Look, I know "nuclear device" is correctly generic, so that RTGs and things like them, legitimately count. But let's be serious: right around the very same time this real stuff happened, some really great fake stuff happened too: the movie Goldfinger.

And once you've watched Goldfinger, "nuclear device" is just a euphemism for a bomb. So don't go calling RTGs "nuclear devices," please.

it is pretty clear trump would pardon or vacate any fine against a right winger org.

The president does not yet have pardoning power over civil judgements. Maybe a constitutional amendment to do that is coming, but we haven't had a vote on it yet.

Some good has come from promoting more user speech online, but also a lot of bullying, harassment, echo chambers, doxxing, stochastic terrorism, and so on.

You make it sound as dangerous as a 1775 soap box that people like Sam Adams would stand upon and shout from, or a pamphlet-printing-press that someone like Thomas Paine might use, where in both cases the goal was often to rowse the rabble into protest and action.

But is the internet really that dangerous?

"The platforms" are, at best, a percent of the internet.

Sign up for a linode, put up any sort of website you can imagine on it, and explain why you would choose for the algorithms you write or install, to work the way that you fear.

It doesn't have to be as bad as you say, unless you want it. That's essential freedom.

This would result in suppression of anti Trump opinion

It will result in suppression of all anti- power/wealth opinion, i.e. all criticism of government or big-pocketed business.

This change is sponsored by litigious motherfuckers. Trump is only the instance-du-jour, a few percent of the overall threat, though very much a shining example of it.

With one important difference, this reminds me of the 1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, which established a national speed limit of 55 MPH. States had to either adopt a state speed limit of 55 MPH, or else lose out on funding, i.e. get punished.

Of course, that was a law enacted by Congress, not an Executive order. I guess, traditionally, they say that for first quarter millennium of America, Congress held the purse strings because some inky piece of paper said they were supposed to, as if Congress could ever handle that much responsibility! Can you imagine?! Anyway, we've decided Fuck That Tradition, let's try something new and put a thieving tool in charge of the purse.

NO! This is an outrage! [slams table]

Our religious war should be about reader's choice vs writer's choice!

Ok, but which of those things came with the new law? A lot of what you're describing (I suspect all of it) was already in place. What changed for non-banned users?

Oh, so they're doing it the same way I take "good" photographs: by taking a fuckton of mostly-shitty photographs and trawling through them for the rare few which actually look decent.

Vaporware. If this feature doesn't make it into the Open Source driver so that I can know where my computer is, then I'm not going to buy any Nvidia hardware!

If you wouldn't allow children to play in waste effluent from a 1960s nuclear power plant

It was good enough for us!

Forget the kids, they don't vote so they can be safely trod upon. Who cares what their experiences are.

But seriously, what about the not-kids? Australian adults, are you having to show your ID when you get a DHCP lease? Do a lot of websites who didn't have mandatory logins, now have 'em?

How does it work, and what has changed for you?

Europe is now eyeing similar bans, as well as proposals for a late-night "curfew", curbs on addictive features, and an EU-wide age verification app.

LATE-NIGHT CURFEW?!

If Europe isn't careful, they're going to teach a generation of kids that it's ok to do their FTPing during business hours.

Do these people really think they're hiding Directive 4 from us?

We are only a year out from the murder of a health-insurance executive, so the police are more on edge than usual.

Then we need to threaten such things much more often, so that the cops will eventually get used to it, and relax. ;-)

Debian never tried to kill me through my computer. I'd appreciate it if my car manufacturer made their car as safe as my computer.

Fuck it, I just want a Debian car. Then I won't need to extract bloody vengeance from beyond the grave, as my zombie revenant tracks down the CEO of Subaru, and the rotting flesh of my hands tightens around his throat as payment for the time a popup distracted me.