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Skype was originally made by a European company (Latvian?).

I hate when a website allows me to deselect corporate partners who have access to my data, but rather than deselecting all of them it offers me the chance to manually select 600 or 800 one at a time.

As I understand it, the tolls are levied on land connected to the bridges and tunnels entering New York, which are managed by the federal government, not the city.

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.

Since people who are not conservative are leaving the Catholic Church at a significant rate, it stands to reason that the people who are left will be more conservative.

I know one person who is a rabid defender of the Catholic church. The last time we talked, I was explaining to her that Jesus taught that you should love your enemies and not fight back. She said I was stupid and that I must have been reading a defective Bible.

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.

My ex, visiting Canada from Japan, once complained that there are too many trees.

Because he has the knowledge and experience to completely understand the final product. It used an approach that he hadn’t thought of, that is better suited to the problem.

I was talking to someone who does software development, and he described his experiments with AI for coding.

He said that he was able to use it successfully and come to a solution that was elegant and appropriate.

However, what he did not do was learn how to solve the problem, or indeed learn anything that would help him in future work.

It’s available on CBC Gem, if you are in Canada. Probably also available in the UK. A VPN might do the trick for you.

If you haven’t already seen it, I highly recommend the original British version. They already finished, I think after five seasons.

Have you paid any attention to the political scene in the United States? There is no way that a billionaire could be convicted of any crime. In the rare event that they are charged, they can delay and obfuscate so that they die before any repercussions must be suffered.

I don’t think that the truth of the two-tiered American justice system has ever been so clearly delineated.

It’s a good thing that there is no history of soldiers obeying illegal orders and committing atrocities. Of course, there are plenty of people in the military who are quite happy obeying those orders because they agree with them.

That’s strange, because the Catholic Church officially endorses evolution.

I think you forgot the part where the Supreme Court declared that basically anything the president does is legal. Citizens United drove a stake through the heart of American democracy, and this latest ruling cut its head off.

Welcome to Elon’s Brave New World!

Do you tell him that Trump has filed for bankruptcy six times with his companies? What does that say about his business acumen? How often has your uncle filed for bankruptcy?

Canada’s warnings are even more extreme.

https://images.app.goo.gl/j66GAmSPjy4ZchX46

No, Mao and Chiang Kai-Shek were tools of the international Jewish conspiracy. I think she said that Zhou En-Lai was the one who started helping them to destroy China by bringing them under the control of the Americans.