The idea is that the fines as supposed to act as a deterrent, but unfortunately there's been a shitload of really bad practices stemming from the fact that many consultants have drawn the erroneous conclusion that pre-ticked opt-in boxes are legal. Fines were handed out regarding a few specific cases, but very few businesses know about this and most of the ones that do claim it doesn't concern them for whatever reason. Furthermore, the Danish authorities set a very dangerous precedent when they refused to take on Google with the sole reason that Google are to big and that someone else have to do it.
But yes, until the situation has stabilized and someone has gotten very badly hurt from a financial perspective, the only sensible thing is to block non-HTML content by default and only whitelist the stuff you actually want to run.
The LGBTQ-movement, for example, is extremely vocal about any technique that could potentially be used to determine the sexual orientation of a person. They've spent a huge amount of time and resources in order to get society to redefine homosexuality from an illness and into a personal matter which should be included in societal norms.
If someone discovered a reliable way to detect the future sexuality of a child then those efforts would suddenly be contradicted, because 1) it would be harder to argue that it's not just a condition, and 2) no matter how controversial, there would be a demand for such screenings, and the LGBTQ-community would most likely interpret it as an existential threat.
Obviously, I chose sexuality as an example as it's an easy metaphor that most people get, but this reasoning can be applied to quite a few other things that are (possibly) caused by genetical factors and where there's a community involved. As an example, I've heard people mention an on-going "genocide" of people with Downs syndrome, simply because pre-natal screenings are quite effective at detecting it and that parents therefore terminate the pregnancy instead of having a child with Downs.
EDIT: Simply put: If you start screening for X, thereby allowing it to be prevented or treated in any way, then you imply that the X is something negative. People with X might take offence to that.
> If it were that simple then they would already not be using it
Yeah, did you read the link? "several manufacturers have entirely discontinued its use"
But also your statement isn't really true as a general rule. Sometimes it's very straightforward to avoid an ingredient but it costs half a penny extra.
The fact is, however, that modern society doesn't fit everyone. Since we won't allow people to withdraw from society that means we're actively forcing people to live a specific way of life that some simply cannot handle.
Simply putting more pressure on those groups will result in the forming of parallel societies and in the long run that means that those parallel societies will form a separate culture and try to secede. If we stop that there will be conflict. History tells us such conflict will be very bloody, no matter who ends up on top.
This is a cycle that Western Civilization has dealt with for thousands of years. Personally, I wouldn't mind trying to break it this time.
> Since we won't allow people to withdraw from society that means we're actively forcing people to live a specific way of life that some simply cannot handle.
Sometimes (although far less often than some people would like to assume) the person who withdraws is perfectly capable of handling the demands we force on people in our society, but they simply prefer to not participate. These people usually aren't sitting around all day collecting welfare checks, often they are the career homeless or living in isolated shacks in mountains. I can't really fault them if that kind of lifestyle is actually preferable to them.
Well yes decreased inequality globally does make life better, it's just that those who've gained the most (the ones that used to be poorer than the American poor) arent part of your in group
That's indeed a big if, but even if it ends up being cheaper to use solar for most applications I can imagine fusion power would be a nice thing to have locally around major production centres where the power demand is much higher.
Solar is great for decentralized grids where one's neighbour basically buys excess power from you, but transferring gigawatts of power from a large amount of solar panels to something like a major industrial area /might/ be trickier.
There is no reason to think such cost decline will apply to fusion reactors. Many of the parts in the system are mature (like, all the non nuclear parts like turbines.)
I'm hopeful that the research might bear fruit at some point, so I am glad to see it continue. We definitely shouldn't put all eggs in one basket, though.
We don't have a finished design yet, so who knows what parts are needed (yeah, a turbine is a given, but still...)?
> If you build a house on rotten stilts, and some neighborhood kid comes and kicks one of them, it's not the kid's fault when the house collapses.
If you build a house that isn't fire proofed properly and a pyromaniac sets fire to it then you won't blame the contractor, even if the house wasn't properly built. Sure, there might be fines involved for breaking rules etc. but the blame for the fire is still attributed to the person who lit it.
Soros and his associates did this to a number of countries, includingMalaysia, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand and others; this is not about a single incident where someone used a small loop hole to make some profit -- it's about the financial sector deliberately playing nation states for massive profits, affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of people in those countries.
Should the banks have been better prepared? Yes, definitely. Does that in anyway shift the blame for playing with the livelihood of millions in order to turn a profit? Not a chance.
