I know someone who works in a university group related to privacy issues. He refuses to have a smartphone because of the ease which which almost anyone can track you and your activities. I think he has an old flip phone.

“Whatabout…”

But how much do IP laws actually protect the little guy? When a large corporation can bankrupt me by prolonging litigation until I have nothing left, what leverage do I really have?

There are certainly cases where small creators and inventors were able to overcome this disadvantage, but I suspect that they are the tiny minority, celebrated when they do achieve it.

I was seeing a lot of crashes two or three years ago, but none in the past year or so.

I guess if you can’t rely on human intelligence, you have to hope that artificial intelligence can do the job.

I think you would be more convincing if you spelled “line of sight” correctly

Lovely troll!

When I was in grade 9, in 1977, my science teacher told us about his solar panels. He was projecting that they would pay off the investment in about 20 years. How much better must that be now (and we are talking about Ontario, Canada, hardly the best place for solar power)?

I’ve probably played through it 5 times, using different skill trees.

• We Have Ways of Making You Talk
• Battleground
• The Rest is Classified
• The History of English
• Ehrman Podcast (Christianity from an atheist expert in the New Testament)

Definitely a thing for days like Valentine’s.

I look at Trump having meetings with Putin where none of Trump’s advisors were allowed to attend, no transcripts were published, and I think they even used only Russian translators.

So either Trump is controlling Putin, or Putin is controlling Trump. I know which way to bet.

Doesn’t it have to be a land border to qualify? I think so. They are two islands in the Gulf of St Lawrence.

Just don’t tell anyone about The Judgment of Paris and similar events that showed the wine world, and French wines in particular, in a very poor light.

Sadly, France doesn’t have a very well developed wine industry yet!

One of the giveaways for me was the complete ignorance of the Canadian post-secondary system.

She said that she’s taking pre-health sciences at George Brown College. College in Canada means community college (which George Brown is). You take a course, typically 1-3 years, with a specific goal in mind.

Also, Canadian universities do not offer pre-med or pre-health sciences tracks. You get a degree in chemistry, biology, or whatever, and apply for med school irrespective of the program you are in. One of my classmates was accepted into medical school straight out of chemical engineering. Someone else I know was finishing a degree in Spanish literature when he was accepted into medical school.

I remember a theory that the US government asked Microsoft to purchase Skype and change it from p2p to server-based, so that they could intercept decrypted communications.

Skype was originally made by a European company (Latvian?).

Being Ukrainian puts a completely different spin on it. My comment still holds true for Americans, but I would rather not see Ukrainians ground under the heel of another dictator, especially one enabled by the stupidification of the United States.

I’m sorry, but I don’t see it. The century of American supremacy is coming to a close. You may not want to admit it, because everyone in the US has been thought about American exceptionalism since they started school. China will rise, as will Europe possibly. I think Russia is failing as well. Its current lashing out is the end of their term as a great power.

The US is a big country, and the fall will be slow, but I don’t think there is a way to stop it now. I suspect that future historians will trace it back to the Nixon era. Come to think of it, every Republican president since then has also been really, really shitty when it came to preserving the health of the democracy.

I suspect that it was a defense mechanism due to her experience of many older men trying to hit on her. Better not to even open the door.