Not quite...

I would argue that regulating the humidity in the crisper drawers, and moreso the freezer (keeps freezerburn to a minimum and eliminates the need to remove ice buildup), and to an extent, some icemakers, are all useful functions. I don't want an icemaker in my fridge because I don't want to bring water to it, as it's one more thing to break and cause a flood, but a lot of people find that very useful; it removes something they otherwise need to remember and attend to. A water dispenser too, for some people.

Agreed on any kind of smart function though. No problem is solved bu putting those functions on a fridge.

You read the article?

You must be new here...

TOS had one black character, which provided some great storylines - some "woke", some not.

Had it made half the characters black as part of some diversity mandate, it too would have flopped.

(And actually, it didn't do too well during its original run anyway, which is why it was cancelled, which somewhat invalidates your point.)

Kinda hard when the family is in the middle of Arkansas and your employer is in Redmond, and you've just been ordered back to the office. Or if every employer you can find is inexplicably governed by the laws of Delaware.

And therein lies the problem. On the Internet, Cloudflare is that law. Whom do you propose to replace them with, without also allowing the same problem to exist (that being, that Cloudflare can too easily act as a censor)?

How?

I can close an entire street by ordering five hundred pizzas to the same address at the same time (assuming I can find five hundred pizzerias within the delivery area). How would we design a street to prevent this kind of DDoS attack?

Likewise, I fail to understand how the Internet could be designed in such a way that would be impossible to overwhelm any given target with a volume of traffic it can't handle.

No. It literally isn't. To any engineer, nothing but zero is zero.

You're a fucking idiot.

My theory is that Azure and AWS are having issues due to a large number of multi-cloud GCP customers failing over. They're just overloaded - it's not one or two GCP regions that are down. It's all of them.

Although I've been having issues with AWS all day, since before GCP went down. So I'm not sure.

Leopards ate their face.

I hate to victim blame, but don't put your genetic data online. My sister did, and I share 50% of mine with her. I am (IMO) justifiably angry about that (we're still cool though, but this is not something we'll ever agree on).

Everything, and I mean everything you put online, or send anywhere, including to government, will be leaked eventually. Share your data with that thought in mind.

That's great, if it's an option. It's a government overreach if it's mandatory.

Thanks for the clarification, I'd only read the linked article and not the website (which to be fair to me, wasn't mentioned in the article).

The challenges I presented are still valid. Sure, they'll "ensure accessibility for those with...", but it never works out that way. The closest thing I can think of is a driver's license being our de facto standard ID card in Ontario. My brother, who doesn't drive, doesn't have one, so he has an "age of majority card" - and nobody knows what the hell it is. I think something like this proposal would have the same effect. Sure, it's technically usable by those without a smartphone, but in reality, not having one is still a massive challenge.

A simple read-only (write-once, technically) smart card that keeps a picture of you and can be protected by a PIN or password is a much better idea. It doesn't need to be updated when new information is stored. It's cheap. It's accessible to everyone. It's superior in every respect. It can replace driver's licenses (a challenge here in Canada, and the US, due to differing areas of federal and provincial/state jurisdiction). A smartphone app is an implementation, maintenance, legal, and security nightmare just waiting to happen. We all know it's gonna cost a fuckload more than £10M to keep it running. Just create a smart card that's basically a database key; there's no reason the data itself needs to be on the card beyond a few simple points, maybe picture and date of birth so it can be used to verify age of majority.

None of this even mentions my objections to making it mandatory to carry ID. Not in my Canada, thank you. I personally see requiring me to carry ID to walk my dog, or forcing me to identify myself to any government official any time other than when I'm requesting a government service or I'm being arrested as an egregious offense to my right to be left the hell alone.

If you're not looking at the road, you're not driving safely.

You're an idiot of the kind that believes they are the only exception.

I don't want the Big Bad Government to control me, no.

But I do want it to control assholes like you who endanger me by believing that only they are able to drive safely while staring at their phone. Laws exist specifically to protect the rest of as from reckless, selfish idiots like you who give not a whit for the lives of others.

You are free to do whatever the hell you want, free of government intervention (or at least you should be), unless that "whatever you want" endangers me. Your right to swing your fists stops at my face.

You are not special. You are not unique. You are just as dangerous as everyone else if you're playing with a phone while you're driving. Believing otherwise is just stupid and selfish, and the reason we need this Big Bad Government that you seem to hate so much.

It sure is.

But both are still distracting, and dangerous enough to others that it should be illegal.

Put the phone down, you dangerous selfish prick. You are a danger to everyone around you. You are not unique in your superhuman ability to drive safely while distracted.

Or yanno, mount it to the dash, like everyone else.

Not everyone has, or wants, a cellphone. Even among those who do, many have just a candy bar or a flip phone. A bill like this can never become law - it's tantamount to forcing an entire populace to purchase a smartphone. It has serious civil liberties and logistical hurdles.

A much better idea is a smart card, or some kind of hardware device. Protect it with a "Personal Identification Number", or a yet to be invented smartcard+fingerprint reader (concerns with biometric identification notwithstanding). Call it a... PIN card. This would have the benefits of A) Being much cheaper and easier to replace, B) Being issuable to those who don't or can't own a smartphone, and C) Not requiring citizens to hand over their entire digital lives to get an ID checked. It could work like, I dunno, a PIN card like you have from the bank - which serves the same purpose: identifying you to the bank.

The fact that this is even being considered suggests to me that either someone saw a flashy powerpoint and hasn't yet been schooled on the legal and logistical challenges, or B) It's a pork barrel project. Either way, it's a problem in search of a solution. The problem is "We need a more verifiable way to identify people when required by law". A smartphone app is not the only possible solution.

I'd even be OK with a smartphone app, as long as it was an option, not a requirement - but we all know where that road ends.