My first thought was to wonder if this is a subtle indication that someone somehow invented the fictional "Dollhouse" imprinting technology, and wanted this data as a raw source of skills/etc to edit into personalities to actually imprint in the dolls...

My second thought was to wonder what this data could actually be useful for (nefarious or otherwise), since it is doubtful it really "reads your mind". But the article does mention it "... can reveal mental health conditions, emotional states, and cognitive patterns, even when anonymized". I guess that is a legitimate concern.

Minor correction: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/815 is just the summary. The actual text is a little more verbose, starting with:

Where?
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text

If I understand that website correctly, your linked page is just a draft that only passed the house. The actual passed law (a different version) was embedded in another "related" bill ( https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/815 ), which includes the following sentence:

I don't know how well Trump's action actually meets those privisos...

From the Nov 1 story on slashdot: "US Experts Say Headlights Aren't Bright Enough" https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...

For what its worth, I agree with this newer story and completely DISAGREE with that earlier one.

In fact, in that one I actively complained about tail lights, let alone headlights: https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... . Everyone is trying to out-bright everyone else, with no sign of reaching a reasonable balance...

Emails or phone calls claiming your computer is infected is one of the most common scams...

The specs seem like only a rather tiny incremental step towards the upcoming PlayStation 9 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ).

They seem to be releasing new console versions too quickly: We've used more than half the version numbers already, but it has been less than 1/3 of the time elapsed until the year 2078. They'll need to substantially slow down the release of new versions if they expect the PS9 to have anything like the advertised features...

Personally, I think some cars' taillights and brake lights are too bright, let alone headlights.

Everyone is trying to out-bright everthing else, increasing brightness more and more on a continuous treadmill. Everyone has studies that if they just make their own lights brighter, drivers will notice them better and avoid hitting them, possibly stop and shop at their store, etc. That's true when considered in isolation, but it ignores how that now makes it harder for drivers to notice anything else besides your now-brighter taillights, storefront signs, etc.

I suspect it would be beneficial to try to achieve a better balance, making everything dimmer (but balanced by priority), with the ultimate goal of trying to preserve enough of a remnant of people's night vision that they might have a chance of noticing hazards that aren't directly illuminated at all...

Agreed. I think the title is miss-phrased. It should most likely read "... BECAUSE of His Many Encrypted Apps", although I suspect the authorities aren't talking about their techniques in enough detail to determine which of his apps tipped them off...

#1 is wrong, DEI prioritizes hiring on the DEI principles WHEN the competence is equal.

In theory.

In theory, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" seems like an excellent and fair way to distribute resources.

In theory, with respect to voting there seems like a lot of sense in the idea that someone should demonstrate some minimal level of competence in planning and running their own lives before they are allowed to have a say in running a country.

(There are probably many more.)

But in practice...

... (the US, which does the lion's share of global space spending, hasn't sent a dedicated mission to Venus since 1978).

Pedantically, there was the Magellan mission launched in 1989. But your overall point still stands... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellan_(spacecraft)

The concept of consistently poor quality big macs reminds me of a 23 year old joelonsoftware post that used the concept to explain why consulting companies start out great, and then quickly degrade into mediocracy: https://www.joelonsoftware.com...

Epic already lost its suit against Apple months ago.

I'm not an expert, but doesn't it seem like the legal results are backwards (assuming different results for the cases are legitimate at all)?

Unless I'm mistaken, it is officially allowed and fairly straightforward for a user to install anything on Android without going through Google, but IOS only allows that if you (as a user) sign up as a developer (including a fee, I think). Doesn't that mean Apple is a worse/stronger monopoly than Google?

Along the same lines, there is also Benji Smith's 2005 hammer factory factory post on the now-defunct joelonsoftware discussion forum. The original is long gone, but there are at least two copies elsewhere:

https://factoryfactoryfactory.net/

https://medium.com/@johnfliu/why-i-hate-frameworks-6af8cbadba42

(The original also had some good follow-up discussion, but that is harder to find.)

... and I still actively avoid buying anything from Amazon, originally for this reason, but later just because they are too big and powerful.

I agree OAuth2 is a real PITA; I've got a few gmail accounts and it has been getting insane. They don't really seem to want to support POP/IMAP and other non-"gmail.com" web clients. However, there are some options:

I'm not sure if it still be possible to leave 2FA off on an account that it decides is low importance (like if it only ever receives mail from public mailing list subscriptions). It seems to be more and more difficult. In the last few years they added logic that (sometimes) disables access if they detect you trying to access it from unexpected IP address ranges you aren't "normally" using (such as when (rarely) travelling). This basically forced me to enable 2FA on all of my gmail accounts.

Last I checked, it was still possible to enable and generate "application passwords" that you can use in any POP or IMAP client, but not for any other kind of access. (Unless you are using business class "G Suite" and your company's admins disabled the application password option.) Most of my accounts are still using application passwords, and I occasionally get emails about "improving" (scare quotes) my security by disabling them, but maybe I'm just grandfathered in? (I could log in with my browser and check what settings options are currently in gmail's settings, but I disable both javascript and cookies from most places by default (especially Google), and I don't feel like going through the hassle of temporarily opening holes in my personal security policy right now (and tracking down passwords and TOTP secrets for "second factors") just to refine this comment.)

Finally, if nothing else works, I try to maintain some instructions on how to use oauth2 to maintain a normal local UNIX email account routed through gmail, as a kind of public service. See https://mmogilvi.users.sourceforge.net/software/oauthbearer.html. This requires carefully setting up a lot of little details, but once it is working it seems to be possible for cron jobs to keep using a renewal token for years without manual intervention. The instructions, scripts, patches, etc could probably all use some updates, cleanup, and streamlining, but I think all the currently-critical tidbits are there. Including a workaround for google's recent decision to disable so called "out-of-band" initial token acquisition a couple of months ago. I use this for a single account, just to make sure I notice and can try to document it the next time google decides to break something.