It is less bad. The US government doesn't have any obligation to protect the rights of citizens of some other country not living in the US. If your government disagrees, tell them to sign a treaty.
Both my country and the US are already signatories to various international treaties guaranteeing a human right against arbitrary interference with privacy and correspondence, e.g. the ICCPR. The US has declined to transcribe it into its own law. My country is also a member of an international human rights court that enforces a (admittedly qualified) right to privacy (for humans - hence 'human rights' - not just citizens of the particular member state concerned). AFAIK the US is not a member of any such organisation.
I'm a bit bemused at the level of cognitive dissonance required to loudly assert both that something is an 'inalienable human right' and at the same time that it doesn't apply to non-citizens. Perhaps the US government uses 'inalienable' and 'human' to mean something different to everyone else?
Frankly that level of xenophobia is just bad - period. Sure, it would be "worse" if the US was spying on their own citizens as well (and frankly I'm not convinced that they're not), but I take real objection to you saying that it's "less bad" as it's essentially saying that something is "ok" when you compare it to something even worse - when in actual fact both examples are appalling.
America should be leading by example rather than hypocritically condoning China (et al) for their spying then turning around and doing the same thing themselves. And most importantly, America (and every other country for that matter) should be comparing themselves to the best examples - constantly trying to better the nation - rather than comparing themselves to the worst and saying "we're less bad than those governments".
It just means they feel like the other party is forgetting about the cost. For example, if I hear my friend raving about this new phone that only costs 99 dollars, I might remind him that it would require him to upgrade to a data plan that costs 20 dollars more per month. That doesn't mean that the phone isn't still worth buying, just that it's not as cheap as I think he is imagining it to be.
Honestly, and especially in the case of public goods like the baby box discussed here, I think people are perfectly well aware that they don't fall out of the sky or grow on trees, even if they can't articulate the entire cost-benefit structure at the drop of a hat. But people who say the cost is being forgotten usually complain that it has to be picked up by 'the taxpayer' (meaning themselves), as if the expectant parent(s) had no history or prospects of ever paying taxes themselves.
Intentionally or not, the implicit suggestion that the costs are being picked up by someone else is rooted in economic stereotypes that remain widespread in the US despite a lack of supporting evidence.
If "you" didn't lie to some reviewers and pay others I'd be able to.
This isn't a case of a game that doesn't age well, the thing just didn't work. Even after fixing the servers it's still defective by design. Worse, EA deliberately lied about this and their coordinated responses show widespread and high-level involvement.
Anyways, thank your lucky stars I can chargeback, it's a lot cheaper for you than any of the other (all legal) things I'd do to get back at someone who knowingly sold me a defective product. Hiring a PI isn't that expensive...
The point is not to stop your ISP from showing you ads. The point is to stop your ISP from interfering with your traffic in transit.
If I ran a website with ads, and someone was stripping those ads to replace with their own ads, I'd be annoyed. I'd be amazed if that's something Google would tolerate. We've seen plenty of stories from people saying "Google closed my ad account and froze all my money!!!" so I hope they do that to this ISP and or the company serving the ads.
But you already don't stop your ISP from interfering with your traffic in transit. So why is it a big deal if you continue to not do it? Or is seeing a few ads more important to you than, say, all of your email?
For what it's worth I was grumpy in those situations too. I wrote polite letters. Where possible I opted out.
But your point - this kind of this happens all the time, and has been going on for years, and noone is doing anything to stop it even though it's wrong - is taken.
This point of view assumes that the injected code is harmless and never causes compatibility issues when viewing a website. The moment a JavaScript conflict occurs and Apple loses a sale or the ability to buy a product online is hindered, I think that there will be parties who certainly feel they are being "harmed" by this process of manipulating the content being delivered to end users.
Even if you hire a 50/50 split, it doesn't solve the problem because the ratio in conference attendees is far from even. The conditional probabilities still lead to the conclusion the article complains about.
Actually this event is a consumer tech exhibition where ~43% of the visitors will be female - however the vast majority of hired, good-looking booth staff will still be female.
(And my comment wasn't so much addressing the article as the GP comment which said "I wish we had more men who dressed up as booth babes.")
