People used to do a lot of stupid stuff. If you live alone and are conscious of the risk, sure, this is not a terribly dangerous item if you're safe about it. If you live with pets or children, it's entirely sensible to be concerned about the risk. A mercury spill can seep between the floorboards and contaminate your house with volatile mercury vapors for years to come if not properly managed.
Maybe in a pinch, doesn't seem very sustainable. A single decent 400 watt solar panel produces about the same continuous power as a horse, and doesn't consume 20 lbs of hay per day, or pee on your generator.
Sure, plenty of people also wear a 14 oz hard hat strapped to their head all day with no negative health impacts. Doesn't mean it's enjoyable or comfortable for everyone.
> nearly all Americans now treat this as a Very Secret Number
I don't think that they actually do in practice. Last time I opened an account with Comcast they required your social security number. Same with an AT&T cell plan.
Last time I opened an account with Comcast they required your social security number. Same with an AT&T cell plan.
Strictly speaking they require /a/ Social Security Number, not necessarily /your/ SSN.
When I signed up for my most recent cellular service, I hesitated at giving my information to the guy in the store. I told him that since it was a pre-paid account I wasn't asking for credit, so there's no need for him to have my information.
He was OK with that, and pulled out an ID card the store keeps in a drawer for just such occasions.
Salespeople have a sales quota, not an enforce-the-rules quota.
Same when I visited Germany, every phone account needs your name and address and passport number to prevent spam, I bought a prepaid card, since I don't live there I don't have an address, so he used the address of the store. Still needed a passport though.
I applied for my first credit card at a desk they had set up in front of the school. No SSN. When I entered my income (non existent), guy went "no man.. come on. put this amount. hey'll never give you a card with that". Week later I received the card with my name misspelled and everything. (I still see that misspelled name EVERYWHERE when I search for my name)
I'm not sure people treat this as a Very Secret Number. Certainly using SSNs publically has gone away, but people are willing to provide their SSNs to basically anyone that asks for it. Heck, some job applications ask for your SSN.
I've seen forms that explicitly say to put in all nines if you "don't have one", so that's what I do everywhere that insists on asking but doesn't have a legitimate purpose (ie tax reporting). To any human it should be obvious that all nines indicates an exception.
The property you are talking about is generally called "deniability" in the literature, whereas the GP is talking "verifiability" ie. being able to verify your own vote is cast correctly. They are both valuable, sometimes mutually exclusive, but not necessarily, see eg. https://petsymposium.org/popets/2024/popets-2024-0021.pdf
You’re overthinking it. “Country” is simply more ambiguous when used as an adjective. “F5 announces attack from country hackers” sounds silly and confusing.
"F5 announces hack by foreign country" (or the infinite variations of) is less silly than "F5 announces attack from nation-state hackers", you're just used to hearing the latter repeated every incident. Anyone can intentionally use a phrase poorly, pointing out a silly sounding phrasing exists adds nothing.
Not that "F5 announces attack by state sponsored hackers", "F5 announces attack by nation-state backed hackers", or "F5 announces attack from nationally backed hackers" have to be invalid, particularly since the latter is often what is actually most specifically correct anyways.
At the moment, ad networks don't pay for bot impressions when detected - so content farms tend to optimize for what passes for humans. All bets are off if human and bot visitors offer the same economic value via miners, or worse if it turns out that bots are more profitable due to human impatience.
Imagine an internet optimized for bot visitors, and indifferent to humans. It would be a kind of refined brainrot aimed at a brainless audience.
