Not trying to sound anti-Indian, but yes, lots of Comp Sci Degree mills in India. They are given an education to teaches them to produce code, but NOT understand why they are doing it. The science part is left out and rigid coder piece is not. EVERY solid Indian developer I have encountered has become one because they worked OUTSIDE of India. That is not to say there are not fantastic Indian developers who have never left India because of course there are! The problem is when you are your average pointy haired boss looking for cheap labor, you're not hunting for talent, you're hunting for bodies with the hops if you have enough bodies that are 'qualified' they're be able to bang out a working solution (who cares if it requires more hardware and maintenance! I managed the project and got it done on time and cheaper! Where's my bonus?!?!). So they looked at the numbers and go, ohhhh. 30 developers for the cost of 5 Americans?!? Awesome, fuck the flag assholes, where's my bonus?!?!? It always amazes me watching pointed haired assholes trying to implement the Infinite monkey theorem.

Exactly. I know quite a few transgender people and while not a scientific study, all of them are happy because of their transition. They all are married or have a long term partner, some of them their partners have transitioned too. All of them have been threatened at some point, told they should just be killed or were just mentally unstable. Most agree that the most stressful and depressing part of their life is societal reaction, that in retrospect learning about their dysphoria had been less stressful than being attacked by society or worrying about how society will treat them. The suicide rate is not from making the choice to live as they identify, it is from family abandoning them, society threatening them or firing them. My friends are fortunate, their partners make decent money too, so if they encounter an employer that fires them for being transgender, then they still have a place to live and the ability to afford to live. Some of their birth families have abandoned them, but each, their partners family has embraced them. Now that being said, these people are adults, they had been adults for a few years before they committed to hormone therapy and transitioning. As far as teenagers go, I have no idea, but I would suspect society has a lot to do with it and I would wager the misdiagnosis in some cases. The solution here is not to bigot and offer an uneducated opinion (as what a lot of comments here are based on), the solution IMHO is: 1) Help society learn that a person's gender and if they transitioned is a) none of your concern, b) does not affect you so just mind your own business, c) Mind your own fucking business, d) Don't fucking be a bigot 2) Improving the standards of care, more consistent counseling procedures, understanding that counseling for an adult is going to be different than for a child and adapt. Puberty blockers are prescribed for a lot of children to delay development while they go through counseling. Is this the best course? Could delaying the increase sex hormones that come with puberty give the child time to get the counseling they need? I think so. I think it also gives the child time to live as their identified gender, to do a trial run before they commit to permanent changes and long the way be counseled with how to deal with the stresses that come with transitioning. The result is to diagnose and treat appropriately and in some cases that does not mean transitioning. If your first instinct is to assume transgender individuals have a severe or serious mental condition, then you are apart of the problem. Even the professional field no longer considers it a mental illness.

And apparently they get left in classrooms too.

The Florida situation is a perfect example of how useless they are as the only way to make sure that ballot box was not tampered with would be to manually verify each vote with the "person" that cast it and verify its accuracy. Of course, you also have to verify that the person you are contacting IS is eligible to vote and is not trying to commit identity theft / election fraud.

Yup, never going to happen and just another way for people to try and cheat and game the system or be tricked in to thinking they can vote at the last minute and still get their voice heard, thereby reinforcing a poor state of personal responsibility to get registered AND to vote.

So that whale sound I kept hearing last year was not my father in law rolling out of bed?

At least there is one person here that gets it ;)

Really the only basis is anti competitive practices with their hardware platforms or software services. If there are contracts that force customers, partners or vendors to only use big tech company A's products, then sure antitrust issue there especially if the market intrusion is significant. I suspect this has more to do with the free speech argument floating around; aka political pages, channels and media creators being banned because of TOS violations and then their supporters crying a violation of free speech, so politicians start to cry antitrust. And now we have the supreme court about to hear a case of whether freedom of speech applies with private corporations, so antitrust could balloon in to constitutional violation arguments. There is some irony here... but not on topic.

Pay the fee and pass the background check (i.e. register your cannon shells!). I have a friend that shoots off civil war era cannons every fourth of July and it is freaking awesome to watch. He also is under intense scrutiny from the ATF and other federal agencies because of this and probably the 1,500 odd guns he owns (yup he is a collector).

Angry? Not at all, mocking basement dwellers like you I find entertaining. Now go dribble in to a sock.

And apparently shooting people in the head... but hey, let's ignore that part eh?

Ah yes, my pseudonym is at least tied to an enduring account - whereas you post from as an AC, complaining about my apparent "hypocrisy". Also it is Tesen, not Tesin.

Spoken like the cowardly right winger posting from an anonymous account, one hand on a small weapon the other on his keyboard.The only thing you shoot and by that I mean dribble, is in to a sock.

In addition, the tangled web of information selling to third parties adds a level of complexity to what I said obviously which is a totally different discussion.

Google and Facebook do not have to respect your privacy if you're in the USA; they are not charging you a penny to use their free services and in return you have agreed to their terms of service. The only point I will agree with you on is spelling out how they use your data (in the broadest sense) since people are apparently to stupid to understand that these companies have operating costs to pay for let alone supporting a stock price and yet charge nothing... gee I wonder what they are doing with your activity and personal data in order to pay for themselves?

I am usually pretty leftist on most of these issues, however in this case to many people think because they can access a website they have absolute right to use it without any terms or conditions. If you want to have a discussion about how long they may keep your data and how they use it after you terminate your account with them, now that is a totally different discussion. I would argue upon termination anonymous usage information can be used indefinitely, they can keep identifiable information for a period of one year but not use it in any active financial activity and must erase it after one year.

It would also be in the interest of Google and Facebook to provide a subscription tier to their operating model which includes a restrictive usage of your data model.

They are free to enforce their rules anyway they wish to, you agreed to their terms of service when you signed up to use it. If they have a complicated censorship mechanism they owe you zero explanation of it and it is their choice if they wish to incur public outrage by not disclosing it or enforcing it in a negative way.

Who says they are not responsible? Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA).

It is absolutely nothing like your phone company! They are not providing you connectivity to the internet, they provide a platform you can interact with if you agree to their terms of service. You are NOT paying for it and there are other tools online available to you to use or you can create your own and negotiate with the very same phone companies to provide priority QOS on their networks.

You are not entitled to use it, you are invited to use it - shit, the outrage over this "censorship" of Alex Jones whose own site has the same damn terms of service criteria is stupid.

I see your dealer made out tonight...