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This has been troubling me for over a year. Last winter I twice got ads for something I picked up at a retailer, never having searched it online, causing me to look up and find these articles.

Admittedly I've lived in very small villages before where there was no privacy, and I can relate to those who say that the idea of privacy is a fairly modern thing. But never in a village was there such a preponderous difference in power between villagers than there exists between individuals and the corporations who can now track our every move.

BBC http://www.bbc.com/news/busine... NYT http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02... Here is a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?... http://adage.com/article/digit...

BBC http://www.bbc.com/news/busine...

NYT http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02...

Here is a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-walmart-write-rules-facial-recognition/245707/

There are others but these stitch together the use of facial recognition in existing retail security systems (2011) and the later meetings (Walmart, Facebook) to establish "rules of conduct" for retail implementation, a video showing how it's done. It's certainly proven to be possible and tested, I suppose my experience finding an ad for a Sony AX6000 which I'd looked at for 3-4 minutes and put down, leaving a store without buying anything, could not be construed as proof. Or the ad for the HP Laser printer.

Does quarterly profits dropping more than 90% sound like Santander was a "successful" bank? http://www.bbc.com/news/business-20079104

Santander was no more successful than US large banks and, just like US large banks, they pretended they didn't need large government bailouts by forcing their national government to bailout the people who owed Santander.

Quarter-to-quarter profits is a HORRIBLE way to measure the viability of an organization. The sooner we all learn that, the better for all entities, corporate or human.

Swift was mentioned on CNN here

It was also mentioned on BBC here...

I've seen mentions of it all over, on a lot of non-tech web-sites. That has been kind of amazing.

Coding is starting to matter more, especially as black hats affect more and more people - so people are starting to care about it more generally, even if they don't really understand details yet.

Does quarterly profits dropping more than 90% sound like Santander was a "successful" bank? http://www.bbc.com/news/business-20079104

Santander was no more successful than US large banks and, just like US large banks, they pretended they didn't need large government bailouts by forcing their national government to bailout the people who owed Santander.

Yep, they're still used today: http://www.bbc.com/future/stor... ... Even in Japan as of a couple years ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02... ...

If I have to choose I would prefer China spying on me than the US. China doesn't care wether I download movies and music, or if I want to smoke something else than tobacco.

It appears that China does care if you want to smoke at least one certain non-tobacco plant in China, at least.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...

Research shows that the system is working, says Sebastian Fohrbeck of DAAD, and that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany.

"Even if people don't pay tuition fees, if only 40% stay for five years and pay taxes we recover the cost for the tuition and for the study places so that works out well."

So by your own quoted source, they pay for it in taxes in a few years (like the ones while they are there) just as claimed.

Idiot and liar, product of a "free" education.

This simply isn't true. People come to the US all of the time, and get their education...then move back to their country of origin and work there.
Sure, not Everyone moves out of the US after studying here...but they're not forced to. And the taxes you're paying for all that FWEE education come from the working residents of Germany, from whom you'll have to continue to pilfer to fund this Utopian solution.

FTA:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...

Research shows that the system is working, says Sebastian Fohrbeck of DAAD, and that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany.

"Even if people don't pay tuition fees, if only 40% stay for five years and pay taxes we recover the cost for the tuition and for the study places so that works out well."

"Free". You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. They pay out the ass in taxes for that "free" education and over the course of their career, they'll pay more money than if they just took out loans and paid for it themselves. But sure, keep using the word "free" for things paid for via taxes.

Yes, it is free.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...

Research shows that the system is working, says Sebastian Fohrbeck of DAAD, and that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany.

"Even if people don't pay tuition fees, if only 40% stay for five years and pay taxes we recover the cost for the tuition and for the study places so that works out well."

It's free to the student because he didn't pay anything.

It's free to the government because they got paid back from it more than they put in.

It's free because when you invest money, and get more out of it than you put in, it's free.

City College in New York City used to be free. CCNY turned out Nobel laureates and creators of industry like Andy Grove, founder of Intel. You can read the biographies on the Nobel prize web site of people who say that they never could have afforded to go to college if CCNY weren't free.

CCNY was a meritocracy. You got in because you made the grade. That's different from a free market, where you get in because your father is rich (like George W. Bush).

I don't think you know what the word "free" means. Most native speakers of English know what the word "free" means, because they are familiar with "free" education and "free" libraries, which is where a lot of them spent their childhood.

I think there must be a script going around to search message boards for the text "free", and post a reply, "It's not free! They pay for it in taxes!"

