And those unrealized gains, saved for a rainy day in an art safe in switzerland, or in some special financial scheme that effectively hides/reinvests any profits without triggering the tax obligation?

There is something to an extremely low-percentage wealth tax that kicks in only at an insane amount of wealth. It could introduce the obligation to track and report individual wealth in a standard way, at the risk of a significant financial penalty, helping to bring much needed transparency, which in turn can help shape future laws and policy.

Whose deepfake influencers do you "trust" more? US, China, russia and a few lesser players are already working to control the information space / spread propaganda (note: not necessarily/always lies, but there is typically a focus or spin) far and wide.

We know people are highly influenced by propaganda (some more than others, but all of us are) and that quantity and repetition plays a role. Since this is now an established battlefield, I'd like our (western) defences to be strong.

It has potential for abuse, certainly. That's par for the course. There is also the potential for it to be used to debunk fake news, shock people out of false beliefs, and help reconnect people to reality. Let's see how this plays out. popcorn time

It's a trade off. "Free services" typically require more leg work and can come with legal or security risks. I used to have a great XBMC & torrenting setup years ago. I spent significant time customizing it and various plugins, extending scripts etc. I had fun, and took necessary precautions. Millions wouldn't. Some are happy to pay €9/month to another evil corp for convenience (where it works for them).

My Samsung S90C OLED is pretty good. I spent a lot of time researching TVs and user reviews before I bought it though, and an LG OLED also made the shortlist.

If that involves stifling other's creativity and harming society, then I'd argue no.

Realistically, it is a balancing act.

Copyright, patent and even trademark laws should promote sustainable creativity and societal progress. They try to achieve this by granting some extra (non-intrinsic) rights to creators.

That these are regularly abused to stifle competition and creativity in the name of profit is a cancer deserving treatment.

And faced with an imperfect world: If any law or its implementation feels unjust, then most people will feel morally OK with breaking it.

Skynet sounds friendly. It needs a friendly looking logo.

In some countries private law firms chase down infringers on behalf of copyright holders. They then attempt shakedowns with the threat of legal action if you don't pay. They have a financial interest to catch people, and moral compasses vary.

Also, mistakes can happen (you, your family, guests using your wifi, in the courts, in the ISPs, in the law firms, in the tech they are using to identify people). Shit happens.

And if (when) it happens, then you would still have to deal with it, costing you time and money.

Understand the risks and make choices to minimize them if you can.

I only eat vegans. Would that count?

https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=jeYa__ATQDc for adding virtual instruments (VST, LV2, CLAP). I recommend Surge XT as a great free synth. Windows VSTs need something like yabridge to wrap wine and the plugin.

Not sure about your bug, but try using pipewire & the jack interface with reaper. Ping me if you need more assistance.

Go shopping at the airlines' expense!

Except it's often not your ISP going after you, and https does not protect against everything. A few years ago there was a scandal in Germany when a moneygrubbing law firm took out ads on a porn site to get user IPs and the referer header, then sent demands to users for illegally downloading copyrighted material.

A court initially rubber-stamped the requests for IP info from the law firm.

A better judge/court clarified the law (streaming is fine in Germany) in that case and there were hopefully consequences for the law firm and the lawyers involved, but some suckers paid hush money first.

Hear hear! We 40-50+ year old geeks were learning the Internet as it rolled out. Before that we were upgrading our PCs and modems as funds permitted, joining & running BBS's on DOS. OS/2 seemed futuristic and I ran it for a while, but Linux won my heart. As a teenager, I had my favourite kernel hackers, tested their patches, chatted with them on IRC. Before that, we had our C64s, Amiga 500s and similar. We had the greatest opportunity to learn, and we loved it.

Over the last 10 years I've really had to dumb down my interview questions, covering a wider range of topics until I (hopefully) find a spark of passion and beyond-user-level knowledge about anything (even unrelated to the position)... it used to be easier.