Hardly. Historically there has been a lot of cheating in elections. Look at Chicago up to the 1970s. Election fraud was common there.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/1973/05/08/how-the-chicago-tribune-exposed-city-vote-fraud-in-1972-and-won-a-pulitzer-prize/

Nobody can prove that there’s less cheating in Chicago elections today than in the 1970s, but people trust that it’s more honest.

Can you prove that your vote was counted and that the number of votes for your candidate went up by one as a result? If you can’t prove it, then it’s based on trust.

Right, but no way to verify who you voted for.

And, you have to trust that the website is telling you the truth. You have no way of verifying that it always gives the same answer to everybody. I guess someone could test that there’s some connection to their real ballot by intentionally screwing up their ballot. But, that doesn’t mean that there’s any way to prove that when it’s counted that the actual tally for the person / people you voted for are going up not down.

First, I’m writing about a person who’s watching and doesn’t know if they can trust the system. My point is that there’s no alternative to trust in the system, the system is built on trust.

Second, if you’re inside the system, if you’re an election worker or a government authority, you can tell who voted. But, you can’t tell who that voter cast their votes for – at least in a functional democracy.

The authorities can, and should, have all kinds of checks and balances to make sure that all the votes are being handled safely and counted correctly. But, if the public doesn’t trust the authorities, there’s nothing that the authorities can realistically do to convince the public that everything is above board. You can’t “prove” that the system isn’t rigged.

Yes, and again, it’s all based on trust.

The scary thing about elections is that, by design, nobody can ever “prove” they won.

Votes are designed to be anonymous. They have to be. If they’re not, they’re very vulnerable to manipulation. If someone can prove how they voted, then they can either be bribed to vote a certain way, or threatened to vote a certain way. If you can check that your vote was counted successfully for the candidate you chose, then someone else can check that you voted for the candidate they chose.

That means that, by design, the only security that elections can have is in the process. In a small election, like 1000ish votes or fewer, someone could supervise the whole thing. They could cast their vote, then stand there and watch. They could watch as other people voted, making sure that nobody voted twice, or dropped more than one sheet into the box. They could watch as the box was emptied. Then, they could watch as each vote was tallied. Barring some sleight-of-hand, in a small election like that, you could theoretically supervise the entire process, and convince yourself that the vote was fair.

But, that is impossible to scale. Even for 1000 votes, not every voter could supervise the entire process, and for more than 1000 votes, or votes involving more than one voting location, it’s just not possible for one person to watch the entire thing. So, at some point you need to trust other people. If you’re talking say 10,000 votes, maybe you have 10 people you trust beyond a shadow of a doubt, and each one of you could supervise one process. But, the bigger the election, the more impossible it is to have actual people you know and trust supervising everything.

In a huge country-wide election, there’s simply no alternative to trust. You have to trust poll workers you’ve never met, and/or election monitors you’ve never met. And, since you’re not likely to hear directly from poll workers or election monitors, you have to instead trust the news source you’re using that reports on the election. In a big, complex election, a statistician may be able to spot fraud based on all the information available. But, if you’re not that statistician, you have to trust them, and even if you are that statistician, you have to trust that your model is correct and that the data you’re feeding it is correct.

Society is built on trust, and voting is no different. Unfortunately, in the US, trust is breaking down, and without trust, it’s just a matter of which narrative seems the most “truthy” to you.

Give them a break, it’s really erarly.

I remember the days when BioWare wasn’t EA’s BioWare. Those were better days.

Yeah, but I assume the poster was Canadian, so it’s $132, not 90 USD.

AFAIK this is different from the original auction house mount. That one had a auctioneer and a vendor who could repair things. This one comes with an auctioneer and a “mailbox” NPC.

For some people whose purpose in playing WoW is to make money trading, this makes it marginally easier. Instead of having to park your mount next to a mailbox, you can both post your auctions and collect your money on one mount. But, since most people doing auction stuff also need access to a bank, it doesn’t mean they can easily just abandon the city and live out in the country.

