...why harmful lies spread easily EVERYWHERE, regardless of how heavy-handed a government's controls may be on communication.

Serious answer:
Try reading a little before asking an already answered question.

In 2015, the FCC upped the definition of "broadband" from 4 Mbps to 25 Mbps (https://broadbandnow.com/report/fcc-broadband-definition/)

In the New York Times article, statistical truth is obscured by political mission.

There's a lot of effort to add little meaningful information here. Politics, as usual.

1) Tariffs don't make American products cheaper...they make foreign products more costly (by adding taxes at import time).
2) Yes, you _can_ get all those materials (steel, paint, plastic, LEDs) in the U.S., but at least some of them are available at a substantially lower cost from other countries (e.g. steel from China).
3) The margins on almost all competitive consumer products in the U.S., including computer cases, are VERY thin no matter what kind of optimizations you try to make to the production process. That's what competitive markets do...offer consumers a variety of prices, qualities and relative values. Consumers pick their preferences, and all other things being equal (e.g. relatively similar computer cases), consumers will typically select the lower priced one.

The short term effect of increased tariffs will be increased prices for the same goods you bought cheaper before the tariffs. The political and longer term effects are more uncertain, especially when you factor in the possibility that unfair players (like China with respect to intellectual property violations and government subsidies) will also hurt in the short run, and may improve their behaviors in the longer run. But you won't find many consumers who will prefer the fairly certain near-term increase in sticker prices [dripping with understatement].

And _if_ a robot takes your job, you should seek to product through some other function that people "value" (read: "are willing to pay for"). It's not as if your need to consume will go away. So it remains important that you produce. That is, unless you have decided that it should be somebody else's problem to pay your way.

(Virtuous notions: Try to be a giver. Try not to be a taker. Never give up.)

If a customer wants to know if food contains a particular ingredient...

Yes, he should know. But then, you're not talking about disclosure of an ingredient. You're talking about disclosure of the use of various processes you don't like, without having substantiated the materiality of risks of those processes.

My main concern is [...runaway...] GMOs and turning millions of people into unwitting lab rats.

Those would be unsubstantiated fears. And though your fear is undoubtedly "real", that which you fear is invented.

The courts, quite rightly, have little use for unsubstantiated claims. It is not Mansanto's money that compels the actions of the courts; it is the substance of Monsanto's arguments.

Imagine as you will. The courts will not be easy prey for your fears.

For the same reason that people have resisted requiring schools to include "creation science" in their text books.

Before you pass a law requiring people to disclose information, you should have a burden to reasonably demonstrate the significance and materiality of that information. If you try to take your anti-GMO "science" to a U.S. court of law, just as the creationists tried with theirs, you'll fail miserably as they did.

The law is not a playground for your unsubstantiated beliefs. (Slashdot, however, is.)

Very dubious. Slashdot often posts BS stories simply because doing so engages their readers. It is not a requirement of the editors that a story has integrity; only that a certain percentage of the stories have integrity. That's enough to keep people coming back with hope that their time isn't going to be wasted.

This time, we're losers. And, yes, to me, it is mildly humiliating to be a participant in this.

Slashdot. Not journalism. Infotainment. Hi BS quotient.

(And that's why I read and respond less and less every year.)

So I've spent years building my application on top of MySQL. And MySQL has done its job just fine...before Oracle and since.

Now comes along a fork, a new database, that solves *what* problem for me?

I'm looking for an effective DBMS (which I have in MySQL), not a company (or CEO) to love.

Are *you* paying attention? To *what*?

How in the world are new devices developed and approved for production that ignore the possibility of EMI from portable devices? There are no excuses for such negligence.

How, you ask? Well, really, if you wanted to know, then you wouldn't be asking such a foolish question. And you wouldn't be calling it "negligence."

How in the world do people routinely concoct unsupported technical judgements (such as yours) about things they don't technically understand, and then share those judgements with the world as if they are insightful?

Not surprisingly, most of the loudest and least articulate people are way up in the nosebleed section of the bleachers, far away from the players in the game, who, unlike you, must move beyond just [trite] words.

There are plenty of excuses for your ignorance. But none of them justifies it.

Go home.

do really, really rich people still feel comfortable lending us money for long periods at low interest rates?

As opposed to what? As opposed to leaving their currency sit while the controllers of the currency dilute its value by printing $2 trillion dollars/year? Do you pretend that Joe Investor (oh...excuse me...Joe "Really Really Rich" Investor) has an alternative?

It amazes me that we can watch one bubble build and burst after another, and people like you still can't figure out that you can't spend more money than you have...you can only come up with lame-ass excuses like yours until, once again, the bubble bursts. And even then, you'll blame somebody else as if an intellectual theory could somehow transcend the conservation of mass.

Yeah...you're right...just print more money. BRILLIANT!!!

...without the government getting in your way.

Anywhere.

Anymore.

--
The principles of Free Software are built atop the principles of intellectual property.

But your analysis, your decision-making, should not be done in the context of the "media cycle", but instead, by preponderance of the evidence (well-formed studies, well-qualified facts).

You present the major rights and wrongs in this case (and others) as being ambiguous. They are, but only if you choose to be informed by that media cycle of which you speak. Why would you choose, in your final analysis, to be informed by the media cycle? Why do you frame the decisions as in any way having to be made within the context of misinformation instead of well-qualified information?

I suspect that, for whatever reason, your own truth is best rationalized in the context of the media cycle, or, that you somehow benefit by influencing people within the context of their own ignorance (and susceptibility to weak rationalizations such as you present here). That would certainly explain your well-phrased appeal for us to be understanding of, well, nonsense. But you've simply presented a foolish context within which to make important decisions that are fairly easily and reasonably resolved within the context of good information.

The ambiguities you affirm are, for the most part, only affirmed within the context of misinformation and a willingness to trust untrustworthy sources. The issues are much clearer than you suggest, which is telling of your own brand of bluster.

The smart move is to cut YouCut, because your Congressman should already be cutting the crap you dislike,

Do you think so? Because *my* Congressman *doesn't* seem to be cutting much of anything.

The cuts always seem to be "scheduled." When does that "schedule" happen? What does it mean when they say "the cuts are scheduled."?

And when they cut, isn't total spending supposed to go down? What do they mean by "cut"?

Where can I get me one of those Congressman of which you speak?

I'm _really_ confused.