I had composed a pretty intelligent reply to this, but /. refuses to let me post it.

It just keeps saying: Filter error: Lameness filter encountered

I think I'm done with /.

Censorship sucks. Censorship without any clue as to why.. I didn't even write any swear words. Yeah, that is lameness. Goodbye /.

Stop giving legitimacy to BitsOfCrimeCoin.

The alternative is all the code that makes the internet work would be proprietary and locked down.

I think that's why the open source community does this. There is a payoff, it's just not in dollars or food.

They also just enjoy programming I think. I mean who would do such a thing for free if they hated it?

Bottom line, better think carefully about what you're asking for. If you want 'paid for' programming running the internet, better be prepared to not get the source code with it.

This current model works well. It may shaft some people, but I think ultimately we as a species win in the end. I think these selfless people who do all this work for free are the unsung heroes of our era.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...

But that's just the thing. Eating fake meat currently has nothing to do with it being healthier than real meat. It's about reducing the amount of livestock we're raising and slaughtering for food. It's also about it being tasting as good as the real thing, to the point of it being impossible to tell the difference between real and fake. At least that was my take-away from this new fad.

As far as I know, I've not seen anything suggesting these new phony-meats being healthier than their real counterparts. It's all about reducing cow farts.

Costco does this too, at least their food demo subsidiary does.

I believe most, if not all, of the dollar-store clones do this too.

And I think Walmart does it to some extent too.

It's a classic move. Employ only part-time workers to get out of providing any benefits what-so-ever.

Welcome to America. Where a person can work 80 hours a week and get no benefits (working multiple part-time jobs.)

Where finding an actual full-time position is next to impossible for the less educated among us. And this is why.

Why hire full-time employees and be forced to pay benefits, when you can hire 2 part-timers for every full-time position you need to fill?

Why do people continue to use Facebook, after everything they've been caught doing that is shady?

This is absolutely no surprise. Is anyone surprised? Is this anything BUT expected behavior out of the 'apologies make it all ok' company?

This really seems to butt up against 4th amendment protections. You can't just blanket search people (or their data, theoretically) without a warrant or at least probable cause.

I smell legal challenges to this. It's also very strange this is coming from this administration. They seem so gun friendly, after all.

Even with the stated reasoning (something regarding ITAR?), this seems really odd and dubious. It doesn't seem legal in any perspective to blanket demand this data on US Citizens, regardless of what is going on with these scopes and related apps.

I'm calling BS on this.

For starters, this is not valid. Taking some unused phones and subjecting them to 'test condition' audio seems completely bogus. One of the things these phones do, over time, is 'learn' about their owner.

Feeding the phone 'test condition' audio with no actual normal use... invalid.

Second, even if that was valid, and it's not... who's to say the operators of the backend don't know what's going on and invalidate the test by making the phone respond differently than if it wasn't in a lab.

I don't buy this for even a second. They do listen, they do learn about their owner. At least I think so. Even if they don't, I would still be cautious around these things if you're plotting criminal activity with a buddy.

This is rather the expected result when nearly everything coming out of the US Government these days is clouded by lies, deceit and misinformation.

Good on you Europe. We earned your lack of trust. Well deserved.

Can't developers protect their ideas with patents?

Humans weren't meant to drink sugar water. Plain and simple.

I kind of feel like we should have similar laws regarding any robot that resemble 'dog leash laws.' ie: The robot needs to be accompanied by it's owner/agent at all times.

These things should be treated like something that needs adult supervision at all times.

At least for now. And a parking lot sure feels like a mostly public place.

If it's a private parking lot, then fences perhaps to make it inaccessible to the public seems appropriate before an unsupervised robot is permitted. Just like with a dog. A requirement of fencing would also really help address unwarranted surveillance of people outside the private lot.

If you pay, this will keep happening.

That is all.

So first, some of the things the TFA says are definitely true. Local media is all getting sucked up by big media conglomerates. This would include newspapers, television and radio stations. It's gotten to the point that if there's a local station that is actually local, it's a point of pride they'll announce during station id, at least on radios.

It's also true that many local media outlets are being forced into pushing the viewpoints and editorial pieces from their corporate overlords. John Oliver did a piece on this some time back, it was quite good and very informative.

Newspapers are also very much struggling, but for different reasons... lack of advertising dollars and lack of subscribers as the internet has severely displaced print media, and to a degree radio and TV radio too. I believe this displacement has left nearly all of these local outlets vulnerable to being gobbled up by corporations. But it's not all corporate overlord pulling the strings here. There's a lot of garbage media out there too. Sensationalism sells ads and subscriptions. So many outlets have turned to that sort of hype to pull in eyeballs, passing by the more mundane (but important) news coverage. A lot are just plain sellouts, too, looking to get bought by a big corp for that oh-so-sweet cashout.

I for one am all for rules and regulations to come down hard on this industry to help re-balance it. Caps on allowing corporate acquisitions and mergers and all the other shenanigans going on that's diluting and tinting news reporting. Be really nice if the 'fairness doctrine' came back to balance out political messages and talk shows being blared out by all these outlets.

However, I have to draw the line at subsidizing any media outlet. This is extremely unwise. Government and their media watchdogs really need to be kept as far apart from each when it comes to conflict of interest issues. There is just no way we could ever expect any unbiased reporting from media outlets sucking on the government teat. No. Do not subsidize. Just regulate the hell out of these clowns. Break up huge media conglomerates, there's a lot of monopolization of information going on out there. Put a stop to that. But leave the subsidies to the poor and needy, not the stupid and greedy.