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So if no banks will loan Trump money, why would Russia or China take those loans? Surely they know its bad business.

Money laundering. Russia is a kleptocracy, all of those oligarchs need a way to get their money out of the country so they can spend it on stuff you can't buy in Russia. But the west has a range of anti-money laundering mechanisms that, while imperfect, are still a major obstacle. Turns out real-estate is so loosey-goosey that its a pretty good way to launder money.

There has been a ton of reporting on his association with money laundering. But it gets lost in the metric fuckton of other scandal and corruption stories. Here are just a couple of reports, from before and after the election:

FinCEN Fines Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort $10 Million for Significant and Long Standing Anti-Money Laundering Violations

Dirty money: Trump and the Kazakh connection
          — FT probe finds evidence a Trump venture has links to alleged laundering network

Donald Trump’s Worst Deal
          — The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

US election: Trump’s Russian riddle
          — The Republican nominee became the face of Bayrock, a developer with roots in the Soviet Union

So if no banks will loan Trump money, why would Russia or China take those loans? Surely they know its bad business.

Money laundering. Russia is a kleptocracy, all of those oligarchs need a way to get their money out of the country so they can spend it on stuff you can't buy in Russia. But the west has a range of anti-money laundering mechanisms that, while imperfect, are still a major obstacle. Turns out real-estate is so loosey-goosey that its a pretty good way to launder money.

There has been a ton of reporting on his association with money laundering. But it gets lost in the metric fuckton of other scandal and corruption stories. Here are just a couple of reports, from before and after the election:

FinCEN Fines Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort $10 Million for Significant and Long Standing Anti-Money Laundering Violations

Dirty money: Trump and the Kazakh connection
          — FT probe finds evidence a Trump venture has links to alleged laundering network

Donald Trump’s Worst Deal
          — The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

US election: Trump’s Russian riddle
          — The Republican nominee became the face of Bayrock, a developer with roots in the Soviet Union

Technically speaking, RT is based out of Moscow, and is a foreign corporation. The 1st Amendment rights of corporations is still a gray area, and Constitution protections for foreigners is still highly subjective and is still decided on a case-by-case basis. Even cases such as Citizens United really only touch on campaign contributions as a "form" of free speech, and contrary to popular belief, was pretty limited in the resultant decision. There have been many court cases that have decided that foreign nationals are not automatically covered under the Bill of Rights as these where meant for actual citizens of the US. Combining these factors together, this leads to the conclusion that RT would NOT be covered under any 1st Amendment rights.

As for the evidence of Russian involvement, there is proof. However, the actual "list" or whatever is currently still highly classified and not released into the general public yet. The real question is if the involvement was coordinated on the "state level", and was the Trump administration an active participant in said involvement or just a beneficiary. There is evidence of similar tampering in France; however Marcon's cyber team was prepared for this and may have actually done some preemptive "informational poisoning" to derail it.

People who can't see this trail are just keeping their heads buried in the sand; I blame it on something akin to the "beaten spouse syndrome". However, I don't think Clinton was a very good candidate either, and would have brought her own long list of issues with her. It's sad that out of 330 million people these two rose to "the top". We can do better than this; we MUST do better than this. Personally I advocate for replacing the House of Representatives with a proportional representation system to encourage the viability and formation of real third party choices. The US stands alone in having the meme "third party" due to the mathematical fact that our system only allows two sides due to our "winner take all" system. These sides often switch platforms, and absorb any emergent 3rd parties within a few election cycles.

