pfried

This is common practice. If you look at Google Maps in any other country, the name will not have changed. In the U.S., it shows the legal name within the U.S., which was updated by H.R. 276.

Similarly, disputed borders are drawn differently depending on which country you're accessing Google Maps in to satisfy local laws. https://www.the-independent.com/tech/the-man-who-s-making-google-maps-smarter-9544478.html

I asked about the Strait of Hormuz, and it summarized information from Al Jazeera, the BBC, and Wikipedia. It added the following disclaimer:

Disclaimer: This information is based on reports from April 18–20, 2026, and the situation is highly volatile.

This seems reasonable.

When I asked about ICE illegal operations, it summarized and linked to the American Immigration Council.

This is not as good. If I'm asking about something done right now being illegal, I would like to see ongoing cases challenging the legality of the actions. I'd hesitate to call that bias instead of just bad results though.

I, for one, learned something from this response. Thank you for posting it. You've saved maybe dozens of people from having to search themselves.

Indeed, defenestration is making a comeback in Russia. The Prague tourism industry is in shambles. Nobody wants to see the second best.

That dude has a history of not understanding what is going on. The only thing the passport revocation did was give Russia an additional excuse to tell him to keep him in the airport instead of allowing him to meet people outside the airport while they figured out what to do with him. They could have let him out of the airport or onto an airplane at any time. There is no requirement for travel documents to deport someone from your country.

I also didn't get Internet connected thermostats until the utility company added demand response discounts. It's really a smart grid technology. This does mean that it should be secured as such, otherwise it's another vector to attack the power grid (set all thermostats to maximum and cause blackouts). Regulations haven't caught up.

Sorry, I updated my comment while you were responding. Please go ahead and update your response, and I'll then cross out this comment.

You seem to be part of the first.

Absolutely not. I'm for fighting government abuse. I'm against helping antagonistic foreign dictatorships like China. You and Snowden seem to be for the latter. It is not that hard to do the former without doing the latter.

And calling Snowden simple-minded truly betrays your ignorance.

His plan to live in Hong Kong didn't work for what to me seems obvious reasons. He completely misinterpreted the PRISM slides. He failed a very simple analyst test. He's unironically a libertarian. He didn't understand whistleblower laws at all and didn't even bother to consult a lawyer. For all of these simple thinking errors, he now finds himself living under Putin's thumb. All the available evidence points to one conclusion.

The SCMP is, as you said, a chinese newspaper. So it absolutely makes sense that they'd ask China-focussed questions like "Were there chinese systems compromised?"

And Snowden claimed to be a patriotic American. Why would he tell the Chinese about the systems that the U.S. had compromised? He also told the SCMP that he chose Hong Kong years ago, so telling them about these hacks clearly wasn't some spur of the moment decision made with little forethought.

This is not some vast conspiracy theory requiring dozens of people to be in on some secret plan. This is a simple analysis of a single simple-minded man.

Where did I say my beliefs were from government statements? My comment only mentioned leaks. How do leaks lie? Are you implying Snowden was in on a conspiracy where he only leaked documents that made it look like the government was following the law in order to pull the wool over our eyes? I have to admit, that is a new one to me.

Yes. Switzerland reduced the size of its military, and the number of firearm suicides (and total suicides) dropped correspondingly due to reduced access to firearms. https://www.thetrace.org/2016/09/military-suicides-switzerland-gun-suicide-prevention/

But you'd have to be a naive child to think they abide by the law.

If they didn't abide by the law, surely there would be evidence for it in the massive trove of documents that Snowden released.