there's a ton of infighting going on right now inside their party. They have what's called the "twitter faction" which is a bunch of members that make a lot of noise on twitter but don't get much of anything done.

The House Speaker allowed their impeachment inquiry against Biden to die off for lack of evidence (their main witness was revealed to be more or less a Russian plant) and they're pretty pissed about that, so they wanted to remove the Speaker (again) but they don't have the votes.

So they blocked this (along with a border reform bill) to make him look bad. They got outmaneuvered though and it eventually passed.

Make no mistake they'd cheerfully support the bill, they couldn't care less about your privacy. This is just party infighting at play. The entire GOP is in total disarray because Trump barely won the primary by 60% and that was *after* his opponents dropped out.

but there was a quirk of the studio system that caused us to get all those awesome movies in the 70s and 80s. If anyone remembers what it is feel free to chime in, but it was more a happy accident than anything else.

I know for TV what happened was there was so much censorship it got insanely boring to watch TV. Their solution was kind of novel, they packed every show with gays (mostly men) which was controversial at the time. It's one of the reasons we saw such a huge shift in opinion on stuff like Gay Marriage. At any rate that got TV pushing the envelop in different areas and made it more interesting... until cop shows took over everything that is.

it'll get people talking about anti-trust law enforcement and it's a target everyone hates, if only because of the high cost of Taylor Swift tickets.

But the courts are pretty well packed with pro-corporate judges now, so I suspect it'll die at the Supreme Court, if not sooner.

Still, awareness is important. It'll get folks passing new laws and the courts are still stuck *interpreting* the law. Even if they sometimes quote a witchfinder general to do it...

Mean I know this is low quality bait in all but damn that's a mean spirited thing to say.

People are born into poverty all the time. My mom was a chain smoking alcoholic and it had a significant effect on my life. On the other hand she was able to hold down a job and so I have been too. Since I don't drink and smoke being a nerd and all I did not pass that down to my kid. But even taking that into a fact the incredibly high cost of college and the extremely low pay for anyone under 40 means that my kid is likely to struggle to afford a decent living even with a college degree, albeit an undergraduate one

This is why everyone hates boomers. The world changes in the economy changes and they all just pretend that nothing changed and everything's just like it was when they were fucking kids and you can walk into any place of business and get a good paying job and you could retire from

Yeah from the structure of the headline I know I'm supposed to be outraged but from a criminal standpoint that's a pretty good deal if you get away with it.

I guess it does show that cryptocurrency mining is less than worthless now. Maybe that was what the author was trying to show but didn't want to stated bluntly for some reason?

The way x.com did? I guess they kind of had to otherwise they would have had to exit the country. I do think it's funny that they pull out of the country for not being allowed to violate privacy across their various companies but not for selling out the civilians in those countries. Suppose I shouldn't expect anything less from a corporation

There's so little money and you're so likely to get caught because of the inevitable paper trail that anyone doing this is going to be in the kind of dire straits that would cause them to make bad decisions.

People do not make good decisions when under pressure despite what 80s action films would have you believe and low pay for customer service jobs coupled with skyrocketing rents have put hundreds of thousands if not millions under some very heavy pressure in the form of homelessness or threats of homelessness

Are so well paid and so well treated by their employer that they would never consider taking this risk. I'm just glad large swaths of them aren't paying so much in rent that they are facing serious risk of homelessness that would make them vulnerable to making a bad decision...

the Fed return was already free, the state was $15 bucks. I need to be able to file my state return for free, otherwise it's kinda silly.

w/o those monopolies you wouldn't have just a few mega corps deciding what everybody listens to.

There was a little bit of a break with mp3.com but they saw the threat and came down *hard* on it.

there's been decades of focus group testing and refinement to determine what's going to sell. Also music is much, much less popular because it has to compete with other forms of entertainment (VHS cassettes, computers, video games and now streaming and podcasts) so that's going to narrow the market substantially resulting in less complex and experimental music.

Before everyone jumps in no, it's not that people are getting dumber, it's that businesses are smarter about what will or will not sell. Big Data means they don't need to throw nearly as much at the wall to see what sticks. And it means that the occasional pop star that's more complex and nuanced has less chance of making it through. You're not gonna get a Kate Bush in today's market. Not enough room and the focus group's will shut her down long before she does something as crazy as "Babushka" or "There Goes a Tenner".

because they're practices are deceptive. If you click something by mistake you're locked into the upsell with no way to disable it, even if you haven't used the service (which itself is of dubious value).

This doesn't happen until well into your tax prep work. So switching over to a competitor becomes a major pain. This is by design.

It's the kind of user hostile UI design that normally gets /. up in arms.

and you being one of the guys or gals setting policy are two very different things.

I'm not going to bother digging up the quotes for you, so don't ask, but a little googling and you'll find the people who set policy for the cops walking the beat like you were said they were holding off for the sake of "innovation".

I question their motives because anyone with half a brain can see crypto was only ever going to be useful for money laundering and ponzi schemes.

I guess it *is* possible they're all completely incompetent nepo-babies. But that's probably worse then them just being mildly corrupt and holding off in the hopes they and/or their buddies can make some quick cash on a new scheme.

and saying they're holding off for the sake of "innovation". So yeah. The question is are they really so dumb they think crypto is "innovative"?

We figured out ages ago it was useless as a currency and little more than an expensive gift card program when used as such.

If you think the regulators and various law enforcement didn't figure that out too you're not paying attention.

There's a bunch of them at the top who know exactly what crypto is and are letting it swim to see if it makes money. A small handful of them are die hard, some might say extremist capitalist types who will let anything slide and then there's a bunch who are just kind of squeezy and corrupt and want to see if them and their buddies can make some scratch off this new scam.

Those guys have been protecting crypto for some time from the beat cops that make up the SEC law enforcement. Basically providing mixed signaling whether cryptocurrency was going to see regulation or not.

The actual legal system though, that looks like it's had enough with judges getting cases in front of them because people are losing money.

But the regulators know what's going on they're just not doing anything about it. These are the same Jokers that brought us the 2008 market crash and would have brought us another market crash in 2020 except covid through that off. Basically all the ex Goldman Sachs people we never seem to be able to get rid of.