> Wouldn't I be better off having the package delivered to an Amazon Lockbox right next to or even inside of the post office, and then not pay any fuel surcharge?

You realize this is already a thing the post office does, right?

You can also have items shipped to, say, a UPS store or have it held at a FedEx shipping hub for pickup.

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are automakers responsible when someone breaks the speed limit and kills someone?

What's funny is that there's no such thing as "vicarious speeding" or "contributory reckless driving," but with copyright, there is. Analogously, sometimes the automaker is liable for drivers speeding!

But even so, Cox's behavior didn't fit contributory infringement.

The court just said T17 S501 is an ok law that they're not striking it down or anything like that, but it doesn't apply to this case!

A very good thing has happened.

The people who say that, never supply a reason. It's just dogma.

My counter-dogma: nuh uh.

It's illegal but laws aren't currently enforced, so I don't know why you're bringing the law up.

Let's perform a natural experiment: keep saying reappropriation is illegal, and then wait for the executive to do it anyway. Then watch to see if Congress gives a fuck, by impeaching the executive (or credibly threatening to impeach if the embezzled funds aren't returned in n hours).

My hypothesis is that Congress won't do anything about it, and is fine with whatever new powers that the president decides he wants.

What's your hypothesis?

Surprise: we're actually going to do that experiment. In fact, we started it last year.

It's not in society's interests, but it is in government's interests. Society and government are orthogonal teams who often conflict with each other. In the US, we spelled that out explicitly in the late 1700s, but docs go back at least as far as the Magna Carta.

Alas, "spelling out" government limitations isn't the same thing as believing limits are a good idea and enforcing them, as we're occasionally reminded. The Constitution is just ink on a page, until people give a fuck about it. And in America, the constitution is currently very unpopular. Society wants to surrender to government, or if it doesn't want that, it's sure acting like it wants that.

That's pretty neat!

The danger with using unallocated space, is that sometimes you might accidentally overwrite it. But if that happens, I guess it just means you need to figure out what your new size needs to be, make a new hidden volume, and then restore from backup. It's that last step that I never remember as a possibility, probably due to my horrible backup habits. ;-)

I think that might be a bad idea, because when thugs say "hand over your phone" and you hand them a brand new phone that you have apparently never used, you're going to get wrench-based cryptanalysis. You need to be able to hand them the keys to a realistic environment that looks like it's being used. Thugs wanna see recent timestamps.

Ideally, we need to have some casual, boring (but constantly-touched!) environment that can launch encrypted environments, but somehow not have anything that references those environments.

The biggest problem I see is storage allocation. We need to be able to plausibly deny the existence of something, but also keep it from being overwritten by not-denied environments. How do you hide "don't write to these blocks, because something else uses them"?

Some might suggest hiding in plain sight with steganography, but at some point thugs will notice that everyone they suspect, just happens to have an unnecessarily-large gigaphoto. ;-)

Having alt environments that are detectable, but can be quickly destroyed the way you suggest, might be a decent compromise as long as it keeps an innocent and recently-used one around as cover. You enter the oh-fuck PIN, and it logs you into the innocent host environment but then it immediately deletes its encrypted guests, leaving you with a truly innocent machine as far as anyone can tell. And then you just really hope you can enter that duress code (or you can trick thugs into entering it) before they image your storage.

"National Security" means anything the government wants. Anything you would consider to be an abuse, they would consider to be within bounds, because there are no bounds.

> It may be a shitty project, but the people all had at least an indirect say in it.

No we didn't. Nobody votes for what NASA does, not even indirectly through their choice of congress critters. More often than not even Congress barely gives more than a passing thought to NASA's budget, and even then all that matters is how much of that budget will be spent in their jurisdiction and not what it will be spent on.

I do not approve of congressional (or presidential) meddling in NASA's projects, but not because of what the projects necessarily ARE - I care because you cannot hope to make progress on a project that'll take 10+ years when the project changes every 2-4 years.
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We pay money to get less energy?

Trump is confusing plus signs with minus signs. Does he need an eye exam, or a mental exam, or what?

The story here has nothing to do with sympathy; it's about incompetence.

"You used a n^2 query on a billions-of-records database?!"

"Well, yeah, but it's ok because the only people who use it are assholes."

That the victims of the breathalyzer's incompetent implementation happen to be people I mistrust, doesn't make the breathalyzer's makers look any less incompetent. They had one job, and they failed.

It's funny because if you go back in time about 40 years you could replace "Chinese" with "Japanese" and get the exact same sentiment. And we all know Japanese auto makers definitely didn't learn any lessons and definitely didn't eat US automaker's lunches, right?

> There are plenty of good used cars if price is the issue.

Fun fact: There can't be any used cars if nobody buys new cars.
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> It's money-neutral for everyone involved

Not only will the LNG plant absolutely cost more than $1B by the time it's all said and done.

Not only is LNG something that needs to be paid for in perpetuity, unlike wind, which means an ongoing expense that will be paid by utility customers.

Not only is the price of that LNG linked to global markets which are, for lots of reasons, more expensive and volatile now and will be for the foreseeable future.

But the LNG plant will be built in Texas, and does not generate electricity at all. Do you know what an LNG plant actually does? Generates Liquefied Natural Gas. Do you know why you'd do that? To put it on a boat and export it... not to burn it for electricity. Not that generating electricity in Texas - which has an isolated grid from the rest of the US - would be of any use to the people in the Northeast US and Canada who would have definitely benefited from cheaper electricity.

So not only are you wrong about it being cost neutral in both the short and near term, but it could ever be neutral 'for all involved' either. The people of the Northeastern US are fucked out of cheaper electricity, and the people of Texas don't get anything out of the deal.
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Yes, I'm aware there are forums full of people with no personal experience with X complaining to the people doing X every day that X simply can't be done. A forum full of truckers saying EV trucks can't meet their needs doesn't mean EV trucks can't meet their needs. It only means they have opinions about it strong enough they feel it necessary to post online about it.

Meanwhile, all-electric trucks doing 800km (500mi) trips across Europe has been a thing long enough that it's becoming mundane, and they only have rated ranges of ~300-400km (190-250mi) loaded. Again, I'm not going to say a 500-mile range is never needed, but I'm absolutely saying the necessity of that range is way overstated. The tech is very clearly good enough for the vast majority of real world use cases and has been for some time, evidenced by the fact that it's successfully used in real world use cases and has been for some time. Those guys can post on their forums about how it can't be done until their fingers fall off, but it won't make their opinions into truths.
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> Allow me to rephrase with exactly the same meaning, "The problem is customers could receive a $2 discount for coming in on the low-demand day." Are you sure that is... bad?

I'm gonna guess that you're one of those idiots who think Amazon sales are a great deal, rather than the 'sale' price being the normal price and the non-sale price being inflated by 20% (because fuck you what are you gonna do about it, leave the house?)

The flip side you're not seeing is if they peg you as someone who ALWAYS buys Maxwell House coffee even when other brands are cheaper or on sale, they will charge YOU SPECIFICALLY more for that product because they know you're likely to pay it. Amazon already does that shit (try looking at the exact same item in a different browser or device while not logged in...) and with the use of digital price stickers on shelves it's likely gonna start happening everywhere.

And in case you're wondering how; the security cameras are already face-IDing and tracking you from the moment you walk through the store. All they'd have to do is set that coffee's price to $20 and give you a 'discount' as you approach, which of course won't be as much a 'discount' as someone they aren't sure has a strong preference for that brand.
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