And Americans were laughing when Russia was doing something similar. Pot calling the kettle black.

I'm sure plenty Americans are also laughing at this. No hypocrisy here.

America is a very big place. It is nearly 4 million square miles, and has a population of over 340 million people.

Next time you start to generalize about "Americans" exhibiting some kind of unified belief or behavior, just stop and think about how stupid that is.

Don't care about windows. Haven't used a windows computer in over 20 years. Happy Ubuntu user here. What bothers me is the upcoming Android restrictions. I distribute an app that none of the app stores want to touch with a 10 foot pole. That's fine -their store, their choice. But now, to distribute the app from my website I have to jump through hoops and pay their stupid fees through a credit card (at a time when I'm trying to stay anonymous because of the nature of the app). I don't know what to do.

I like Ubuntu. My only regret is having an nvidia GPU and not getting an AMD one before computing components became unaffordable. Nvidia on wayland is 100% busted and juggling DEs for gaming vs productivity work is inelegant.

So what's the solution? Graphene OS? Let's convince everyone we know to buy the upcoming Motorola phone. If it's sales hit 10s or 100s of million devices, only then Google will listen.

Time to put pressure on manufacturers to move to something more open like graphene, or another community based project

A king wanted to test the complacency of his subjects. He put a toll on a bridge. There were some noises but eventually everyone got used to it. He slowly kept increasing the toll, which came with increasing noises which would all eventually subside. He decided to take it a step further. He proclaimed that anyone crossing the bridge will be slapped by one of his guards. This time the protests were stronger and getting bigger. He thought "thank God my populace has woken up". He went outside to meet the leaders of the protesters and asked why are they protesting. The leaders said: "you started taking toll, we said nothing, you kept increasing it, we said nothing. But with this new policy, there's only 2 guards delivering the slaps, leading to huge line ups. So we demand that you employ more guards at the bridge to ensure faster slaps and smooth flow of traffic."

Canadians do not elect parties. We elect Members of Parliament. This is why it is democratic for MPs to cross the floor from one party to another. It has happened over 300 times since Canada became a country.

If an MP is not free to vote in the best interests of their constituents, and rather has to vote along party lines, then the failure of democracy has already occurred. Crossing the floor, in order to act in the best interest of your constituents, is a big move that one doesn't decide on overnight.

We should be more tolerant of individual MPs not always siding with their team, without them having the fear of being removed from their caucus.

Notice how none of the floor crossings happened right after the election. They took time, they saw how government was working, and they took action based on their experience.

Nobody is paying to read their socials.

I think bigger question is, how do you bring the blimp down without dumping out helium?

Airships have air bags inside. Same deals as submarines. They take in and out ambient stuff into the bags to control buoyancy.

What ambient stuff is available at the altitude where a zeppelin typically flies?

there is generally plenty of ambient air in the earth's atmosphere

And how can that ambient air be stuffed into bags to control buoyancy?

An air pump will not compress the air such that it becomes dense enough to overcome the buoyancy of the helium. The idea is ridiculous.

Tell that to the airships I guess

so balloons appear to have negative mass, it's actually just the result of having lower density than the air. the upward force balances out with the gravity where the lbs/in^3 figure of its entirety matches that of ambient air. it's exactly the same as how an empty tank underwater floats, and a water filled tank underwater sinks.

or I guess one could say it's the bottom side getting more compressive load from air than the topside, given the observable effect, whatever floats our zep...

The stuff the Zeppelin/Blimp floats in

And how do you propose that stuff be stuffed into the bags to control buoyancy?

Attach hooks to the bottom of the blimp and send a guy in a heavy sled with hooks on it, with helium balloons attached to it, to the bottom of the blimp. Attach the sled to the hooks on the blimp, then get the guy to pop all the sled's balloons. The blimp will land on the ground gently, if the math is right.

you could compress the helium into tanks?

This. Buoyancy is related to volume. Reduce the gas volume, increase its (relative) density, bouyancy goes down, ship goes down.

Same way submarines adjust dive depth without dumping air overboard.

They started selling in 1996: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve

Where the F does IDMerit even get all this data from? They have names, DOBs, addressed, phone numbers, national identity numbers for over a billion people? How?

The 1B number would contain multiple records per person.

For example if I (as a German in Germany, ymmv) open a bank account online that involves a call with one of these companies where they take pictures and information from my passport and check that that's me. Then I choose payment in installments on some online shop, same game. Apply for a small loan? Same game. Set up an account for trading (stock exchange or crypto)? You guessed it, another call. Another payment in installments, backed by the same bank? Apparently verifying my identity again is easier than checking their database. Each of those is another record. Potentially with a new identity document, address or even name (maybe you got married) but mostly just the same data confirmed again with another timestamp

Not all of them use the same identity verification service, but there aren't that many. And I wouldn't be surprised to learn that many are the same company under different brands

A record is not necessarily unique. Name changes, address changes, phone number changes, can all create "new" records in dumps like these.

Makes sense if the ID verification process involves scanning a driver license or passport.

Edit- rereading this, you’re obviously talking about scale. The original article is much better : https://cybernews.com/security/global-data-leak-exposes-bill...