Many of the people who might consider this mount are already playing for free because they make enough money in-game to buy a token every month.

Also, it’s $132 if you’re Canadian, otherwise it’s 90 USD.

It’s $132, it’s only 90 if you pay in USD.

Who’s Chris Robert?

It’s not just one generation receiving an education vs. another one that didn’t. It’s that the platforms the generations used are fundamentally different.

Gen X / Millennials grew up with Macs and PCs, computers that were fundamentally not locked down. You could install any software you wanted. You could modify the OS in many ways. DRM wasn’t really a thing in general, and there were almost always easy ways around it.

Gen Z / Gen Alpha grew up mostly with cell phones. The phones they had are much more powerful than the PCs from 20-30 years ago, but they’re incredibly locked down. The only applications you’re allowed to use are the ones that Apple / Google allow on their app stores, unless you root your phone which is a major risk. It’s very hard to even load up your own audio files, movies or images let alone “dodgy” ones. DRM is everywhere, and the DMCA means you risk serious prison time if you bypass access controls.

Gen X / Millennials grew up at a time when there were still more than 5 tech companies in the world, and the companies out there competed with each-other. There were plenty of real standards, and lots of other de-facto standards that allowed programs to interoperate. Now you’re lucky if you can even use an app via its website vs. using a required app.

It’s not just a difference in education. It’s that companies have gained a lot more power, and the lack of antitrust enforcement has made for plenty of walled gardens and “look but don’t touch” experiences.

Should it also be illegal for a company to issue press releases when good things happen? Or, maybe, required that they issue press releases any time there’s bad news?

I don’t see a problem with it as long as it’s clear that the group pushing the bad news is honest about their short position. Especially in a world where an advertising duopoly has appropriated nearly all the advertising money that used to support news, and as a result news organizations are crumbling, we need short sellers. Shorting a company is extremely risky, and generally an organization will only take a short position if they’re sure the stock is overvalued. That means they’re going to do deep research on the company – the kind of research that used to be done by financial reporters.

Naturally, if they do take a short position they really need the stock to drop, so they’re going to frame everything they find in the most negative light possible. They’re also going to be extremely aggressive about getting the news out, because they need shareholders who don’t pay much attention to the news to hear about what’s happening and want to sell. While they might not be fully honest about the companies they’re shorting, the kinds of companies they’re shorting are also often not being at all honest about their performance.

I’m sure that sometimes a company gets targeted by short sellers without doing anything wrong. But, I’m even more sure that there are companies out there lying to their investors to keep their stock price high.

Unless it’s ruled and a precedent is set, the statement is false.

They believe that the users agreed to a contract that specifies that in any dealings with Disney they’ve agreed to binding arbitration.

What’s the “false statement” there?

It could be changed at any time, it might not resolve properly, the page could be hijacked, an ad blocker could decide it’s an ad and show something else instead…

That was something Disney Lawyers claimed, but was never actually agreed/enforced.

Disney backed down. They still believe they have that right, and no court has ever said they didn’t, but the bad publicity was too much for them in this case. They’ll wait until there’s a case that doesn’t get that kind of publicity before they try to establish that precedent.

You aren’t internet.

The EULA isn’t null and void, but it’s pretty meaningless. Not because you can’t reasonably be expected to copy that link into a browser to read it, but because there’s no indication that you should or even must do that.

The EULA contains no terms, it doesn’t contain any wording saying what you can or can’t do. It doesn’t say what your rights are. It just contains something that looks like a URL. So, you’re still bound by the terms of the EULA (as much as you’re bound by any EULA) but the EULA doesn’t permit or forbid anything. It’s effectively the same as if it were blank.

They’re bound to the EULA, but the EULA is meaningless because it’s just a URL. They’re definitely not bound by whatever’s at that URL.

This would be like having someone sign a contract when the contract was just a shopping list. Sure, they’re bound by the “contract”, but the contract doesn’t specify anything they can or can’t do.