I am a different person from the one you were bantering with. This is the best quote I’ve found:

By the fall of 2024, Lane found the source of his next fix: Credentials stolen from a PowerSchool contractor were available online.

And he’s 20 now, mentioned right at the beginning of the article. So roughly 1.5 years ago? So if my math is right, he could have been 18? We have to count a few months more than just one year back (apr 2025 would have been exactly one year ago).

Anyway I upvoted the both of you for the conversation. No hard feelings at all. It’s just not so obvious to me he was 19 at the comission of the crime.

They were approving evety health claim for a fucking while back then.

It’s not 100% safe for the patient either, but if surviving the treatment is more likely than surviving the disease, it’s a go? Assuming the pain is bearable, and the post-treatment quality of life is worth a damn too. Mere survival is not good enough.

Micro$oft isn’t America.

Micro$oft is a special interest inside America, maybe, at best, American-government-aligned, assuming the government is heavily influenced or captured by Micro$oft.

If Ameirca is first and foremost its people, the megacorp and the oligarchical interests (economic royalists) inside America are at odds with most of the American population. The megacorps and the oligarchs can be considered anti-American.

Anyway, what’s bad for Micro$oft is not always bad for America. What’s good for America is not always good for Micro$oft. These interests are not all on the same page, to put it politely.

(this is just me agreeing with you in a longer form)

The problem lies in direction and methods.

Direction: toward greater wealth consolidation.

Methods: fear, lies, fostering ignorance, fostering political disinterest, truth embargo, surveillance, overclassification, embezzlement and other white collar crimes unpunished, eliminating the commons, paywalling all things, etc.

Both of those are huge problems that create unlivable societies.

The only proper direction is toward a legally mandated wealth ceiling plus a wealth floor plus enforced and publicly measured and publicly tested market competition to regulate maximum allowed wealth consolidation.

And of course truth has to be the informational currency. And rights. And privacy for the small players, with heavy oversight for the large players because large is dangerous.

We can’t lose the big picture here. Of course the governments must govern, but toward what ends and with what methods matters hugely.