That was not the defence's argument. They admitted that inflammatory and factually incorrect statements were used to spice up his show. Carlson was well aware that what he was saying was incendiary and non factual. His 'opinion' enters into it only inasmuch as it was his opinion that it would be good for his ratings. What he did was very similar to Alex Jones' attacking of the bereaved parents of Sandy Hook victims as crisis actors, purely a way to appeal to his audience by telling them what they want to hear, taking advantage of their ignorance and gullibility.

The tricky part comes from when parody has side effects. Parody has limits, and is not a blanket protection when the speech has real world effects. For instance, as a silly extreme, a mugger can not go around demanding wallets and then claiming that they were simply being a parody of a mugger. In this case, there was the criticism, but also the confusion it caused with residents and the real world police time that consumed, which is what the charges are actually involving.

Yet, when Tucker Carlson (believed by millions of his viewers) was sued for defamation, his lawyers argued that a reasonable person would not take his words as factual, and the court accepted this argument. Thus, apparently, racist and anti immigrant rants taken seriously by millions, and likely to have serious real world consequences is protected under the First Amendment. However a parody website of a police department, taken seriously by very few people, but resulting in a handful of calls to a non urgent phone line, is a crime worthy of the incarceration of its creators. Is that really how a democracy is supposed to work?

It seems a lot of the people who are screaming are people that don't want free speech. THEY WANT FREE FROM CONSEQUENCE SPEECH.

Certainly, there are cases where that is true. However, that does not seem to be a valid criticism here. The government should not be able to send you to jail for the use of parody to get across your point. Individuals, of course, can choose to boycott media when they disapprove of its content. It is even acceptable for private entities to censor such content. However, criticism of government bodies whether in the form of parody or otherwise, is protected under the First Amendment for a reason. Any attempt to curtail it should require pretty persuasive justifications.

When The Onion and The Babylon Bee agree on anything, it is time to take their opinions seriously. After all, you would not at the current time be able to find them in agreement even on whether the results of elections should be respected.

I was gobsmacked that the Sixth Circuit saw fit to support Ohio's law in this way, and I do believe the SCOTUS is likely to grant certiorari and reverse this horrible decision.

Unfortunately, your system has not yet been updated to the latest version of NTP.

The need for time synchronisation sure has come a long way since the need was found to have all towns connected by rail aware of railway time. Prior to that, disagreement about the time of day by an hour or two did not much matter. Having a watch was kind of overkill when glancing at the position of the sun was generally good enough.

... Added to that, wealthy countries like the US are not going to be willing to fund their share of the cost unless countries like Somalia and Afghanistan also contribute.

The first world may be almost 100% responsible for creating the problem, but consider it outrageous to suggest that they should be the ones who need to fix it.

The first computer(s) I actually owned were not particularly interesting. The first was no more really than a toy, given to me as a Christmas present. I cannot remember its name, but it had no capability for storing programs or data. You had to enter everything manually, and everything was lost when you turned the "computer" off. I did not own another until the early PC days when I had a Compaq running MS DOS4.0

More interesting was the first computer I was able to use personally hands-on. This was in 1968 as a student, when I was allowed the use of an (Elliott 803 computer. I loved everything about it, except for the real pain involved in getting anything in or out. Apart from console switches (which allowed direct entry of programs and data) there was only paper tape input. Huge spools of paper tape containing supervisors/compilers, were incredibly prone to rips and jams. Output was also only to paper tape (which you could then render intelligible on teleprinters). This was not as bad as usually the volume of output did not result in the kinds of huge spools I ended up using for input. On the positive side, with all its limitations, the computer was remarkably reliable for a computer from 60 years ago.

There is almost certainly a class action lawsuit coming, and you do not want to make it easy for those who were harmed to know they should be joined in the case.

Many of us believe that there is a high likelihood that, what we perceive as reality, is just a simulation. What is described in the latest research if just another indication that this is probably true. In a simulation, you cannot possibly store the entire universe, in all its detail. You need to create "reality" as the observers in your simulation decide to view it. What is an interesting question is: do all observers see the same version of reality? With a huge number of observers, there might be an attempt to compartmentalise rather than keep track of all the interactions. If so, there are bound to be inconsistencies as these conflicting realities interact that we might be able to detect.

We aren't going to stop digging this hole without nuclear fission power and hydrocarbon synthesis.

One thing the Ukraine war has demonstrated is that centralised energy sources (however they end up being delivered to consumers) are extremely vulnerable by their nature. One powerful missile scoring a direct hit on a nuclear power station leaves you with, not just a total loss of energy from that source, but also a major environmental disaster. Large hydrocarbon synthesis facilities will be similarly vulnerable. To mitigate human induced climate change with resilience during war, energy production should be decentralised as far as possible. Locally produced solar and wind turbine generation meet both objectives, and we know how they could be dramatically increased within a few years. There will remain a role for utility scale power and remotely manufactured fuel sources. However, they should be mainly intended to provide greater stability during periods when local resources are under short term stress, not the primary source of energy.

It is more common today to find code that is cross platform and which supports proper internationalisation of the code. On the average, error checking is also less bad today than years ago. These, unavoidably, lead to larger code bases. Having said that, most code I look at makes me wince. Inefficiencies resulting from inappropriate coding choices affect not just code size but also execution speed. Most often, this does not impose a major economic cost on applications, but the aesthetics of most applications are horrible.

I am also a Brit, but have lived abroad for over 40 years. I grew up near St Albans, where CAMRA originated, and was an early member (in 1972 when I was barely old enough to legally drink). In the 1970s, you really needed to know where to go to find a good beer. It was mostly fizzy keg beer, often low quality lager. I agree that many of today's craft beers are awful, but traditional, real ales were dying until CAMRA successfully campaigned for their revival. Beer drinkers in the UK today are actually pretty lucky. It is now way easier to get a good pint than 50 years ago.

I also love beer, though I drink less of it now than I used to for health reasons. I note that this event is in New Orleans. In spite of your (sometimes valid) claim that brewing beer is a skill where humans excel, I have to say that my experiences in New Orleans years ago would not support your case. I had the misfortune of encountering a local brew called "Dixie Beer". No matter how bad the recipe the AI came up with, it is impossible that it could be worse than this local human-crafted excuse for a beer.