nske

Sure, and they wouldn't be wrong to do so, just like they're not wrong now. We can't admit that on one hand we need something because there is no viable replacement and on the other consider that those that choose to work on that make a morally questionable choice.

I don't think anyone except the most hardcore climate activists would be willing to accept that cost, so I don't think it's consistent for anyone except these to judge negatively people who choose to work in this industry. This doesn't change that we as consumers should try and use as little fuel as possible, opt for renewables where possible etc., that's the only way to guide the change. If we do that, the market will take care of the rest as the conditions allow it.

That leaves ambiguous situations where for example there is an order saying "get satellite data from that location". In this case, if the data end up used for something unlawful, I think the responsibility doesn't lie with the soldiers at the bottom of the chain, no.

Now for the case that best serves your comparison, generally serving in an army that very clearly wages a war of aggression. In this case yes I think soldiers carry the responsibility to not help in any way (which realistically would mean stop being soldiers). The difference in this case is that we can't compare an army waging an aggressive war, which is as clear an evil as we can imagine and is in fact considered a crime internationally, with a company that analyses data collected by consent, where the question is whether the mechanism for obtaining consent is good enough or not.

Wouldn't you agree for example that collecting and analysing user data for purposes of displaying relevant advertisements doesn't have to be dishonest, if the users consented to it? Maybe then the problem becomes that some methods of obtaining user consent are not honest -which would mean that there could be methods that are honest, and companies that can follow them.

And if the subject is so nuanced then maybe it's not fair to say that an employee that simply wants to work in their domain of expertise doesn't do honest work, just for failing to set more strict standards than the law with regards to their employer's activities.

The only rational argument for these laws would be the burden on the national-health system for injuries sustained on the head during riding a bike. This could be solved by allowing people to opt-out of the free national health system coverage explicitly in these instances of injuries, if indeed statistics show that there is a significant burden imposed on it. And still there is the counter-argument that this would be biased -what about people who are engaging into leisure activities with higher-risk, "extreme-sports" and such. I wouldn't be surprised if even the cost of treating normal sports-related injuries is higher than the cost of head-related injuries of bikers riding with no helmet. Why not enforce wearing full protective gear when engaging in every sport?

If we start with this mentality, it's only a slippery slope that would lead us in a place we don't want to be.

Same as with smoking taxes. It started with the justification that it's fair to counteract the increased cost that smokers have on the national health system. A perfectly fair reasoning. But by now these taxes have increased so much that this justification is no longer convincing -instead they are widely accepted as a sort of "luxury tax" that smokers pay, no longer to cover the cost of the medical treatment they are more likely to receive on average, but just "because that's how it is". This income is not even earmarked for the health system in many cases. They also started covering things that evidence don't support they pose any or as much of a risk as cigarette smoking (Vaping), and in some cases -Italy, IIRC-, even with official lawmaker justification that these products deprive the state from tax income that they would receive through the smoking tax. A completely illogical argument that I was surprised to see it made nobody blink twice.

So I think such laws are really a demonstration of government acting as a for-profit entity, squeezing money from whatever they think they can get away with.

When I first heard of the term farmer/farming in-game, I didn't think anyone meant to point to any stereotypes either, just that the actual act had similarities with farming. Granted, in this sentence it's easier to interpret it the other way, but isn't it always better to give someone the benefit of the doubt? I can see how the process of programming lazily without understanding can resemble farming -and there might be a more intuitive metaphor if the author is not a native english speaker.

peace

I'm so grateful that I've never felt the loss of someone very close to me, but at the same time it's my biggest fear in life because I have no idea how badly it would break me and if I would have the strength that these people have.

- However their own employees are typically consumers of services, that can be hosted either on the cloud, or on premises (which turns the argument on its head)

- Even for businesses that do offer services to customers over the internet, the alternative to the cloud doesn't have to be servers on their premises for this. They can be bare metal servers, either collocated or leased on datacenters. This is just fine when their services don't anticipate explosive growth. It doesn't even mean they have to sacrifice fancy "infastructure-as-code" tooling, though it does mean that they have to think about scaling in more terms than just cost.

It's javascript-heavy and likes to behave more like an app than a good-old website.

It loads the messages dynamically -I never liked infinite scrolling-, can be slow and unreliable, especially on patchy internet connections, hijacks ctrl+f for its own search function and its UX is a weird combination of minimalism and fanciness.

Its setup is also more convoluted than I like.

No downsides that I can see for the consumers.

Sadly we have since started seeing all big companies move to a SAAS subscription-based model so in practice it seems to become less relevant with time as it's only meaningful on software under perpetual licenses.

But at least Windows Server is still a big one that can save a lot of money -and that can also help struggling/downsizing companies by allowing them to sell licenses they no longer need.

b) Even if it did, I still would not pay for a license, as a reaction to its overreaching approach, obligatory character and dishonest reasoning. They are claiming that you need a license to watch any type of content made available in public in real time, with Youtube LIVE mentioned explicitly as an example -no particular reason this wouldn't include even things like gaming video streams a school kid would share for fun.

I don't think BBC should profit from the consumption of content it has contributed nothing towards. I'm not sure if that's more absurd when that content itself is provided for free by its authors, or when it's content you have already paid for.

I think that a society that is too scared to break every little law or regulation even when it doesn't make sense would eventually tend to becoming conformist -and a stagnant, conformist society is worse than one with the rate of serious crimes that the traditional methods of enforcement leave.

People rarely bash others that express themselves modestly and sincerely.

How did they manage this? I've tried every way I can think of forgetting my age, to no avail -the bastard number is always there :)

Things related to substances, sex acts, pornography, religion, obscenity, gambling, even vaping seem to be common victims nowadays.

And when there is some progress in something, it seems that it's not for the right reason (that simply there is no rational basis to restrict some freedom for some arbitrary/subjective concept of "the greater good"), but for the reason that the people that are negatively affected by it became numerous and loud enough to not ignore.