People in functioning democracies realize that there are some services that the government can provide more cheaply than the "free" market. Education is one of them. The market is always more expensive. You can pay $10,000 in taxes or $20,000 in the marketplace for a year of school. There is no developed country in the world that doesn't provide free education for its population.

In the presidential election, Bernie Sanders is the one candidate who says that college should be free (as it is in Europe), and that students should be able to discharge their current loans. Sanders went to Brooklyn College, which was free at that time (and graduated a few Nobel laureates too).

So if you want free college for yourself and your children, and you want to get rid of your college debts, vote for Bernie. If like Mitch Romney your father's rich, then vote for Hillary or the Repugnicans.

It's also possible that your father is rich, but you want to see free college education for everyone because it's right, or because it's good for the country.

Hersh's original article ("The Killing of Osama bin Laden") is plenty credible and the main points are backed up by numerous other sources. Some of the finer details have yet to be confirmed and I can't say about his later musings.

No, it really isn't.

It's based on one source. the source added one true fact to the story (there was apparently a walk-in involved), and the rest is all fanciful BS that only a Film Major would take seriously.

For example, let's say you're Pakistan. you control Osama because he's constantly surrounded by men with guns. Your men with guns. Why the fuck do you bother bringing in a SEAL team to kill his ass? You can shoot him and feed his corpse to the pigs. You can cart him to the mountains, give the CIA an "anonymous tip," and then slip him a sleeping pill while the SEALs are on thew way so your troops can get away. You do not actually need to create a major assassination operation five fucking minutes from your military Academy, which will convince the entire fucking world your military is dumber then two sacks of shit for not noticing Bin Laden.

Hell, why involve some poor Doctor whose just trying to vaccinate your kids against a deadly disease? Seriously, the scenario that played out was pretty much guaranteed to convince half the damn country not to vaccinate their kids for polio, which means that it sickened hundreds of Pakistani kids. And Hersh is claiming the whole damn thing Pakistan's idea.

If Pakistan were run by people who have the common sense of a goat, they would not have involved themselves in this operation. It made hundreds of innocent Pakistani children seriously ill, humiliated the Pakistani Defense Establishment is worthless, risked blowing up a huge section of a fairly important Pakistani City, and there's absolutely no pay-off for them.

Which in turn means that unless the source is impeccable no sane person will take it seriously. the source isn't impeccable. the source is a member of the aforementioned Pakistani Defense Establishment, and he benefits if people believe that it was all their idea because otherwise they're laughingstocks.

> It's more Mob rule on a national scale.

Yes, it's called government. This sentence conveys no useful information. Are you saying Pakistan is an ochlocracy?

Yes.

You wanna know what happened to the attempted assassins of Malala after they got sentenced to 25 years? Eight of the ten walked out of prison. The Pakistani Justice system claims the Prosecutor was lying when he said that all 10 had been convicted, and 8 got acquitted, but that's a rather odd thing for a Prosecutor to lie about. And it's quite strange that 8 Taliban gunmen, admitted members of a movement that seeks to overthrow the government by violence, got to walk out of Court.

Unless the government is too weak to a) admit that 80% of the defendants got off, b) keep all 10 in prison.

> If Pakistani Intelligence knew bin Laden was there then they can claim to be a real country.

Pakistan isn't a real country?

In the legal, formal sense? Yes.

In the sense that it actually controls it's territory? Hell no. There are active rebellions in most of it's landmass, residents of seven of the eight state-level government will identify themselves as Sindhi/Balochi/etc. before saying Pakistani, the supposedly secular government tries to support Islamist rebels in Kashmir (because part of Kashmir is run by India) while fighting an Islamist rebellion in it's Pashto areas, and appeasing Islamists in other regions by occasionally letting them lynch some random illiterate Christian whose equally illiterate Islamic neighbors swear he said bad things about Muhammed, etc.

It's a step above Somalia, but the step is damn short.

Also widely known of in recent history. A lot of Ethiopean Jews were evacuated to Israel after the state's post WWII formation. Unfortunately, they still experienced many similar difficulties with life in a different culture to black people in America, with widespread racism and discrimination despite being a faithful part of the most persecuted religion, and being brought to its centre to save them from persecution elsewhere.

Where do you live that gives free healthcare and housing to homeless people? Around these parts we do what most American cities do - shuffle them further and further away from the services they need access to, because the people who live in the area and aren't homeless don't want to be able to see them suffer.

Probably GP is just rattling your chain. Either that, or he/she lives elsewhere, perhaps in Canada or Europe.

