I'll give you a hyperlocal example from my neck of the woods west of Boston.

The Concord Rotary along MA Route 2 in Concord, MA. Massive traffic bottleneck. The state has slowly been upgrading the part of Rte 2 between 495 and 95 to a limited access expressway. But when they got to this particular place, all the people whose house values would drop by openning up an easier commute to Boston upstream of the traffic bottleneck (thereby increasing the pool of desirable housing and thus lowering values of currently desirable housing downstream of the bottleneck) sued to stop the project on environmental grounds. In this case, taking away rights would entail taking away the right to use the courts to buffer your home values from natural market forces happening away from your property lines. All for it.

That's a different problem, and I can't speak to it. But chickens could not be raised as they are without LOTS of antibiotics. (I happen to think the way they are raised is an abomination, but it's cheap.)

Have you actually seen the kind of verbiage that makes it into real, on-the-books legislation?

If you had, you'd probably want to put some sarc tags around your sarc tags.

Bullshit hypotheticals have standing in court precisely because of vaguely worded legislation that delegates a lot of authority to determine what counts as negative impact onto regulatory agencies or the court system.

Clear and concise language to dilineate what does and does not count as harm and what level of evidence and confidence is required to show attribution is *precisely* what is lacking and what enables lawyers to spin bullshit stories to shopped-for juries or judges.

"Vets and wholesalers who supply farmers should be shut right down."

Yes, but... if you do this expect the price of meat to go way up, especially chicken and eggs. Perhaps it's a price we need to pay, but expect that it would need to be paid.

"Risk and concern" is a euphemism for too many busybodies with too much time on their hands having standing in court to challenge permits.

You can fix this in legislation by taking away people's standing to sue when they are not directly affected and explicitly define "directly affected" to exclude bullshit hypotheticals.

Of course this would solve the problem and thus take away opportunities for rentseeking and grandstanding. So we can't have that.

Right now, it is a stupid check box I have to keep clicking. Just started maybe a week ago. And it is nearly every time I click on anything Slashdot, if I have a gap of time inbetween. Sometimes even a few minutes. It is very annoying.

>"So you disable all the tracking and that's cool and all but a lot of businesses use that tracking to decide whether or not you're committing fraud or not. So you use Firefox and they can't track you but then they won't let you make purchases on their website..."

This is actually insightful. I have noticed that with UBO and lots of tracking disabled (thank you Firefox), many sites, INCLUDING SLASHDOT, are now constantly challenging me to prove I am not a "bot" through their use of Cloudflare. So far it is just annoying. But that could evolve pretty quickly into downright disaster. And the more we outsource control of our sites to Cloudflare, the more dangerous it becomes. Soon, Google will be able to define the web in whatever freaking way they want, ways that will certainly not benefit user privacy or freedom. And Cloudflare will be able to completely control who is allowed to even browse the web, and how, and using which tools, and from where. Throw in AI nonsense to remove users from all direct sources of information, power more bots, and confuse everything with fake crap, and the outlook for "the web" is looking more dreary every year.

>"No. FF is hopelessly enshittified."

Couldn't disagree with you more. If you want that type of browser, look no further than Edge/Chrome. Rigid config, lack of user control, often mysterious goings-on, etc. That is on top of Google trying to completely take over what is web standards, mostly in favor of their own products and services (and drag all the other browsers with it, since they are now all Chromium, except Firefox and those based on it).

>"The only way to fix it is to strip out all the telemetry/AI/adware"

What little telemetry/AI/adware, if you can call it that, is 100% under user control. Mozilla is completely open about what they do and where, and you can turn all of it off. Nothing is hidden. And it actually is off when you turn it off. And it stays off.

>"and preinstall good adblock."

Mozilla isn't going to put that directly into Firefox. It would be suicide. Yes, we all immediately install a VERY good adblock, which is UBO. And it is the real deal, unlike anything you can put in Chrome or Edge. But that is our doing it. If that were preinstalled, it would make Firefox an enemy of some very powerful corporations. Mozilla has enough issues without adding that.

Again: if the market is inelastic and prices are rising, that's an incentive for new entrants into the market.

What is preventing new entrants from building power plants and connecting them to the grid?

If prices are rising, the return on investment to build out more generating capacity also rises.

Now let's ask: what added costs are discouraging that investment?

What prevents things like new power plants from being built?

Hint: it's closely related to the reason many power plants are actively being shut down.

Because the civil side of RICO, the CFAA, and the Lanham Act give Google standing even without direct monetary loss. Lighthouse’s phishing kits impersonate Google, misuse its trademarks, spoof its services, and target its users at scale—that’s textbook Lanham Act territory, and it's exactly the kind of systemic harm that the civil provisions in RICO and the CFAA were designed to combat. Google isn’t doing this out of charity; it’s defending its brand, its infrastructure, and the long-term viability of its messaging platforms. And thanks to the civil provisions in those laws, Google doesn’t have to wait around for the DOJ to get involved.

If Google's lawsuit moves forward, Lighthouse’s lawyers are going to have a very uncomfortable conversation with their clients. Civil RICO and CFAA both allow judges to issue ex parte asset-freeze orders, seize domains, force registrars and hosting providers to shut down infrastructure, and compel U.S. (and EU) intermediaries to turn over logs and identity records. Once the court grants early discovery, anyone even loosely involved—from resellers to developers to “affiliates”—can be subpoenaed, deposed, and pulled into joint-and-several liability. In practical terms, Lighthouse’s Western-reachable assets get seized, their infrastructure goes dark, their payment processors and crypto off-ramps get locked, and every employee or contractor who ever touched the operation suddenly needs their own lawyer. That’s the quiet part Google is saying out loud: this lawsuit isn’t symbolic—it’s a legal kill-switch.

It absolutely does say that—just not in the way you apparently think. RICO and the CFAA aren’t purely criminal statutes. Both include civil causes of action that private entities can invoke. That’s exactly what Google is doing here: filing a civil RICO and civil CFAA suit to go after Lighthouse’s infrastructure and operators.

No, Google isn’t pressing criminal charges. Yes, Google is using the civil provisions of those laws to bring enormous legal pressure to bear—completely in line with how those statutes were written.

This isn’t ambiguity, or spin, or Google LARPing as the DOJ. It’s just basic statutory reality.

Drive-by dismissals are fine, if you actually RTFA. Since you obviously didn't, take your drive-by snark and go pollute some other thread.

I hear you, man. Under normal circumstances “pressing charges” is absolutely the government’s job. But in this case the article is (for once) not playing fast and loose with the terminology -- RICO and the CFAA both have civil provisions explicitly allowing private plaintiffs to sue.

That means Google doesn’t have to wait around for the DOJ. They can file a civil RICO action, drag Lighthouse into federal court, freeze infrastructure, claw back damages, and generally make life miserable for everyone involved. And Google has the pockets to hire more lawyers than Lighthouse has people.

So yeah—no criminal indictment here, but Google does have some very long levers to pull.
In this particular case? Yay Google.

And those can be explained in terms of other reasons. National security, protection of domestic production, immigration control, reduction of government dependency, regulation reduction to stimulate the economy, etc.

>"The current administration wanted to do that by imposing a national vehicle registration fee for EVs. Some states already do this with higher registration fees for EVs (and oddly enough, not all of the states are red ones)."

No, that is to make up for the loss of gasoline tax revenue. I think that is reasonable, as long as it is at least roughly based on mileage. In my State, they collect the odo reading during annual vehicle inspections. But for some stupid reason they don't use it and want people to put spy devices on their phones or in the vehicle.