cuppaconcrete

Or just have all gambling be run by the government so the profits go to social services to support people who bankrupt themselves from gambling.

In the US most of the lotteries are run by the government (typically state governments). If they can do it we can too.

The idea is that if the government gets all the profit from gambling then that money can go into social services to support the people who bankrupt themselves from gambling.

Because you can strictly enforce spending limits per person. The current system allows people who hit the limit to go down the street to an ATM and get more cash out. A digital card system is designed to close that loophole.

Good idea.

I don't think "ACAB" is a great credo, and it's probably a self-fulfilling prophecy. Don't dehumanise cops, most of them really are trying to help.

Already has I think. Especially with tools like radar/sonarr/jellyfin that let you "follow" tv series/movies and automatically download them as they become available and put them into your own personal "Netflix" style media server. Piracy now is better than ever.

In a perfect world I would agree with you.

In a capitalist economy it's normally a "growth or death" situation, for many reasons.

My understanding is that all of the codecs we are discussing are deterministic. If you have evidence to the contrary I'd love to see it.

You can boot from USB with UEFI, that's not a showstopper. Unless I'm missing something?

It's still a bad idea. If they have some really nasty malware installed it could rootkit your device, and vice versa - and you never really know. Just build a small portable computer (eg. Raspberry pi, NUC, etc) and use their KB/mouse/display.

Other peeps are saying just connect to a remote desktop you have hosted somewhere using your friend's PC - don't do that, you can't trust their software/hardware.