I'm in favor of enforcement of laws which protect rights, but it's cheap and easy to get such devices, and there are valid reasons for them to exist — like knives.

You could cook with only shorter knives. It would be a lot more difficult (I also cook) but it would be possible.

I don't think most people who can afford a thousand dollars for a phone plan to keep their phone for longer than the 7 years Google will support their Pixel devices these days, nor do they want to buy a phone which has been out for very long. The poors will accept last year's iPhone, or an even older one, or the Shitty Edition bundled into their phone plan.

For a non-Pixel device you'd have a solid point, as most other Android phones have abysmally short support lifespans. Then again, many of those phones are so much cheaper you can buy one every three years...

It's partly end stage for a nearly dead country that causes us to have to talk about politics now.

But it's also partly because we didn't take politics seriously, and get involved enough in it. If we had discussed it a lot more sooner, maybe we wouldn't have to discuss it so much now.

Even if it could find the answer it might mess it up before it gave it to you. It might give you the right answer sometimes and not other times, especially if the right answer has changed...

Wikipedia wasn't banned, though one asshole did introduce a bill which tried.

You can't cite ANY encyclopedias after elementary school, whether it's claimed they are particularly inaccurate when they aren't, or not.

We would have fixed this with wind and solar already if the money holders didn't think nuclear was going to solve these problems any day now.

Humanity is in the end stage atmospheric we're fucked fire... And the amount of fire is increasing.

If some people didn't spend political effort to make sure of that then this wouldn't be an issue.

Slashdot has ALWAYS been a place where we discussed politics. Cry harder.

Yeah he paid billions to shut down a wind project in my area in California. PGE has made it quite clear they will not bring in more power, and right now you can't get anything permitted here that requires new service because there isn't any to go around. Since California let PGE kill net metering (fuck you Gavin) we won't be getting the power from anywhere else either. The local descendant of the Confederacy yokels are celebrating because they didn't want the wind turbines to ruin their view.

But you participate in society! I am very intelligent! Etc etc

Global warming won't work out well for them either. Permafrost doesn't magically become arable land when it thaws and AGW means more chaotic weather that will affect crop yields for them, too. And at high latitudes it means increased occurrence not just of heat waves, but blizzards too... Russia might well be one of the nations for which it will be worst. It's hard to know, that's why they call it chaotic

Cute eighties movies about inexplicably skilled protagonists doing space combat which would absolutely actually be done by a computer don't prove anything except that suspension of disbelief is necessary to enjoy Hollywood movies.

The Chinese are doing a lot more cloud shit now than in the past. For example the manufacturer of my 3d printer made it phone home for cloud crap. Naturally I loaded a third party firmware patch into it which fixed this and other things. You're right that they're not good at it, it goes down a lot from what I hear, but that doesn't stop them from trying out this new angle on monetization (for them.)

I don't know if the problems are incompetence or just being less protected by attacks from competitors...

CA is #6 in homeless per capita among states. #1 is NY. I can't find any good nationwide numbers on homeless spending; it doesn't seem like anyone collects that data. However, I did find numbers from CA and NY, and NY spends nearly three times as much per capita as CA, so CA is definitely not #1.

Per the official poverty measure, CA is #22. That's arguably not a great measure, though, since it assumes the value of a dollar is the same everywhere. Using the supplemental poverty measure, CA is #2, behind Louisiana (#3 if you include DC, which falls between LA and CA). LA is high because people are actually very poor. CA's poverty rate is high even because though incomes are relatively high, housing is very expensive. Anyway, not #1.

CA is #11 in percentage of income collected, though it does have the highest marginal rate. It's important to keep in mind that CA's tax burden is more progressively allocated than most other states. If you're middle-class, your tax burden in CA is about the same as someone in TX or FL. If you're poor, CA is cheaper. If you're rich, CA is more.

#6, not #1. LA, NM, MI, TX and NV are numbers 1-5. Well, that's "average literacy score". If you want to look at percent with literacy skills at or below PIAAC level 1, then CA is in a three-way tie for #2. #1 is NM, #2-4 are CA, TX and MI. Either way not, #1.

Personally, I wouldn't want to live in CA, mostly because of their ridiculous gun laws, but it's a pretty decent place to live by most measures. It's best if you're highly-educated and highly-skilled, because while it costs a lot to live there, you can also make a lot of money.

There are far fewer factories than brands, so there is some truth to that, but it's a lot more complicated. Certainly though a lot of brands are created with randomly generated names, operated until the liabilities of whatever kind become too great, and then abandoned in favor of another equivalent brand.

Yeah, usually in the US they aren't tasked with that, though I have seen it occasionally. It's more likely you'll get attitude than information. But fair point.