Sources:
RT Network
Are foreign nationals covered under the Constitution?
Corporate personhood
First Amendment and “Foreign-Controlled” U.S. Corporations
Can US election hack be traced to Russia?
Putin: Patriotic Russians may be involved in hacking
The Macedonian Teens Who Mastered Fake News
Macedonia’s fake news industry sets sights on Europe
Russian Cyber Attack Repelled During French Elections
Proportional representation

The utility providers for all of BA's major operations centers in England are all on record as saying there were no power surges, anomalies, etc. This wasn't "we're unaware of...", they all went back over their logs and categorically denied it (seems like they weren't happy about BA trying to pin any bit of this sh*t show on them). As many have pointed out above and elsewhere, none of this passes the sniff test. BA's taking a beating for this, not just over stranding passengers but how they handled the stranded passengers. Many of their communications to passengers have failed to mention BA's obligations as well as refunds and options passengers are legally entitled to. They even had the nerve to point most people to their toll customer service line instead of their toll-free one, charging people 35 pence/min to sit on hold while they were trying to get their travel plans sorted out. Even nickel and diming low cost carriers (LCC's) like RyanAir aren't stupid enough to try something like that after a system-wide disruption.

The US System is not government run, it's government regulated, for now. Both links you included, don't show what you are claiming.

The US has two systems: public and private. Medicare/Medicaid are fully government run health insurance systems: the government collects the money, negotiates services, and pays out claims. It's places like Germany and Switzerland that have all-private systems with regulation, so the US actually already has a "more socialist" and more government run system than those countries. The difference is that countries like Germany and Switzerland do a better job at regulating their private systems than the US does at running its public systems.

The medicaid expansion you reference did not statistically improve the health of relatively healthy people, big surprise. It did give them better financial and mental health outcomes. I wouldn't call that a failure.

First of all, given that they are using statistical confidence, just by chance, you expect one in 20 variables to improve accidentally. Second, if you transfer large amounts of money from a population you don't measure to a population you do measure, of course, the financial well being of the population you measure is going to improve. So, that reasoning is b.s. And, regardless, it is trying to distract from the fundamental fact that the Oregon experiment failed to deliver the outcomes that expansion of public coverage was first and foremost supposed to deliver: better physical health outcomes.

The VA's patient load increased way faster then funding. [...] they just want it funded properly so it provides the services they were promised. It's certainly the least expensive way to provide those services.

Absolutely false. Veterans cared for through the VA cost even more per year on average than people covered in other ways. (The reason this gets obscured and people cite absurdly low per person figures for VA patients is because the VA only pays for about 1/3 of the medical costs of veterans; the rest is reimbursed by other carriers.)

You can see that American's have less doctor visits, they spend more without getting better treatment.

Correct. And single payer proposals do nothing to address this. Instead, what they propose is to simply extract even more money from American taxpayers and put it into the same broken system.

Now, from your your links:

In contrast, the U.S. devotes a relatively small share of its economy to social services, such as housing assistance, employment programs, disability benefits, and food security.

Actually, the US devotes a fairly average share of its economy to social services.

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/20...

But that is the wrong measure anyway; social services shouldn't be measured relative to the economy. The correct measure is the absolute amount per capita the US spends on social services, and that is near the top.

https://mises.org/blog/social-...

Finally, despite its heavy investment in health care, the U.S. sees poorer results on several key health outcome measures such as life expectancy and the prevalence of chronic conditions.

Correct. And that tells you that increased health care spending and coverage does not improve life expectancy or an increase in health. Much of US health care spending is the consequence of obesity, substance abuse, single parenthood, homelessness, and promiscuity, and increased healthcare is not effective in addressing any of those problems. In fact, we have natural experiments in the US: Asian Americans and Latinos have the highest life expectancies in th

https://www.ft.com/content/9b6...

UK already has exceeded 25% power generation from renewables
https://www.ft.com/content/30e...

China is moving to 25% renewable energy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

So the argument of the era of cheap energy is over doesn't really hold up.

The next issue will be clean air and unpolluted water and land.

fossil fuel subsidies dwarf anything solar gets so thats a non-starter some reading for you.
https://www.ft.com/content/fb2...
https://cleantechnica.com/2016...

'Furthermore the GPU design that replaces Imagination's designs will be, according to Imagination, "a separate, independent graphics design."'

Imagination does not acknowledge Apples claims, it actual fact Imagination says the exact opposite.

