Mod parent funny. (But what I was looking for in the comments was time-based electricity rate considerations.)

But being a s-hole country explains why no one cares? However I'm still interested in how the stolen data will be used and abused...

Moderators voted Insightful which I'm taking as proof it should have been Funny,

I used to have a delusion that the moderation system could be fixed. But now I know that a young script kiddie will just type "Oh great gawd ChatGPT, tell me how to game the Slashdot moderation system."

"You have done badly, grasshopper."

I don't think it helps to feed the trolls and definitely doesn't help to propagate vacuous Subjects.

Have I guessed your intention properly? Or am I projecting my historical focus? I think the YOB is merely the latest in a series and there is probably worse to come. No, I can't imagine who could be worse than the YOB, but I couldn't imagine worse than Dubya and I therefore proclaim my imaginative powers have already been exhausted.

Quoted due to the sock puppets with mod points. The vestigial moderation system is not one of the best features of Slashdot.

With regards to the GPP, I'm curious about the age. Any easy way to map a UID to its birthday?

Should have also been modded up on a dimension for "accurate prediction".

Just the ACK, though I want to remind you that "you people" aren't listening.

Sorry, too tough of a question. I think I'd have a better shot at picking five nonfiction books... Even if the dimensions were clearly defined, picking the top SF would be really tough. And should fantasy be included in the consideration? Two examples did pop into mind in response to your question, though I don't think I could claim "top" status for either. I thought the style of Stand on Zanzibar was quite impressive, but perhaps it was merely one of the first multi-threaded books I read. In the humor category When Harlie was One comes to mind, but maybe that's AI overhang? Asimov wrote some great stuff and I was big into Heinlein for a while, but I think I grew out of his stuff. I already mentioned Banks as a more recent author whose SF work I mostly liked. Seems like I've mostly stopped reading SF now... Only four books last year out of more than a hundred... I see one from Vernor Vinge, another excellent author, a Frederich Pohl, and two from newbies Becky Chambers and Edward Ashton. Also nearing the end of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022 without much liking any of it.

That's not even vaguely what I said, so it's unclear if this is some kind of language issue or the result of a disability, but I'm just feeling worse and worse for you. You somehow believe the cold war was about communism?

I'd say Microsoft won that war, and everyone else lost.

Wow, I had no idea you were dumb enough to fall for the Red Scare.

Congrats on provoking so much vacuous ire?

Not disagreeing with you on the substance, but seems increasingly pointless to me to worry about it. Not just out of my pay grade, but these days all of the crucial decisions are being made by selfish a-holes for stupid and shortsighted reasons. Can't even imagine why they are so concerned about dying with the most toys, but...

Mod parent up? Deserves more visibility than -1, even though I disagree about Liu Cixin. Good, but I wouldn't rate him that highly. Really hard to pick a favorite... Possibly Iain M Banks? The Culture is such an optimistic view of the future, notwithstanding all the gruesome deaths?

But mostly I've been disappointed by most of the current SF authors. Too much rehashing of old themes... Currently reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Pretty goo, but again I wouldn't rate it at the top.

These years I'm losing faith in the value of catharsis. So what even if it makes someone feel better? Too many crucial decisions are being made by selfish a-holes for stupid shortsighted reasons.

Addressed in my other reply on the branch that started out more politely. But the short summary is that most of the honest businesses are basically using tested business models and in those cases the google is usually in a privileged position to confirm the general conformance to the claim.

I've actually written about this topic in the past, but my pie-in-the-sky vision is a two part tab that wannabe downloaders could look at. The top part would be the claims of the developer. Perhaps going beyond the money to motivations. The lower part would be under the google's control and would most often say "Yes, we have evidence to support the above claims" or "This business model is out of our scope and we know nothing". Maybe the google response will go farther in some cases, something like "This business model seems questionable and we caution you about using this app and want to remind you that we are not liable if you do it anyway."