... they're going to be criticized no matter what they do about this.

I mean, if they hire an outside group to handle this, the user-base will complain that either the wrong group was picked, or that group was not conservative enough, not liberal enough, not whatever enough... you pick. Hell, they'd probably get accused of everything under the sun.

However, the same thing will happen if they pick internal users to be their test-bed for this. "Oh, you picked the wrong users. They're too conservative, too liberal, whatever." It doesn't matter, there's bad optics no matter what.

Doesn't mean that they shouldn't try. Just be prepared for the butt-hurt no matter what you do.

Reagan raised taxes eleven times during his two terms. That alone would get him called a RINO by some members of the party.

Just how many tabs are people keeping open at a time that this is considered a good feature? I mean, at home or at work, I only ever have maybe a half-dozen or so tabs open at once. Whereas an old roommate of mine used to have dozens of tabs open at the same time.

But I don't recall him ever complaining about clicking on a tab and it not rendering immediately. It was more of a "which tab was it again"? problem as he looked through the ones he had open.

Yes, there are tech failings in this incident. There were also human failings. Let's not let the tech failings overshadow the human ones.

I mean, sure, let's get better tech solutions for this. But we can't ignore the fact that the President, who tweets about anything that upsets him, couldn't be bothered to interrupt his golf game to say that this was a false alarm.

That's the problem right now.

Okay, look, when someone is voting for a state-wide office, like Governor or Senator, it literally does not matter if or how their district is gerrymandered. That is because all the votes across the state are tallied and if you get more than 50% of the votes, you win.

But when it's for something like a state legislator or a Representative in Congress, you are voting in a district in that state. Now, your district for a state legislator is likely to be different than your district for a Representative because there are a lot more state legislators in any given state than that state has Representatives in Congress.

But you're voting in a district for a candidate on that district's slate of candidates. Only the voters in that district count towards which candidate on that slate wins. And that's where gerrymandering plays a factor. Districts can be drawn to favor one party or the other. And that happens all the damn time. With the right demographic data, it's relatively simple to draw the districts in a state to ensure that even though one party has more registered voters, the other party stays in power.

Hell, North Carolina has a history of this. There was someone involved with the North Carolina elections who, for an interview on The Daily Show, inadvertently admitted that the recent laws that they had passed were targeting voters that traditionally voted for the Democratic party.

Why does the Vatican get a pass? They helped cover up pedophile priests for decades.

If someone is convicted of espionage, your plan is to kick them out of the country instead of punishing them? I mean, unless they have diplomatic immunity so that we couldn't prosecute them, what does that solve?

Why are you limiting prosecution of preachers to Wahabis and Salafists? I mean, if you're serious about religion being used against the U.S....

Oh, wait, you're not.

Welcome to the slippery slope. Here's your ski pass.

The First Amendment has never shielded you from non-governmental consequences. (And there are a few things, like threatening public officials, that don't have First Amendment protection to begin with.)

Simply put, if I express an unpopular opinion, albeit one that is protected by the First Amendment, the government may not abridge my speech. My employer, however is perfectly free to tell me to, say, stop telling everyone that "The Last Jedi" is the best Star Wars movie ever and anyone who thinks otherwise is a drooling dimwit, and I'm surprised they managed to dress themselves this morning. (I was picking an obviously odd example.)

Actually, in California, political affiliation is a protected class (states can add to federally protected classes, but they cannot remove any federally protected classes). So, he (or rather his lawyers) can argue that he was fired for his conservative views. Now, whether that argument works....?

Yeah, within the last 24 hours, Bitcoin's price dropped over $2000 and has recovered about $800 of that (so down about $1200), and that was probably based in part on the news from Microsoft.

I'm fully expecting another decent drop once enough people realize the ramifications of this.

That may be, but considering that the CEO sold millions in stock after learning of the problem, but before the hoi polloi were notified means that the SEC just might be crawling up his ass.

You cannot make something that is perfectly legal, illegal because you feel it is morally wrong.

How very strange. Politicians want to do this all the time. Maybe they're just saying it to placate or appeal to a voting bloc, but you literally cannot swing a dead cat in the Deep South without hitting a politician who wants to outlaw abortion, gay marriage, and in some extreme cases, religion other than Christianity.

And I'd really like to think that Collins will stick to that, but I'm not going to be a bit surprised if she doesn't.

the "bad guys" have to steal your phone AND your laptop now to get away with their cunning plan?

Yes, but if a private company placed an advertisement where, in the advertisement, they said "No one over the age of 40 need apply.", they'd potentially be breaking the law.

Now, to be fair, there are some jobs where, if you're over a certain age, you're probably not going to be hired. I don't believe the major airlines are looking to fill the ranks of their pilots with people in their 70s, for instance.

But when it's not the advertisement explicitly stating it, but it's the algorithm behind showing the digital advertisement to selected groups, is that still discrimination? Well, yes. But you have a harder time proving it, because you never see the advertisement to begin with.

Anyone can pick up a newspaper and look in the Help Wanted section.