"Apple has not presented any evidence to substantiate its assertion that it will no longer require Imagination’s technology, without violating Imagination’s patents, intellectual property and confidential information"

Apple were also one time in talks to acquire Imagination's technology outright.

"From time to time, Apple talks with companies about potential acquisitions. We had some discussions with Imagination, but we do not plan to make an offer for the company at this time." March 2016

Well considering:
      - 49% of eligible Brits said 'no'
      - Another portion indicated they didn't really want to exit, and was using this as a protest vote
      - Brits outside of the UK for more than 15 years weren't allowed to vote
      - The younger portion of the population generally voted to stay (ref)
      - Financial institutions may move their HQs, with some having started (ref)
      - Airlines such as Easyjet will need to move their HQs to benefit from the European continent (ref)
      - This may be the trigger for Scotland to have another referendum (ref)

With the above I am wondering who will really be happy? Maybe those who were living in a bubble and reading tabloids? I am not saying the EU doesn't need some fixing, but being a non-team player may really hurt.

B. Irish is a race?

Ever since a court in the Netherlands ruled Moroccans to be a race.

Nerve agent VX used in Kim Jong Nam killing

- The growth is from expansion into China, not improved sales in the West.

China sells were down....
https://www.ft.com/content/474...

- The average spent on an iPhone went up by $4, which is less than inflation and...

As opposed to every other phone manufacturer who is seeing ASPs decline -- especially Samsung.

A lot of the sales were for the larger screen models, which are more expensive and which Apple was reluctant to do until other manufacturers proved there was a market for them

Every indication is that the difference between the price of the iPhone 7 and 7+ are greater than the difference in cost to make them. Apple has larger margins on the Plus models.

Sales of 128GB models are up, because no SD card for you

How is that a "deception"?

A lot of people are, this policy is going to be something that will start to draw companies back out of China on top. It's easy to see the reasoning as to why they're implementing this policy though. It's Trump.(or if you're not a FT sub you can read the synopsis here.) Not him, in itself, but the idea that a populist can rise through the ranks and throw the entire establishment on end. Hell China has banned anything to do with the US election, is requiring heavy censorship on all CN sites that have comments over the election as well. They absolutely don't want people in their own country getting any ideas that even in democracies that someone can seriously upset the power balance and doing the same there.

I do knot know what GP believes or knows, but one would have to be have been living under a rock for the past one and a half years not to know that the use of defeat devices is very widespread in the industry. Some reports and articles easily found with your favourite search engine:

The emissions test defeat device problem in Europe is not about VW
Dieselgate At GM? Defeat Devices Claimed To Be Found In Opel Cars
Test of Fiat diesel model shows irregular emissions: Bild am Sonntag
Report on France’s Renault emissions probe omitted crucial details
French government ordered to hand over full details of Renault emissions study
PSA Group Raided by French Fraud Office in Emissions Probe
Nissan faces suit over alleged emission fraud
#Dieselgate continues: new cheating techniques
RDW emission test programme - Results of indicative tests for the presence of an unauthorised defeat device
VW, Daimler, Nissan, Mitsubishi, GM: Can We Finally Agree That Dieselgate Is An Industry Problem?
Revealed: nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
Many car brands emit more pollution than Volkswagen, report finds

Defeat devices are hardly a recent phenomenon:
How Common Are EPA “Defeat Devices” In The Auto Industry?
Carmaker Cheating on Emissions Almost as Old as Pollution Tests

There are different ways to cheat, too:
`Shameful' Mitsubishi Fraud Risks Pushing Carmaker to Brink
This is the world now: Suzuki also admits to cheating on fuel-economy tests

It's not hard to find more. Pretty much every manufacturer cheats or has cheated in one way or another.

> I'm only one person, I don't have time to debunk all this nonsense you keep posting.

Feel free to stop.

You don't know it, because you're actually the conspiracy theorist kook on this site, but most of the fake news comes from you. Like, you know, when you tried to argue the PizzaGate scandal was real and so on, so you'll actually be solving the goal you profess to solve which is good.

