If a hacker breaks into a company and is CAUGHT, then claims they were just testing security....the hacker gets prosecuted. It's not the hackers job to expose the problem unless the company hired them to do that. Otherwise any hacking efforts ever could just be excused as "security checks" and not prosecutable, even when they're successful at stealing money, data, and IP. Even if they do no harm and report themselves, it's still an illegal attack, just like if you catch me leaving your house after breaking in but I say I was just exposing your poor locks by picking them and searching your house....you've still been illegally violated.

If I break into a bank, break into all the safe deposit boxes, and when caught in the vault say" I was just testing security, what's your problem, I'm the good guy here", I'm going to prison, just like she should.

The daughter would be in trouble because she helped an adult sneak into the school, not because of the schools reaction but because of her clearly inappropriate and likely illegal actions.

She's a real nut or she never would have thought this was a good idea. Do you think any concerned citizen should do as she did? How do you distinguish security checks from kidnappers, pedophiles, thieves, .... People who take the law into their own hands at the expense of other people's security are not heroes, they're self centered, self aggrandizing, nutjob criminals.

Such nonsense.
Biden did not approve, nor is he helping build this pipeline. He chose to not sanction one Swiss company helping build the last 90 miles, but is still sanctioning Russian companies involved, and is likely to block it's certification and insurance (by banning any insurer from using international or US banking) without guarantees the Ukrainian pipeline won't be abandoned.
He decided not making Germany go dark was a better plan, not alienating a long term ally and strategic partner that we are trying to repair our severely damaged relationship with.
He also decided putting Russia in bed with the Chinese, their other option for selling their gas, was not a smart move.
He is clear, he is against this pipeline and is still sanctioning many Russian companies involved in it's construction.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/18/politics/us-nord-stream-decision/index.html

Those grapes must be really sour today @bobknight33, they've got your yummy tears flowing like a firehose....keep em coming. So yummy, you guys.

Edit: I'm curious why America SHOULD hold veto power over international projects approved by all involved countries on other continents. Should we stop pipelines because Putin says so? He could stop hacking them and just tell us to quit. It seems ridiculous that we are telling Germany they can't have more natural gas, and telling Russia they can't sell it.
For clarification, I'm against it for ecological reasons, yes gas produces less CO2 than coal and oil, but produces way more methane which is >25 times more destructive per molecule in the short term. 11 billion could have built any number of wave/tidal generation facilities that run 24/7 without a new source of greenhouse gases.

They aren't afraid, they're sick of indulging idiotic morons at great cost to the state and more degradation to faith in elections here over bullshit accusations that have all been retracted by every person who made them besides Trump, and that have been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked by multiple actual forensic audits....looking for bamboo on ballots to prove the entire election was rigged, this time by China, because we all know bamboo=China and nothing else, now they just need to find it and boom, Trump’s president. So idiotic and delusional.


What's happening in Arizona now is not a forensic audit, it's a purely partisan witch hunt by stop the steal creators with zero election or auditing credentials using uneducated rabid Trumpsters who aren't auditing, they're searching everywhere for anything they can exaggerate into another baseless accusation that the election was stolen by Chavez.

You're spouting more nonsense. Trump was never up 8-1, and because in person votes were counted first they gave a false impression that Trump led at one point, this was purely by design and you know it.
There was never any question that in person voting would favor Trump, Biden's followers knew the virus wasn't a hoax and voted by mail. Again, you know this.
There was also no question that mail in voting would favor Biden, that's why so many republican led states changed their rules to force the mail in count to wait until in person votes were counted in full to start counting mail in ballots....to create that false perception for one point in time early in the count to give dishonest morons like you a false reason to ask these bullshit questions.
No counts happened without witnesses or off camera. It's another lie, Bob.
No counts happened in secret.
No votes were dumped.
No witnesses were removed besides those that ignored the law and became disruptive and those that weren't actual official witnesses but just people who wanted in. Windows were covered for that reason, republicans were taking photos of poll workers faces to attack them, the legitimate republican observers who weren't removed for cause were inside those windows, not blocked by them. You know this.

