Posts by Eric Olson

Japan complains Fukushima water release created terrifying Chinese Spam monster

Re: I seem to remember

I enjoyed this YT video by Plainly Difficult about the Windscale fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5wZoswSNwc

NASA still serious about astronauts living it up on Moon space station in 2028

A lot of people in the comments acting like someone pissed in their cereal this morning

I know the readership here may be a bit more dour than your typical IT professional, but this comment section reads like a roast without the good-nature humor.

Space is hard, and it's a legitimate question if space should be tried given the cost that comes with it. I do, as there are knock-on benefits every time humanity tries something hard. Hard things are just that, and if as a species we want to stop doing the hard things, that's an option. But as evidenced by other nations and private corporations, there is a drive to explore space even though it's hard. NASA has the mission to explore space, and jobs program though it may be on the Space Coast, this is keeping with that mission. Will it succeed? Maybe not; but also remember they don't call these shots. If you actually have a problem with how this money gets spent, or that it's spent at all, Congress is the culprit.

Have you ever suspected your colleague doesn't hope this email finds you well?*

For the first time in my 20 year career, I like my co-workers

At least the folks in IT. It's a laid-back crew, and it probably helps it's my first IT just where we are support rather than the product being sold. Still would rather not work, but I'm not going to say no to the first job willing to pay me more than 100K a year.

US Cyber Command boss says China's spooky cyber skills still behind

Re: What the actual #***?

<quote>One would think that hospitals would be a bigger priority for National Security than meat packing plants.</quote>

Hardly. Hospitals are for civilians, and the civilians at the hospital aren't contributing to the war effort

Games Workshop once again battles scariest monster of all: ERP gone wrong

Re: Well this makes me feel great

*wanders off mutters about finding offerings this time of day*

Well this makes me feel great

We just kicked off an ERP migration from work.... is this my life now?

Google says Android runs better when covered in Rust

Re: ABS Brake

Every winter, I'm reminded that ABS brakes are a feature I would never want to live without again.

Look! Up in the sky! Proof of concept for satellites beaming energy to Earth!

No mention of SimCity?

There was nothing more fun than a disaster where the SBSP would miss the receiver and travel as a beam of destruction across your city.

Quantum startup demos spin qubits fabbed with existing tech

Wait, did I just read what I think I read?

Did someone provide an assessment that was outside of 10 years? Their investors must be angels. There's no way a CTO of a company that will ever need money again would describe their time horizon as 20 years.

Don't say Pentium or Celeron anymore, it's just Processor now, says Intel

Re: trademarks

BRB, trademarking Windows branded doors

Intel's stock Raptor Lake chip will do 6GHz and overclock another 25%, if it keeps cool

Honest question

Anyone else getting a lot of P4EE and PR-rating flashbacks suddenly?

API rate limits at the core of Elon Musk’s decision to ditch Twitter

Re: specific info on that contract

IANAL, but I follow a bunch on Twitter. And all of them are universally being attacked by Musk stans for pointing out the Specific Performance clause. Based on that, the lawyers are probably right.

Specific Performance is a legal term where both sides agree that money is not an adequate remedy if the agreement is breached. It's not just a termination fee: the judge can demand that one party fulfill their side of the agreement rather than pay a sum of money to make it go away.

From a Twitter perspective, $44B US is a lot more than the entire company is worth today. The board would be in breach of their fiduciary duty if they failed to enforce the agreement. They are required by law, in terms of being open to legal liability, to pursue Musk for the purchase and make sure he completes it.

I'm not going to say Musk will lose, but the inclusion of the Specific Performance clause means if he does lose, he'll be forking over more than $1B. Consider the $1B to be a floor, not a ceiling.

https://twitter.com/felixsalmon/status/1525481890643337216

Boffins demonstrate a different kind of floppy disk: A legless robot that hops along a surface

Head's up, Las Vegas

First demonstration of a product will be at the Adult Entertainment Expo, probably as an advancement in teledildonics.

The Ministry of Silly Printing: But I don't want my golf club correspondence to say 'UNCLASSIFIED' at the bottom

Re: Back in the early 90's

We're *thisclose* to getting rid the office... finally!