What you're really saying is that you're getting worn out being the only guy willing to prop up fake news and conspiracy theories. That's really not a loss to most of us if you stop that though you know?

The only people that have killed off the tech angle are people like you that are more interested in implying political opponents are paedophiles than actually having a decent rational discussion. If it upsets you that the site isn't what it used to be then all you have to do is stop being one of the key causes of that.

We really really don't want you to keep defending fake news and the fact you call this widespread issue a conspiracy theory is astounding. What, you really think all those Moldovan and Macedonian kids who admitted they make a fortune peddling it are CGI or paid to say that or something? If they were then that would in itself mean it was fake news, hence destroying your argument of it being a mere conspiracy theory anyway:

https://www.ft.com/content/333...

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/wo...

http://en.publika.md/moldova-s...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

http://www.pri.org/stories/201...

http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11...

It doesn't matter what media left, or right, or what part of the world you look in - Serb or British, Macedonian or American, the problem is real. The fact you want to pretend fake news isn't real says all that needs to be said about you.

If you don't have time to keep trying to debunk the truth then you may want to consider that that's because the truth can't be debunked. You're fighting a battle you can't win, because you're fighting a battle against reality purely because you can't accept that you spent the last 6 months of your life riding Slashdot's ass to defend countless fake news stories and peddle them as fact. You were duped by a 16 year old Macedonian kid, so accept it and get the fuck on with your life if you can't cope with the pressure of trying to mask your own failings.

Potentially interesting context: Softbank owns Sprint. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that might well have a great deal to do with Apple's interest in Softbank...

Yeah. If this wee an investment in Softbank. But it's an investment in Softbank's new technology fund

Much more interesting is Trump's touting of this fond, considering 45% of the money comes from Saudi Arabia, and what he said about the Saudis during his campaign. But then, he has 3 guys from Goldman Sachs in his cabinet. He doesn't seem to care much about what he said during the campaign.

It is being run just like most dotbombs. A carefully managed charade to pump up values for the IPO so that vulture 'er' venture fun capitalists can cash in big time with the backing of "it's a great investment" banksters, whilst they privately bet on the side it will fail. https://ftalphaville.ft.com/20.... How has it managed to convince investors, it hasn't, the banksters and culture 'er' venture capitalists did that, next they dump it, bet on loses and rake in the profits.

It's best we keep moving away from the nuclear industry. In Finland two new nuclear power plants are currently being built. The French state is desperately trying to get rid of its state-controlled nuclear company Areva and it seems plausible that the remains of Areva - company may not even be able finalize building of the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant.

Another (Russian) nuclear plant that is under construction is expected to produce more expensive MWh's than most of the competing energy sources. In practice, the some foolish buyers of Fennovoima nuclear power plant's energy have been committing into buying energy at a price of 50€/ MWh, while the other energy sources are clearly cheaper than that. Its quite likely that the Fennovoima's nuclear power plant never be producing any energy at a competitive price.

On the other hand, the price of solar keeps sinking 50% in a decade and it's already enough competitive with the prices of other energy sources. Development of high capacity solar energy storage solutions is much more needed than the new nuclear power plants.

- - - - -
7f1bb2f1a92eeda5b8d9d4e424da104bf2e74e75

Another uber troll without the facts https://ftalphaville.ft.com/20...

Not going to register with ft.com just to read an article with "taxi unicorns" in the title.

What I am is very much against the corrupt big city machine politics that created a system where you get a taxi "medallion" from the city through a corrupt good old boys network in order to be able to pick up passengers on the street in that city. That isn't about safety, that isn't about health, that isn't about any legitimate regulations or careful study of what level of taxi service meets the demand and provides an optimal transportation system. The medallion system is about political state control of a lucrative market in order to squeeze money out of it to feed the political machine. It is about the corporate deep state and the controlled violence that imposes the rule of men over the rule of law. That is what I am against... The mafia like control that the Democratic Party (and sometimes the Republican Party) exercises in the big cities and the taxi protection racket is a racket.