More long debunked and admitted bullshit lies Bob. What little of these accusations that weren't pure misrepresentations or lies all went to court and was all tossed by usually Republican judges because it wasn't true, there's zero evidence of these made up claims. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Nunca. Absolutely squat.
You know all of this, you dishonest liar, you made the same arguments at the time and every single accusation was debunked thoroughly...You just chose to ignore every explanation and exposure of the pure lies you were fed, and now pretend they weren't answered. You're a gullible moron who bought a con man's con....and you're so ridiculous you continue to believe it long after the perpetrators have admitted it was never true or an honest accusation, and only a gullible moron could have believed them when they said it was true.

Since we're asking questions....How come Trump won’t agree to stop raping little girls? How come he’s still is terrified of his taxes, or foreign business dealings, or foreign holdings and secret bank accounts being investigated?
I think we both know why.

Since we’re indulging questions about recounts, why aren’t democratic observers allowed to closely observe this recount? Why are only Trump cultists allowed to participate? Why are ballots being counted multiple times using different criteria using no discernible rules or safeguards, actually destroying or removing some ballots in the process? Why is this happening at all after multiple Republican led recounts in this county came to the exact same results already? Why in the fuck are taxpayers paying for the umpteenth recount, this time by partisan frauds with zero election experience besides creating the big lie in the first place?
Why has it taken three weeks to get through well under 300000 votes when they knew they had three weeks to finish? Why do they now say it will take them until September to do what takes every other recount under three weeks? Why do they plan to take this circus on a national tour, heading to Georgia next to try this nonsense again, planning to keep the big lie alive through 2022?
Answers please, unlike you I want to hear answers. Sadly, I know you don't have a single one.

Lol. You don't know which jurist or alternate, or which they were, biased or afraid, but you know someone was something so toss his multiple murder convictions....and execute the Central Park Five. LMFAHS!!

The biggest charge, second degree murder, was unanimous on the first vote in under two hours of deliberation. In interviews, jurists have said there were technical questions about applying third degree murder too, that's what took them a day, getting technical answers about the law, not questions about culpability, not fear. Sorry, wrong again.

Bobski, your hammer and sickle are showing.
Juries don't declare people innocent in America.....and Americans don't speak/write like a Russian first year English-as-a-second-language student or a Nigerian Prince with amazing financial deal bank for you money wealth.

I mean what I said. Trump (and his subordinates at his direction) made up new regulations, New laws, New restrictions, New limits, new procedures, and new rules that combined made it not just harder but often impossible for people who, before Trump under any administration would have been quickly granted asylum in accordance with the law. He also slowed the process for legally applying, limited the number allowed to apply in a way never done before, and created new systems where instead of waiting in the country they had to wait in another country with no services in crime ridden refugee camps if they're lucky, sometimes sent south of Mexico, many instructed to go home and wait, homes they fled under direct and credible threats of death or worse....many after having their children taken.

Trump did not simply "enforce current laws". He changed them, misinterpreted them, ignored them repeatedly and flagrantly, then enforced those he liked. Consistently the intent was to minimize any immigration as much as possible from countries that aren't predominantly white. Not once was the intent to streamline the system so it would improve, every step was designed to slow the process and deny entry to as many people as possible, even those with legitimate life or death reasons for asylum. He even changed those rules to exclude narco terrorism death threats to be a reason for asylum, not because they aren't valid but because there are too many.

When you personally create the "law" you're enforcing by (often illegally) changing the rules and established interpretation of long standing law and policy to make following the law near impossible and often deadly, you don't get credit as if that's being a humanitarian just enforcing the law. Duh.

Edit: BTW Mr law and order, Trump never followed the law in his business dealings nor with his taxes or his loans (hyperexagerated his property values on loan documents, while minimizing their value on tax forms). His best excuse? His claim that he's not a real businessman and didn't even bother to read the loan and tax documents he swore were correct because he had no idea if they were.....His claim that everyone does that, everyone is a tax cheater and bank fraud perpetrator, is asinine.....but exposes him as the criminal fraud we all know he is, not a man who respects the law.