Incidentally, did you know that it's possible for Americans to study in Germany, and for free (apart from transport to/from Europe). Technical subjects tend to be taught in English, and German is not such a bother to learn, for social purposes.

The second one is being built and basically mothballed right away because the contract was set up so that it was cheaper to do this than to cancel building it.

That old news was overcome by events over half a year ago. Prince of Wales is not going to be mothballed at infancy after all. 2014 September 5: "The Royal Navy's second new aircraft carrier, the Prince of Wales, is to be brought into service rather than sold off or mothballed, Prime Minister David Cameron has announced. ... Both carriers will not be fully operational until 2023, the Ministry of Defence said."

Jeeze, struggling to no more than the third and fourth sentences of Wikipedia would have told you that.

The Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier program has been beset with enough heavy weather without having to cite obsolete information.

Hm. Predict again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

"...hurricane-force winds and rough seas in London"

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-297...

"The woman died in central London..."

Most of Hollywood's revenues comes from abroad. And it's like that for most big corps - that's one of the reasons why corporate profits are at a peak and there are still 8.5 million people unemployed or underemployed and wages have stagnated. For the average American, the pie isn't growing and is being sliced into ever tinier slices.

The problem with this is your child, who is turning 2 years old, while qualifying to be capable of capturing a flying unicorn, is physically incapable of doing so.

The flying unicorn, upon delivery to your home, would just fly off, since neither you nor your spouse meet the capture requirements (a) and your child is too young to control such a majestic and powerful animal.

(a) This is an assumption given you have procreated. You could be a sawfish for all I know, but that would make riding a flying unicorn very difficult.

Sawfish Link (virgin fish can reproduce):
http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc...

Well you can listen to the Dutch and the BBC about a little thing called a Russian Buk missile system with photos that was seen in that area of the crash. A Buk isn't a simple system. It's very sophisticated and it takes months to learn how to use it so it's doubtful that it didn't have a Russian crew with it; or maybe that's why the 777 was accidentally shot down by it because of incompetence either way it's linked into the investigation. Of course blaming the Ukranians is of course the easy thing but here's a couple of links out there.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...

Well you can listen to the Dutch and the BBC about a little thing called a Russian Buk missile system with photos that was seen in that area of the crash. A Buk isn't a simple system. It's very sophisticated and it takes months to learn how to use it so it's doubtful that it didn't have a Russian crew with it; or maybe that's why the 777 was accidentally shot down by it because of incompetence either way it's linked into the investigation. Of course blaming the Ukranians is of course the easy thing but here's a couple of links out there.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...

How France is [not yet] disposing of its nuclear waste - BBC News

Despite advanced schemes in Finland, not a single country worldwide has an operational underground repository.

50+ years of nuclear and still no waste storage.

Gas is not the best option. It may burn clean, but the process of extracting it is NOT clean.

The problem is that the contamination is much more diffuse/widespread, so you can't say "OMG LOOK THREE MILE ISLAND! BAD!" - even though TMI led to less negative health effects for the environment than gas drilling in just a single town (Dimock, PA).

Solar and wind won't be able to meet our needs for another few decades as we don't have sufficient energy storage technology to make them viable yet (Tesla's making great strides here, but one has to wonder - what might the hidden environmental costs here be? For example, the permanent magnet motors used in nearly all electric and hybrid vehicles use rare earth magnets - http://www.bbc.com/future/stor...

We need one more generation of nuclear to bridge the gap, using modernized reactors with improved safety. (Ideally, research into improved reactors/fuel cycles like the IFR wouldn't have been killed 2 decades ago and they'd be ready for construction now... If I recall one calculation, the IFR could've met our energy needs for 100 years using only the stockpiles of LWR waste we had in the mid-late 1990s.)

The fear of this sort of fiasco makes establishing the company in London instead far more attractive.

Your premise is flawed. Mandriva is kind of the opposite of a startup. From Wikipedia: "Mandriva, S.A. began as MandrakeSoft in 1998."

From the BBC:

The average lifespan of a company listed in the S&P 500 index of leading US companies has decreased by more than 50 years in the last century, from 67 years in the 1920s to just 15 years today, according to Professor Richard Foster from Yale University.

I don't have the relative numbers for the UK and France, but I suspect they're similar.

So as far as one study on public companies is concerned, Mandriva was slightly above average. It had a good run, but the world changed, and it wasn't able to keep up, and it died a death.

I saw this yesterday How did my dad's Uber account get hacked?