Or did you mean the paper bit?

Anonymous: We've leaked disk images stolen from far-right-friendly web host Epik

Re: *looks around quiet, crowded theater* FIRE FIRE FIRE!

The time gate component is critical, IMO. If someone is murdered for an opinion, it would be dangerous to people if the government could round up anyone who ever said the victim should be punished for their opinion.

The Jan 6 insurrection is an interesting case, as many strong free speech advocate are looking at it and saying, "Yeah, those speakers may not be protected by the 1st Admt given the crowd, what they said to the crowd, and what the crowd did a few minutes later."

And also, harm can (and is) defined so many ways that your simple definition could be used to prosecute people for things like calling someone fat, or saying a person's faith is evil, demonic, etc. Words harm, there is no doubt about that. But we can't make it all criminal, because that means the wrong person in power will use it to suppress, harass, or even imprison a group of people because they are seen as enemies.

*looks around quiet, crowded theater* FIRE FIRE FIRE!

You can shout fire in a crowded theater, at least in the US. And advocating terrorism is no more illegal than saying someone is a Nazi.

In the US, there are few(er) bounds on speech. There used to be more, allowing the government to jail people for saying critical things about the government.

Did you know that the Supreme Court ruled the government could arrest and jail someone for distributing pamphlets telling people to peacefully resist the draft and petition for its end?

Oh wait, that's where Justice Holmes wrote that it was unprotected just as shouting fire in a crowded theater would be unprotected.

Thankfully, that terrible opinion was struck down a few decades later and replaced with a more logical test. Speech advocating for illegal behavior or violence is only illegal if it is intended to create imminent lawless action.

Saying we should kill God is not illegal. Pointing to God and saying, "Kill the bastard!" to a group of people armed with pointy sticks and copies of Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" may be considered incitement.

Want to support Firefox? Great, you'll have no problem with personalised, sponsored search suggestions then

The irony...

After I did the update so I would remember to disable to feature, the typical "new version" tab was advertising their VPN and proclaiming how your privacy matters.

Never mind that the VPN would make the localized suggestions pointless, but it also means they aren't being upfront about a rather huge privacy change.

I will also note the setting indicates it "Helps fund Firefox development and optimization," so at least they are being upfront on why they've included it.

Dell won't ship energy-hungry PCs to California and five other US states due to power regulations

<quote>AMD is now making CPUs in a weight class that didn't exist in their portfolio in probably 20 years and they really pull power in their high core count configurations.</quote>

It hasn't been 20 years; I built my first PC using the Athlon T-bird which was released in...

Oh.

No way...

Oh GOD!

When did I get so old!

Inventor of the graphite anode – key Li-ion battery tech – says he can now charge an electric car in 10 minutes

Oh no, it's a battery story

In before the "battery advances never pan out" commentards.

I always have wondered about that. All the stories of advances in battery tech, chemistry, charge cycles, etc., and so many people immediately say, "Bah, it won't happen, just like all the ones before."

But if they really were increasing energy density at 80% per yr until 2016 or so, you've gotta imagine a lot of those did make it into production, and just added to the overall amazingness of Li-ion batteries. Not to mention the reduction in cost. I mean, I can literally buy a 6Ah battery from Sparkfun for $30 USD and have it here before the end of the week. And it's only about 3" x 2"... that's impressive.

FBI paid renegade developer $180k for backdoored AN0M chat app that brought down drug underworld

Re: A job well done

Besides the authorization expiring in various jurisdictions? The answer is in the last sentence of the article: To get the users of such methods to question its safety, to reduce trust between groups, and show off the danger of assuming you're protected from eavesdropping.

I'm sure there will be other methods, and some groups might have enough capital to employ their own developers and device makers to keep things relatively safe. But by also co-opting one such dev, law enforcement demonstrates they can make it lucrative to sell out your employers....

Re: Trusting trust

Or get better lobbyists. ;-)

Australian cops, FBI created backdoored chat app, told crims it was secure – then snooped on 9,000 users' plots

In the US at least, entrapment is when cops/government induce an otherwise law-abiding individual to commit a crime, and not just by leaving a brick of drugs sitting on the ground, waiting for them to pick it up.

