Mixed, of course, but overall I think it has made things better. An easy example is filming police. Police are overall a benefit for society, but they have massive power and very little oversight, and historically have been "above the law" and behaved accordingly (not all police, not always, but it doesn't take much). Now that cameras are always available, some percentage of misbehavior is captured and shown publicly, which is the main way that such misbehavior is truly investigated and (occasionally) punished.

We had the same panic when (almost) all cellphones started coming with cameras. "What if people take pictures in restrooms?" And somehow we all survived.

We tried year-round DST for a short time in the 70s. It was popular before it was passed, but... very very unpopular after it passed, because the mornings are very very dark and unpleasant. Good thing we learn from history rather than repeating it!

But there is. If telecom companies improve the service, then they will make less profit. Which is a good reason for the telecom executives, and a good reason for the current FCC. Crappy for the consumers, sure, but the FCC is staffed by the administration, so we had a vote and we made a choice.

Honestly, I suspect that it's more that telecom companies are supposed to improve their service, but that would cut into their profits, so they want to continue selling turds and calling it chocolate. We can all agree that wireless internet will not work the same as wired, but the only reason that so many people have terrible wired internet is because the companies would make less profit if they fixed it. So the FCC is saying "No worries! Customers are not important, your profits are!"

I hope everyone is having the day they voted for.

It's not causation, but correlation. The times that the grid open goes down are during extremely hot weather, which is the same time AC is needed (which overloads the grid) and during extremely cold weather (same time electric heat is needed). Extreme weather is the problem, along with underspecked grids and CEOs/politicians who permit loads on the grid which we all know the grid cannot support.

Both OSX and iOS are good. And if you're willing to lock yourself in the walled garden, the ability of laptop, tablet and phone to work together is very nice. I'm not so willing; in fact, I don't own any Apple hardware these days. But Apple should be lauded for their integrated system, and then excoriated for their paranoid money-grubbing which keeps them from allowing non-Apple systems into the garden, and for their inability to build their own secure-but-flexible cloud services.

Apple designs amazing hardware and great software. But when we get to online/networked/cloud... It's kinda shit, yeah. Which is notable because other companies have done extremely well in that space, to the point that Google's good-but-imperfect network services get more public complaints than Apple's dear-god-why network services. We just expect it now.

Eh, kinda, established case law, even citizens have limited rights near the border (with "near the border" being interpreted quite loosely). US citizens can refuse to give a password, but the govt can refuse to return the device and can make your life very difficult. This case, where data was destroyed, doesn't fall under existing case law, but if it gets to SCOTUS as long as a Republican is in the white House I expect SCOTUS to give all power, all the time, to the executive branch and none to us lowly peons, err, citizens.

Of course, ICE is known for laughing at laws and judicial rulings, so YMMV, IANAL, good luck and stay safe.

TOTP has the huge disadvantage of being a pain for non tech folk to understand and use. The selfie-video is less secure than TOTP, but more secure than SMS texts. Passwords are reused between different sites.

If you are happy with your security, keep using it. And if you have a friend or relative who use ones password for every site, switch them to the video.

That... didn't happen. What you are probably thinking about is that during COVID, during both the Trump and Biden administrations (so your "sides" comment is laughable), there was a govt group which identified misinformation about COVID (yum yum gullible ivermectin!) and notified the social network owners. Those social network owners (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc) added this data to their own internal checks, and decided to allow, deny, or demonitize based on their internal decisions. So the govt notified about potentially false information, but the decision to do anything was 100% made by the individual companies. And while some countries treat "suggestions by the govt" as law, the US did not (until CBS cancelled Colbert to make conservatives happy, so huh, your "sides" comment does have some validity!)

So "control what people were allowed to discuss" was false until the current administration.

20 years ago, which was a few years after conservatives supported the Patriot Act which greatly increased govt surveillance of US citizens? Yeah, no real changes. The folks who want the police state now are the folks who have always wanted the police state (mostly through some idiotic idea that THE OTHER will be persecuted, but never themselves).

They've been trained to believe that anything said by their bubble is Truth, anything said by anyone else is lies. Which is why yesterday's Truth (release Epstein files) is today's lies (don't release, oops Trump is in it lots and lots).

"The truth has a well-known liberal bias" -a smart cancelled man

Come for the voting, stay for the gerrymandering!

But yes, quite a few Ohio folks (and other Americans) are getting the day they voted for.

But conspiracy theorists need both the government and the media to be simultaneously incompetent (so they cannot be trusted) and hypercompetent (so they can organize a illuminati-level conspiracy including tens of thousands of conspirators with no leaks).

It's the only way that conspiracy theorists can feel in control of their pointless lives, by loudly "proving" that someone else has all the control. I don't get it, but whatever.