I'm thinking those companies are not likely that proactive, on the ball, or technically proficient to pull that off. If they were that good, maybe they could manage to do their actual jobs better. Incompetence is everywhere, especially in large organizations.

HIPAA actually does have some teeth, unlike some other privacy laws. Since this was protected health care information, there may be some hefty fines in store, as they are assessed per exposed record. We'll have to see what happens.

This ^^

Old(ish)-timer agreeing with you 100%. Not that I even check slashdot all that often anymore. But I'm guessing there's a few of us lurking around.

You have no idea how any of this works.

Tell that to Comcast...

Hear! Hear!
(j/k)

As it always is.

But seriously, if one of the old gang would be interested enough to head something like that up, I'm guessing some of us oldtimers could be tempted to contribute. Maybe it's just nostalgia, I don't know.

Well said.

It was always really creepy, don't try to fool yourself. It was never cute.

Sometimes creepy things can be funny too, in a "I'm laughing at you, not with you" sort of way.

But most of the troll memes over the years have at their heart a creepy nastiness. The goal is to shock people or goad them into replying (the angrier the better).

The exception to this that pops to mind from Slashdot history is the Beowulf cluster. Just geeky fascination there, repeated ad absurdum until it became a silly inside joke.

Oh man, you're giving me flashbacks.

RIP Roblimo, you'll be missed along with all of those hours we'll never get back. You've made our lives richer.

It's impossible to say what an AI would "think" of humans, it's creators, or anything else. You are all projecting your own feelings onto a completely imaginary (at this point) construct.

So the Paris Climate Accords are the only possible reason why you might want to measure atmospheric gas compositions?

Well, this shouldn't be about any specific governmental agreement or treaty or policy at all.
This is simply about gathering scientific data. Without accurate information, no one on any side of the debate can know what's even going on, let alone decide what to do about it. Completely short-sighted and makes the administration look like they know that their position is wrong and want to hide something for fear of being proven wrong.

Won't You - Come see about me..

All of that completely misses the point of the argument comparing the Bitcoin bubble to the tulip craze.
It is precisely not about the nature of the commodity being traded. It could be fidget spinners, beanie babies, futures contracts in mortage-backed securities, it doesn't matter.
What does matter is lots of ordinary investors with no understanding of what they are investing in believing that because others find this commodity desirable, it must be valuable and the price will continue to rise - and importantly, that they will be able to extract that value before the price crashes leaving them "holding the bag" of something now worth much less than they've invested in it.