Back doors into encrypted communications? Is there a government in the world that hasn't demanded exactly this?

It may not meet the technical definition, but any scheme in which early adopters benefit from the losses of later victims is, morally, a ponzi scheme, same as nearly all MLM businesses. When the only way for later joiners to make their money back is to recruit new victims, it's a ponzi scheme.

"True" democracy only works with very small numbers of people. By the time you have a dozen people involved, you have cliques whose interests diverge. From there, all else is popularity contests.

Sounds good, as long as I get to define what merits and expertise are required, and determine who has those qualities. Me, and me alone, because no one else has the merits and expertise to determine what merits and expertise are needed.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

The news media is, and has always been, completely controlled by their advertisers, who kowtow to whoever is in office at the moment. That is why you got whiplash from watching how fast most of the outlets reversed direction when Trump took office and Republicans got control of both houses of Congress. It'll be the same when the Democrats take it back.

By and large, the "news" media doesn't care what the politics are, they're just desperate for enough money to stay in business.

Technically, the one who would "have standing" to file criminal charges would be the prosecutor who is assigned the case after a careful investigation.

Not holding my breath, though.

News is a business, and it's not the business of selling news. It's the business of selling advertising. When advertising revenue tanks, the industry tanks. Even a cursory examination of how the industry works - and has worked for over a century - will show that, in fact, one did cause the other.

Universities are all about teaching. This will teach their researchers how to fake their research better.

And then, shortly thereafter, you'll have to pay to use your device with less advertising, and then you'll have to pay to use it at all, with the same amount of advertising for all.

It's not like we haven't seen it all before. Cable TV originally had no advertising. Now, it's just like broadcast TV, with 1/3 of the total air time being ads.

This is the history of technological advance. Technology is that which amplifies the work done by a person, and pretty much all technology has reduced the number of people needed to do a particular job.

Starbucks has free WiFi.

And most libraries have free internet access, including the computer to do it on.

And among the things they'd have to remove would be the spyware and adware, which would defeat the entire purpose of Windows.

Stamps aren't free. (And hand delivering will involve some kind of transportation cost.)

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

(But I agree, except this doesn't seem to be about free filing through third party sites, only about direct free filing.)

Virtue signaling is very important to maintain a steady flow of graft and corruption.

If they learned something useful from it, it was a success. It was, after all, a prototype test. That's simply how it's done.

If you require 100% success on even the first test, you'll never accomplish anything.