And English speakers are only a fraction of the user base. Current events in the US social media bubble barely penetrate the general public in the US, let alone across international and language barriers.

It's probably the largest social media platform in Japan, for example.

All of the money from subscriptions and advertisements is put into a big pool (minus a cut for Spotify), and every month it is divided up between each rightsholder based on the proportion of plays. So if you have a big chunk of track plays that are just generated noise playing over and over for hours, that's a big chunk of that pool going to unoriginal/easily reproducible uploads instead of actual musicians. It's basically a scam gaming the way the system works.

It's also costly for Spotify. Even if the streams were in the form of, say, podcasts that were not allowed any sort of monetization, it's still hours upon hours (per user) of data that has to be streamed...and it doesn't compress efficiently. Compression algorithms seek to avoid noise, and deliberately generated noise will not compress well. So the amount of data being streamed is much higher per second than with music or speech.

Meanwhile, you can make an app that plays white/pink/whatever noise trivially. No waste of resources necessary.

The Model Y has it hidden too: the back (you know, where small children are likely to be) has its manual release under the floor mat. And the exterior door handles need power to pop out, obviously, since they're flush with the door normally. So if you have power out, and there are kids in the back with extreme heat or a fire or something, good fucking luck.

There's a world of difference between witnessing something in public and following someone around, making note of everything they say and do "in public." We call the latter "stalking" when an individual does it.

The federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 prohibited the AR-15, which is pretty much the weapon of choice for spree killers. The law expired in 2004.

We also have a growing resurgence of fascist ideology, which is favored by losers who also have access to guns.

Yes, though technically they started out as reverse engineered clones. There were tons of incompatible microcomputer brands before the IBM PC. Then companies like Compaq put out "PC compatible" clones based on specs that came from reverse engineering of the IBM PC. Over time, things evolved toward deliberate standardization.

Imagine the dumpster fire of legal action, which courts would likely side with, if someone put out hardware that was 1:1 compatible with the iPhone and iOS would run on it. That's basically what happened, though MS DOS was produced by an additional party instead of IBM.

Look to other countries. Japan has a very sensible system, for example:

1. You must complete a licensing course to be able to own a rifle for hunting or target shooting. You must keep this license renewed.

2. You must arrange a police inspection of your storage annually, which requires the rifle and ammunition be in two separate lockers.

3. Handguns and semi-automatics are strictly prohibited. So much as possessing one carries a prison sentence. Obviously attempting to use one to kill people would be life imprisonment (or capital punishment, since they unfortunately still practice that).

We need similar laws, and strict penalties for arms manufacturers, smugglers and people who deal in them under the table. The first step is patching the hole in the boat before you start trying to pump the water out.

The only public shooting in recent memory was the assassination of a former Prime Minister with a "gun" made from a pipe, battery and fire crackers.

Part of what happened is schools stopped teaching the muggle kids basic computer skills, assuming "they're young so they must innately know this," and went all-in on locked down Chromebooks for everything. The average household doesn't own a computer, just uses phones, and schools took away the only opportunity for them to have exposure to real computers.

And universities. Email is the digital version of the memorandum, which is an essential tool for any large organization.

Digg fully died, but the name was brought back for a curated news portal years later.