I worked at a startup a few years ago. They used weasel words in marketing and PR material. The key question is whether these are "unique users". And I guess now with AI agents, whether the user was even human.

It seems the patients were "walked through" the whole process of buying the bitcoin just for this gimmick. So there really should be no buyer's remorse.

Spot on.

I don't know why this censorship card is so popular. Most countries let you say pretty much what you want, only limiting harmful stuff like incitement to violence etc.

I personally liken it to a hypothetical criminal spouting that their rights to crime are being infringed by all this legal nonsense.

There are a lot of people in the world. So there's always going to be "coincidences" due to probability.

I've watched a long interview with a forensics guy and (from what I understood and remember) he pointed out the same thing... that modern fast DNA tests only look at small specific areas of genetic data. And can only give a degree of certainty.

Plus there are many ways a DNA sample can get onto a crime scene via contamination.

It's a nice stock phrase. Other's should use it too:

[hypothetical bad person says reports of their crimes are]... a "smear campaign" which was based on "false and misleading misrepresentations

Agreed. But what's the alternative to MSOffice when it pays the rent?

Are there any other sources of microplastics, or is it just water?

I can only comment on the lack of opportunities for those straight out of school. While I worked in London, I tried to push for some super junior hires. But unfortunately, we couldn't dedicate the time for training or mentoring.

I figured we could train some university graduates who would love to land their first professional job.

Me, I had to apply for dozens of jobs before landing my first one out of university. After that, I had close to a 100% success rate when applying for a new job. So seems to me that no one wanted to bother with me before I had at least one job... quite the chicken and egg situation.

Quite a few of the old timers with grey hair on our software development projects learned on the job or through training programs or apprenticeships decades ago.

People's physical biology might not change much, but culture changes a lot. What was deemed acceptable in the past can sometimes be considered ridiculous or illegal in the present. It's a classic issue that exists with everything from religious texts to laws of the land.

Most people would find it really difficult being without a phone for 1 day. Let alone 10 days in a foreign country.

Personally, I'd do what others have suggested, take a cheap burner phone and put in your SIM card. If you are on eSIM, then just get a temporary SIM and input the numbers for your friends / family / work colleagues in case of an emergency.

I recently got notifications on my Pixel about enabling theft protection features that lock the screen if there's a suspected snatch of the phone. Plus another setting that will lock the phone if it goes offline. Seems reasonable to me.

I appreciate your comment.

You yourself pretty much say that these "die for something" quotes only make sense if the something is worthwhile. And my point is... a kids movie is not worth getting worked up over. So it seems we actually agree here.

What's the world come to when people are saying they prefer to hang out with a ranting person...

Getting outraged about stuff is just so exhausting.

A friend of mine came to town. We went for a couple hour walk. Everything was pleasant, we talked about work, family, normal stuff. Suddenly he started ranting about how "Disney changed history". I couldn't believe a grown man in his 40s could go 15 minutes about how a new kids / family movie was a symptom of what's wrong with the world.

End result is, he won't be invited back.

All good points