I couldn't give a damn about Uber or Lyft or whatever. People can drive for or use whatever service they want.

You mean facts like this: Uber had GAAP losses of $2 billion on revenue of $1.4 billion, a negative 143% profit margin. https://ftalphaville.ft.com/20...

Another uber troll without the facts https://ftalphaville.ft.com/20...

And yet Uber has been losing $2 billion dollars on revenue of $1.4 billion. That's a a negative 143% profit margin. Good luck with that. https://ftalphaville.ft.com/20...

Right, but a small mention of "Entire family wiped out in car crash" pales in comparison to the news coverage that a Tesla just scraped a parked car .

This shows the the level of media attention does not correlate to the appropriate levels of concern. Just like the terrorist attacks. Tobacco companies kill far more Americans than terrorists. Do not ramble on on the argument that smokers choose to risk their health and life, I'm talking about second hand smoke.

Tesla's autopilot will save many lives on the motor ways. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be statistically better than you or I. Even though this technology is in its infancy, it is already a better than you are, statistically.

The jobs aren't going away because people here are being replaced by better technology, the jobs are going away here because people are being replaced by workers in other countries who can work for less.

One is not mutually exclusive of the other. It's not exactly a golden age in emerging economies either.

Continuing high rates of unemployment worldwide and chronic vulnerable employment in many emerging and developing economies are still deeply affecting the world of work, warns a new ILO report.

In fact, some companies are insourcing back to the first world because of robotics. There won't be many jobs to go along with it though:

the two new factories (the other will be in the US) will produce about 1m [shoes] (...) The new Adidas factory will have about 160 staff, a fraction of the number required to make the same number of shoes in Asia.

So 160 people to produce 500.000 shoes if that was 1m total, double that if it was 1m each. That's thousands of shoes per employee per year. I just checked one of the bigger online banks here in Norway, 310 employees and 380,000 customers that's more than a thousand per employee. And we're constantly improving the systems to do more with less. For a long time getting more people into the economy has been driving it, like adding another ground level to the pyramid makes it taller.

I'm not so sure that it will always be that way, at some point we might run into other resource limitations and having less people means there's actually more for each because robots do the work but like you need land to grow food, so the more people the more land you need. The more people, the more waste, the more pollution, the more housing, the more traffic and so on. If you think really far into the the future maybe it's better to have fewer humans and a large robot staff to support them.

Of course I'm not doing to ask anyone to give up on the right to have kids, but many countries in Europe are below replacement numbers and maybe then it wouldn't be such a big deal.

I find it offensive that the submitter and editors emphasized that the software is made in Serbia and highlighted it in the title. They could have said "outside USA" but I guess when you say "Serbia" it sounds a lot more serious. Looking at some of the posts here I see that for some of you it actually does.

Crooked software is made in many countries. Perhaps the choice of the company wasn't really based on where the company was based but the quality of service. There are many excellent software companies in Serbia. Just check this out. And this, and this...

I get the point that voting software is too sensitive to be outsourced but if you're going to outsource it then software company based in Serbia is probably one of the better choices.

Ms. Holmes said in a statement: "We will return our undivided attention to our miniLab platform. Our ultimate goal is to commercialize miniaturized, automated laboratories capable of small-volume sample testing, with an emphasis on vulnerable patient populations, including oncology, pediatrics, and intensive care."

What the fuck is Holmes still CEO? http://www.zerohedge.com/news/... http://www.vanityfair.com/news...

What the fuck is wrong with investors? Well like you and me we have no say what we "invest" in. Instead banks and insurance fund managers decide for us. It's not their money. They don't care. You probably have some of your savings indirectly invested in Teranos and don't even know it, and even if you do too much work to withdraw it and transfer it to an equally incompetent fund across the street. So this shit keeps happening.