The phone itself is not illegal, and intent is important when determining culpability (usually).

Re: Five Eyes

It's not entrapment.

Entrapment requires the cops to induce an otherwise law-abiding person into committing a crime.

So, it would be like handing a random person a brick of cocaine, telling them it was cocaine, then saying, "Hey, I know a place and person to sell this to. Go here at this time," and then arresting them for possession and intent to distribute when they leave.

They just created a product using their knowledge of in-demand specs, advertised it to some criminals, who then word-of-mouthed it to other criminals, who then used it exactly as they would have similar products.

Guy who wrote women are 'soft, weak, cosseted, naive' lasted about a month at Apple until internal revolt

Re: Inclusive must mean that we only include things that we like...

There was a time, when inclusivity used to mean that we accept everyone, regardless of their opinions, because they were people like the rest of us, and had personal opinions about stuff, not just the socially accepted opinion that they were expected to have.

Do you want Nazis? Because that's how you get Nazis!

-------

Joke aside, five minutes in a library would uncover evidence it's false, even when it comes to more innocuous things like food preparation or choice of shoe. Tolerance of political leanings, religion, or ancestral origins has been more of a bug than feature for most of human history.

Your invocation of communism is ironic too, given the whole McCarthy thing in the 40s and 50s here in the US, where people were literally blacklisted because they may have had an association to another person who might have passed by a building that once hosted a meeting between two people who knew what the Communist Party USA was.

And of course, there is the Paradox of Tolerance, where if intolerance is allowed without any kind of societal check, eventually the intolerant will destroy the tolerant society.

Loser Trump is no longer useful to Twitter, entire account deleted over fears he'll whip up more mayhem

Re: Now they shut down his voice. Is that right?

Extremely hard to prove.

Based on what I've heard 1A lawyers say, you have to be able to not only draw a direct line between a violent act to a speaker, but you have to show the speaker explicitly called for the violent act to happen in a very short time frame.

The Brandenburg Test is:

The test determined that the government may prohibit speech advocating the use of force or crime if the speech satisfies both elements of the two-part test:

The speech is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,” AND

The speech is “likely to incite or produce such action.”

Advanced Money-making Devices: AMD inks multibillion stock deal for FPGA specialist Xilinx

It's nice to be back to two functioning chip makers

Well... one functioning, one retrenching after it dominated the market for nearly two decades

Former antivirus baron John McAfee collared, faces extradition to America on tax evasion, securities allegations

Re: You would have thought . . .

Sounds like the IRS would rather prosecute poor people for claiming too much Earned Income Tax Credit, rather than pursing any portion of the $200 billion estimated that will be owed each year by the top 1%.

https://www.startribune.com/a-lesson-from-trump-taxes-an-underfunded-irs-is-outmatched/572589912/

Priorities, I guess

Five years in the clink for super-crook who scammed Google, Facebook out of $120m with fake tech invoices

Re: He should of just hit normal people

Imma gonna leave this right here

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/whats-worse-than-coulda

Explain yourself, mister: Fresh efforts at Google to understand why an AI system says yes or no

Re: debuggability

Dude, do you even English?

Google: We caught a Russian state hacker crew uploading badness to the Play Store

#MICA

Can't bear to part with that well-worn copy of Windows 7? Microsoft might let you keep it updated an extra year

Re: The cost of Win10 is far too high.

The cost of non-Win 10 will be far higher when the support ends and patches are no longer issued. This is the thing about buying software: at some point, the support ends and you're left picking up the pieces. For apps like Photoshop CS6, it just means you don't get the latest and greatest... for an OS, it means the underpinnings of your system are on shaky foundation.

By all means, stay with whatever you want. But if you want to stay in the Windows ecosystem, things have moved on, like it or not. If you can, go to a different OS to run your system and make your code work there. But other than your dollars, you don't have any say over what MS decides to do with their OS.

Don't be Russian to judgement but... Bloke accused of $1.5m+ tax filing biz hack, fraud

Re: a refund to be paid into a prepaid debit card

There are a lot of free filing sites that will load your refund to a pre-paid Visa or something, precisely because the person in question paid taxes through payroll but doesn't have a bank account. Since employers are required to deduct taxes from each paycheck, it doesn't matter if the person won't make enough to pay taxes, or if they have other qualifying statues or circumstances that get them things like the EITC.

