You make very good points here. I was thinking similar since I know Google tosses into Chrome all sorts of things that are most beneficial to their websites and services. I mean that's why they made Chrome. Chrome was a Trojan horse to give Google control over the evolution of web standards so they could;d bend that in a direction most beneficial to themselves.

These are all great points. Here in the USA we lack a strong social safety net, we lack healthcare as a right, and we have a long, historic racism due to hundreds of years of slavery and abuse of indigenous peoples. We have a militarized police force that is completely untrusted by significant populations. We have social problems that don't exist in some countries and its hard for me to believe (well, as a liberal it is) that some of those differences are not as or more reasons why we have more crime issues.

That said given that fact that suicide is the #1 gun related cause of death in the USA and countries like Japan that have crazy hard core gun control have more suicide by population count tells me there's a lot of complexity and nuance here. It's hard to compare since crime gathering statistics vary a lot country to country. Yes other countries that ban guns have less gun crime; but they are not Star Trek style utopians with no crime at all. Wasn't there just a mass killing style attack in the EU where the person was using a bow?

One thing for sure, banning ARs will have a statistically insignificant impact on gun crime. When the US banned ARs for 10 years they did three studies and that was the finding (and the commission was run by a Democrat that really really wanted to find proof that the AR ban was a great idea). Both Australia and Canada did similar studies after banning ARs and both countries had the same conclusion. Those studies are out there in the public domain for anyone to read.

My personal use is self and family defense. However I don't feel I really need to justify it. I personally don't drink alcohol, I think it's unhealthy and dangerous, but I don't think it should be banned since lots of people just enjoy drinking and the vast majority do so without causing trouble. Nobody needs a drink, they just enjoy doing so for personal reasons. Of course I believe like most drinkers that access should have some limits, like you need to be an adult to buy it and anyone that commits a crime using it should be seriously punished. Most gun owners believe similar about firearms.

There's essentially no functional or lethality different between an AR pattern semi automatic rifle and 'classic' styled rifles (wood stock, shoulder butted) like you see in old 50s Westerns. You can get a rifle that fires the same ammo in either style. Many people like the AR pattern because it's a modular gun system that allows you to customize. For example you can change the trigger to one that feels better to you, or change the barrel to one with a different rifling twist or made of different material so it can be lighter or more rugged. Gun control proponents have seized on the visual similarity between civilian AR rifles and the type of fully automatic ones available to the military to brand them 'military weapons' because they know that people who've never handled such a firearm are more likely to be convinced of the propaganda due to the superficial similarities. There's nothing about the AR pattern rifle that makes it more suitable for crime. In fact if you check the stats the vast amount of gun crime in the US are related to handguns. Of the 15K gun homicides in the USA the FBI says about 500 were with what are classified as 'long guns' (this includes shotguns, classic rifles and AR pattern rifles). I'm sad for any gun death but less than 500 deaths across the country is hardly an epidemic. This usage of medical terminology by gun control proponents is just a new tactic they are using. Its just like how the anti abortion folks are always trying to pass laws 'for the health and safety of women', stuff like requiring an abortion clinic to be within a certain number of feet of a hospital when the doctor performing the abortion has admitting privileges. To people with no clue it sounds like a fair safety measure but in reality it ends up closing 90% of the abortion clinics in the State.

Ultimately you could destroy every single AR pattern rifle in the USA and it wouldn't have a statistically significant impact on gun crime. That's why most of the 'AR Ban' laws are trojan horses for laws with significantly more sweep.

I've lived in failed and failing countries and 'just let me be' isn't going to work out. You spend a lot of time coping with local thugs and trying to figure out how to keep what you already have.

I don't see how the home setups are worse than the crappy, cramped setups I had at every programming job in NYC. This seem suspicious to me. There's a total push to get people back to the office, even against their will and self interest.

I bet the part where gender gets all mixed up is actually sorta interesting. Too bad people thought that needed fixing. I mean its sorta like our era.

Perl has had great support for unicode for many years. Not familiar with Slashdot code so can't comment on that

I don't think this is aimed at people like Natalie Portman so much. Age discrimination is a real problem. This is aimed to help out people that don't have her stature and her resources.

No matter what I do, even if I DIY I end up with like 10 years payoff. If it was 5 years I;d do it tomorrow!

How about clay tile roofs? That's what I have, and it looks nice but I couldn't figure if it was going to help in a fire or not.

Apple and Facebook were served with warrants that required them to turn over the information. They did not. This isn't 'help', its just following the law.

I've never owed a new car, I don't think its a very good value. Cars lose like half their value in the first few years, and the insurance kills you (and road taxes, some places charge road fees based on how old the car is.).

Hi Larry,

I'm a profession Perl5 programmer who is very worried about the future of my language. I remember when you kicked off Perl6 in the very late 1990s the talk was that it would replace Perl5. Clearly that never happened. If you could redo the project what might you do differently?

I bought my first new TV in like 20 years last Christmas and since I was splurging I wanted a great screen. I decided on a Samsug Plasma screen that was very highly rated. However to get that screen I had to buy the crappy smart TV features. If I could have bought the same screen as s dumb TV I would have.

In generally the TV companies bundle all their highest end screens with crappy 'smart' features.