I have no doubt that the EU will be hypocrits with regards to applying their own policies and their judgement of others. Hopefully the WTO will sort this out. But still, IMO that is irrelevant for the Apple case. Just like in the US you can't complain that the government has no business prosecuting X because unrelated person or company Y in a different case got away with it too, or that it's ok if you bribe a US government official because the US government bribed government officials of other countries. As for the proof something was available to some companies but not others, I think the European Commission will not find it too difficult to prove it. They can just subpoena all the tax rulings the Irish tax office has made in the past decade or so. They have made similar demands of many member states in the past. Example: https://www.ft.com/content/6fc...

In the year 2016, a disturbing amount of human activity is run through Excel instead of proper databases.

A similar study from 2009 tested for errors in various operational spreadsheets and concluded, "Our results confirm the general belief among those who have studied spreadsheets that errors are commonplace." The Financial Times commented on the prevalence of spreadsheet errors in business, saying it's probably a function of training and organizational culture.

I've heard from a few salespeople in the software industry that their biggest competitor in the SMB space isn't $BigCRMCorp, but Excel spreadsheets that have acreted over the years.

This absolutely doesn't surprise me. The concept of thinking about where one's data lives is nearly extinct outside of technical circles, and even Access is seen as "too complicated" by a lot of people. The utility of third normal form is obvious to us, but lots of people are perfectly served with pivot tables. How many people receive formal training in any form of database anymore? Even lots of web designers who use MySQL on the back end of their CMS software don't do a whole lot in PHPMyAdmin unless they have to.

Excel is very simple, ubiquitous, and has a low ceiling of functionality. It's the lowest common denominator, and unfortunately, it's "good enough" for lots of people.

In the year 2016, a disturbing amount of human activity is run through Excel instead of proper databases.

A similar study from 2009 tested for errors in various operational spreadsheets and concluded, "Our results confirm the general belief among those who have studied spreadsheets that errors are commonplace." The Financial Times commented on the prevalence of spreadsheet errors in business, saying it's probably a function of training and organizational culture.

I've heard from a few salespeople in the software industry that their biggest competitor in the SMB space isn't $BigCRMCorp, but Excel spreadsheets that have acreted over the years.

A more assertive US? From the guy who wants the US to leave Ukraine to Russia, and overrode the Republican party on the platform issue? Stating that he wants to give Putin a free hand in Syria? Insists that there's no evidence that he kills journalists, political opponents and invades countries? The guy who's exchanged repeated back-and-forth praise with Putin on the campaign trail, with fawning language like "It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond" and "a very bright and strong leader"... so much of a bromance that people in Eastern Europe have started painting murals? Are you talking about the same Donald Trump here?

Trump said nothing about leaving Ukraine to Russia. On NATO, he has demanded that if US troops are to still be in Europe decades after the Cold War, then Europe needs to pay its fair share. That doesn't mean that he'll sign off to Russia everything Putin wants.

Trump is right on Syria, however. The policy of the US State Department, as well as the EU/NATO has been to pretend that nothing has changed since 1991. But since 9/11, Islam has clearly replaced Communism as the ideological threat to the West, and Trump's suggesting a partnership with Moscow reflects a recognition of that simple fact. Russia has been busy since 1991 fighting the Chechens, and other potential Muslim secessionist groups. The policy of the Bushes and Clintons and Obamas was to support these Jihadi campaigns against Moscow. Trump recognizes that Jihadi victories anywhere represent Jihadi victories everywhere, and is reversing policy on that. He doesn't have to endorse Russian incursions into the Donbass, but he is doing well by encouraging Putin to accept the US as a partner, instead of countries like Iran.

Another point: NATO is as outdated today as the League of Nations was after WWII. NATO existed for the explicit purpose of stopping a Communist conquest of all of Europe. That threat has ceased to exist since 1992. However, since 2001, there has been an Islamic threat to the rest of the world, and NATO, the way it currently exists, has Turkey as a member, while considering Russia as an adversary. But Russia is not out there backing an Islamic takeover of any place in the world. Turkey is, and under Erdogan, has been busy rediscovering its Turkic Islamic roots. They've been the gateway for Jihadis from the world over to go to Raqqa via Gaziantep to join ISIS. Any organization that includes Turkey but excludes Russia is completely anachronistic, and stuck in the 80s. If Trump is the only one who recognizes that Muslims are the enemy, all power to him!!!

