They wanted the IP not the staff.

Only if you suck until the creamy goodness reaches your lips.

My question to the politicians…

Has praying been working so far?

School shootings in the USA occur so frequently now that there is very clear evidence that prayer does not prevent them. Therefore , at what point should the strategy be changed to try something else? The most powerful people in the USA claim they have no power to stop this, yet can very significantly curtail abortion access I under the guise of protecting lives.

The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

There have been 416 school shootings since Columbine. Every time prayer is offered by politicians. Every time another school shooting was just around the corner.

You know it doesn’t seem like all that long ago that people were being sued or threatened for playing music in shops or in the back office of a hotel and stuff like that. It might have been urban legend at the time when the music industry was over reacting to Napster, KaZaA, Limewire, Bearshare, etc, etc. but it is true that those venues officially need a license for any music they play in public. So how come a nationwide advertising campaign can make use of music, without the permission of the artist, and not be sued into oblivion by the RIAA? Or does the artist not own the copyright to their own work? Or does the RIAA sympathise more with gentle, kind Billionaires than nasty greedy non billionaires??

I guess it’s “I don’t want to use fossil fuels but I don’t have an alternative. Give me an alternative! Don’t have one? Then I’ll keep using fossil fuels”

In fairness though not using fossil fuels it’s something of a luxury at present. EVs are more expensive that non EVs. Maybe this will change but slowly. Home solar is very expensive and still doesn’t get you self sufficient in most cases. Power companies need to make the grid renewable to make it accessible to the average person for home power.

The problem with this type of thing is intent.

How do we prove intent to deceive?

Lying is not simply stating incorrect information. It is intending to deceive by knowingly stating incorrect information. It is not easy to prove what someone knew.

What if they were misinformed by a third party that may or may not have an agenda? Under these circumstances the politician is not lying and believes they are telling the truth even though the information they uttered is wrong. Do you go after the third party? Does this then give the politician a mechanism to evade charges using fall guys?

I absolutely believe that people like Bojo should be held to account. In his case there was plenty of evidence. It should also be acceptable for the opposition to state that they were lying in the commons without facing repercussions.

So basically upset that the press do their job??

IMO the main reason for the press to exist is to hold people in power accountable for their actions. It doesn’t matter the lengths they go to to get the information or their motivation. There will always be press looking into politics on both sides of the spectrum and we as the public should be glad for it.

You should not excuse bad behaviour just because they are on your team. You should encourage the press to do their job as long as they don’t go too far into harassment, distortion of the truth or digging up irrelevant personal details about someone that affect noone outside that someone.

I really like the line “democracy does in darkness” because it is so true. Political figures who dislike the press generally have something to hide.

Except there is a big difference in that these people choose to live abroad. They have chosen diminished influence of British politics over their lives so they should have diminished influence over British politics.

If they really want to influence politics here, then live here. It is not fair on resident, tax paying citizens to have non resident non tax paying ex pats making choices that may benefit them at the cost of others.

For example, elderly expats may choose to support a policy which significantly increases their pension to cover their overseas lifestyle at the expense of resident pensioners or increased taxes or reduced public services for resident voters. While this is very unlikely to be proposed or succeed, it is theoretically possible. I’m sorry but if I resign from my job should I still get to make demands of my former colleagues because I worked there for 30 years or still feel like an employee??

I just can’t reconcile the thought “I don’t want to live there anymore” with the thought “I deserve a vote in the country I left behind”.

It was a little different when we were in the EU. But we are not.

“I still feel British so I should get to decide how people in Britain live. I mean does it really matter if the NHS gets privatized as long as my pension gets bigger so I can afford my lavish lifestyle. I care so much about my country just not quite enough to live there.”

If counter with: “We’d be well served to remember the long and cherished tradition of settling criminal matters in the courts.”

Basically they want the right to commit crimes without consequences beyond the possibility of simply not being re-elected… But only for Republican politicians. Democrats should be treated differently.

Reading the headline I was about to post how ridiculous it is that AI is taking over everything. Then I read that it is being used to give someone the chance to say their own words in their own voice.

This was not motivated out of using AI to replace an actress. It was motivated out of respecting the wishes and dignity of a dying person. It’s there a better use of AI than this?

Your point is what? That 100% of the people voted for them? Or that those who opposed them should silently fall in line?

Sorry, they absolutely should protest and they absolutely are entitled to.

Am elected government shouldn’t have carte blanch to make changes designed to rig the system in their favour.