Re: Something's wrong here

I bet dollars to donuts that the 27 years is just the DoJ summing up the maximum sentence for each charge and calling it a day. It makes for better theater and satisfies the Law and Order types (TV or otherwise) need for a pound of flesh and an eye for an eye.

In reality, it never works that way. Besides the sentencing guidelines that are always much less (takes things like prior criminal history into account), it's not uncommon for individual sentences for each guilty or plead charge to be served concurrently. And then there is the reality of no matter the actual jail sentence, the actual time served is less before release (assuming they don't screw up more).

IANAL, but after the Manafort stuff, Lawyer Twitter, and some other cases lately, this has come up enough that I feel internet confident about saying it. YMMV, and I definitely don't suggest you go citing this in your next legal brief or law blog.

Champagne corks undocked as SpaceX brings the Crew Dragon back to Earth

Re: Here in the UK... off topic

Oh c'mon, it was first flow in 1949. That wasn't 70 years.... oh crap, it is.

Means my parents are closer to get 70 that 60 now, too. My damn frame of reference keeps shifting, and my math circuits can't keep up.

Wells Fargo? Well fscked at the moment: Data center up in smoke, bank website, app down

This isn't the first time...

I think there was a nationwide ATM outage in Feb and Apr of 2011, also caused by a single point-of-failure. Speculation was a bad software rollout, but I haven't been able to find anything more than the bank saying it was an "internal system."

But hey... it's not like being able to query a bank account is important for customers, right?

Wow, fancy that. Web ad giant Google to block ad-blockers in Chrome. For safety, apparently

Re: So predictable !

Actually, I believe they don't sell your personal data. In fact, I think it would be lunacy if they did. There's a simple reason, too: Profit.

Someone else mentioned this the other day, but that's probably the truth of it. If I'm OmniCorp A, and my product, the Widgetizer, is targeted towards Millennials with interests in underwater basketweaving, I don't know who that is in a given population. But Google does. And Google will charge a nominal fee to target that population rather than just Millennials. If Google starts to sell that dataset, even an anomonyzed one, companies won't need to go to them. They'll directly target the websites, search results, and other places such people frequent, and cut Google out from the middle. Selling the data would completely destroy Google's profit margin.

He who controls the data controls the internet.

What would Jesus sue? The FCC, it seems

Re: Proxy Fight

ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS are all networks, not station owners. Local stations affiliate themselves with a network to get access to the content those networks offer, but that leaves plenty of hours during the day that the local station is transmitting their own content, or content they've licensed from someone else. They get a few local ad slots during network content, and in exchange those networks try to fill those times with shows that pull in eyeballs, which increases the value of those local ad slots.

Your entire argument is predicated on a complete misunderstanding of how the system works. Sinclair operates stations that are affiliates with all the major networks. Additionally, the companies that own the major networks don't have many stations of their own. Disney operates 7 TV stations in the US. Comcast operates 26. Time Warner has just 1. 21st Century Fox has 26. And National Amusements (the holding corp of Viacom and CBS), has 17.

Sinclair owns 173 and would go to 223 with the purchase of Tribune Media. That's a lot more than the 75 or so owned by the networks. And with their history of compelled content that is broadcast nationwide, regardless of local preferences, or in some cases affiliate agreements, Sinclair is a threat to one of the last places people can get local news from local people. The same concerns happened when Clear Channel (now iHeartRadio) started buying multiple radio stations in major cities. They aggressively pushed a one-size-fits-all format, playlist, and talking points. Radio isn't a huge mover anymore and most of the concerns were about taste-making, but the same problem remains: A single voice, pretending to be otherwise, pushing an agenda or point-of-view to millions of people in an attempt to sway them.

Telco forgot to renew its web domain, broke deaf folks' video calls – now gets a $3m paddlin'

Re: Here in the UK... off topic

Eh?