A more assertive US? From the guy who wants the US to leave Ukraine to Russia, and overrode the Republican party on the platform issue? Stating that he wants to give Putin a free hand in Syria? Insists that there's no evidence that he kills journalists, political opponents and invades countries? The guy who's exchanged repeated back-and-forth praise with Putin on the campaign trail, with fawning language like "It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond" and "a very bright and strong leader"... so much of a bromance that people in Eastern Europe have started painting murals? Are you talking about the same Donald Trump here?

How about some real statistics for a change ?

1- Unemployment in the tech sector is very small.. The unemployment rate in the tech sector is 2.5%. Whole classes unemployed ? who are you kidding? Show us the numbers.
2- The tech sector is tiny. Excluding Manufacturing and Telecom, the tech sector represents 2% of the workforce. No surprise the politicians don't care much about it.

"Trump would be a disaster for innovation," wrote 145 technology leaders in an open letter

In the UK, Michael Gove, an Oxford graduate, Times journalist, Cabinet minister and leading campaigner to leave the EU, said recently, âoepeople in this country have had enough of expertsâ.

His side of course won (though he personally hasn't, now being out of government) and that is the constituency Trump appeals to, one which no longer trusts rationality and expertise and is often, sad to say, receptive to any old rubbish as long as it's simple, appealing and delivered with conviction.

Who can blame them? They're told each time, "Experts say vote for me and everything will be great", only to find that decades on, they're no better off, their town has become slightly more crappy and their kids can't find jobs.

It's hard to say what Trump himself believes in; so far it looks like Trump and money.

Exactly, the EU zone has only been beneficial to business

Yes, an open market is the best possible condition for creating jobs. That's what anyone with a basic competence in economy says, so there must be some truth in it.

and the Soviet Bloc countries (business moving there for cheap labor and eventually even further east was the whole objective for the forming of the EU). Before the EU and even now, similar business-friendly arrangements have been made amongst European and even Asian countries without any EU government involvement.

So the EU is evil, but also the EU doesn't matter, because rich people will move their businesses to China anyway?

The EU and later on the Euro destroyed the sovereignty of individual nations (now only nations by name only for traditions' sake),

People elect both their local governments and the European parliament. Their local governments nominate the European government and it also has to be approved by the European parliament. And that government has very limited powers to begin with. The EU didn't destroy our sovereignty any more than the administrator of a condominium destroys the flat owners' ownership.

Of course, if member states send into the EU institutions their worst politicians who failed at home, it's a problem. But hardly a fault of the EU.

the Brits were at least smart enough to maintain some of their distance when the Euro came along.

The Brits have, among other things, a religious leader as unelected, unreplaceable Head of State and Lord Spirituals sitting alongside elected members of the Parliament. To each his own.

The EU socialized the losses of its members on a continental scale (Greece etc) while the affluent Western Europe had their middle class evaporate to pay for it and many of those countries (Netherlands, Belgium and France) will soon follow the UK.

The EU budget accounts for 1% of the total taxes paid by European citizens, how can one see its wealth evaporate because of a fluctuation of up to 1% in his expenses? It's globalization what hit the middle class; it has allowed us to pay less for iPhones without automatically giving us back a way to pay for food and housing. But I can hardly see how being a smaller country in the global maket can help fight that.

Plus, this whole "the North paying for the South" subtly racist propaganda is toxic. Britain was the poorest among the big nations when it joined the EEC. Currently, it is France, Italy and Spain who pay for the British rebate and not the other way around.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fe7e...

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

http://top500.org/news/china-t...

http://www.theverge.com/2016/6...

http://www.netlib.org/utk/peop...

