Pharylon

Disingenuous? You think people arguing that it's immoral for someone to die because they were born poor are not actually sincere in their argument? Tell me, what is my evil ulterior motive? Do I actually just want to increase taxes for the hell of it?

I don't think emotional arguments are a distraction, they're the whole point. This is a moral issue. Other countries manage to have universal healthcare and it doesn't break the bank. In fact, they spend less per person. The fiscal argument is the distraction.

Penn Jillette also believes global warming is a conspiracy. No nation with free market health insurance has universal healthcare, so as the person making an extraordinary claim, it's on you to come up with proof.

The VA has gotten a lot of bad headlines, but I work with a vet who absolutely loved the VA. He brags about the quality and speed of his healthcare all the time. This is in Charlotte, NC. Different offices might be different.

That was my thought as well. I have to switch to Chrome every once in a blue moon to make things work on my Android phone, but 99% of the time, Firefox works just as well.

First, this isn't a Google app. Google is pushing the RCS standard, a standard that some carriers already support.

And yeah, it doesn't support encryption so it's clearly inferior to something like Signal, but open standards that don't live in a silo are still important. For instance, I have friends that almost exclusively chat through Facebook Messenger. Since I won't install Facebook Messenger, I chat with them over SMS. A "better SMS" would be nice, and might help ease people out of the FB Messenger silo.

No, it's a standard that Google's messaging app will (actually, already does) support. But any messaging app can add support if it doesn't already.

That's more a Silicon Valley culture than an American one. Not to say California isn't part of America, but that same glass ceiling exists in most places in America, and it's probably lower.

I don't think he meant there is no opportunity for black people, but that it's truly a "land of opportunity" only for whites (more specifically white men).

Like, I grew up in a lower-middle class family and flunked out of college due to my f-ups. I squandered a lot of opportunities through my 20s, and yet still ended up in a position where I could teach myself to become a software developer, and make good money today. I got a lot of extra chances, chances that people of color don't necessarily get.

SMS is important. It's universal, and it can be used as a way to communicate with anyone. I have friends that I chat with exclusively over SMS. They use Facebook Messenger, and I won't use Facebook anymore. They could join me on Signal or something, but I'm not going to ask them to download a whole app just to chat with me.

It's the one messaging platform that's not in a silo, and that's just as important (maybe more so?) than 100% reliability.

Are they pumping the water from the Muskegon River? No? OK... then... uh... what are you talking about?

The point of it is to avoid fraud.

As long as police unions fight reform it's the institution as a whole that's the problem, not a small sub-group.

In news that will shock only Americans, it turns out the government is better than the private sector at offering public utilities. :)

I always wake up the moment I realize I'm dreaming, so I've never experienced the "totally in control" thing. Seems like it'd be fun. :)

Never heard of if you run an America-centric website. :) You have to support UC and Qihoo 360 if you have a significant amount of Asia traffic.

"The Mr. Robot Malware?" You mean the extension that did literally nothing unless you turned it on in about:config? That's "malware?"

Yeah, those. We actually had two, on the two poles from the electric company that went through my yard. All my neighbors have them too, but not me anymore! :D

Honestly, there aren't any wild animals in the area that are going to attack me or my kids. And as for thieves, most robberies occur during the day, not the night. They're for peace of mind, and nothing else.

The first thing I did when I bought my house out in the country was to have the power company remove the security lights. Now it feels quiet and dark at night instead of feeling like a parking lot.

When I was young and my hearing was better, I think I had a slightly-better-than-normal upper end to my hearing. Often, I would hear CRTs whining that no one else did.

I vividly remember when I realized it. One day in class we were watching a tape and the TV was whining the entire time. After the tape was over, the teacher started talking about what we'd seen, but didn't turn the TV off. I asked him to, because the sound was so annoying. A bunch of kids started saying they didn't hear anything, which made me think I was crazy until one other kid stuck up for me and said she heard it too.

I've never done heavy development in Java, but my day-to-day has been C# for years. I've never seen a FactoryFactoryFactory, or even a FactoryFactory. Since the two languages are so similar, I would think C# would have the same issues as Java in this regard, but in my experience it doesn't. Is there something about C# that has let it avoid this? Or have I just happened to work at places that don't like the Factory pattern as much as everyone else seems to? :D

He means the Verizon Fiber throttling, not Verizon Wireless.

Reminds me of late 90s Microsoft calling everything .NET

That was hung on the door to the office of the DBA at my last job.

One day, we had a catastrophic loss of data due to a junior developer running a destructive script against the production server instead of the test server. We went to restore the database only to discover the hourly snapshots had been failing for months and he hadn't noticed

I have a 2016 MacBook Pro, and I really dislike it. Part of that is the dongles, and the dongles plugged into the dongles.

I also dislike the keyboard, but I rarely use it as an actual laptop so it's fine I guess

First, I don't think you understand what the term "false equivalence" means.

But leaving that aside, I didn't say all Republicans are against Net Neutrality. I'm sure some are in favor of it, just like you can find the odd pro-choice or gay Republican. But the Republican Party as a whole is against NN, and has been very vocal about wanting to get rid of it. Republicans said "If we get elected we're going to get rid of Net Neutrality," and then they got elected. So, you know, no surprise here.

The battle is all but over, and Net Neutrality lost. Republicans control every branch of the government.

I get where you're coming from, but in reality more people voted for Clinton than Trump. More people voted for Dems in the House than Republicans. More people voted for Democratic Senators than Republican Senators.

So while a large voting bloc did vote for these people, it's not the will of the majority. It's just that America's democracy is kind of broken (not completely broken, but it's getting there).

They did. Verizon was throttling Netflix for a long time. Title II regulation was put in place to address ISP abuses. Now they're going to come back, and probably get worse than before.

It seems positive from what he says, but we only have one side of the story.

How does the daughter feel about having a father she sees so infrequently? Is it hard on her? Does she wonder why he won't come help her when she calls him out of the blue over some emergency? Now that she's older, would it be easier for her to know the truth?

We don't know. What I do know is eventually she'll find out, somehow. What happens then?