Because when the telephone system first was developed, all you had were dial phones, which could only send numbers 1 through 0 (10). So every call needed to be addressible using only numbers.
AT&T came up with the numbering system in the 40s…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Numbering_Plan
When the State licenses things like that, it’s usually because whatever activity is being licensed utilizes shared resources, and the State has an interest in making sure those resources are used in the common interest.
Radio licenses are essential because the RF spectrum is a common resource. The State wants to make sure that certain frequencies are only used for certain purposes, and that those who use them have the proper training.
Some communities use pet licensing as a tool to make sure all pets are properly vaccinated, to reduce the spread of rabies (which really is a horrible way to go…)
Hunting and fish licenses are a way to help control the overall wild animal population, and make sure they are not overharvested and preserve rhe availability for future seasons.
It is a real department, sort of. Trump used Legislation that was intended for an Obama Era “US Digital Service” and rebranded it “US DOGE Service”. He didn’t even need to change the acronym, although it is now a nested acronym.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_DOGE_Service
They do, in fact, overstep their legal boundaries quite often. But the administration simply fires anyone in any other department who gets in the way until they get an acquiescent administrator who lets them grab the department by the pussy.
Yeah, individual emails can be picked off at any point in the chain while in transit. And someone who has hacked key infrastructure in front of your server can see all emails on transit. But your server might have stored emails, so someone with clandestine access to that will be able to access part of your email history (perhaps all of it, if you use that server for permanent email storage), and they are not limited to emails in transit.
I plan on complaining about it on the Internet. That’ll show 'em!
I know a lot of people with their own domain names and email servers. From a privacy perspective, it is better because you know nobody is reading your emails. Your email address is a method to track regardless. But free email services are only free because they scrape your emails to figure out which ads to send. If you run your own mail server, you know no one is snooping.
The real issue is that you need to be fastidious about security, because your servers are exposed to the broader Internet and there are a lot of bad actors. You not only have to make sure your server doesn’t get hacked, but you also need to make sure the mail server application can’t act like an open relay. Spammers use misconfigured mail servers all the time to send tons of spam messages using someone else’s bandwidth.
And once your mail server is used as a spam relay, it might get IP blocked from major email providers, and I bet that is a pain to get resolved.
So it’s only worth it if you know what you are doing.
Only a matter of time before Trump renames them the Indians by Executive Order
$4.69 at Wegmans
Unless God exercises His Ultimate Veto and cuts his term short.
I went to Beijing several years ago on business. By a total coincidence, it happened to be just after the Golden Week festival, which is a national holiday and businesses were closed. I expected quite a bit of smog, but when I arrived everything seemed clear. My Chinese host took me out to see the Great Wall, and it was breathtaking, and also crystal clear. I was wondering if the dirty air I had heard so much about was a myth.
But then the work week started, and as the week went on and the factories started up again, I noticed that the air was getting dirtier. My Chinese host took me to see the Forbidden City at the end of the week, which was also extremely beautiful, but already the air was so thick that I couldn’t see the landscape anymore, only the buildings in front of me.
Nature does a good job at cleaning the local air itself, but when we spew so much crap in it Nature can’t keep up. So, yeah, smog happens because of constant pollution.
Impeachment must start in the House, and the rules of the House are heavily tilted toward majority rule. So it would need a majority vote to even get started, and it would be referred to a committee with a Republican majority. If, somehow, the investigation done there is fair and a recommendation to impeach passes the committee, it still needs to pass in the House again.
But then, it goes to the Senate, where a 2/3 majority (67/100) is required to convicted. So now we have gone from needing a handful of Republican defectors on the House (including at least one committee member) to needing 20 of 53 Republican Senators to agree to convict. That is an extremely high bar. If you were a Republican House member who is on the fence about Trump, it is simply not worth openly defying him unless you were certain Republican Senators would convict. Particularly after Trump just pardoned a bunch of folks who have already stormed the Capitol once.
New Mexico has an actual constitution, as well as three whole branches of government, who have the official say on what is called. The Gulf of Mexico just has some fish and oil rigs.
It’s been a common trick for a long time on the right to equate simple disagreement with censorship, and use that as an excuse to practice actual censorship when they take over.
I have been playing this all night, thanks. I did beat it once so far, now I’m trying to clear the board
The price of very large publically traded companies is set entirely by supply and demand. Yes, those shares do represent a tiny share of ownership in the company, which means a share in the profits and assets of the company. But there is no law tying them together. Tesla’s market value is so high because there are more buyers than sellers, it’s as simple as that.
They do it because it works. Not only does it lead to more direct sales, but the app is scraping data that can be further used to generate sales, either to the user directly or sale of their data to third parties. And people who don’t like their habits being gamified will simply not install the app.
How many people are going to say “I refuse to go to Dunkin because they went too far gamifying their rewards program in their shitty app I never use”? Probably close to zero. So, the cost of doing it is whatever they pay their offshore contractors, who probably can’t afford to come visit the US, much less go to Dunkin for awful coffee every day.
Yeah, that is more incompetence than I am used to. When we get driving bans and other emergency declarations, the local news will put that crawly thing on the bottom of the screen letting us know what’s up. I bet they get complaints when it covers up the score of the game.
I live in an area that gets snow regularly. When we get a storm, there are precisely three things the news can report on:
If there is nothing to report in those three topics, then it’s just another slow news day. Just be glad they’re not making TV news reports about trending Social Media topics, that’s what our local news gets into when they run out of Sinclair propaganda (or Bills highlights) to run.
There’s nothing illegal about cryptocurrencies. It’s just random numbers and code.
However, those random numbers have actual value, and governments regulate some transactions, particularly ones that cross national borders, to make sure those transactions do not hide a crime or go to individuals who the government has put under sanctions.
Some people of a Libertarian bent get involved in Crypto to keep their governments out of their business. But those laws still apply, no matter what the medium of exchange is, or how much those people whine about those laws.
Edited to add: I missed the bit where OPs question was about Samurai Wallet. Here is some info about them:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/legal/samourai-wallet-breaking-down-dangerous-precedents
This is from a pro-Crypto online media source, and its bias is obvious. However, it is also from last April. The Biden administration was very hostile towards Crypto. The Trump administration has embraced it, and it would not surprise me if this prosecution disappears in a cloud of “quid pro quo”…