also, slashdot doesn't use markdown or allow comment edits. I remember that now. https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=16837&cid=1942503

hah, indeed ...happened to idly google search some now ancient obscure powerpc things for a comment on another social media site ...and a first page result was [my own /. comment](https://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=16837&cid=1942503) from early 1999...

It is 2018. We now have to justify "illegitimate" protocols. "Illegitimate" because they work better, take so much less electricity, and are utterly democratic. Because the tiny book, movie, music, and TV industries didn't like it.
We nuked the protocol because it worked too well and it couldn't be easily surveilled.
We are idiots led by liars.

Canada has as many volunteers as they need. The have opposing sides witness the count. No mistakes get made with that many jealous eyes locking their lasers on that counter.

Somehow Canada manages a manual pencil-check paper ballot They have counters from opposing sides witness the manual count. Works fine and is done very quickly, and it can be recounted at any time. No way to cheat. No electrons necessary. If you suspect one side has figured a way to infiltrate both witnessses, increase the number of counters. No limit on the number of eagle eyed buggers that can watch.

And addressing the 2000 fiasco, that was one party intentionally sandbagging the audit, dragging it out so that the Supreme Court could find a way to kill the recount. Hanging chads weren't the problem. It was hanging Republicans challenging everything and anything - there was no penalty for false challenges.

Simple regulation is all that is needed, and what we can't get.

It was the free market at work in Adam Smith's time as well, as he observed. A free market always leads to emergent or direct collusion to fix prices as high as they can be. Applecart economics doesn't work at a macro level. The market is a pack of ruthless buggers who will steal your teeth when you're sleeping. This is why we have regulations, or we used to.

I'd worry more about the voting machine company, but yep, this lets the locals the votes. Whoever knows the passwords can sell the passwords. Or give them away to get their candidate elected.

There've been a lot of weird and close elections in the last 17 years. Far too many.

Chicago now offers a Chicago ID card for just this purpose. The right wingers oppose it: guess why.

I TOLD YOU SO GOD DAMN IT.

Why would you assume they wouldn't install a backdoor? WHY??? Changing election totals gave them trillions of dollars in tax cuts and complete power.
Don't talk about open-source replacements. Any solution with electrons will be hacked and controlled. Go back to paper, the way Canada does, or did before the Tories rammed e-voting in. I wonder why, I wonder.

I haven't bought a single piece of music since 1999, when the music industry shut down Napster.
Never will again.
Don't collect music, either. Don't miss it.
Please join me in refusnik.
Not a single centavo for the industry that steals every penny off of artists.

That was like six idiots on one video. It was a bullshit misrepresentation of Palestinians, fed into right-wing bigotry, and is a damned zombie lie.

Eric Ralph at Teslarati has an article up right now:
"SpaceX urges Congress to expedite commercial spaceflight regulation reforms"
https://www.teslarati.com/spac...
"Related to the focus of this particular hearing, namely regulatory reform, Representative Rick Larsen (WA-2) appeared to speak for everyone when he mirrored the four panelists’ sense of urgency for beginning the process of reforming federal space launch regulations by asking for an informal meeting outside the doors of the chamber once the session concluded, stating that “it’s that urgent.” In order for companies like SpaceX (and eventually Blue Origin) to be able to sustainably and reliably reach cadences of one launch per week in the near future, the currently cumbersome and dated launch licensing apparatus will almost invariably require significant reforms."

Blue Origin, SpaceX, the United Launch Alliance and the the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) are on it. Expect some rapid change, mostly in approval time for flights (right now: 200 days!) and a reduction in the huge time periods (90 minutes pre- and post- activity) of the no-fly restrictions around launches and landings.

Jerry Pournelle, the late science fiction author, said on a TWIT podcast that his publishers had, really! lost a number of his books that had not been in print for many years. Libraries didn't have the books, NO ONE had the books. But, TA-DA, book scanning "pirates" *had* scanned the books and gladly zapped him the copies, which he put back on sale and were making him a nice bit of income.