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No more theft than putting a solar panel under a street light that's shining on your property.

People on that forum are trying to call this "stealing", which is ridiculous. This involves less that 1 watt of power. The law should not concern itself with trifles. It's more of a health and safety issue than any "theft".

They don't seem to get the nuance of the situation and can only see it in terms of black and white and following "the rules". I've personally seen this behavior a lot in the amateur radio community, where people were harassed or threatened for breaking some minor rule.

You should see what hooligans in Belarus and Russia get up to, now that is a legitimate problem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4zO2gB70ps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqRT7J86rco

This might just be the same thing as apocalyptic religious predictions, I think? But environmentalism this time?

The human species might have a built in self-destruct / self-limiting mechanism, which is world war, possibly nuclear war, which might end up saving the planet in the really long term?

I'm super super low carbon footprint, personally. All ARM-based computers here, just Raspberry PIs and tablets, that can run from a portable solar panel if I want. Very few possessions too. I love coding and freedom so much more that having stuff. And even more so when doing so in the forest, amongst nature.

And in the really long term that's completely unsustainable. So it's like a pyramid scheme scam, it requires a constant influx of new entrants. Whilst destroying the planet.

I guess people even have their pension funds tied up into the system, so nearly everyone is forced to participate in it, against their wishes even.

Update: Something to back that up: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/04/05/the-worl...

Does anyone know if this has been patented? When digestive biscuits first came out in 1890, they were patented.

Of course, you get utterly depraved individuals who do absolutely atrocious things, e.g. cannibalism. You might get a dozen of them over the decades. And cults that can be nasty and do terrible things.

But the moral panic is where we see it everywhere, in the thousands, when it isn't. It's like a form of mass paranoia. And it's harmful not just because of the innocent people falsely accused, but that people were not letting their children out to play, out of fear of predators, which likely damages their development somewhat.

I didn't single out a specific race, I think, I just mentioned that it was that specific region of the world where the problem was located. As far as I'm aware it was nothing to do with discrimination because of a specific characteristic (which is the definition of racism). It was just that population growth in that region was very large combined with a high per-capita CO2 footprint.

Many NGOs are actively trying to increase the availability of birth control in such regions, they are aware of the problem with unplanned pregnancy in those parts of the world. I strongly doubt there's any racism behind it.

https://www.cgdev.org/blog/access-contraception-global-devel...

While in the west population growth is relatively slow and we still have a high per-capita CO2 footprint.

I guess I unintentionally touched a taboo subject (racism) that's not permitted by the current moral orthodoxy, which is no different to religion in the end? I hope I'm correct about this.

I don't really care if my posts are flagged or even if I get banned from this site completely, I am exercising my 1st Amendment protected freedom of speech rights. It's just that on the Internet every forum is privately owned, there is no "public square" here, and thus all are subject to moderation and censorship.

I am confused as to how discouraging procreation is racist?

Yes, for me it's because of childrens' rights, I don't want my kids to potentially go through what I went through, including the soul crushing compulsory education system.

I feel that natural learning is so much superior, if you can encourage and cultivate it. Coercion destroys the fun in learning and it teaches us how to procrastinate very well indeed. Treat people like slaves, and what do you expect? You get poor productivity as a result, too.

Overall I think the treatment of children and young people in society is terrible and unjustified. It is inhumane.

I think they are being (sort of) micromanaged and exhibit the same behaviors as adults do when micromanaged, this is especially applicable for older teens.

It would be nice if we had an open-source eSIM software emulator. However I think this requires secret crypto keys that are only available to chip manufacturers?

The instinct to procreate is obviously very powerful? Also increasing use of birth control in developing countries can improve the situation?

The CO2-induced temperature rise might not be as severe as predicted. I suspect a "moral panic" over climate change. There's huge amounts of money, influence and power to be made exaggerating the problem into a catastrophe, there's a bandwagon effect.

I personally think desertification will increase, there will be problems with weather cycles in certain regions. But no end of the world, at least in my opinion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic

Encourage other people (especially if you're in a developing country) not to have too many children. The absolutely unsustainable population levels worldwide are behind the climate and pollution crises. We are an incredibly destructive species to the planet. All countries, developing and developed are part of the problem.

