Yep, I'd rather see the EU close whatsapp to chat bots in entirety.

I think you mean Protected Designation of Origin. It can only be called Mafia if it comes from the Mafia region of Italy.

It's less of a nationalism thing and more of a national security thing. The US has demonstrated that it's an unreliable partner.

When it comes to government, you have wholesale, then you've got wholesale, then you've got government wholesale. They're probably getting transactions for pennies compared to the extortionate rates that small business pay (this is why companies rarely advertise their rates, at least the full rates rather only the headline rates that are at best, obfuscating the actual costs, small business get raped by the card machines) The UK is generally pretty good at managing their suppliers, when you find out how little the NHS is paying for medication, often less than half the OTC price (the OTC price in the UK, not the inflated prices Americans pay at that). That's because the NHS can go and say "you see those 3 factories, we want to buy all their output".

Not every culture places an emphasis on being honest and forthright... They probably feel just fine about it as long as they can't be held to blame because in some cultures being seen not to be at fault is far more important than almost anything else. If you get a lot of foreign scam calls who you really need to be angry at are the telco's who make money off it and the politicians who allow the former to happen because these are the people who have the power to stop it. They just don't want to. You'll always find people desperate enough to take crap jobs, would it really be any better if the scam caller really was Jethro from Alabama instead of India? Certainly in the UK there are (or at least recently were) UK based scam call centres, notably the "we's heard you bin in an accident" scam (yes, the standard of English really is that bad, they are hiring people who can't get any other job), I certainly didn't think these scam calls were any better than ones with foreign accents, it's still a time wasting scam call.

They don't want "strict" emissions controls because then they'll have to make products that meet those standards. What they want is a specific loophole that they can easily meet but is difficult or expensive for everyone else, such as a critical "safety feature" that John Deere owns the patent of.

Erm. that is capitalism, it's the ultimate expression of capitalism. Monopoly is the end game of capitalism. If you can literally prevent your customers from going elsewhere and being dependent on you for all future maintenance, upgrades, et al. you have the holy grail of capitalism.

Never confuse market liberalism with capitalism. A free market is not, by any means, a prerequisite for capitalism.

A strong legal system preventing abuse is the defence against that form of capitalism and what enables a free market to flourish.

Stargate died 15 years ago, let it rest in peace.

Stargate effectively had a single gimmick, the underdog vs incredibly powerful enemies and somehow winning. This resulted in a trope I called "Stargate Syndrome". The Underdog, in order to beat the uber-powerful enemy needs to become more powerful to defeat them, once this happens they need to create another, even more powerful enemy which the heroes need to become more powerful to defeat and then they need an even more powerful enemy to keep the series going, so on and so forth. SG1 started fighting fake gods with high tech and ended up with all the tech fighting almost literal gods.

Joe Mallozzi, one of the writers of SG1 did another series in the 2010s called Dark Matter, which started out incredibly well but suffered from Stargate Syndrome in S2, it was cancelled before the end of S3. A shame as it had a lot of potential if they didn't make the heroes effectively untouchable.

SG1 should have stayed finished at S8, Atlantis was pretty much the perfect length at 5 seasons. Leaving you wanting just a little bit more compared to SG1's a season too far (as much as I like Morerna Baccarin, it really was terribad). The reason it has a following is because it was good, the later iterations were not good (SG Universe and Origins), it will lose it's following if they keep making terrible sequels and spin offs. What we need is more original Sci-Fi, not comfort blanket spin offs.

Not every game is multiplayer, there's no need to even go online unless you're specifically playing multiplayer. There's been a recent trend of making single player games a multiplayer game of one, when you play a single player session you're still required to be online which means the single player part stops working when they turn off the servers.

Owning several old phones, this does not seem to be an issue with any of them.

Nor is it widely reported in Android circles.

Random restarts sounds like a hardware design problem, not a battery problem. Or just an excuse to deliberately hobble old phones because you haven't ponied up £1,000 for a new one in more than a year.

This is pretty much the only way to stop this... Make the companies financially liable. Full refunds for every copy sold.

This is why Stop Killing Games is so important, it starts with games as it's easy to dismiss that as "they're just video games" but if this kind of behaviour is accepted there, it'll slowly move to consumer and business software until the frog is well and truly boiled.

"Bomb" is so 1991, these days we use Improvised Explosive Device (not to be confused with an IUD) or if you're really advanced, Contraterrene Device (CTD).

Blaming AI, especially as it's not Elon's AI is easy.

If American politicians really wanted to do something about shootings and suicides they'd look at introducing meaningful firearm controls, most notably penalties for misuse, stop glorifying guns and violence (fix the culture behind the shootings) and do something to help the mental health of Americans (starting with the bullying that has become endemic to American culture)... But that's all way too sensible where you can just blame the right AI for all the ills because shootings and suicides weren't a problem before AI or Altman skeezed onto the scene?

Right, guys. right?

Hey ho... just more thoughts and prayers then because that's been working fantastically so far.

Yes, but the "AI good, worker bad" narrative must be maintained. If they can blame remote work for something remotely bad they will.

The problem is American exceptionalism. The idea that America must be better than everywhere and anywhere else in the universe (including all of the black holes) is drilled into them from childhood. The problem with this is that things have become so bad in the US they now have to engage in huge, collective fantasies to make other places seem even worse than the US.

As mentioned, no-one in the UK is in jail for hate speech. That isn't a criminal offence, they're in jail for actual offences such as threats or harassment (yes doing it "with a computer" does not magically make it not a crime). Committing a crime with a hateful motivation is a modifier in court, known as a "aggravating factor" and often leads to a harsher sentence (especially if they don't even fake remorse, which is a "mitigating factor").

He could buy a pardon and still have $39 million left in gold bars. The Grifter in Cheat likes gold too.