While I agree, he should get paid handsomely for this abuse, I, for one, am getting pretty tired of paying higher taxes that go to pay for these payouts. I think they should come out of the police (or in this case, park ranger) pension funds, then when they're gone, union coffers, then payroll, equipment funds, and lastly from state government discretionary funding. Not one penny more should be given out until all police funding is exhausted. You would see these incidents drop to zero if that were the case, and these officers wouldn't ever get rehired because they are liabilities to the bank accounts of any force that hires them.

I gotta squirrel story.
So when I lived in Mountain View, for Christ only knows what reason, the idiots in charge of power put this big-ass transformer thing on the corner of my property. The thing hummed with menace and I knew that shit wasn't right. But I didn't worry none because there was a big green metal cover over it that provided the same protection against horrendous death that a box of Kleenex would have provided the World Trade Center on 9/11.
One day, I'm standing on my balcony and drinking a beer. I mighta been stoned, too, only there's no 'mighta' that day. I'm watching the whorehouse across the street (really) and generally buzzing when I see a squirrel on the lawn. I hate squirrels. A motherfucking squirrel ate my bar fridge and fucked me outta the $50 I was selling it for on Craigslist (really).
Anyway, I got this longneck of Bud in hand and I'm working out whether I can brain the goddamn rodent with it when the neighbor's cat come rippin' ass from under the balcony and goes after Skippy.
Well here's some amusement!
The squirrel is running for it's pointless life and the cat is banking like a F-16 chasing an Iraqi MIG and I've already got $10 down on the kitty with a $3 over/under. I already know how this was gonna end and I was rootin' for it every step of the way.
Only it didn't.
The goddamn squirrel found the ONE way to get under that green metal cover I mentioned previously. The cat stops in amazement and I'm all pissed because I've been gypped outta Wild Kingdom's money shot.
A second later there's a flash like Ivy Mike going off from under the cover and an a concussive BOOM!! The fucking cover blasts off like a Space-X project gone horribly wrong -- or, in this case, delightfully right.
The cat jumps like 5 feet in the air and an arc of turds flies outta its butt, the cover returns to earth as a traffic hazard in the middle of Latham St., and the squirrel is basically vaporized. And now I'm the happiest motherfucker in Mountain View because dude, that shit was AWESOME!
I call out, "Babe! You won't believe what just happened!" 'cause you gotta totally share shit like that.
Then I realized everything is TOTALLY silent, like Little House on the Fucking Prairie silent.
"The power's out," my wife responds.
And it STAYED out for like two goddamn days while the putzes from the power company had to rewire pretty much everything that blew up.
Honey Badger didn't give a shit because Honey Badger'd copped an oz right before this shit happened. And as Fat Freddy taught us, "Dope will get you through times of no power better than power will get you through times of no dope." Or some shit like that. I dunno, I'm totally fucking baked right now.

Sorry to be the little grey raincloud on this Hate The Hedges party, but you might want to understand the implications of what just happened

Y'know that fund that's getting all attention, Melvin Capital? Yeah, fuck them, right? Fuckin' shorters all shortin' and shit -- they played, they paid!

There's a reason they were bailed out and with all due haste.

Here's the issue: they were VERY good at the shorting game. So good that they actually had to turn away business. They made money like horses makes shit. When clients couldn't get in at Melvin, they went elsewhere. That opened the door to a lot of other firms basically mirroring exactly what MC was doing, which included shorting the fuck outta GME.

Fuck those guys too, right? It's their money, so why should I care?

Let's go back a few year, shall we, to the glorious chapter in finance and economics that was the 2008 Crash. Remember when Paulson lost his shit because he realized that in about 36 hours, the basic system called Western Capitalism was going to shit the bed; the bedroom; the whole house and pretty much every surface above the ocean within a planetary radius? This is sorta like that. Only worse.

The thing about short squeezes is that the losses can be infinite, and that's exactly why WallStreetBets did what they did. They knew if they bought and held -- diamond hands -- the stock would have to rise as the shorters had to cover their bets. Melvin Capital and a shit-ton of other, smaller firms had to do that and ran out of liquidity long before GME was even at $50. For every share of stock they shorted, they need to cough up another share at a higher value -- and they HAD to actually have the higher-priced share.