Even an idiot knows (well, many of them) that they should break up their haul into multiple locations. Here in the US, pawn shops (the typical item for cash location) are everywhere. In my part of the country, most pawn shows participate in a system where all transactions, including timestamp, customer info, and video are logged to a database for the law enforcement to search (it's run by the main city's police dept). Items are held for 30 days before they can be released for sale, allowing time for things to reported as stolen.

Amusingly enough, our PS4 was just pawned the other day, nearly 3 months after it was stolen. Not sure it was actually the person who stole it, or if it's been handed off a few times and finally someone decided they needed the cash more than the system. Sony dragged their feet for months on the search warrant served by our police department, only finally responding last week with the IP that related to the purchases made less than 24 hours after it was stolen. Of course, we now need to wait for the ISP to provide a physical location for the PD to serve a warrant against. Hopefully, a few people get snared and lose their shit over the idea of spending years in jail because they have an item associated to a felony that has a 20 year prison sentence, then roll on the actual criminal who broke into our house.

Unfortunately, the PS4 wasn't really the item we cared about; we want the two laptops back because they have years of professional data that my wife never backed up (a discussion for a different day).

Re: Here in the UK... off topic

In the US don't police really investigate the site of burglary either. They file a report and with luck, stolen goods may pop up later and assuming your property includes unique identifiers, might even be returned. Maybe it's time for some online crime reporting.

I think it depends on the jurisdiction. Burglary is actually considered a pretty violent crime, at least when it happens in a residence.

We had a break-in where the perp used our (stupidly) unlocked car to gain entrance into our garage. They proceeded to learn that we don't keep the service door locked and came inside to steal a couple of laptops, a PS4, my wife's wallet, and the old, inactive cell phone we kept for the kids. Ignored the cash on the counter, though.

Reported the theft after they woke us up after setting off our other car's alarm, and we had four cops show up, plus the county crime lab to look for prints and DNA. Sadly, no luck yet, mostly because Sony continues to ignore the search warrant served (for almost two months now) after my wife got an email thanking her for her PS4 purchases of free games a couple of days after the theft.

The developers vs enterprise architects showdown: You shall know us by our trail of diagrams

I can't count the number of times I go to their documentation to find they haven't even listed the traffic required, or gone to the vendors' site to confirm communication details that the developer hasn't even bothered to look up before requesting IP any any.

Funny, I get tasked with that all the time as the business analyst, under the guise of "gathering requirements."

Sure, there are some requirements there... but there is an element of RTFM that drives me a bit crazy when a dev swings by and bitches about how my requirements docs don't contain details on how to integrate with an external service. Never mind that I included the documents provided by said vendor as reference, rather than duplicate information in a way that won't be updated as the source is.

Japanese sat tech sinks Sea Shepherd anti-whaling activists' hopes

Re: De gustibus non est disputandum

Beginning to think it's more of an issue to go after intelligent, even sentient species for food and/or sport. It's a grey area for sure, but cetaceans in general seem no-go.

And to be fair, the appetite for (some) seafood is driving other species to the brink of extinction, such a blue tuna. The tragedy of the commons and all that.

HP Inc, HPE both slapped with racism, ageism lawsuit

Re: Unsure what to think

The reality is these guys may not have been skilled to play the corporate politics at HP and as the layoffs came they were not part of the "in" network.

Actually, that's exactly what the suit is alleging. Through a lack of corporate controls and standards on performance evaluation, promotion decisions, and termination process, subjective criteria were used for decision-making. These may have included considerations outside of the scope of the job, including protected classes of people that are based on age and race.

This is why HR in many companies insist on a structured hiring and firing process, with retention of notes, emails, etc. that are related to the decisions. Any indication that a decision was made using factors unrelated to the job in question could be used against the hiring manager or company later on. Discovery can be a very embarrassing process for a company, as internal documents, hand-scrawled notes, hallway conversations, etc. find their way into the courtroom. Even if cleared, HP now has a PR issue at hand that can escalate and make it harder to attract talent in the future.

Simply put, HR policies are a pain in the ass, but they are they to protect the company's reputation and keep it out of the courtroom. An ounce of prevention....

'My dream job at Oracle left me homeless!' – A techie's relocation horror tale

To be fair...