Seems like a manufacturer problem. I’ve have the same LED bulbs in my house for 5 years plus with no replacements. Various makes too .Some of them came with me from my old house. No idea how old they are. With incandescent bulbs, I used to have to replace at least 1 a year. I used to keep a stock in the back of a cupboard.

Agree that if an incident happens in a particular jurisdiction, the local court should handle it. That makes sense, no argument here. But here they get to choose the set of laws because there was no physical location? That just feels wrong somehow. Anyway there is a physical location and if anything, the incident was ‘perpetrated’ by a person who was physically located somewhere at the time. It should be handled by the court local to them at the time. In the case of organisations, I guess this would mean where the defendant company operates from. Or if we accept it is virtual and everywhere then, it should be governed by federal laws not state laws.

Why is it OK for an American company to headquarter in one state then cherry pick another in which to file a lawsuit? Surely a company should be governed by the laws of the state in which they are based. It seems weird to choose the set of laws you want to be judged by when the defendant cannot do the same.

I did online dating for many years. I used match, eharmony, tinder, pof, okcupid.

I fully understand the ‘soul destroying’ comment. For me it was a lot of work for little return. I started off being selective. Messaging one person at a time so I didn’t end up getting two responses and having to put someone off or turn one of them down. That was naive it turned out as I got very few replies. So I started messaging multiple people at once. I always tried to personalise things but my effort varied with how optimistic I was feeling about online dating.

Ultimately I think I got responses about 10% of the time. From them, 10% turned into a date, from those maybe 50% would get to a second date.

So overall it every hundred messages I’d write , 1 would end up in a date. I went on quite a lot of dates over the years, but I had to devote so much time to getting them it was, soul destroying.

I never thought i was unattractive, but online dating made me question if I really was. I never thought I was an ass, but online dating made me question if I really was. I would sometimes have very long conversations before meeting to find there was no chemistry in person. Sometimes I would like them when we meet and they would ghost me. Sometimes they liked me and I didn’t like them, but I always tried to be honourable and tell them, not ghost them since I didn’t like it happening to me.

I am male in case my experience doesn’t make it obvious. I often spoke to some of the women I got on better with about how online dating was for them and their experience was pretty awful for different reasons. Generally they were bombarded by messages and a good number of them were obscene. Guys trying to hook up rather than date. To manage their inbox was a real challenge and they probably missed out on good matches because of the noise.

My overall impression of the whole thing is that it generally sucks regardless of whether you are the one doing most of the messaging or whether you are receiving messages. I also think it makes it more like shopping than dating, dehumanising people. Do I want the 8K 42 inch TV or the 4K inch TV? Actually, can I even afford it?

All that said in the end it worked for me. Over 6 years since I last logged in and I think it was a bit of an addiction, or perhaps desperation born of loneliness.i also have a daughter now and there were times I thought that was never going to happen.

So for me online dating was years of frustration, difficulty and upset, but in the end I’m glad I did it but it took a long time.

100% agree. While I think it might be easier to get to a relevant result more quickly in certain cases, I’ve never needed to suffix reddit to my searches to find what I need. Often reddit hits crop up but not because I looked for them specifically.

1: “… and then we’ll be able to stop terrorist attacks. Simple”.

2: “ok but if you put a back door into encryption, won’t others be able to find it?"

1: "no we’ll be the only ones with the key. Great huh?“

2: “and you don’t think the key will be leaked or be hacked?”

1: “I said we’ll be the only ones with the key.”

2: “so what’s your plan to make sure the key stays secure”

1: “…”

2: “what’s your contingency plan if the key *is * hacked or leaked?”

1:“…”

1: "I SAID WE’LL BE THE ONLY ONES WITH THE KEY. "

2: “…”

1: “don’t you want to protect our children ??”

I’m not saying baby monitors are the only reason for improved SUID rates. I’m saying they likely played a role. Despite your sarcasm, you might also be right that lead could have adversely affected unexplained infant mortality. The point I was trying to make was that baby monitors are not useless devices designed to extract money from you as implied by OP, whose comments by the way, were anecdotal.

$400 is excessive though. As is a subscription.

And data on SIDS is freely available. https://www.cdc.gov/sids/data.htm

They’ve also not been fine.

SUID Death rate for infants has decreased even since 1990. Baby monitor likely had a role in that.

FYI not supporting subscription for features a device has in hardware, just saying I’d rather have a monitor that never went off than no monitor and a dead child. There are plenty of alternative devices without subs that cost a lot less to begin with.