I know. My point is that all the site should guarantee to the advertiser is transmission of the ad. What happens to it once it reaches my browser should be irrelevant.

There are sites I like and do not block ads because I want them to be around, and in the end they either need to paywall or run ads to stay in business.

But the company whose ad it is has already paid to be shown on the site, hasn't it? Why should they care whether I choose to block ads via my browser? I'm never going to click on any as anyway.

Damn, Windows has really improved in the last 25 years. Wouldn't know since my last Windows was Win2k and my computers only run macOS or Linux and have crashed less that 10 times combined in the last 20 years or so. A well, whatever. Good for people still using Windows, I guess.

... Fantasy worlds out there that would look epic as a AAA fantasy blockbuster triology. Raymond E. Feist comes to mind. Bernard Hennen, Guy Gavrial Kay, Brandon Sanderson and countless other top-shelf fantasy authors and epic worlds. Can't we just leave LOTR be? It's gotten an excellent film adaption, one that will stand the test of time if it doesn't get diluted with trash like it already partially has. Please stop right now.

I think we may be truly witnessing the dawn of western culture and it effing hurts.

... to all their competitors, grab the deckchairs and some popcorn and watch everybody else tear each other to shreds. Brilliant move if you ask me. 8-)

... in at least one key aspect: The cash going around is almost exclusively from the deep and wide warchests of large megacorps. Which means if a bubble pops it likely will just be a little fart for regular people and we can get rehired for our bullshit desk jobs.

The Second Amendment was intended to be a check on federal power. None of the amendments were incorporated into jurisprudence about what individual states could do until arguably 1890 and not certainly until the early 1920s. Many states had laws around firearm storage for decades. In the 1830s, Massachusetts was the first among several states to generally bar carriage of firearms in public. Texas would follow suit in 1871.

The Heller decision written by Scalia was a sea change in constitutional law, but it laid down important limits that were respected in the MacDonald decision that followed soon after and which incorporated the Second Amendment as applying to states as well as the federal government. Scalia wrote that firearm law limitations were presumptively lawful, and essentially laid down an opportunity for the federal government to prohibit future types of weapons sales by preventing them from becoming publicly available. Here's what he wrote (citations removed).

We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those "in common use at the time." We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of "dangerous and unusual weapons."

It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.

Scalia had no problem with regulating or even banning public availability of broad classes of weapons as long as those available to the public continued to be available to the public. In his view, existing weapons like missiles and new weapons like portable lasers could be banned because they were not "in common use." However, Scalia died in 2016, and the Court has moved to a substantially broader view than he had.

What are you going to do when Nazi Trump really ramps up the persecution? Oh right, sit back and protest and hope the government doesn't murder you all, ie just like Iran did to it's protesters two months ago.

The people who have clamored most over the last 40 years about government overreach are largely those most supportive of Trump's tyrannical behavior. However, the fastest growing segment of gun owners in the last couple of years are those on the left, with even more disproportionate growth among minorities. There are a lot of former military who are very unhappy with the direction that he's taken, too. There are a lot of guns on both sides and not nearly enough police or military to handle them all.

So far, the Trump administration's own overreach has been embarrassing enough to force them to back off. The videos of the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti were bad enough, but the responses by almost everyone up to and including Trump in labeling them terrorists and declaring that the ICE and CBP agents did no wrong before we even had multiple views of what happened caused them to backpedal (even the NRA chimed in against the administration). Bovino was removed from Minnesota and demoted, resulting in him either deciding or being forced to retire. They sent Tom Homan in, and the first thing he did was withdraw half of the agents assigned there, and most of the rest have returned to their assigned jurisdictions. Noem's constant bluster and media presence have sidelined her in the administration, destroyed almost any chance of a political future and cast a permanent pall over the brutal enforcement actions under her watch. Her replacement, Markwayne Mullin, isn't much better in terms of policy goals, but he has said that he doesn't like and doesn't want the constant press from extreme actions. The GOP, including Trump, is being forced to negotiate on things in the DHS budget bill that Trump declared just a couple of weeks ago were nonnegotiable. Trump's actions in Iran have backfired, and so far, the only negotiations happening seem to be in his own imagination, leaving him looking even worse, even among his own supporters.

