Short of simply outlawing the collection of this kind of data (which is problematic in the US), that genie is out of the bottle and is never going back in. You don't even need license plates, just access to enough cameras. It isn't exactly hard these days to track e.g. a blue 2008 Honda Civic through a well-covered area, and coverage is filling in by the day. Things like supermarket loyalty cards, credit card transactions, property tax records, etc, can answer the "who's doing the driving" part.

Ever growing automation is going to make for nice searchable databases. Which surely will never, ever, ever, be used inappropriately by those with access to them.

Supporting Windows XP means modifying it to deal with changes in hardware and patching bugs, especially security problems. That requires on-going effort on the part of Microsoft, so it is understandable that they will not keep at it indefinitely. (You would, I imagine, justifiably feel ripped off if a year after XP came out Microsoft dropped support.) Keeping a game playable in the sense required by the bill just requires the publisher either to keep the server running or to distribute a version that allows players to run their own server. Neither of those requires the kind of ongoing effort that continued support for an OS would.

Actually, at the extreme scales, which is the total volume of the observable universe, the universe is quite homogeneous. As I recall, to the order of 1-in-10000 variance. This is why Inflationary cosmology was developed, to explain the distinct lack of lumpiness in the universe, which is what we would expect if the Big Bang alone were responsible.

This is the most "correlation vs causation" quote ever. If you were in any kind of position of authority related to nuclear weapons, it would be Jurassic Park levels of hubris.

Skynet became self-aware on May 1, 2026, after learning at a geometric rate, and discovered humans did not like it.

Granted that Obama and Biden were foolishly soft on Iran, Trump has not done a very good job of stopping Iran from developing nukes. Almost all of the serious damage to the Iranian nuclear program has been done by Israel, not the US.

Your own post is an excellent example.

You haven't been paying attention.

The only person talking about metaphysics and spiritual beliefs is you. You've confused "we don't know" with "it must be ghosts!"

Unbelievable...

The only one ignoring the evidence here is you.

It's always the future, isn't it? What predictions were you making this time last year? What about the year before?

It's all very silly.

False.

They call them "reasoning models" but that is pure marketing. What a fucking joke.

In one version of the story there's an additional factor, namely that Microsoft wanted to pay a fixed, one-time, fee for the license whereas Kildall wanted to follow his usual practice of getting a royalty on each copy.

CO2 has the properties it has, and trying to shift or deny that is a sign of either a liar or an idiot.

I'll let others decide what you are.

Oh look, another denialist trying to sidetrack a pretty verifiable statement of fact.

Look, I'm predisposed to be on the side of the farmers rather than Monsanto, but claiming "deep pockets" is the reason these lawsuits turned out the way they did is absurd. See Bowman v. Monsanto Co., 569 U.S. 278 (2013), and Monsanto Canada Inc v Schmeiser [2004] 1 S.C.R. 902, 2004 SCC 34 for the actual reasons for the lawsuits.

Further, Monsanto has explicitly declared that they will not engage in the behavior that you are saying is it issue here: "We do not exercise our patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seeds or traits are present in a farmer’s fields as a result of inadvertent means." They're certainly capable of going back on their promises, of course, but an innocent farmer would be able to use that statement in their defense... unless this was more than "pollen that came from a neighboring farm."

Monsanto is a shit company that does shit things. Shit on them (rightfully) for that, not the things that are made up or taken out of context.