It can be a bit of both. Can’t speak to the UK but in Japan you’re constantly asked to become a prepper because we don’t need no stinking strait of Hormuz to threaten us, the earth we live on is doing that all by itself.

Japan is in a bit of a pickle because it relies on the US for defense to quite a high degree. Nobody here thinks the orange’s adventure in Persia is a good idea. But since he reacts like a toddler nobody really dares speak out in public. So the only thing the government can do is ask companies to find ways around the closed off strait. And then the PHP thing happened. And a big data breach. Our ongoing cost of living crisis is amplified by a weak currency. The crises are piling up over here as well. Naturally, the government issues guidance. They can’t do much else.

There have been weird developments in IT thanks to so-called AI. Along with a limited number of advantages at current, it presents a major threat. It provides a Google translate tool for normal speak to code with a reliability of Google translate from 15 years ago. The North Koreans who hacked Sony had to know what they’re doing. We’re now in a place where you can just ask your tailored LLM agent to hack a company and you don’t have to know how to do that. The agent will come up with ways nobody thought of. Offence in IT tends to be faster than defence. So the heightened threat level is not a farce. The impotent government response can be though.

That’s not necessarily a ding on politicians. Representative democracy requires a political meat grinder that few people get out of still mostly intact. Those are the candidates you get to vote on. It takes a certain kind of person to survive the meat grinder long enough to be on a ballot. There are 350 million people in the US, for instance. There are maybe a half million people seeking office from local to federal. That’s about .15 percent of the entire population. It’s a sheer numbers game that you haven’t voted for anyone you liked.

Many good people don’t want to enter the meat grinder in the first place, skewing the result further. That’s why democracy is mostly about voting for the least bad.

I fear if you tally up the environmental impact of war, which is more often than not the reason for the rising oil price, it may exceed the savings at the end consumer level.

Space is very cold. It’s -270something C. The temperature on Earth is much higher. The rays that make it through to our atmosphere bounce off the ground, warming it up from the bottom up. That’s why you need a jacket when you climb up a mountain because it’s getting colder the higher you go. Imagine a mountain higher than anything we have. Eventually, you’ll get to -50 C.

You are straining the credo of this community. Gauging general trust in engineers based on where the most popular PC operating system comes from is simply too simplistic.

Very few people use Microsoft products because they actually like them. They are just the market leader in desktop OSs and do their darnedest to keep people trapped in Office. Their market dominance is no reflection on trust.

None of this applies to all places necessarily:

Large distances in rural areas.

Stranger danger.

Everything is car focused in the US. The famous sentence “It’s 5 minutes on foot, let’s walk there.” has never been uttered.

Public transport may be shit or not suitably safe/reliable to get kids to school.

Big yellow buses have become a default, a cultural cornerstone, and many people rely on it and expect it.

Long traffic jams at schools are the sign of a more affluent population in the district.

I started getting uncontrolled erections whenever my sat nav told me where to go. Now I know that Knight Rider was to blame.

I offered an argument

That’s debatable. Thank you for rage baiting with us today.

Great use of the royal “we.”

Stickers can be forged. Checking your papers against a database is a lot more certain. The sticker is just there (or out of date) to justify pulling you over.

I think they want to continue to make hand over first kind of money. If the gold veneer house came out with straight up accusations that Huang was dumb because he was spied on, I’m sure there is a whole rat’s tail of procedures that need to be followed. And some of those would surely impede Nvidia’s ability to rake it in like that and it may lead to a change in company leadership as well. And Huang is a buddy. Whatever the NYT writes is just “fake news” so they can ignore that like they do all the other proven lies.

I’m also thinking somebody in the clown car is aware of how bubbly this so-called AI economy is and that the two time peace prize runner up should try and not poke a needle needlessly before the midterms.

After I wrote my earlier reply, I was also thinking the motivation could be so much simpler. The orange, one of his kids he likes, or somebody else he knows is heavily invested in Nvidia. This could just be grift and greed as well.

