If you have to use a cloud based user account they already have their dick in your ass.

That is the entire problem with computing as it has evolved over the years. In the early days of computing, computer code was meant to enable the owner. Laws are and always have been sufficient to punish people from breaking the law without needing tech specific versions of many laws. The code that came out of those eras was meant to enable you to do things. Things that did not work, did not work because it was an oversight or just not a planned feature. There was never any code to make something NOT work by design. As computing progressed, the OS and app creators have gotten more and more heavy handed and writing more and more code to break things on purpose to the point where in todays modern operating systems there is significantly more code to STOP you from doing things that there is to enable it. DRM, artificial crippling so that functionality can be sold back, attempts to lock you out of your system to make you only a consumer all of this is creating more code and bloat than all of the code that is there to simply make it do things, by a significant margin. Things should never be police to their owners. Computing should enable people to do their wildest dreams if they have the skills. Laws always were sufficient to punish people for doing bad things with that power without having tech specific versions of those laws that have be a large component of ruining the computing landscape.

I knew someone pushing this shit a few years ago and claiming it was "therapy." She got arrested for dealing (other) drugs and then fled the country after making FALSE accusations at a number of people...

Captchas were thoroughly defeated years -- MANY years -- ago. The only reason that some people mistakenly think they're still working is that some targets aren't worth the time and trouble to attack.

A few of the numerous references that can easily be found to support this:

unCAPTCHA Breaks 450 ReCAPTCHAs in Under 6 Seconds

Bots are better at CAPTCHA than humans, researchers find

AI researchers demonstrate 100% success rate in bypassing online CAPTCHAs

Troy Hunt: Breaking CAPTCHA with automated humans

Stanford researchers outsmart captcha codes

What "excellent film adaptation" are you talking about? There's one old animated adaptation, and that's is. There's also a movie that bears the same title, but it's apparently a coincidence: nothing except the title and names of some of main characters matches, thus I don't see how it could be relevant to Tolkien's books.

The first thing about adapting a book is reading it at least once, and Peter Jackson skipped that step.

The same company that banned people for linking to the British Holocaust Museum (HMD.Org.UK) claiming the links were violations of the policy on "dangerous individuals and organizations." Zuckerberg is a pedophilic little-boy-raping sick-trash Nazi.

"At some point, the right answer is to buy NICs and compute boards and built your own router like we used to do."

I'm still doing it for a lot of applications. Same for firewalls. The cost is a fraction of commercial offerings, the performance is more than adequate, maintenance is in-house and easy (because I keep a stash of spare parts), and there's no bloat in the software stack because anything I don't need isn't there.

1. This will almost certainly be challenged in court, and that will take a while.

2. Some amount of gear is about to undergo a US-washing in order to evade this: "Yeah, it was designed in China and built in Vietnam, but final assembly was done in Lubbock, soooooo....it's US-made".

3. If the challenge in (1) is unsuccessful, the price of a US-made router will double. That's what happens competition is removed from markets.

4. Also, the US vendors will do their best to kill open-source firmware/software -- say, by introducing undocumented components or issuing firmware updates that break software or by labeling it a national security risk.

5. Everyone trying to cope with the mess will be faced with fewer choices and those choices will cost more...so as various devices hit EOL, folks may decide to keep running them (in spite of the security risks) rather than buy pricey new stuff. Or maybe they'll buy gray market gear.

6. Bottom line: everyone trying to run operations while aiming for the balance of cost and security now has a worse set of choices than they had yesterday.

7. The only thing left for the administration to do is to declare "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" in huge letters and move on to tampering with the next delicate piece of machinery; perhaps someone who doesn't know the difference between fission and fusion could craft nuclear policy, or someone who doesn't know the difference between bacteria and viruses could run th....oh. Wait. My bad, already happened.

Good point, and I'm not here to argue with you -- the problem when we talk about Costco is the Wing drone's max capacity of 5lbs. That's not a Costco trip -- that's barely a trip to a Costco food court :).

5lbs feels like not enough to really replace most trips to actually stock your groceries, unless you break up your shopping trip into multiple delivery flights. It's much better for impromptu consumption (though that said, I feel like most of my trips to the local hardware store are "oh crap, I need this one thing ... " which would be under 5lbs)

I would rather see Chinese vehicles at a price point that erases US car makers off the map if they refuse to allow us the ability to secure our things against THEM. At least we know right from the get go that the Chinese are going to do it so at least we can get help from the government in securing the Chinese crap. But the American makers, like how GM got busted selling everyones non-anonymized data and how GM encrypted the canbus to keep them from having to compete with anyone for add ons. All current EV's in the US market force the systems to be online through the data connections controlled by the car makers so that they have data about everything in your life. When you come and go, where you go, and the lock downs are used to keep you tied to their ecosystem in way that keeps their data feed going. We have no ability to lock them out without severely degrading functionality and that is the true reason those lockdowns exist. To keep them in the loop. Most security breaches are by so called "trusted" entities, but the thing is even the US governments own guidance on connected things is the zero trust model. You keep things offline, at least firewalled it not airgapped, until there is a documented need for it to be connected. It should not be a requirement of access their servers and asking their permission to control our things. That should be direct to the thing and people VPN it off for remote control. Cloud control through their app should only ever be an option and never the only option.