I've never left the state for another job, let alone another country. But when I hear "relocation expenses", it's hard to square that with at least not covering deposits or other requirements of moving. Of those who've used them before in three very different sectors (pharma, surgeon, and... retail store manager), they all seemed to cover the expenses of moving from one place to another, including security deposits. Two of them (the pharma and store manager) were more of the "you keep what you don't use" variety, while the surgeon had to document everything in triplicate. Of course, that was the highest paying job by far, so maybe to be expected, especially given that it's almost guaranteed that a resident going into practice was going to be moving.

I can see not covering on-going rental costs... but the security deposit seems to be right up there with moving van, movers, and boxes. No place will rent without a down payment, regardless of your future income.

NASA tells Curiosity: Quit showing off, no 'wheelies' please

Maybe we don't need too many humans in space yet...

In somewhat related news, the mention above of Opportunity sent me to Google to see what the little dood was up to. Not only is it in the 14th year of activity on Mars, the mission page had a link to this story: Why No One Under 20 Has Experienced a Day Without NASA at Mars.

In the 20 years since Pathfinder's touchdown, eight other NASA landers and orbiters have arrived successfully, and not a day has passed without the United States having at least one active robot on Mars or in orbit around Mars.

That's pretty impressive, while also making me feel old. I remember hearing about the Mars missions in the mid-90s while in school and thinking how awesome it would be to see close-up pictures that weren't from before I was born. And now 20 years later, there are two rovers trundling around Mars, including one that has exceeded its primary mission almost 54 times over and another that shoots lasers, plus India has its own orbiter around Mars. And in general spaceflight over those 20 years: the ISS was launched, expanded, and still kicking; the shuttle program went through a rough retirement; and (evil?) genius Elon Musk has not only started resupply missions, but seems to have cracked the whole reusable rocket thing in a way that 20 years ago would have seemed impossible. SpaceX might even be on the verge of manned missions to ISS. Oh, and NASA is finally getting somewhere on their next-gen rockets and capsules, including the Orion test flight in 2014.

People talk about how we went to the moon with Apollo 11 in '69, and then started the shuttle launches in '81, but did nothing after that. And the '80s and mid-90's were kind of a lull... but it's becoming clear that the science wasn't standing still, even if it looked that way. With more resources, I'm sure there could have been less of a gap between the first shuttle launch and the next space era of the ISS, Mars exploration, and private spaceflight, but I'm still not sure we'd have humans on Mars yet, given how little we know about the radiation risk and the material sciences needed to shield people on the way and once they get there. Plus... there's been so much cool science with the space-based telescopes lately and Earth-based sensors, you start to realize just how little we know about anything.

What a tit! Uber CEO hijacks his staff breast-pump room to meditate

Re: Seems to me that ...

Still rather young, so I have to rely on secondhand anecdotes... but if I took more risks than they already do, it's a miracle I made it to my teens.

Re: Seems to me that ...

We should be ashamed of ourselves. Or perhaps extinct.

After observing my sons growing up, I'm surprised we've lasted this long. It's almost like surviving childhood is accidental.

Will the MOAB (Mother Of all AdBlockers) finally kill advertising?

Too much conflation of ads with advertising...

Both the author and the commenters seem to focus a lot of energy on "ads", with only a nominal bone thrown to "native advertising" or what the actual purpose of advertising is: Influence consumer behavior.

On both the web and on TV, ads are despised. They break up the content in such a way that's jarring, either through commercial breaks or poorly designed and executed "inline" copy. You see less worry about ads in print media, or when it's integrated into the content in seamless ways. Think product placement or promoted reviews, articles, etc.

Today there's a flimsy wall separating the ad revenue teams from the content/editorial teams. When they mix, you end up with reviews, interviews, exclusives, and other things that look organic, but really are being done because an advertiser or company offered access to one or more places. In some cases it's outright cash, such as when an actor or producer is doing a publicity tour to promote a new or returning show.

Savvy marketers already know how to influence consumer behavior and do it all the time. Amazon Prime or other subscription programs, loyalty programs, UX, early/first access, etc. all can and are routinely used to guide a person to buy more stuff, recommend to friends/family, upgrade, or shift spending. When the pie only grows so fast and your company is required to increase sales at a higher clip, you have to find untapped consumers (rare) or route existing consumers to you.

