After about the third “You’re Fired”, I never wanted to hear anything from that asshole ever again.

Americans distrust government. We are indoctrinated with the idea that “Universal Healthcare” means that the government will be rationing healthcare. We are told that hard-working Americans will be expected to wait in line for care behind lazy, unemployed people. Propaganda tells us that the private sector can provide better healthcare to hard workers, and that only lazy undesirable people who can’t hold down a job are the ones who want universal healthcare.

Employers use health insurance coverage as a means of extorting workers to tolerate inhospitable working conditions. If you decide you want to quit your job, you are going to lose employer-sponsored coverage immediately, and won’t be eligible for replacement coverage from your next employer for at least 90 days. Employers are motivated to keep that “benefit” as leverage against workers.

Basically, when our political representatives try to address it, a whole bunch of misinformation and corruption combines to fuck us all over.

Yes. And I am being serious.

When JD Vance has a Congress that will back him (which he will have in 10 months), he, and a majority of the Cabinet, can invoke Section 4 of the 25th amendment. He can declare the President incapable of performing his duties, and step up to the plate. Congress then has the opportunity to decide whether to support his coup, or reinstate Trump to the presidency.

To be successful, he will have to immediately blame Trump for attempting to block the midterm elections, and appoint a special prosecutor to look into the full scope of Trump’s numerous, unadjudicated crimes.

For (most) of the next 10 months, JD Vance will have to continue to appear to support Trump’s presidency, and Trump will have to continue his own Trumpiness.

But once we get approval to for thermonuclear detonations in the middle east, we can modify the plan. We don’t need to dig a new canal if we just blow up any Iranian sites capable of attacking ships in the strait.

These age gates don’t achieve their stated objectives.

What they will do is allow “KidGroomer dot com” to request an age signal from a visitor. When that signal indicates the visitor is an adult, they can provide an app designed to inform parents about how to protect their kids online.

When that signal indicates the visitor is a child, they can provide an app for connecting kids with their local van-driving puppy owner and purveyor of free candy

Perhaps having your OS announce a user’s age to anyone who asks is a big fucking problem.

It would be determined that the OS vendor who included such instructions was not making a “good faith effort” to comply with the law.

IF AN OPERATING SYSTEM PROVIDER OR A COVERED APPLICATION STORE MAKES A GOOD FAITH EFFORT TO COMPLY WITH THIS ARTICLE 30 , TAKING INTO CONSIDERATION AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY AND ANY REASONABLE TECHNICAL LIMITATIONS OR OUTAGES , THE OPERATING SYSTEM PROVIDER OR COVERED APPLICATION STORE IS NOT LIABLE FOR AN ERRONEOUS AGE SIGNAL INDICATING A USER’S AGE RANGE OR FOR CONDUCT BY A DEVELOPER THAT RECEIVES AN AGE SIGNAL INDICATING A USER’S AGE RANGE .

Without a “good faith effort” to comply, they become liable for “intentional” violation, which is a $7500 penalty.

Based on what I’ve read of the California law (AFAIK, the Colorado bill is nearly identical), Microsoft, Google, Apple, and vendors of other closed-source commercial software would be considered OS providers. However, vendors of FOSS OSes cannot control what changes the local administrator chooses to make to the OS. The “OS Provider” is the responsible party under these bills; for FOSS software, that person is the end user installing the OS, and not an upstream vendor.

Parents, schools, employers, and governments, already use content controls to restrict users from accessing undesirable sites and services on the internet.

Searching the terms “content blocking” or “parental controls” will get you lists of apps and services doing just that.

Parents already have the capability. This law doesn’t provide any additional capability for parents to parent their kids. This law seeks, instead, to remove the power and responsibility of parenting from the parents, and assign it to pornographers. They want the operators of adult websites around the world to be the ones determining whether or not to provide content to their kids.

What this law actually does is provide a means for a website to determine whether an adult or a child is trying to access their content, and to use that information to decide what content to provide. The thinking is that a respectable services like Netflix will be able to decide to provide only age-appropriate content, blocking kids from adult content.

However, that also means that services like “KidGroomer dot com” will be able to provide different content to adults than it does to children. To an adult, they can portray themselves as a site that provides information on how to protect kids from grooming. But when a kid visits, this law lets the site know it is a kid. The site can now show them kid-targeted content, like how to get in contact with the nearest candy-giving stranger.

Perhaps we don’t actually want a website to be able to determine whether there is a kid on the other side of the screen.

All we can say from the given scenario is that the student has not demonstrated mastery of the subject material.

