Eh, China's route is around 15 times more expansive and longer, similar punctuality, and way cheaper ticket per km, about 10-15 times cheaper.
The only thing annoying for China's HSR is security check on the terminals.
No, there's no compromise here. Anyone pushing for age verification or going along with it needs to get replaced by a service that is immune to government overreach.
Might be vulnerable to classic salami tactics, though. Once we arrive at a general consensus on new norms that expect age verification online, we can just legislate it to ID users as a step 2.
Maybe wait for the next terror-attack before pushing for it, but it's an easy fix to a culture that already accepted a layer control against the user. The end user will only perceive a small difference in whether they provide full ID or just verified age information.
I want to believe that some supporters of age verification are not cynical. However, whatever good can be achieved through age verification seems such a small win, compared to the dangerous precedent it sets for the internet in general. I cannot get my head around it.
And some of us do not believe the identity bit can be truly solved.
In the real world it's always people looking to suppress information or dissent that are pushing for such schemes. It always masquerades as protecting minors (protecting them from what? The one proper attempt to prove sexual materials are harmful found no evidence of said harm.) or as hunting for CSAM (and if you do implement an effective system it will get circumvented by putting relays in hostile countries.)
Depends how much you weight you place on 'anti-Israel NGO'. Assessing for myself by simply watching the content, I do not find it objectionable. Referring to what is happening in Gaza as 'ethnic cleansing' is not biased language, it is calling a spade a spade. IMO.
The Wikipedia page for ngo-monitor.org is quite revealing:
> NGO Monitor is a right-wing organization based in Jerusalem that reports on international NGO (non-governmental organisation) activity from a pro-Israel perspective.
>- Headlin eexaggeration. "point blank range" reads like the whole event was muzzle-close. In the report it’s basically "8 shots from between vehicles" + one inferred 1–4m shot. That’s not killed point blank.
I'm sure all those distances are well below the point blank range of the weapons used by the IDF soldiers.
> Overconfident negatives: no exchange of fire is a strong claim based on limited recordings. Absence of audible return fire in a few clips isn’t proof.
> - Quick search reveals names of 15 dead are PRCS: Mustafa Khafaja; Ezz El-Din Shaat; Saleh Muammar; Refaat Radwan; Muhammad Bahloul; Ashraf Abu Libda; Muhammad al-Hila; Raed al-Sharif. Civil Defense: Zuhair Abdul Hamid al-Farra; Samir Yahya al-Bahapsa; Ibrahim Nabil al-Maghari; Fouad Ibrahim al-Jamal; Youssef Rassem Khalifa; Anwar al-Attar. UNRWA: Kamal Mohammed Shahtout.
Even the IDF itself won't go this far in trying to muddle the waters.
"The IDF did not use the six Hamas terrorists who were wearing dual hats, as medics and terrorists, as an excuse for the mistakes made in the episode, given that the IDF forces involved did not know whether they were Hamas – and when the soldiers got up close to them, they found that they were unarmed."
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