Here's a link to a BBC article where some doubts are also expressed on this being real.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-32828359/

Seriously? Let me know when they start rounding up dozens of people for no reason other than they believe in a different God and then they cut off their heads and post the video online. You fucking idiot, stupidity on the part of a few cops doesn't mean we're living under ISIS. Maybe you'd like to try living in the caliphate. Let me know and I'll buy the ticket if you promise to keep your ignorant fucking ass there.

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol... http://www.washingtonpost.com/... http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... https://books.google.com/books...

According to bbc, only 37% of the votes cast were for the tories. Blame the British first-past-the-post system for giving absolute majority to a party supported by only 37% of the voters.

This. Today Spain's Podemos won in local elections. Spain is often portrayed as an example of an austerity "win", but it seems the people do not agree. =)

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...

At least most of us are smart enough to wear a seatbelt and not get ejected from a vehicle.

Why this anonymous human being is modded down?

The two were thrown from their vehicle, police said. Media reports said the couple may not have been wearing seatbelts when they crashed. (source: BBC)

Or maybe the police will use it to blackmail/persecute people they don't like: http://www.theguardian.com/com...

I wouldn't trust the police to investigate any kind of sex related crime: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-328...

Bullshit.
http://www.bbc.com/news/259075...
http://www.spiegel.de/internat...

Did they really consult all of them?

wait, greece still has TV's?

Greece is a poor state with rich citizens - our per capita GNI PPP for 2013 based on World Bank is 25630, 38th richer from more than 200 states. source.

also, i hope their commentary goes something along the lines of, "this tragedy occurred on an actual functioning, profit-neutral rail line" because, you know, greeks probably have never encountered that scenario.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...

Well, Greece has a non profit-neutral but surely actual functioning rail line - i used it a month ago.

Perhaps we should: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-eng...

wait, greece still has TV's?

also, i hope their commentary goes something along the lines of, "this tragedy occurred on an actual functioning, profit-neutral rail line" because, you know, greeks probably have never encountered that scenario.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...

I don't have polling data, but it does pass the sniff test to assume that one form of magical thinking, inculcated from birth, would tend to make the personality more at-risk of accepting other magical-thinking proposals.

Well, there are some studies which suggest what you say is true, but there are other scientists and psychologists who have claimed that supernatural beliefs and superstitions are "hard-wired" into humanity. Many anthropologists have argued that some sort of supernatural beliefs were necessary for the foundation of complex societies, but there's disagreement about the exact role or types of beliefs and their effects.

On the other hand, regardless of upbringing, there seem to be specific psychological traits that are highly correlated with religiosity, such as lower intelligence or various personality traits. There have been literally hundreds of studies on this stuff, and your proposal that various superstitious thinking may be related to and/or substituting for religious thinking has been studied for close to 40 years.

There seem to be no clear answers and a lot of contradictory studies about whether paranormal/supernatural beliefs are basically innate or mostly affected by psychological traits or intelligence, or whether nurturing children affects those tendencies in significant ways.

The only thing I can say is that people have believed weird nonsense throughout history, and even if you expunge various myths and bogey men, people will find other weird nonsense to believe -- whether it's aliens or conspiracy theories or whatever. You can even look at demographic stats and polls for other countries -- participation in institutional religion is very low in Europe, and many countries have relatively high numbers there of people who are nominally atheists, but various other types of occult and superstitious elements are exceptionally popular.

Bottom line: decreasing religious indoctrination of youth may have some impact on overall belief in "magical thinking," but many people will still find various weird things to buy into as adults. Aside from natural cognitive tendencies of humans to "ascribe meaning" to random or natural phenomena and such, religion is historically about defining social groups as well as beliefs, and there's a lot of evidence that people will buy into all kinds of weird crap if it seems like the stuff that most of the people around them are into.

As a consumer, it's hard for me to understand why a CD that costs $1 to stamp and package, sells for $15, and gets the artist $0.10.

These number seem exaggerated. Here's the BBC's take on how 800 million pounds from CD sales are divided amongst the various players:

About 13% goes to the artists, while 30% goes to the label, with a 17% cut going to the government in the form of VAT (applied at 20% and therefore 1/6 of purchase price). About 17% goes to the retailer, while the rest goes to manufacturers (9%), distributors (8%) and the spend on administering copyright (6%).

The artist makes 1.04 pounds from an 8 pound CD.

You mean you DON'T want your refrigerator sending out spam?
http://www.bbc.com/news/techno...

In my experience the so called "10x Programmers" are excellent examples of the Dunning Kruger effect at work.

Their work is usually hacked together rubbish that is neither well tested and intractable.

