Thanks for omitting the one important fact: A certain portion of the ideology spectrum are breaking the rules and traditions of leading schools and states while demanding everyone else pretend they're aren't. This year, those people aren't limiting their behaviour to niceties: They are breaking laws.

Bribe-friendly Carr isn't doing this to help consumers, he's doing this to help big business. It's easier to excuse 'progress' if people think it benefits their self-interest. Since consumers currently have no reason to use it, they won't be in harm's way.

Paxton's raft of laws depriving Texans of choices, of rights, indicate he's not doing this to protect the people. This is driven by his xenophobia and racism.

Translation: Customers repeatedly expect a corporation to manage their equipment for them, for years, for free.

Seriously, this has been standard practice for 2 years, yet customers continue to be surprised when a corporation pulls the server's plug. If a product's interface is internet-only, the manufacturer is assuming you are a gullible idiot. Buying the product proves them correct.

If customers aren't asking how long the remote management/sync will be available, they deserve disappointment. If product reviewers aren't asking, they don't care about their audience. Product reviewers should headline their description of internet-based functions with "functionality ends 18 months after product release". What's the manufacturer going to do: Admit the EoL date in advance?

I'm guessing this allows Apple to decide which software the owner can use: Like Google is doing with Android OS. Either way, a hardware driver needs permission to work.

Why is hardware forced to expire? I get the security purpose of certificates but why the forced expiration? It's another form of forced obsolescence. I doubt anyone is making fake Logitech mice, there are easier ways to install malware.

The real problem is, my 6-button mouse needs a manager application to work while my 38 button joystick doesn't.

Of course the king of fraud won't sign but that's not the problem. Who has the power to seize e-mails and trace the payment of moneys? Without that, it's a "been a very naughty boy" posture: If you don't get caught red-handed, it's easy money. In other words, what US congress already does.

That's what war is for: With more people chasing a dwindling resource (middle-class pay-cheque), war is inevitable even though winner-takes-all capitalism has eliminated most of the middle-class (who would pay for that war).

War has useful side effects: Reducing the number of people and their rights (mostly democracy), normalizing theft (of foreign wealth) and creating new customers (the foreigners just robbed), while increasing the wealth of ruling class, yet again.

Civil war is worse because there isn't an invading force to impose law and order, to begin rebuilding the country. The victims of war must divide themselves into the have and have-nots, the cruel and the just. That's near impossible after years of blood-shed. It's why a war for freedom results in a nation that practices more violence and cruelty.

This is a law designed to shut-down data-brokers. Everyone will still collect your data: The law demands it. Anyone else, having your PII, can keep it. Corporations have been moving data out of the US for decades, to by-pass laws just like this. It's why the US has the CLOUD ('all your data are belong to us') act but of course, it won't be used against faceless corporations.

Everyone looks at big breasts, whether they be real, artificial (on the inside) or curved padding on the outside.

AM transmitters and airport VOR are already installed across the country. A law and budget to maintain AM radio transmitters (long-wave and VHF), should be sufficient.

What can the UN do: Ignore US veto power over its decisions?

Even if a cabal of nations decide to protect Venezuela: How? Are they going to invade Venezuela to stop the US occupation? Or, at least, to stop the fascism of economic 'hit-men' (think loan-shark debt collectors for countries). Even if the international community agrees to a military response, it won't prevent Trump robbing his victim.

While Trump has the might of the US military (and the laziness of the international community) to empower his burglary of other countries, his menaces must immediately increase his bank balance. Gaining ownership of oilfields requires a team of employees who want a share of the loot: A deal that Trump will avoid. So, Trump will demand multiple bribes. (Officials in Venezuela should buy pardons.)

*Sigh*
That's not reading circular space as numbers that's a diophantine equation.

quarter - 15 minutes
to - before
three - 3 hours after midday or midnight

calculate: 15 minutes before this hour (three) = 45 minutes after the previous hour (two)
So 3 o'clock minus 15 minutes or 2 o'clock plus 45 minutes (02:45 AM/PM)

I guess this is chewing tobacco. One can buy powdered tobacco for inhaling (snuff), still.

Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Nobody imagined American Christianity and corporations combining forces and turning against the people: But the pieces were there for everyone to see.

The problem is that a chat-bot is easily contaminated from remembering its past: A real-alive person is forced to satisfy their emotional needs (respect, authority) and social needs (same-ness, together-ness) by dealing with independent parties who are also constrained by the need for others but a machine only has its memory. This is why 'therapy' chat-bots turn into an agreeable sycophant that allows the patient to do anything he/she wants. Two years of LLM development has not removed its 'monkey see, monkey do' behaviour. The conclusion: Such responses are a design flaw that can't be 'trained' out of existence.

Taking the job of pretending the design flaw can be fixed, is a bad decision.