This is like anything involving cryptography. It's fiddly, easy to screw up, failure prone, and usually also hard to understand just for funsies. If even the hotshot cryptographers cant keep from screwing it up, maybe voting on plain old paper ain't so bad, eh? I like the simplicity of replying to "We don't believe the result." with "Okay, there's the ballots. You count them."

Solar Winds monitoring suite was always such a darling and favorite among Windows sysadmins. I remember writing a few custom shell scripts for it's Linux agent years ago. I must admit to a bit of schadenfreude after they stumbled with the security nightmares for a while. However, the stuff I'm seeing now is even worse and more horrifying than anything SolarWinds ever released. After "AI Agents" become the norm, I have a feeling I'll look back on Solarwinds fondly.

I wonder what solar panels do to the land productivity, soil health, and for local plant species? I'm guessing it's like most things and /how/ they do it matters a lot. Seems like in some areas the shade might be welcome and give a chance for other plants and animals to survive.

Did anyone else see those articles about how using drones/robots to dig holes and plant local plants could transform a desert in just a few years? Then there are the machines that can pull moisture from the air to fill tanks. What about the fact that the Sahara desert was once a rain forest? I've seen these foam-throwing cannons mixed with plant nutrients and local seed varieties do wonders on burn scars in my area in just 2-3 years. Doesn't it seem like these huge unproductive tracts of desert could be made much more productive with current know how?

Ah, so this is thread-vs-thread counter-mod warfare! How exciting! :-)

Oh so clever. One of us is advocating freedom and one of us is starting the "for the children" litany as a pre-ritual likely before a big step on freedom's face. Will you do "stop the terrorists" next, grampa ?

I remember you being an authoritarian idiot during CV19. You shouldn't be participating in any discussions in your condition.

Assholes always think they are the smartest person in the room and nobody knows what they know.

You have no credibility. Why should anyone care what you think?

Pure hubris.

The most venomous of idiots get big mad every time someone points out that scientists need to be skeptical and always lean on data, no matter how uncomfortable the implications. Is that why you decided to participate when you "can't even" ?

That wouldn't hold water anyway, but the facts remain, you said "No scientist claimed it would stop transmission." I quoted the CDC director, a scientist who said exactly that. If she hadn't other scientists wouldn't have called her down for it in the very article I linked to, which you appear to not have read.

Nobody is playing syntax games. She said it, she's a scientist, and the CDC retracted it a day later since it's such a ridiculous statement. Oh, and you still sound angry and it's impacting your ability to communicate with any clarity. Amusing.

Hasn’t the way you’re no longer feeling now become what you felt you wouldn’t when you first did?

Best. Reply. Ever.

I'm super tired of hearing about QC. I know it's not completely fake but it's been 5 years away for 30 years. When someone can use a quantum modem to send data without any transmissions or wires or they can solve all the NP complete problems or crack AES with it, wake me up. Meanwhile, much more interesting things happen in computing than "news" happens in QC.

I suppose that's one possibility. Now, another is that you'd just get your can't-fight liberal clock-cleaned in front of your weak sickly child then wake up in jail with a bell and sign shoved up your ass while wondering what happened to the authoritarians who were so supportive in 2021. I'm guessing you never tried in back then, tough guy, so we'll never know.

Certainly true. An actual skeptic would simply look at the facts and the gaps in the facts and make up their mind accordingly with an appropriate level of confidence. However, you and I both know that's not what we saw in 2020-2021.

That data would have very questionable value, once collected. Did a company end up with a majority white & male IT dept because they are racists who only hire whites or because they are in Maine where 93% of the population is white? Perhaps you can use other mitigating facts and coefficients to adjust then get some value from the data, but I doubt it. I'd also point out that, in my personal experience, most folks who suggested this sort of exercise do, in fact, eventually seem to land on "hire fewer whites" as the fix once they have a "study" to shake in the air.

I do not disagree with this, but I would point out that it's not a direct rebuttal to anything I actually wrote.