I despise the whole concept behind Facebook.

You're basically submitting yourself to a continuous session under the data harvesting fluoroscope.

Sorry, I never signed up and never will sign up.

Socializing live by going out to real physical events is much better for you.

Science fiction it is.

Sal9000: Will I Dream?
Chandra: "Of course you will. All intelligent beings dream. Nobody knows why".

to publicize Linux security breaches more vigorously then IOS or Microsoft security breaches. Closed source OS providers have historically had more vulnerabilities, but the US government tends to look the other way.

Why would they do this?

They want closed source solutions to be adopted over open source solutions.

The future the government wants is to ensure each user of a personal computer can be ID'd and tracked. Age verification is the wedge to force this onto every PC. Open source operating systems get in the way of this.

If the Ku band transmissions from Starlink terminals are frequent enough, the IRGC could put a small Ku band receiver on a few drones and fly them over a large city in a grid pattern repeatedly to find the terminals.

The only way to combat this is to have a spread spectrum emission designed to communicate over a wide bandwidth which appears to be below the noise floor at narrower bandwidths.

The Insurance industry will be gunning for this since it is an additional revenue stream for them. The more mass, the larger the amount of damage is done in an accident.

If it has a motor, you will pay for the privilege of transportation, but I suppose they could tax your feet (Apologies to the Beatles) if you avoided motorized transport.

It's almost like there is "second law of thermodynamics" for money in addition to energy.

And they like these aspects of American Employment Law:

1. Employment-at-will
2. Binding Arbitration
3. Non Compete Agreements
4. Little regulation of employee monitoring
5. Little regulation of paid sick time and vacation time.

Employment at will doesn't exist outside the United States (Unless in a third world country). The rest of developed world uses the "Just Cause" standard.

Binding Arbitration is only available to employers in a handful of countries outside the United States

Non competes are heavily regulated outside of the United States for the most part. Some countries require garden leave.

Monitoring employees has to adhere to specific rules outside of the United States

Most OECD countries offer paid vacation and sick leave outside of the United States because they are mandated by statute.

They haven't bought the ones owned by a nonprofit healthcare group (Think Kaiser, et. al). The problem is they have bought a lot of the anesthesiologists and other specialties which operate as contractors in the emergency room environment. This was a big problem up until a few years ago when the Congress passed an act to prohibit third party balance billing from contractors in the emergency room. One of the few places left where they can get away with third party balance billing is Ambulance Services. Although in California, that was made illegal just recently.

accountability sinks.

1. What is a Reverse Centaur?

The Reverse Centaur: The AI acts as the "head" or decision-maker, and the human is the "body" or worker, forced to keep up with an impossible, algorithmic pace.

2. What is an Accountability Sink?

  A "moral crumple zone"—is a human who is present only to take the blame when an AI system fails.

Who wants to work in such an environment?

Some of us would refuse.

The companies locking up products to make them non-repairable by the user aren't going to give up. There's too much money in their high margin monopolistic repair services.

They'll introduce a bill in Congress and the Senate "Unifiying" the right to repair to only apply to the manufacturer of the product. The excuse will be to eliminate a patchwork of state laws.

for anyone who uses X for everything. Why?: A walled garden where the services cost more than if you sought them out on your own.

The only way prices are kept under control is if there is a broad market for products and services being offered.Once that is walled off you will only have the choices offered in the walled garden unless you want to do business outside of the app. Musk is betting nost people will be gullible enough not to notice, and/or won't care.

Musk is isn't the first or last person to attempt this.

You pay for convenience.

IMHO Social media this one of the reasons the world as gone to pot.

Bring back physical social gatherings where you get to see the faces of the persons you are socializing with. This way they can't hide behind their device. This tends to keep people honest.

social media companies. They'll either pull out of the country/state or comply. Make it so there's severe tort exposure if they do nothing by private right of action.

Age verification is being implemented in the wrong place. Like others have said, the endgame my be no internet access unless we know who you are.

If the veto isn't overridden by the legislature, then the citizens could start a petition for a referendum if they can raise the enough money to gather the signatures.

If they really overpaid for it, there's a chance that the combined entity could end up declaring bankruptcy at some point if the economy gets bad enough to make a serious dent in their gross revenues.

as reliable news sources as CNN is going to become another Fox News if the deal passes regulatory muster (Trump will be using cattle prods in these regulatory agencies to get the job done)

Next up: The Walls: Bolster the southern Border Wall, Build the Northern Border Wall, and the Great American Firewall.

Then comes the the collection of personal firearms, shortwave jamming stations, harsh penalties for using Satellite Internet, and the full size statues of the president in every square with his right arm at a 45 degree angle and his palm outstreched.