrine. The FCC also flexed its muscles to delay FM radio, cable TV, cell phones, color TV, WiFi, and I forget what else, by 10-20 or more years.

There's a great book on this, "Political Spectrum", by Thomas Hazlett. A good review: https://www.hoover.org/researc...

Well, right in the summary it says ChatGPT gave the kid a "pep talk" encouraging him to actually carry out the suicide.

The gasoline tax was introduced to encourage the adoption of pollution free alternatives by building out the infrastructure that was required to charge these vehicles.

It has now transformed into a road building initiative and a possible tax loss. Before the gasoline tax, roads were built with the funds accumulated from income tax. Is this going to be refunded or are we going to continue funding projects that continue to have budget overruns?

This is supposed to be for NON-emergency calls. Not comparable to 911.

No. It can't be properly expressive without understanding the story that it's reading. Punctuation is just not enough, it doesn't capture many different shades of meaning. E.g., an ironic statement should be read in a different tone than a factual statement, even with exactly the same punctuation. (That's one example out of MANY. Consider, e.g., the scene in "Alice in Wonderland" where she's talking about jumping off the top of the house.)

Well, I *do* want an "AI PC", but not anything currently on the market. I want one that will understand books in HTML format and read them to me in a reasonably expressive tone. I'd also like it to be able to pause and then answer questions about what was going on earlier if I missed a point.
OTOH, I'd also want it to be strictly segregated from most of what I do.

That's the way the internet works on land these days, over any distance. Your multiple carriers all turn out to depend on the same infrastructure.

I don't think you understand the process of science. That is the appropriate reaction to any initial claim. An initial observation needs to be repeated by others, and the data that justified the initial claim should be reanalyzed by others to see if they agree with the interpretation. Then arguments ensue. Eventually people "pretty much" come to an agreement.

Sometimes the arguments last for decades.

It also suggests that as time goes by, dark matter will decay into normal matter (photons). Rather slowly, however.

Apparently you'll need to be able to see gamma rays to be able to see it.

Huh. I coulda sworn mine had the crank. On the other hand, maybe they only promised it for later delivery and I barely used it after a few days experimenting, since it was so limited, and eventually tossed it along with a lot of other eWaste.

Many many years ago, I bought an OLPC, actually a pair, one for me, the other they sent to Africa or some other place. I do not remember the year even vaguely. I do remember it had a crank to windup and charge the battery. I bought the two because (from memory) the purpose of the laptop was strictly limited:

* Carry all textbooks on one laptop, instead of having to walk miles to school and back with a heavy backpack.

* Have modern eBook textbooks, not fifth generation hand-me-downs which had been written in a different language for a different country. This was certainly important for indoctrination in local history and culture, but it even applied to math textbooks, whose examples could well use cultural aspects which were literally foreign.

* Be rechargeable with that windup crank for kids whose homes had no electricity.

* Use a screen to read those books instead of having to stop using them after dark or by candles or oil lamps.

In particular, I had never heard that they were meant to teach computer science. It might have been a nice side effect, but I did not think it was any kind of a primary goal. The primary goal was to help young children learn.

If people trust Google to keep them anonymous (which I wouldn't), apartment complex reviews are gonna get a lot more spicy. As it is, you only get reviews from ex-residents and morons.

I'm not saying any particular person said that, and the question to Slashdot was asked over 2 decades ago. But I was assured that SSDs were "now reliable as an archival store", despite my informal test failure. (I had backed up something to them, and stuck them in a drawer for perhaps a year. They became unreadable.)

This would cause me to contact a person at the company and get real help or never again part with my money when this company is part of the contract.

I have a list of companies that I will not purchase or use their products just because of the way they support the product.