The concern raised about ads being blocked is less about catastrophic disruption and more about antiquated ideas on how advertising and marketing actually works today. The reason they still exist on the web is they are cheap and easy to fling, with little attention or expertise being needed to conduct a campaign. Once those are exhausted or revealed to be the wealth transfers from dumb/lazy companies to savvy ones they really are, the web will be a better place for it.

Democrats draft laws in futile attempt to protect US internet privacy

Re: So...

Not a lawyer, but based on the typical arguments...

Things get tough when crossing state lines are involved... however, there are ways around it.

Most often, businesses have local affiliates in a state they do business as. These are for numerous business related reasons, but often is required for a regulatory standpoint in the state. So if Comriz & T wants to be an ISP in Minnesota, they need to be mindful of state laws. Otherwise, they will be shut down by state regulators and prevented from operating in the state. That handles 1, 2, and probably 3 in your example.

#3 could also be handled by a state law in Minnesota that makes it illegal for companies in Minnesota to purchase aggregate or individual data from states that make collection illegal (essentially, illegal to use illegal goods). Maybe that one isn't so cut-and-dried.

The Commerce Clause of the US Constitution typically comes into play when state laws attempt to supersede or ignore federal laws that apply to interstate commerce. So when it comes to your 4th example, the state laws would have no impact.

#3 might also be tricky if Minnesota had a law on the books applying to MN companies and used a higher standard to determine what is "illegally collected" data, such as not even allowing opt-in data, or just a blanket prohibition on their use of such data. Those companies might be able to sue the state if they can show that they conduct interstate business or that the data was not illegal where it was collected.

As Trump signs away Americans' digital privacy, it's time to bring out the BS detector

Re: Devils advocate (from the right side of the pond)

For the most part, ISPs are bit and cable TV pushers. The reality is that we don't have "clean" ISPs; almost all were born of and subverted a cable (Comcast) or telephone provider (AT&T and Verizon). They used subsidies and legal monopolies provided by the FCC and state laws to string a bunch of copper (and later fiber) across the land, then took the subscription fees and ad dollars to buy out many of the regional providers for a pittance.

OTT providers like Facebook, Google, Netflix, etc., are using that infrastructure to make money, but they also have to make major infrastructure outlays in order to keep up with demand. The barriers to entry are high and require a massive investment. No one in their garage is going to put together a couple of networked boxes and claim measurable market share from any of them.

I frankly don't care if ISPs can aggregate data and sell it... just get rid of the franchise laws that protect them from competition. If a small shop wants to link a neighborhood to a backbone and charge for the privilege, great. Living in a large metro area, I have two options for ISPs, and a single provider of TV. Of course, I could hang a large HD antenna on my roof and stream the rest, but I still have to deal with one of two ISPs, neither of which are known for customer service, or frankly, service.

Make 'em compete. Make 'em fight. Hell, televise their executives beating each other over the head until they go down, alive or dead. Don't really care. Just make them actually have to work and spend money on service, rather than resting on laurels or crying poverty because some popular network is exacting a higher user fee in the next round of negotiation.

Samsung plans Galaxy Note 7 fire sale

In all honesty...

I miss my Note 7.

No, not the idea of my pants catching fire while I was on a hyperbolic rant.

But as a phone, it was damn good. It was fast, the screen was great, and I could come home with more than 10% of a charge left. Obviously that last bit was the problem... so it wasn't perfect.

I have the LG V20 now. It's fine. I used my wife's S7. It's fine. The S7 Edge was fine. Everything available at the time was fine. But the Note 7 was good... even great. And some government-bribing idiot (or his underlings) had to try to fuck Fate in the ear by cramming something too big into the intended cavity.

I may never forgive Samsung for ruining a good product with an engineering gaffe that I'm sure will come out in the future as a "We told you not to..." Probably some moronic VP or executive demanded that this whiz-bang cell be put into the Note 7 because the dimensions were just a hair smaller than the battery hollow in the PDF of the technical drawings.