They're weak and they know it, and their support isn't as solid as it was a year ago. Whether this means they continue to back down or they suddenly lash out, I don't know. But if they do move to mass violence, it isn't going to be against a group of unarmed pansies entirely incapable of shooting back. I hope it doesn't come to that, because it will become impossible to predict the outcome.

Shouldn't the super-fast rotation of massive black holes counteract at least some of their gravity vertical to it's axis? Could that - at least hypothetically - eventually cause a black hole to break apart into bits of regular non-black-hole matter, if it spins fast enough?

Sorry if I'm sounding silly here, I'm a 5th-grader when it comes to astrophysics but perhaps someone with knowledge could offer some insight?

That's already the case. The so-called National Security Law is used against any kind of political dissent.

Trump has issued 101 pardons in his first 13 months of office, many of whom were very obviously guilty of serious crimes and for which Trump was expecting a quid pro quo. The Cuellars are a prime example. The evidence against them was overwhelming, yet Trump pardoned them and then got angry that he registered to run as a Democrat for office in his district. And there's Changpeng Zhao, whom Trump didn't know anything about but pardoned on the idea that his prosecution was a "Biden witch hunt." We're supposed to ignore that Peng's company made the Trump family $2 billion richer a few months before.

How many billions did that game make them? Seriously, this just be one of the highest grossing videogames ever, no? How long has it been going? 9 years? That's pretty epic if you ask me. This game was nothing other than an epic success (no pun intended).

Mikrotik has manufacturing in Europe and China, as well as Vietnam and Malaysia. Their higher-end stuff seems to be made in Europe, but that doesn't necessarily mean that parts of those aren't made in China.

Modern devices and machines appear to me like some hilarious Brazil-style cyberpunk joke-reality. Imagine an effing cyberattack bricking a lock on your car or engine-starter. LOL! Well, I guess it's not called "Internet of Trash" for no reason.

Chinese vehicles, both EV and ICE, are selling like crazy in every market where they can legally be sold. I've spent some time in Latin America recently and have ridden in several of the various models, and the reality is that they are all quite nice. The Uber drivers driving them invariably think that they got excellent value for their money.

In the United States we don't have access to these inexpensive brands. We can either buy expensive ICE vehicles, or even more expensive EVs where you pay a premium to not burn fossil fuels. In that situation it makes sense to want a vehicle that competes favorably with an ICE vehicle. After all, you can get a perfectly good ICE or hybrid vehicle for less than it would cost to buy a less capable EV.

The equation shifts dramatically when the Chinese vehicle you are looking at (whether it is ICE or EV) is 1/3 to 1/2 the price of a comparable vehicle. If I could get a Chinese EV for $13K I, personally, would be willing to put up with some of its shortcomings. As an example, I like the idea of the American made and designed Slate truck. However, it isn't available until next year at the earliest, and it is likely to cost $30K, very close to what a base model Ford Maverik, Nissan Frontera, or even a Toyota Tacoma currently cost. At that price it doesn't really make sense to purchase the far less capable electric vehicle.

However, if the Slate only cost $15K then it becomes far more interesting. That's the sort of price difference that Chinese brands are currently offering. I could learn to live with a range of 150 miles (that's supposedly the Slate's range, Chinese vehicles typically offer more than that), if it costs half as much as the competition. China is making vehicles that are more than competitive with what we currently have access to in the United States, and the prices are very low. The only thing keeping China from making huge inroads in the U.S. auto market is politics.

Sure there are some people that will never buy a Chinese vehicle, and there are other people that will never buy an EV. That's fine. I remember when the same arguments were made against Japanese (and later Korean) vehicles. If the politicians really thought that no one would be interested in these cars then they wouldn't need to protect us from them with tariffs.