Sure, you’ve got to consider both sides of the equation: Use your military might to plunder distant lands faster and harder than their armies are able to plunder your own land. It’s the fiscally prudent way to run things.

It’s an expensive business to be in. If the military is going to turn a profit we’ll need to start looking for better wars to get involved in, ones that really maximize the opportunities for plunder.

That’s unfair — it’s not just carbon capture, he’s also putting lots of effort into building oil pipelines.

The way forward for Canada Post is delivering the mail.

I like trains.

More formally known as The Stephen Harper Victims Of Communism Memorial.

It’s been a pretty mild winter so far, though. I can tell by the hydro bill.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/eff-open-rights-group-big-brother-watch-and-index-censorship-call-uk-government

The age checkpoint results so far in the UK:

1. Not-for-profits and community groups which formerly had their own websites feel forced to move onto big social media platforms to avoid liability under the law.

2. The wrong types of content are being taken down.

3. “Age assurance” is applied widely to anything the slightest bit risky.

4. The list of websites that have shut down or started to geoblock the UK continues to grow.

5. There are constant reports of “age estimation” not working correctly — blocking people who should be allowed through and allowing those who shouldn’t.

6. People are angry about it, and have responded by resorting to VPNs and other such tools in unprecedented numbers.

7. Perhaps emboldened by all this success in protecting the children, the government is now threatening all-out war on general-purpose computing in the form of requiring that devices “supplied for use in the UK must have installed tamper-proof system software” to scan for CSAM.

But it’s only been a few months, I’m sure there’s much more to come.

Can you not at least wait a couple of years to see how the ongoing disaster in the UK unfolds? Will their age checkpoints become a mild nuisance that is routinely bypassed by everyone other than the most horny and gullible? Or will they reinvent the Great Firewall as they attempt to block websites, ban VPNs, and shut down whatever convenient means to evade the checkpoints becomes popular next.

But no, the biometric data ghouls are keen to lead Canada down that same road, regardless of where it leads. Our politicians are helpless to resist the finely crafted illusions of their lobbyists, which have been gradually perfected as they infiltrate one country after another. Will there be a free world left, when it’s over? I wonder which language I should start learning.

An article from “chek news” complaining about spelling. This looks like a tricky question on a “can you spot the fake news” test.

You are suggesting that a system which does not yet exist will be perfectly safe and secure. None of the ones for which I have seen actual design documents are anything like as safe as you imagine.

What do you mean, “no additional risk”? It’s a pretty big additional risk, creating a huge central database of everyone’s ID that will be frequently interacted with through a new interface that’s available to every sketchy website in the world. Even if it isn’t compromised it can collect data about how often your name gets looked up, and it isn’t easy to make a system where there isn’t the additional risk of more personal data being collected if the central authority colludes with Facebook. You’d really need to look carefully at the details to evaluate the risks of such a system, which they have not done at all in Australia.

Every time I’ve looked at the details of elaborate schemes resembling the one you imagine, I’m always left with a lot of doubts that they’re secure or practical. Every time I’ve looked at the systems that have actually been implemented in reality, I have no doubt that they suck.

How would you get by without one? If I produce a proof right now that I’m at least 32 years old, how else do you know it’s a proof for anyone in particular and I didn’t get it from my older brother or some random website that sells them?

zero-knowledge proofs, which don’t expose any information to any party other than “I’m at least x years old”

Not quite. The well-known zkp for age verification used in the obvious way reveals only: 1. “I’m at least x years old” and 2. “my name is y.” The name can be some other unique assigned identifier, but the point is that whatever is used it needs to uniquely identify you.

There is no way to tell how old people are across the Internet without relying on unprecedented and shocking intrusions into our privacy.

Are you pretending to be a fresh 50-cent army recruit?

Exactly, software and algorithms would be a huge part of the challenge which is one reason I think Canada would be well positioned to be the nation to advance that technology. Communication via satellite is the obvious choice, but even just sitting here casually pondering it I can think of other options that might be worth considering, involving for example laser-based mesh networks between drones somewhat like what SpaceX has between satellites.

And yes, it’s true, not spending money on that sort of thing at all would also strike me as a better option than sending so many billions of dollars to the giant American defence contractors who are the primary beneficiaries of the F-35 contract.

Unmanned makes a huge difference in many ways, surely. There are all kinds of constraints added by the need to carry around a squishy human, and evaluating what can be done without them is not something I’m going to attempt in a comment here but there are a whole lot of possibilities, many of which might not cost in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Starting from scratch is not necessary. Starting from the point of view of making fighter planes obsolete, rather than building the best possible one, is what I have in mind. Somebody is going to do it. Shame it won’t be Canada. Even if the attempt failed it would be a better use of the money.

I revised it down to $50 billion after posting, having looked up the actual estimate I’d seen (74 billion), but either way it’s plenty.

I suspect that requirements for the airframe design for a swarm of drones that don’t need to carry human pilots around can be made somewhat less than those for the most expensive airplane ever made.

We’re talking somewhere over 50 billion dollars. It’s not easy to do, but with that kind of money, money is not the problem. What’s more, the profits will be enormous: There’s a market for that product all over the world.