And here's where things get VERY ugly.

Shorting GME was such a sure thing that a huge number of shorts were placed. In fact, more shares of GME were shorted than actually existed. Oops. But hey, SURE THING, BABY and what's the worst that can happen?

Yeeeah, y'see where this is going now?

So these firms, not only are they broke, they don't have the shares, either. They need to come up with shares, pronto, at any price, because contractual obligations are a motherfucker in the finance world. But again, more shorts than there are shares and the people who have the shares, WSB and 4chan's /biz/, aren't letting them go. The longer they hold, the higher the price will go as short after short faces having to cough up the shares they borrowed.

A lot of people are about to lose a LOT of money -- the kinda losses that have so many zeros attached that looking at the number bores the eyes.

Back to 2008: the reason the whole world almost started Mad Max LARPing back then is that a narrow number of highly-important financial institutions were a wee bit thin on liquidity because they were having to pay it out by the boatload. That's bad. What would be better is if risk were more distributed, and how could that little plan POSSIBLY go wrong? Maybe a Black Swan event involving a huge amount of money that needs to be paid out by all of them due to this annoying bird.

That's where we are now, but no one even remotely knows what that figure is going to be. Again, (potentially) infinite losses multiplied by 150% times the number of shares actually available, multiplied by the dogshit risk factor on the loans and the leveraged payouts -- your best case scenario might be a loss of about $500 billion. Someone has to come up with that money, be it the Fed or other banks/investors, but that latter group has to come up with the money themselves, which is generally accomplished by selling profitable holdings. We all know what happens when a lot of people have to sell, right?

I always wanted to live in interesting times, thus proving what an utter fuckwit I am.

I think that's at the discretion of the judge, if you asked for 15%, likely you'll get your principal back, if you asked for 1500%, chances are you won't get a dime back as punishment, and may end up owing the borrower if you went overboard trying to collect.

I live in California, building codes change constantly. I agree, it is maddening and often backwards. He was specifically talking about codes for building stand alone solar, which are newer building codes. Even old building codes are often poorly thought out and contradictory. I'm not saying there isn't an abundance of red tape here, especially for building.
That said, his contractor should have been aware of all codes, submitted his plan, and would have approval or notes on what to change in weeks tops. There's something wrong when it takes over a year to get a shed built, some reason his plans weren't approved like they weren't to code.
Citation : personal experience - I installed solar in California, it took 3 days for my permit approval....and only that long because my contractor was being lazy.

That's the thing I disagree with, no new laws are needed at all, just a removal of exemptions/deregulations for businesses that pay large enough bribes (contributions) to elected officials. Even making all credit businesses operate on the same rules, allowing them 30% interest, seems ok, but that isn't reality today. It's unconscionable to allow 1600% interest on loans peddled to desperate people that don't actually qualify for a real, legitimate line of credit, many of whom don't understand it's what they're agreeing to, but the payday loan lobby is well funded and connected.
Citation:
Although U.S. states set their own maximum legal interest rates, a Supreme Court interpretation of the National Bank Act of 1864 preempted state usury laws and created a path toward a national consumer lending economy. The most important federal case in credit card interest rate deregulation was decided in 1978.

Her problems were multifold. The predatory loan took a fixable issue, her terrible customer service, and compounded it with insurmountable and ever expanding debt, which in turn undoubtedly hurt her customer service more, thus increasing her debt..... It sounds like she never should have purchased a service oriented business, and likely overextended herself from day one just to do it.

I'm unsure of your point in the last paragraph.

And BOOM goes the dynamite.

Trump is officially the worst president ever and the first to be impeached twice, this time for incitement of insurrection on tv and Twitter, so he can't bully the witnesses out of testifying.

10 Republicans voted to impeach, twice the record number of representatives to vote to impeach a president from their own party ever, so Trump is the best at getting impeached in at least two ways! He's also the first impeached for what amounts to treasonous sedition, inciting a deadly insurrection, sure sounds like a hanging offense to me.

