Yeah, it's an interesting comparison. Ars has been a Conde Nast property for ten years now, like Wired, and gets promotion which pulls in a broader crowd of people. Slashdot was bought by a classifieds company, and is now owned by a financial company, neither or which know about or do anything with news or news publications.

Is Slashdot promoted at all? I've never seen it advertised, or any mention of it in other places for many years now. This means that the crowd who comes here really is the narrow group that it always has been, rather than expanding as Ars did. It also means that the people here are older, and older people tend to be more conservative, though I expect that there's more to it than that.

As for this story: there are a lot of "libertarians" here. A libertarian might oppose the FCC on this, since libertarians are generally in favor of keeping power as local as possible; but a "libertarian" would probably go the other way, since a "libertarian" only cares about cutting taxes and nothing else.

Some from Indiana, but there's no need to go that far. Plenty of suburban gun shops, with a relatively small number of them supplying a high percentage of the total number of guns confiscated in criminal activities.

I expect better, this is pathetic. The issue at hand is elections, and politicians are required to keep personal business (e.g.: getting elected) separate from official business. It's illegal for a senator to use a senate.gov email account for campaigning, and probably a very bad idea to be using it for anything else personal. Like, for example, making vacation plans with his family. Which would expose exactly where he's going to be and when, what he likes to do while on vacation, when he will and will not be working / campaigning / considering some large bill which a foreign actor might like to influence.

Second: I don't have terribly high expectations of the people here, but I do expect them to at least recognize that any vulnerability is a potential attack vector. You wouldn't think that an SQL injection for some website could lead to penetration of a company's internal development servers, but I expect you to know that it can and does.

Third: who says that he doesn't pay to secure his email? And the email for his staff? And his family? And his friends? Maybe he doesn't for all of those people. Maybe he does. That would make targeting him harder... and? So? Would that make these attacks okay? Would that mean that we could just ignore attacks on our congressional representatives, because paying some security company is totally foolproof?

Here's the EFF's take on it. Apparently it's a combination of the Music Modernization Act (a mostly positive bill updating how compensation works for artists and rights-holders on streaming services), with the CLASSICS Act (another copyright extension and expansion thing).

What are you reading? It specifically says, in the summary no less, that females are more likely to be average. And the word "beta" appears nowhere in any of the linked articles or the summary or anywhere except in your post. And why would it? A/B personality theory has been pretty soundly rejected, it mostly only persists in pop psychology.

You understand that's not actually what it stands for, right? That's just an insulting thing that people call it. The 'R' stands for Rights - Digital Rights Management. So no, it's not right in the name.

Feeding starving people has nothing to do with philanthropy, it's an entirely selfish act intended to prevent those starving people from killing you and taking your food.

Giving homes to homeless people has nothing to do with philanthropy, it's all about putting them somewhere so you don't have to look at them.

Saving piglets from drowning in a pond has nothing to do with philanthropy, it's a selfish act to ease your guilt.

Etc., etc. Those children who went to school are already well-familiar with this claim, and know of it as the altruism vs. egoism argument. It gives them something to discuss in the factories. (I'm sure I'm not the only one who had a philosophy class at their public high school.)

Here's a thought: maybe the problem isn't education, maybe the problem is philanthropy. As in: the need for the existence of philanthropy, the idea that helping people who need help is optional, is itself the root of this problem.

Education is a matter of public policy, these billionaires are essentially using their money to undermine democracy. And they're getting away with it because our democracy is apparently not up to the task.

Unanticipated flooding, droughts, erosion of the coastline... I can think of a lot of things which could go wrong.

This is a really common problem, unfortunately, that shows up in all kinds of places. A lot of people deny the existence or seriousness of allergies, because they don't have any personal experience with those allergies. A lot of people deny the existence or seriousness of pollution or other environmental impacts because they live in areas with a lot of flourishing wilderness, or near a place where a particular endangered species still has some population, so they don't see anything wrong.

Ultimately, it's just a lesson about the worthlessness of anecdotal accounts.

People say that arguing does nothing, especially on the internet, but I don't think this is true. Arguing, or "discussing" if you're in polite company, is how we resist misinformation on a person-to-person basis. Apparently you're not a believer in the efficacy of canvassing, but for most people it's all that's available. Not all of us have a soapbox to stand on.

I mentioned above that I try to draw attention to the fact that Ajit Pai is not the real problem whenever he comes up in this sort of thread. I do this in the hope that maybe someone will read it, and maybe someone will say something like, "Oh yeah. He's a douche bag, but that's probably true." And in that way I can, to a very small degree, help to erode support for the people who put him where he is. I think that this is worthwhile, and not nothing.

I don't know anything about the law in question, but there are established methods for this. For example, The FISA court in the US allows for retroactive action.

Is this really a mystery? The answer is: a judge. Germany has had laws against hate speech and holocaust denial even since the end of World War 2, laws which we basically (literally?) forced on them. And like any laws, these are enforced in courts and judged by judges.

The rest of Europe is extremely aware of that history, and there are similar laws in most European countries.

Your claim contradicts the case in point.

Okay. Step 1: complain about it on the internet. This is the internet version of canvassing.

Step 2: complain about it to anyone else who will listen. This is the lazy version of canvassing.

Step 3: Hope that this is enough, because I'm not going to do canvassing for real.

Not good enough. You don't solve the problem by getting rid of the lackey, you solve the problem by getting rid of the people who put him there.

I'm getting sick of saying this in every story about Ajit Pai, but: Ajit Pai is not the problem. There are no surprises here, he's doing exactly what he said he'd do when he was nominated. Congress is the problem.