There is only one reason that bitcoin is so high in value right now, ransomware

...says Mr. #921799. Get off my goddamn lawn.

And this is why people who travel a lot use local simcards and do all their communication on WhatsApp these days.,

Last time I needed a simcard when in a foreign country it cost me $5, gave me 1GB of data and lasted two weeks.

Whoa whoa whoa.. back up a bit with the gender mud, I'm pretty sure Obama wants to be called he.

Doesn't matter. They'll just be calling us all "cucks" since we don't beat our wives or espouse genocide against people of color.

The camera "sees" the user and even knows which user it is seeing. The camera then locks the screen immediately when the user is not present.

How long before the computer "sees" the user and notifies the police that they can pick up their known dissident. I mean, really, given the kind of governance we're about to enter into, this (not to mention Alexa-like audio surveillance "features") are the last thing I'd want on any equipment in my home.

And no, I don't have anything to hide. But conversely, I also don't use the restroom in the middle of 5th Avenue. Privacy is a thing, even in a world full of morons who think it isn't.

Yes, quite carried away. Your exposition is quite naive in thinking that people think in the scope you think they do. The failure to respond has been repeated historically quite a number of times.

And I think your timing of off by 50+ years, nothing will happen until people are really starving.

Nothing will likely happen until the 0.1% are starving, by which time it will be too late to do anything. The only reason to even hold out what little hope there is, is that people like the grandparent are at least thinking about, and worrying about, these things. If enough do, then real change can happen. Like the outcry that forced the Republicans to back off (at least for now) gutting the House Ethics committee, when the masses do voice their concern, they are heard. Unfortunately we all feel too weak, and too powerless, to make much noise unless things really hit the fan (by which point it is often too late). This is not an accident, and there are very specific reasons we as citizens are constantly made to feel powerless (hint: it benefits those running the show, on whichever side of the aisle).

While this request has DRM implications I really don't like (lense to screen encryption) and is no doubt an MPAA wet-dream, I unfortunately have to support this, as the clear and present danger to journalists, and the potential for regimes like the Trump Administration, Putin, et. al. to distort or destroy evidence of wrongdoing, demand something like this. At least with encryption journalists can keep their data safe, and if done properly, we can detect changes to the raw video/audio data. Both of which will be critical if we don't permanently want to live in a so-called "post-truth" reality (which really means "nothing but lies, lies, and more lies" reality).

Sounds like more SOP conservative false equivalence to me: President Obama never threatend a crackdown on dissent, never threatened to jail his opponents, and never showed himself predisposed to seek revenge against critics with as many levers of power as are at his disposal.

This.

If someone gave me the godlike power to craft a fair system of government for our country, it would probably be parliamentary with proportional representation, so as to prevent the situation that the Canadians are dealing with, where they have a parliament, but still have a "two party system," so they still have problems with the two parties not totally representing all Canadians between the two of them. I do think their "two parties" do a better job than ours at representing a bigger proportion of the population, but I'm sure there are some valid, but not popular viewpoints in Canada that aren't represented by the Conservatives nor the LIberals.

Very true, but we have that even without the Electoral College--we have individual constitutional rights that are supposed to serve that function. And if the "steamrolling" they fear is one that is political rather than tyrannical, I'm not sure why rural states should get to be "protected" from being in the minority as long as the thing being done doesn't violate those individual rights.

Consider the current situation, which more or less amounts to a tyranny of the minority, especially when you factor in the "southern states/rural states" Republican "majority" that exists despite not having received a majority of the votes in "The people's house" since 2010. In fact, they got fewer votes in 2012, 2014, and 2016 than they did in the "wave" election of 2010, but have vastly more seats after those elections than they got in 2010.

Tyranny by the minority is just as tyrannical as tyranny by the majority.

So, that one time you got drunk, and wondered "What's Autofellatio" and typed it into Google? Yep, that's why that Traffic Cop is looking at you funny. He's not judging, just trying to picture you blowing yourself.

Impossible--those flyover states also consume the bulk of the welfare dollars pad into by the productive coastal states. Break up the union, you create an instant refugee crisis for the productive states as unemployed rednecks who think "College is a scam so I ain't going--now where's my money-check?!?!?!" suddenly can't afford to exist because the productive big cities simply stop subsidizing them, as they're now part of a "different country."

Now, the possibility of "Regional autonomy" government solution (where the existing 50 states going one of several "provinces" that are governed separately, rather than at the Federal level) might be possible. ...But you still end up with basically the same problem: No province would want to get stuck with, say, Mississippi and Alabama, and Louisiana, the three lowest performing states economically and academically. Of the three, Louisiana is probably the "prize," what with the sea port and oil resources... But that's still not saying much.

Not so fast, Billy Bob... Some of those "counties" have fewer residents than single neighborhoods even a small city. So perhaps a better way to say it is "If you think rural voters are somehow so superior to city dwellers that they should get their way despite accumulating 2 million fewer votes for their preferred candidate, well, you're an idiot."

Ah, I see what you did there by failing to quote the second half of my point (where I acknowledged it "was racist" when used to that purpose, but isn't anymore now that it isn't.)

Racism/slavery wasn't the only reason the electoral college was instituted... It absolutely was racist when instituted, but since the "3/5" part of it was struck down by the 14th amendment, it's now just a pointlessly old fashioned contrivance to "protect us" from the tyranny of ill-informed rural voters, rather than racist.

A much better argument than racism for eliminating it is in the inequality of value assigned to votes. For example, it takes four times as many votes in Michigan to gain the vote of an elector as it does in Wyoming--which is complete bullshit which allows a state with barely any people a much louder voice for each of its citizens than far more populous Michigan. And it really sucks when you look at how many votes you need in California to get an electoral vote vs. one of the bullshit states.

Yes, I do think of small states as "bullshit." Having lived in Indiana lo these past 15 years I feel I can speak from a place of some authority when I say that.

Two things...

Even with the electoral college, the President is being chosen by a "handful of states." Specifically, the three "Swing" states which put Trump over the top. Even worse, the outcome of the entire country's future leadership is based on less than 10,000 people in one state, less that 20,000 in another, and less than 35,000 in a third--a total of far under 100,000 votes in a nation where more than 120 million votes were cast. This is, more or less... a rounding error... A number of votes that could be cast (or not cast) if it rains on election day.

And second of all, the original "Balance of power" the electoral college was created to preserve was between free and slave states. Specifically, southerners would not have adopted the constitution if they thought that higher population northern states would have been able to control the congress, and the presidency, by virtue of their greater numbers. So they came up with the 3/5 compromise (that allowed slave states to count 60% of their slaves for the purpose of calculating their congressional representation, and by proxy, their electoral college representation,) and kludged it onto the electoral college to "protect" their interests in the Presidency.

Setting aside whether or not the electoral college is, in and of itself "racist," (I don't think it is anymore, although it was conceived as such) the real issue I have with it is that it's an anachronism that isn't necessary. Because the other justification for it is that rural areas in 1797 didn't have very good communications with the outside world, and might be enticed to accidentally vote for a dangerous tyrant that they were unaware was a dangerous tyrant.

So bottom line, slavery is defunct, so we no longer need to appease slave states, and today, rural states have access to the Internet and full communications parity with the rest of the world. Which means there's no more justification for the continued existence of the Electoral College.