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Comment Re:not really.... (Score 1) 99

It depends on how recently the message was sent, and how much tedious work the police's technical team want to do. Email isn't designed to be particularly anonymous.

If the perpetrator was stupid enough to user their own email account, that is.

If they use a free mail account they opened with forged data, and were always using Tor or a VPN, it's impossible to trace.

Comment Re:Precisely what we need (Score 1) 305

The actual problem isn't that. And it isn't one that we need some sort of new battery technology to solve. It's a lack of will to do things other countries are already doing.

China just recently brought up their first 10MWh sodium install. Yes, fucking salt, which we have a lot of.

Wow! With a capacity of 10MWh, it would easily store more energy than than the smallest pumped-storage hydroelectric power station in Germany (6MWh). (Never mind that the other 30 stations have a total capacity of 40,000MWh.) It could even store the nominal solar power (peak capacity) of Germany for nearly half a second.

Comment Re:marketing babble (Score 3, Informative) 102

No, they don't. The EU parliament is not a legislative body.

Wrong. The Parliament is the legislative body, together with the Council. That's no big difference to countries that have a bicameral parliament. The main difference is that in the EU, the term "parliament" only refers to the lower house whereas in bicameral systems, the term refers to the system of both houses.
What is missing (for both Parliament and Council) is the right of initiative, which is reserved for the Commission. That is an issue in theory. In practice, however, it does not make a big difference as even in countries where the parliament has the right of initiative, the proposal for new laws come from the executive branch anyway.

Policy may be suggested by the commission. The parliament gets to say yay or nay to that. They also have a say in who gets to be appointed to the commission.

The policies decided by the council are then made directives by the commission, to be implemented by the member states.

That's completely wrong. "Directives" are legal acts proposed by the Commission and voted upon by the Parliament and the Council. The title even says "Directive (EU) year/no of the Parliament and the Council". (Same for Regulations.)

The parliament is basically a fig leaf, the only part of the EU bureaucracy that directly represents the voters in the EU. But its competences are very limited. As a voter, you have more influence by voting for your country's parliament.

That's also wrong. If you look at the legislative competencies of the European Union, that's no longer true. Many basic decisions are now made by the European Union, and thus significantly influenced by the European Parliament.

Comment Re:Summer is not Over Yet (Score 1) 255

Isn't this a little premature given that summer is not over until the 21st September? I expect it will still break the record but it would be nice to actually have the data before making claims like this.

In meteorology, summer is 1 June till 31 August. Weather frogs can't handle partial months.

Comment Re: Bullshit. (Score 3, Insightful) 220

It was an 8-yer-old photo, Ken

She was also very visibly pregnant, an obvious fact that the alleged victim never mentioned.

That fact that there is video evidence makes it completely irrelevant whether the victim mentions something about a pregnancy. That will be visible from the video. It does not matter that the photo was 8 years old, a photo half a year old would not have shown the pregnancy, either.

What is relevant is that the police did not treat her as "innocent until proven guilty" but

Comment Re: This is what happens when people stop thinking (Score 1) 220

Let me put it another way. If the officers were going to arrest a man named Larry Laffer who was supposed to be in his 20s and get there and see a 50 year old man, they wouldn't proceed with the arrest without double checking with the detective that got the warrant, would they?

Do the police get an arrest warrant for "Larry Laffer, supposed to be in his 20s" or just for "Larry Laffer"?

Comment Re:Eye witnesses are very unreliable (Score 1) 220

According to the TFA, point 4 from your list was never performed.

You missed the actual point.

A line up does not help if it is done with the "suspect" and random people. Random people will not look like the perpetrator, so the victim will obviously pick the only person that resembles the actual perpetrator to some extent.

Comment Re:not flamebait - tiktok (Score 2) 84

EU data protection laws are meant to prevent companies using data in ways that are considered harmful to users.

Not really. It's based on the idea that being in control of your personal data is a fundamental right because otherwise, you would not be a human but a number. It's more about dignity than not being harmed.

As part of that they forbid sending user data to regions where the same level of protection don't apply. Like the US. That's what facebook was caught doing.

There's no absolute prohibition to send data to such regions as long as there are adequate safeguards. In the US's case, the issue is that those safeguards are ineffective against intelligence services AND that there is no legal recourse for non-US citizens.

Comment Re: Seems simple to explain when you pair it with (Score 1) 391

Actually, the key reason Rome fell was because it lived past its means, which was fine as long as it was expanding and wealth from abroad came to the empire, and as long as it could exploit its colonized regions for their resources, they were doing fine. That type of economy is not sustainable

The reason Rome could not sustain it's economy were the loss of a part of its population due to plagues and the loss of harvests due to climate variations ("little ice age").

Comment Re: Seems simple to explain when you pair it with (Score 1) 391

Statistics has always correlated single parenthood with crime conviction rates, college graduation rates, divorce in life rates among the children, etc etc.

Correlation is not causation. There is a high likelihood that they simply have common risk factors, such as being poor, growing up in an abusive family, etc.

There is an adage: "sticking together for the children is never a good idea". Total horseshit. Unless there is rampant abuse, it is almost always a good idea.

Which makes this a non sequitur.

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