EU countries try really hard to register all births with the proper documents that then lead you to get an ID or passport later on in life. Everybody is used to needing an ID, being able to show it upon request, and using it to vote as well. Most people are just fine with all of that.

The US doesn’t follow this logic. For example, a person born earlier the last century in the deep south may not have received a birth certificate. The birth could have just been written into the household bible. So when you require a voter ID and to get that you need a birth certificate, you have eliminated a possible voter. And what if I added this bible practice was done predominantly in African-American communities. There will be other loopholes where people will be required to produce paperwork they can only acquire after a Kafkaesque tour through various administrations. Funny enough a lot of them affecting minority communities first and foremost.

If you want to do a proper voter ID, you need to first convince the people this isn’t government overreach (good luck). And then make sure everybody has an equal chance to get this ID, e.g. by issuing missing birth certificates. The laws that generally want to introduce this do not care about equal chances. They tend to target voters who vote for the other side.

Your post is in danger of being deleted because there isn’t an open-ended question in there.

You maybe had better address this question to developers or in communities dealing with building out the fediverse in particular.

I have no idea if this was Huang on Huang spying, export ban evasion, or a Chinese Trojan horse. And I’m happy about all the negative headlines about so-called AI or the incumbent president.

Still, and at the risk of having to take a long shower after this, I think I have to defend the mad orange. Let’s say there was a big Lockheed Martin deal in the making with Japan or the UK, billions of dollars for weapons and what not. Let’s say their CEO was cozying up to a person allegedly affiliated with an adversary’s intelligence service. And revealing this would endanger the whole deal. I think any president, no matter what party, would try to keep this under wraps. Do something like cancel that special briefing for the CEO so you didn’t do nothing alright. And then hope for the best. If they break this story, the deal is over and LM and all the jobs there are in real trouble. If the NYT breaks this with anonymous sources, there is wiggle room. I think that’s just executive realpolitik and not another character flaw in 47. He has enough of those already.

Anyways, eff me, I’m off to the shower.

To be fair, the courts didn’t order a transition. Nor could you say the poor man had much of a choice in the matter. Nor was he a Hannibal Lector type violent criminal, as far as I know.

What happened to Turing was reprehensible and wrong. His case is a good example to point at when decisions like this are forced upon unwilling people. OP doesn’t want to force this on anyone.

With these things, you cannot deal in certainties. So the best answer is probably there is a high likelihood that a theoretical, voluntary transition like that would lower aggressiveness. However, and I assume the down votes are a reflection of that, there probably is a way to achieve that outcome, including medical procedures, that doesn’t require a transition. And since that’s unfortunately a hot button issue, linking a gender transition to a form of criminal punishment is not a good look.

Physical integrity is a highly valued right even in countries that still do capital punishment. So few people would put your theoretical plan here into a therapy plan or the law. A transition should be a personal decision based on an inherent need of the self and not an item on a menu of therapies that might get you out of the institution faster.

There are no stupid questions (well, hardly any) here but there are ones worded off the cuff that may lead to a pile on. I’m afraid yours here falls into the latter category.

Touchscreens can serve a function. And that’s predominantly when you have your laptop atop your lap. In a cafe or on a plane where even operating your touchpad may be hard for a lack of space (or for me size of gut). On the couch is another scenario like that. If you don’t encounter those situations a lot, don’t get it, especially if it’s more expensive. If you hate fingerprints on any screen, don’t get it. If you’re not sure and money isn’t an issue, take the extra feature.

And none of that applies to what I wrote. Hence my confusion. Could this be hyperbole on your part?

vitriol

What now?

My gut feeling is not here. It sounds to me like you need specific local legal advice. Search for a local tenant organisation or union, if such a thing exists where you live. They may offer free consultation. If not that, you somehow need to find or befriend a lawyer.

Are other parties in your building also negatively affected? Start reaching out to other tenants who feel the same way.