Which kind of brings up an interesting angle - if every company is asking for an NCA, can't you argue that you signed it under duress, i.e. you didn't have a choice in the matter, and therefore that part of the contract is invalid?

You had a much better saying at your disposal "The grass is always greener on the other side". Alas, you chose not to use it and now we don't know how your comment would have turned out, had it made sense.

    test rax, rax
    add rax, $offset
    cmovz rax, 0

Sorry for sounding angry, but this kind of thing isn't what makes my programs faster, this kind of thing is what makes it harder to write correct programs.

Edit: clang does exactly this at -O1: https://godbolt.org/g/o6gh0M

And don't get me started if your name can't be written in US-ASCII, i.e. if it has weird squiggles above or below the characters or if it's written in gasp cyrillic.

So no, I am absolutely not OK with allowing the sharing of my private life. I'm not OK with people knowing what dark jokes I've said about Nazis, I'm not OK with people knowing how I've cursed a minority in a moment of anger, I'm not OK with anyone knowing what I wrote in my diary.

I know that you can't stop the flow of information and that you're responsible for protecting yourself, but we should have some law to offer recompense to the party whose private life was exposed.

I guess this post was provoked by the recent Hogan vs Gawker case. I'm a bit divided on that - on the one hand it obviously damaged his reputation and career, and Gawker are responsible for that. You could argue that that is accidental damages, i.e. they didn't know the extent of the effect their actions would have. I guess it might make sense to offer insurance against that for the press - to cover court fees and damages arising from damaging a public figure during reporting. On the other hand, this is now posted, public, known and there is no silencing it. I would never ask Gawker to take down the sex tape, as that would both interfere with the freedom of the press and be absolutely ineffective in stopping the spreading of information. So my compromise is to both have Gawker pay, but not take down the video. I think this should make both equally unsatisfied, so it's the best compromise.

Could this then be a general compromise? If you share private details of someone doing something lawful, which damages his/her life, you are responsible and have to recompense him/her in some way (i.e. the court decides on how much you owe), but given the reality of the internet, the information can't be taken down.

Well, to be fair, I wouldn't mind executing alcoholics and smokers. But you can have the best of both worlds - provide help and healthcare to ones who have fallen in drug use and execute the ones who can't complete rehab.