You are exhibiting insufficient cynicism. The people responsible are highly competent.

Their competence is discreetly handling the acquisition of COTS hardware at DOD prices from politically connected contractors. The contractors pocket the massive margins and fund the designated campaigns. These are the real priorities. Not whatever silly security concerns plebs like you have.

Any given tech nerd could do better at a fraction of the cost. But that wouldn't fund the mcmansions and range rovers and boats.

Right! That's exactly it. I was part of "Gen X" myself, and while I had friends who lived the whole "latchkey kid" lifestyle to the max? It really wasn't the norm to just be unsupervised all day or night.

I remember my folks both worked, but my mom went to working only part-time, early in the morning until around the lunch hour, when we were younger. She hired an older lady as a part-time nanny for us while she was gone. When we got older, mom was always home by the time school let out - so we barely knew she was ever gone.

And also true that even for the teens I knew who had a house to themselves after school each day until bedtime? Their parent(s) weren't just buying them electric motorcycles or any of that like you see going on today. Obviously, the Internet wasn't anything like it is today. Even as a hard-core computer geek though? I called and ran my own computer bulletin board system where it was just really a local niche community of like-minded people dialing in with modems. Most heated arguments that came up on a BBS got squashed when the BBS operator decided he had enough and banned all of them. It just wasn't *anything* like what goes on now where people get video-recorded against their will in high resolution just so someone can get famous on TikTok, or ?

Rei: Do you actually work for Amazon in a capacity where you're informed on how they're obtaining these books?

I'm asking for a couple reasons.

1. We all know Amazon has plenty of money to be able to afford to buy rare, out-of-print books that are difficult to obtain. I'd be surprised if they refrained from doing so if that meant their AI risked not having some of that knowledge/information while a competitor's did. I'm not saying the guy tasked with being manager over the disposable labor doing the book scanning is authorized to make direct choices about what books to buy. I'm saying someone in Amazon corporate, in charge of the AI project itself, was probably given the funding to buy what he/she felt was needed.

2. The original article's anonymous interview with the low-level worker sounded very accurate with such statements as the details/orders changing daily and everything feeling disorganized. I can speak with some authority that that's exactly how it feels when you work for them in a non-management capacity. Multiple layers of management are dictating new processes or policies in a constant stream, and then often? The entire thing is up-ended when top level management makes a company-wide decree or mandate. Your team lead/manager is even liable to change on short notice. Their push to constantly "reinvent" causes a whole lot of reinventing of the same wheel another department or team already invented, and it's kind of a zoo. That's why I'd also take their comments as legit when they express concerns some of the books appeared to be obscure titles, etc.

Have you tried doing carnivore for thirty days?

I did the beef / tallow / salt only thing a couple years ago and it gets old very fast but the metabolic changes hit fast after about 15 days.

Surprisingly it was cheaper than a regular grocery bill (not counting labor for roasting).

Probably a bit better with a CGM but I only had test strips.

I dropped 15 lbs which wasn't my primary goal but could have kept it up if I needed to lose more weight.

I have to agree. I'm not defending Facebooks' practices, but at the same time? It seems to me social media as a whole can become addictive, or promote bad ideas to kids or teens. You have to control this at the parental level ... not just depend on corporations to self-police it all.

So sure... slap them with large fines and use the money for good, where you can. I'm not opposed. But your kid or teen wouldn't be spending all day on social media if you controlled it as their parent. By the time they're old enough to legally move out of your house? Then it's too late for you to try to "fix" anything they're doing. But before that, they live under your roof and by your rules.

Watch the video of the EMT's loading the ambulance at his home.

If they were any more non-rushed they would have had time for a card game.

If there were even the faintest pulse they would have screamed out of there with sirens blazing.

But TPTB didn't want Massie running in a special election.

Day by day the populous is realizing that "Democracy does not exist".

Don't forget the Terafab in Grimes TX.

Looking at the decision, it really makes a lot of sense. The coast of Louisiana has been a nexus of transport in the US since before it became the US. Obviously, there is the Gulf of America (hehe) plus the Mississippi river. That led to a convergence of several interstate roads. Plus, there is ample barely drained low value land with sparse population, and no risk that it will see a bunch of sub/exburbs sprout up in the foreseeable future. The state government, similar to the other gulf states, isn't bat-shit crazy commie adjacent, so that's another plus.

If they can get it built before POTUS is (D) again, they can pencil whip all the federal endangered species pressure group bullshit.

Hurricanes are a thing though. Obviously that will interfere with operations from time to time.

Angry inch Californian watching the cool shit not happen in California anymore.

It has happened under both.

An RTX 3090 24GB is about $2150 new.

I've spent more on gaming rigs a couple times: it's not some unfathomable amount of money.

Really, a lot of us in I.T. should have seen this coming.

Earlier in the year, my significant other was still gaming on an Alienware laptop that was about 3 generations behind on its nVidia GPU and had issues like a non-working trackpad (someone messed up the ribbon cable inside it while replacing dying cooling fans in it). We found a high-spec upgrade for it at the local Micro Center, selling for around $3500 with an RTX5090 in it, 64GB RAM, etc. Just about all of our friends advised us not to dump that kind of money on a gaming laptop. "Just wait, they said.... You can surely find something cheaper than that." I told her to ignore all of them and to pull the trigger on it if it's really one she liked.

Only a month later? That same machine was up over $5500. There's basically nothing on the market today with the same GPU in it selling for less than $1000 or so more than we paid for that system. And typically, they only have a 1TB SSD vs the 2TB in hers.

None of us have a crystal ball, but I saw this trend started with price increases on RAM and storage with the rise of AI and new data center construction -- and knew PCs weren't going to go down in price for quite some time...

:frowns:

I thought Chrome devs went hard on fuzzing API's after the timing attacks went big ... circa 2020.

Back to the drawing board.

> Only the richest of us are worthy of privacy, right?

  I put GrapheneOS on a $179 Pixel I got off eBay. Works fine. Battery is at 97%.

You only buy new phones? Must be nice, moneybags.

You're on the right track with this. Except one thing; they didn't pull his bubble card. His fund was rapidly recapitalized before the headline even appeared. There is a lot at stake, the music is still playing, and they can't afford to have reality asserting itself on behalf of this chucklehead. His sandbox is a good deal smaller now, but they're letting him stay in the yard.

Correct. I used the term "pattern." SCOTUS has a number of mechanisms for temporary rulings, often made by a single justice, or by the full court. That is not officially a "panel," but it has the same outcome, and so fits the pattern. Stays, injunctions pending appeal, emergency/summary court orders, etc. SCOTUS has done this many times and whether any given matter ever subsequently appears before the full court is not a given.

So while not termed a "panel," this is a distinction without a difference.