It could be that the teacher fucked up, and tested improperly. I’ve seen tests that didn’t reflect the subject matter; the teacher failed.

It could be that Mom or Dad were the ones completing the student’s assignments for them all year. The student never actually learned anything; the student failed.

If every student had the same experience, I’d be happy to point fingers at the teacher. But when virtually all her students pass, and this one “workaholic” kid can’t, that’s not on the teacher. That’s on the kid.

(Apparent) hard work is not evidence of mastery.

The UK uses single phase to the house. This is provided via one 240v hot and a neutral. Their final distribution transformer bonds one side of the output coil to ground and use it as a neutral, which makes the other side of the coil 240v relative to that ground.

The US uses split phase to the house. This is 240v provided via two opposing 120v hots and a common neutral. Their final distribution transformer is almost identical to the UK version: end to end, they have a 240v output. The difference is that instead of bonding one end of the output coil to ground and using it as a neutral for the other end, they instead bond the center of the output coil to ground and use that as a common neutral for both ends.

Not just solar - most grid-scale generators have this problem. “Black start” is the search term you want to look for, and Practical Engineering has a good video on the subject.

Basically, only a relative few grid generators are actually capable of black starts. The rest need the grid to be already functioning before they can tie in and start producing.

Ohio does something like that. We have separate contracts with a heavily regulated grid operator for distributing power, and our choice of generation companies for providing power.

The grid operator does our metering and billing, but forwards our generation charge to the provider we select.

Are you saying that electrical power should only be provided by government entities?

Should you be allowed to plug in a solar panel and provide power back to the grid?

Are you a government entity?

If you think you should be allowed to backfeed your own meter, you are calling for the grid to be operated as some sort of market. A regulated market, sure. But a market nonetheless.

The “natural monopoly” of electrical power is only on the distribution, not the generation of that power. It is reasonable for various generators to compete against each other to meet grid demand.

You should be able to push power back onto the grid. You should not be limited only to taking it off the grid. If you can put more on than you remove, you should be compensated for your generation at the market rate.

Assignments are not evidence of learning. Assignments are pressure for students to learn. They are motivation to spend time acquiring knowledge and practicing skills expected to be acquired from the class.

For students who master this knowledge and skill without that pressure, assignments are distractions from further study. They force the student to expend time and energy on previously-mastered material, rather than allowing them to focus on unmastered subjects or additional classes.

If I were building a grading rubric, I would say that the test score at the end of each unit is the minimum score recorded for any assignment in that unit. My tests would be killers: I would target 80% raw scores, but final test scores would be on a curve, with the median score being recorded as an “A”.

Score a 100% raw score on a unit test, and every assignment for that unit is raised to 100%. The student has demonstrated complete mastery of the subject matter; any grade less than 100% does not reflect their true capability.

Score an 80% raw score on the unit test, and every assignment for that unit is at least an 80%. A 95% assignment stays a 95%, but a 45% assignment is counted as 80%. Missing assignments are counted as 80%, not 0%.

I would go further: the raw score on the final exam replaces every lower grade in the grade book. You ace that indomitable horror of a final exam, you ace the class, regardless of how much effort you put in.

The purpose of a class is to instill a specific set of knowledge and skills.

The purpose of an assignment is to provide the student with sufficient pressure to study the expected knowledge, and practice the expected skills. The assignment is the pressure to learn; it is not evidence of learning.

To the student who has achieved mastery of that knowledge and skillset prior to completing the class, an assignment has no valid purpose. For such a student, the assignment is busywork, and serves only to distract the student from further study.

If your grading style does not allow for a student to demonstrate mastery and refuse busywork assignments, your grading is a problem.

A student with test scores equal or better than the class average does not deserve to fail your class for having refused assignments.

A student who ritualistically completes all of their homework assignments with excellent marks, but is entirely unable to pass a test on the subject matter, is a student who has failed your class.

There is a difference between providing the capability, and requiring that capability.

Under this law, something as simple as sharing a Google Drive could make you an “app store” and potentially liable for penalties.

These laws are specifically designed to be broadly interpreted. We have no idea just how widely the nets will be cast, either tomorrow, or 10 years from now. It is prudent to assume the absolute worst case.

The best defense is a good offense…

Aren’t all these bets made of a blockchain? Aren’t these transactions traceable from wallet to wallet?

Basically, any complaint made against you is an opportunity for the BBB to sell you a membership.

The argument is that if you don’t buy a membership, then complaints against you tend to substantiated, and your response to those complaints is deemed inadequate. If you do buy a membership, then the complaints against you are generally unsubstantiated, and your responses are exceptional.