Or we could be just go Japan's route:

Various reasons have been cited for the population decline, including:
- The rising cost of childbirth and child-raising
- The increasing number of women in the workforce
- The later average age of marriage
- The increasing number of unmarried people
- Changes in the housing environment and in social customs

Come to think of it, all those points could be from all the video games and porn. Hallelujah! The Internet solves ALL problems!

Also from the BBC: China says no to amateur weathermen: "You may not be able to control the weather - but you can control the forecasts.".

but it's the misogyny that is far, far more worse and embedded in social norms and power structures in jobs and schools,

Boys are killing themselves at 6 times the rate than in the 70's. Women dominate college enrollment and diploma earners. Furthermore, watch this, then tell me about "social norms". The fact that TFA is even being discussed shows that people actually do care about women, in fact, society is predisposed to rush to the aid of crying women. Prohibition was called for by some whiny puritan women, and they got it. You're a historical revisionist. Husbands used to go to jail for their wifes' crimes. Female serial killers were notoriously hard to prosecute thanks to the chivalry of male jurors and officials (see #6), and today men still serve longer sentences for the same crimes.

Here's a documentary about workplace sex differences from the most egalitarian country in the world. Researchers have found cross-culturally (thus not social norms) that the more egalitarian a country is, the more gender differences exist. This is likely because men and women are different and thus prefer different things (otherwise, reproduction wouldn't work); So, when you give them more freedom to decide what jobs they want they express their differences more. Humans are sexually dimorphic species, and it would be foolish to think that the same selection bias that created their very different bodies had no effect on one of the biggest and most complicated organs: Their brains.

Care to cite any facts? After 40 years of disproving social justice whiners I have mountains of evidence to back my claims. Here, have 286 studies that show women are as aggressive or more aggressive than men when it comes to domestic violence, but you won't hear any SJW advocating for Battered Men's homes, even though they're 40% of the victims of abuse, and the target of ~90% of all violent crimes, and make up over 80% of the homeless.

There are over 200 US government programs that exclusively benefit women, and few if any that benefit exclusively men (I couldn't find one). If you want to end sexism, why not have programs that grant assistance to any in need, regardless of race, creed or sex. I'm a poor white kid who grew up in the ghetto, and was beaten up regularly just for being white. My best friend was a black girl. I was every bit as disadvantaged as she, and she had government programs for housing and college available to her, I was excluded from assistance based on my sex and race. My skin and penis didn't win me any sympathy or "privilege". When I cried beaten bloody in the street no one came to my aid, but a startled women cried out at the site of me, men rushed to her aid.

You SJWs say that those who have privilege are blind to it. How ironic that in this gynocentric society, you would continue to be blind to the privileges afforded women, claiming that they are the most oppressed by sexism, meanwhile ignoring that any attempt to garner support for men's issues is typically met with contempt and loathing. Women are pandered to in everything from voting since women are the majority of voters and swing voters and women decide where ~70% of the nation's income is spent.

You want to talk about social norms? How about this: Men are disposed to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of women and children, and for the "privilege" of fulfilling such duty we get less empathy, less rights, less assistance, and a constantly whining bunch of idiots telling us how bad women still have it because they don't like doing the largel

Before Nixon "got us out" of Vietnam, he made sure the USA stayed in it.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...

This could be useful for US police force if they can adjust the algorithm to automatically hit black targets.

Florida would be the first in line to order them.

What about this?

http://www.bbc.com/news/health...

They say it was possible since the nick in the cord was clean (also not being 100% through helped I guess). I wonder if a severance of the spinal cord was done with surgical precision if the process here could be used.

According to the BBC. This wasn't a isolated incident from the accused trader. He has been using the tactic as late as April 6th of this year. He's made $40 million in the last 5 years. http://www.bbc.com/news/busine...

Actually, it's an oligarchy.

The summary says that Wikipedia does not have a mobile site. That isn't true. The BBC article linked from TFA actually says:

Sections of sites owned by the European Union, the BBC and Wikipedia currently fail the search giant's Mobile Friendly Test developer tool.

I just tested the Wikipedia mobile site with their tool and it says "Awesome! This page is mobile-friendly." However, if you feed it wikipedia.org instead of en.m.wikipedia.org it complains that the links are too close together, which is definitely not the case. Even the picture it shows of "How Googlebot sees the page" is quite clear.

More of the same:
http://www.bbc.com/news/educat...

It is just a republic on paper. In practice it's an oligarchy: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-...

It is neither a 'democracy' nor a republic. It is an oligarchy - in the technical sense: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-...