Along with states trying to cancel contracts with him, his last banks now refuse to do any business besides collecting on his massive debts, and his kids businesses tanked because no legitimate businesses want anything to do with them, Shopify, paragon over virtue that they are, dumped Ivanka, and I bet you could get paid to haul off MAGA merch at this point. No states want him to move there, and multiple friendly countries have preemptively denied him entry.

Sorry sunshine, it's over for Trump and MAGA. You can't say we didn't warn you.

The mayor of New York just cut all contracts with Trump.
The multiple contracts the Trump organization has with New York city all include a clause negating the contract if any of the companies leaders commit criminal activity. Treason and sedition and inciting a riot fit that bill, so they have ended all business contracts and will hire other vendors to handle their properties.
It's pretty likely other states will follow suit.
The PGA has cut all ties.
Shopify no longer sells Trump merchandise or products like Ivanka's clothing line.
His banks, Signature and Deutsche bank have both said they will do no new business, but won't walk away from the $340 million he owes them, business loans personally guaranteed by Trump.
Sounds to me like all revenue is drying up just when $700-$1000 million in debts are coming due...Barron is going to need a job flipping burgers, he's only going to inherit debt and hatred.

If only we COULD cancel those 72 million who supported treasonous Trump and his coup. Cancel their citizenship, their government benefits, their air travel, their bank accounts, and their freedom. They are treasonous terrorists, and deserve to be treated as such.

You’ve said the same about people in their homes, even about George Floyd if I’m not mistaken, he wasn’t running, straw man.

I do see his issue as a problem. I don’t think it’s an excuse to break the law in multiple dangerous or malicious ways like he did. I think, like most other countries have, we should pay people their normal wages to stay home quarantined so we might stop being the worst at COVID response on the planet and avoid this kind of situation altogether.
You seem to think we should pretend the pandemic is a fraud and go back to life like it was pre 2020....problem solved. Your words say as much. Sorry, that’s not realistic. That “plan” kills millions at best and destroys the economy in the process.

Btw, we've been over this a dozen times, I’ve never taken a dime of government assistance, and my wife and I live on $30k a year. Just because i don't need government assistance doesn't mean I don't see the need for others, just like even though I'm "retired" I can still understand the need for a paycheck, but needing money is not an excuse to break the law or heroin dealers and bank robbers would be good guys who just need to make money.

Yes, the government doesn’t care, that’s why it just passed another COVID relief bill that again gives the vast majority of the money to corporations and state government, not citizens (likely with the same lack of protections that let Kushner and a few Trumps take millions from the first relief bill). For once, Trump at least publicly tried to do the right thing (credit where it’s due) by insisting on larger payments like Democrats wanted all along and Republicans killed the idea.

This is like driving around the Arc de Triumph in Paris. It's absolute insanity and you HAVE to drive through it to get certain parts of the city. Imagine a huge round-about with no set rules, no one uses their signals and everyone is French. Yet, somehow, there's rarely accidents and it just sorta works.

Also, driving in Paris in general tends to be hair-raising, especially in the Left Bank.

Aaaahahaha. Jesus you're getting desperate, little Bobby.

Yes, I would trust Biden over biggest loser, Donny low T, with my money. Only one of the two can't even afford his lawyers and may lose dozens of cases because of it, like suing ex administration officials for violating ndas, multiple rape charges, multiple fraud cases, tax fraud cases, bank fraud cases, campaign finance fraud cases.... better mortgage your life to the hilt and give it to little Donny low T, he needs every penny.

Trump is broke, in massive debt to multiple foreign powers and is by his own admission the worst business man in the country with the biggest losses many years running....like another tax fraud where he filed for a $750 million refund for losses he caused a company he had been tossed out of...I think the Taj Mahal. (BTW, that is the "audit" he hides behind, a tax fraud case for $750 million stolen from the IRS through fraud...Not an actual audit of his recent taxes....but since every disclosure to different agencies claims massively different values for assets, debts, obligations, and credit lines, he cannot let them be published because the frauds would be blatantly obvious.)

Now a question for you, Bobski....which would you trust your teenaged daughter with? The lecherous rapist of teenaged girls, or Biden? (Note, she won't get paid for getting raped either, since Trump's broke.)