Not only that the overcrowding and fighting over limited resources causes psychosocial stress, which might explain the mental illness epidemic nowadays?

It's taboo to say this, but people worldwide have had far too many children, and I believe that overpopulation is the root of the sustainability crisis, including climate change and pollution.

And that taboo is probably rooted in evolutionary psychology, people have a genetically driven tendency to criticize those who advocate having less children? So could there be an instinctual drive behind it?

https://www.flashpack.com/solo/relationships/dont-want-kids-...

https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/childfree-by-choice

And how deceiving children is normalized in society, together with even worse forms of mistreatment. Because children are low status and can't fight back, adults and society in general can get away with doing all sorts of unjustified nasty things to them. That no adult would ever tolerate.

It really is a dominance hierarchy there, something we expect from animals. People are supposed to be better than that.

Spot on, and one god has been described as having symptoms of mental illness too.

I also wonder how many "prophets" in religion were actually suffering from paranoid schizophrenia? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_health_of_Jesus

And if you criticized this ridiculous mythology, you were persecuted and shunned.

Clarified it to say "on Earth". I agree with you there's likely life elsewhere in the Universe.

I'm fairly confident about it because I've seen this pattern before, with moral panics, fairy tales, witch hunts and other group/herd behavior in people throughout history (and modern times as well).

Yes, I think it's sociological in origin and the UFOs don't exist. There are probably a core group of "true believers" that are absolutely convinced that aliens exist.

Here's an example of a somewhat modern mass hysteria, which started in the 1980s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic

This UFO investigation stuff is just a giant bandwagon, which people get on to for money, influence and power.

I don't think there's any extra-terrestrial activity going on here on Earth, period. Maybe elsewhere in the Universe and probably not in our solar system either.

Perhaps we should make exceptions for small scale growers? So royalties can only be extracted from those with large scale cultivation, and royalties should be taken from the profits made only.

Absolutely sick. That's like copyrighting a computer virus and prosecuting everyone who has been infected.

I agree, civil disobedience is the correct thing to do here.

In these investigations the authorities are seizing peoples digital devices, which is routine these days.

It's about time operating systems actively stop generating unnecessary forensic data. When we delete a file, it should be overwritten with zeros, not just unlinked. When we clear browser history, it should be gone for good.

And many temporary files and other intermediate data should be stored by default in RAM, so when we power off the device, it is gone. When a device is seized it should not be possible to tell what the owner was reading or searching for. If the user wants to keep weeks of browsing history, that should be an opt-in choice.

Our devices should be working for us, not snitches or informants for the state.

These are being used by the Ukrainian army for detecting incoming russian drones.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/eyesonukraine_drone-detector-...

The firmware source is on GitHub at https://github.com/erikkaashoek/tinySA.

There's the chilling effect, people not wanting to protest or organize against government overreach for fear of being put on a watch list. This allows the state to enact more draconian laws with less push back from the general public.

It's like a vicious circle that feeds itself, the more surveillance the government permits, the less the public are able to complain or fight back against it. Thus leading to even worse surveillance.

And Microsoft could have just kept the old menu system. With a single click to switch between the ribbon interface and the menu interface. It could have been as simple as that, saving countless users from so much frustration. Instead they decided to force the inferior interface on every single user, whether they like it or not.

The whole ribbon interface debacle looks like a classic case of enshittification, where the users are no longer the customers anymore.

Yes, and if the intent was to prevent access to emergency services, then yes that would rightfully be a crime. But if the intent was to pull a stupid prank that would temporarily disable someone's iPhone for 5 minutes, then that should not be a crime, if only done once.

The kid should be told not to do it again. And no law enforcement should have ever been involved in the first place. Otherwise we are teaching those children to distrust authorities, that authorities are unjust and unfair. Thus undermining the rule of law.

All their classmates are also involved and watching the outcome of the situation. Some might end up seeing the "system" as being unfair and are not going to think twice before stealing or committing some other crime, e.g. fraud.

The media is scaring them into accepting these measures, which is standard practice in totalitarian states, by the way. Create a climate of fear, and introduce draconian measures which the public will then accept. And that is how a democratic society slowly becomes authoritarian, it plays out very slowly over decades.