It's not McDonalds per se that's being held hostage. Rather, McDonalds and Taylor are in cahoots to hold the franchisees hostage. At about a half-hour this video about the subject may seem a bit long, but it's a fascinating story and a cool piece of investigative reporting: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...

So nice of them to take on the task of making average citizens feel secure by denying them access to private communications. I guess that means that they'll also take on the task of heavily propagandizing those citizens into believing that they have nothing to worry about.

Sadly, the propaganda will probably succeed. And the peeps will make like sheeps and go "Baaaaa".

I was unaware that it went back as far as the 30s. But I do know they recognized by the 50s that AGW was going to be a problem. By the 60s they had models for predicting temperature rise that were still remarkably accurate up to a decade or so ago.

All that to say that they aren't just guilty, but that there have been decades of ongoing malice aforethought. The petroleum corporations should be taken over by the appropriate governments, the C-suite occupants should be imprisoned, and any payments to investors should be cancelled. That will never happen, of course, but this case might move the public discussion in the right direction.

and

I understand that the common advice is to make sure the URL does in fact point to the expected site. But aren't the appended parameters also part of the URL?

If they are, then I'm probably OK, because I'm used to looking at the entire URL for tracking cruft. I always strip the tracking crap from, for example, Amazon links. I prune anything from a URL that looks to be unnecessary.

I know the average person won't do what I do with URLs; but it strikes me that a browser extension using customized LLM queries might prevent this kind of attack.

I agree entirely. The only way we'll have government like that is if we start lynching - perhaps literally - both the people who bribe leaders, and the leaders who allow themselves to be bribed. And we have to figure out a way to eliminate the revolving doors between governments and corporations.

Most people here would NEVER connect such an appliance to the 'net. But then most of us here can probably do an end-run around any interlocks which prevent the thing from working if it can't phone home.

To be clear, we're on the verge of an era in which many, many appliances will be crippled - or simply not work - if they fail to contact the mothership within a specified period of time. And most people will roll over, or bend over, for this shit - either because they feel they have no choice, or because they're incapable of grasping the implications and consequences.

After all, it's already the case that most people, (even most people reading this), don't really own their electronic devices. They hold title, and they pay for the purchase, maintenance, and repairs. But they often have no say when it comes to OS or app updates, terms-of-use changes, change or withdrawal of features, etc. Hell, many can't even choose the supplier of ink for their printers! I argue that given that lack of control, ownership is merely an illusion.

Cory Doctorow's 'Unauthorized Bread' is only six years old, yet some of its predictions are clearly becoming reality. Dystopian SF works usually have a prediction horizon of at least decades, not mere years - but here we are...

Exactly. It's not good for pressure vessels - especially negative pressure. I can see its use under pressure for limited-surface-area cases such as the hatches you mentioned, as well as for parts like brackets in which there are no voids.

I'm also wondering if it might be OK for a spherical submersible where the stresses are evenly distributed. But then, any hatches or windows would represent concentrated-stress points, so probably not. And come to think of it, making a carbon fibre sphere would probably need to be done by winding a either a single strand of fibre, or narrow bands. I suspect that using sheets of the stuff to make a spherical pressure vessel would not be good.

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So people are purposely adopting news sources which they believe will be less transparent, accurate, and trustworthy? Got it.

But I still don't get it.

Also unlike steel, carbon fibre is typically only one-half to one-third as strong under compression as it is under tension.

This is just a guess, but I'd add that the extra layers needed to achieve the required thickness / strength also increase the likelihood of voids and other flaws which would be potential failure points.

Of course it won't happen, but this would be the time for the courts to extrapolate from the existing situation, to a future in which AI fully memorizes even the most obscure works and monetizes them in some fashion. Allowing a class action suit now - assuming the suit is successful - will help to prevent future abuses. That's what should happen; but the courts generally seem lacking when it comes to preventing as opposed to punishing.

The primary problem isn't "pollution", it's specifically greenhouse gas emissions. Is natural gas any better than coal when it comes to emissions of CO2 and other heat-trapping gases?

25 decades and still going strong! Good genes, or a pact with the devil? Also, computers have been around for a LOT longer than I ever realized... ;-)

It strikes me that all programmers using AI to help with coding are also also training AI to ultimately replace them. So I'm not surprised that the "AI bullshit" is being pushed so hard.