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Comment Re:Ridiculous (Score 1, Informative) 167

I think the reason a lot of us worry is that China is a very anti democratic force in the world with clearly stated expansionist goals in terms of territory (Taiwan and a huge chunk of the South Pacific that includes other country's territorial waters). I don't think we'd be having anything close to the same concerns if this was about the EU and not China.

Uh, the Trump administration is staffed by a bunch of people with openly anti-democratic views and they have strong opinions on how other countries should run their affairs as evidenced by J.D. Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference. From a non-US, non-Chinese point of view, while China is anti-democratic, it is still better than the US in that China at least leaves you alone as long as you don't step on it's tail while the US will without any provocation try to force you to run your country the way they think you should, or outright annex your country like your orange king has threatened Canada and Greenland. For most of the world China is bad but the USA is actually becoming worse and that took some doing on the part of the US.

Comment Re:Something to improve consumer laws? (Score 1) 53

What in modern society requires signing up for monthly payments to any service? The only thing that even comes close for the average person is renting a property to live in.

Even if electric power, water, sewer, trash pickup, and gas for indoor heating (in areas that get snow) are included in your rent, other services with recurring payments include home and mobile Internet access, renter's insurance, car insurance, and health insurance.

Even the streaming services I have either have month to month options or bill me for the full year at the time of purchase. I don't need to use any of them as I could always choose to rent or purchase to own any of the content on those services.

A lot of shows on streaming services are never released on DVD.

Comment Re:I don't understand why this is so difficult (Score 1) 48

Why not make a simple API to that digital ID that would be a simple yes/no to any app or web page's query (permission permitting) to whether or not the user is over X age?

Your suggestion is defeated by parents' habit of handing a phone to a child as a digital babysitter. It's how we lost comment sections on animated videos on YouTube in December 2019.

Comment Entrenched giants ... (Score 2) 13

They do have a point about new players having trouble competing against abusive 'entrenched giants' but in the particular case of OpenAI I've got to say this is the pot calling the kettle black because OpenAI wants to become an abusive entrenched giant and if the way they have run roughshod over IP and copyrights to get where they are today isn't enough to convince the public of this then the public needs to be beaten over the head with a clue stick.

Comment Re:iTunes doesn't sync under Linux (Score 1) 215

Until 2009, no other device could play iTunes Store purchases, and there weren't a lot of other legal downloadable music stores. This was one factor for the iPod to iPhone progression. Another was that Google required cellular telephony support in all certified Android devices prior to sometime in the 2.3 "Gingerbread" cycle, which made it impossible to make a direct counterpart to the iPod touch.

Comment Re:iTunes doesn't sync under Linux (Score 1) 215

If you're using apple music you can play it directly from the phone itself, you don't need itunes at all.

You can play Apple Music from the Music app on the phone. Unless I missed something, you can't play it from other apps on the phone. And the Music app can't play files written by libimobiledevice, only the music library. You need iTunes to send music to the phone in a form that the Music app can play.

Comment iTunes doesn't sync under Linux (Score 3, Interesting) 215

My roommate tried that patch with my help, and iTunes stopped being able to sync purchased music to her iPhone.

I researched online and found these limits:
- iTunes app for Windows uses a driver called Apple Mobile Device Service to sync to an iPhone, which (like other drivers) Wine cannot run
- libimobiledevice for Linux can sync files but cannot update the music library
- The Music app included with iOS can play only music from the music library and cannot import files
- VLC app can play music from files but cannot play rented music from her Apple Music family plan, making it impossible to mix the two in a playlist

Comment Re:Uh oh (Score 1) 128

a "transgender woman" [...] is a man with serious identity issues who needs psychological help

What is the safe and effective treatment for gender dysphoria?

I'm starting to think prevention of gender dysphoria has to occur on a social level. It would start with cracking down on parents and K-12 teachers who perpetuate gender stereotypes ("you're not allowed to do this because you're a boy") to children in their care.

(adoption doesn't count)

Given the right wing's crackdown on abortion on a fetal personhood theory, why shouldn't adoption be promoted?

Comment Re:Stupid comparison, apples and bowling balls (Score 1) 278

Part of the problem is that there are a massive number of chargers being installed where people live and thus could have charged at home, but how many are being built in the middle of nowhere where they are really needed?

Charging stations are built and operated by profit making enterprises. One would think market forces would fix that problem. I'd be far more worried about political ideologues banning BEVs and charging stations because the are 'woke' technology, which is of course just an execute to artificially prop up oil companies and the dying ICE car industry instead of letting that fail which the market has already decided is doomed to failure.

Comment Re:Stupid comparison, apples and bowling balls (Score 4, Interesting) 278

Why would you ever compare the quantity of nozzles vs chargers? Nozzles take 60 seconds to top you off. Chargers take 30 minutes. A better question might be how many chargers do you need to provide the same functionality as a single nozzle?

You make an excellent point. If most people can plug in to a private outlet at home each night, we should need a lot fewer public chargers than public nozzles.

The real question is what proportion of a day are nozzles actually occupied. I expect that number is extremely low. Chargers may take 30 minutes but they are just being used for a greater proportion of the day than gas nozzles. Furthermore, if there is twice the number of them than gas nozzles, tons of people also just charge at home overnight rather than using public charging stations and battery charge times are constantly decreasing I don't think a dearth of charging stations is going to be a problem unless Orange Palpatine declares electric transportation 'woke' passes a federal law banning charging stations and/or electric cars and then sends out police and the military to enforce it.

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