I forgot to add how Chinese apps have been caught spying even when the code itself is benign. I'll use TikTok as an example. TikTok has been caught providing GPS feedback in NEGATIVE back to the CCP. Here is what I mean by negative. Certain areas in the US are tightly controlled with no access allowed. Usually government issues phones or things like that explicitly are denied to have those apps, but what they search for is in aggregate data where they can look for places where they know there are buildings but yet none of their apps or services ever goes. These areas are flagged for more "spying". EV cars will be used no differently but also with the added issues that microphones can be turned on remotely and other things. When looked at in aggregate, what seems to be even minute risks can turn into massively real issues when used together with other data sets in ways that most people never imagine.

While I fully agree that Chinese cars are insecure and will used at the very least in the same way other Chinese apps are used to spy on the public and gain information that even extends into true cases of national security (I'll cover ways below just in case people are unaware), but this is two faced bullshit when the American market is spying on us just as much. EV's are connected in ways that the companies will not allow the users to have any semblance of security from the owners standpoint. Things are locked down to protect them from the users, not us from bad things. The governments own guidance for connected things is that they be sandboxed at least, if not airgapped when there is no documented need for anyone to get in. That even means locking out the manufacturers. The lockdowns are used as a way to keep you using cellular connectivity that they control in a way that prevents you from locking them out. It keeps you using apps that connect to servers you dont control to ask permission from someone who does not own your thing to control that thing that exists (preferably behind your firewall). But we are not allowed that. These systems are weaponized against the users of the systems so that they can datamine everything about you and deny you services that would work on other networks but instead keeping you on a network they fully control. So to non Chinese car makers.... with that said, give us the keys to our security destiny or let loose the Chinese EV's and die. Things attached to infrastructure should not be connected all the time and should at the very least be firewalled and opened ONLY WHEN NEEDED. Local API's to control your things should be forced and cloud based systems that require full time connectivity should only ever be an option, and not the only one.

Why not "replace him as CEO"?

Although it could be done much more cheaply just by using a Magic 8-Ball equipped with appropriate choices, e.g., "be creepy as hell", "invest billions in tech nobody wants", "find another way to invade privacy", etc.

At the moment, Reddit (and other sites) are being targeted because the attackers gain something: profit or publicity or political advantage or something else. If those attackers find that age verification mechanisms/services are standing in the way of that gain, they won't just give up and go away. They'll target the age verification process itself.

That targeting could take a number of forms: an obvious one is to hack them and arrange for them to "verify" a selected set of identities. A less obvious one is to bribe or blackmail people inside the verification service; yes, it's low-tech but that's why it's worked for millennia. Another, and this one is on the table because of the amount of money and power in play, is to set up a shell corporation and buy the verification service. There are other approaches as well.

I strongly doubt that any of these verification services have the means to defend themselves from these attacks: they're running on thin margins and mounting an effective defense would be quite expensive. Moreover: why would they? It would be far more profitable to squeeze out as much revenue as possible before the roof caves in, conceal the assets, declare bankruptcy, shut down, reopen under a new name elsewhere, and repeat. (This business model has already been proven to work -- by telemarketers.)

I would add "...and throw some campaign contributions at politicians" but I'm not sure that's necessary. There are already plenty of them grandstanding on the "FOR THE CHILLLLLDRRRRENNNNNN" platform, so I there's little need to purchase any of them.

That's a blockade done against human drivers, who (usually) know how to drive off the railway track, and the blockaders are only protesting rather than actively trying to murder. They stop cars from passing but don't trap them on the tracks.

What GP suggests is that by people simply standing there, the self-driving car's software will stop on the track without aggressively trying to escape.

Here in Poland we have campaign teaching people how to get out of a railway crossing if you get stuck. A bunch of differently-smart humans didn't even contemplate driving through the bar gate, and in some cases didn't even evacuate the car either. The bars are designated to break easily when forced by a car, but somehow in a stressful situation drivers regard them as sacrosanct. As Waymo cars behave that way in about every potentially dangerous situation, I'm afraid they'll do the same when on a railroad crossing as well.