Or my (rejected) submission at https://slashdot.org/submissio...

Sounds like you invested in them, financially if not emotionally. 10 secs of searching shows they're under federal investigation for fraud, and have themselves invalidated 2 years of tests basically admitting it was all bogus.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/1...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/08b1...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...

Gotta fix this for you:
Facebook kills clickbait with one simple tweak! Number 6 will blow your mind!

Really though, the clickbait industry is going into a death phase and has been since last year, and with any luck it'll kill the sites. Advertising revenue is drying up, people aren't going to the sites. Some sites have been bleeding views and uniques others have simply stalled and/or entering serious declines (article paywalled)like Buzzfeed which has lost ~32% of it's traffic since last year.. Vice for example has bled ~18% of it's traffic. Huffpo? Laying off. Salon? Laying off. Even sites like Cracked, bleeding traffic and was sold off earlier this year. Lots of stories, lots of sties besides those that live and breath on clickbait are dying. Other publications(like media) that are pushing very specific agendas, are also suffering heavily as people turn away.

Because competition and capital expenditures are unique to this industry

Keep in mind that in every market where Google introduced competition, the incumbent monopoly immediately cut prices and improved services, indicating that they've had this capability for some time but did not need to exercise it without competition. Assuming they didn't just cut their CEO a massive bonus check every quarter, they likely have significant cash reserves to cover the expense of a protracted battle: AT&T ended 2015 with 5 Billion in cash and short term investments, up from 2014, Comcast ended 2015 with 2.4 Billion well down from 2014.

Sadly Alphabet is grouping Google Fiber with all of their "other bets" like Nest and that failed robotics project they dumped. "Other Bets" operating loss was 3.5 Billion dollars last year, but there's no way to know how much of that was Google Fiber.

Do you invest Billions of dollars in companies planning to lose it? Do you have some other explanation for why "this time it's different"?

Good thing you're not in finance

Good thing you are, then. Someone's gotta tell people not to ask what happens after the next quarterly report, those pump and dump scams don't pump themselves.

Because competition and capital expenditures are unique to this industry

Keep in mind that in every market where Google introduced competition, the incumbent monopoly immediately cut prices and improved services, indicating that they've had this capability for some time but did not need to exercise it without competition. Assuming they didn't just cut their CEO a massive bonus check every quarter, they likely have significant cash reserves to cover the expense of a protracted battle: AT&T ended 2015 with 5 Billion in cash and short term investments, up from 2014, Comcast ended 2015 with 2.4 Billion well down from 2014.

Sadly Alphabet is grouping Google Fiber with all of their "other bets" like Nest and that failed robotics project they dumped. "Other Bets" operating loss was 3.5 Billion dollars last year, but there's no way to know how much of that was Google Fiber.

Do you invest Billions of dollars in companies planning to lose it? Do you have some other explanation for why "this time it's different"?

Good thing you're not in finance

Good thing you are, then. Someone's gotta tell people not to ask what happens after the next quarterly report, those pump and dump scams don't pump themselves.

Oil sales in Iraq and Syria from wells they've taken over. Here's a good link, wikipedia also has some info.

Meanwhile...

https://next.ft.com/content/39...
http://bfy.tw/4qlU

Microsoft may be behind Apple, but Bill Gates isn't.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/3559...

Can't say I'm a fan of his rationale, he of all people should know better.

He's refuting he said that he supports the FBI.

He has very slightly backed off, claims that people have misinterpreted his position:
(see the "update:" in this gizmodo article: http://gizmodo.com/bill-gates-... )

But here is Gates' actual quote from the Financial times article; what do you think-- was he misinterpreted?
  http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/3559...

“This is a specific case where the government is asking for access to information. They are not asking for some general thing, they are asking for a particular case,” Mr Gates told the Financial Times.

“It is no different than [the question of] should anybody ever have been able to tell the phone company to get information, should anybody be able to get at bank records. Let’s say the bank had tied a ribbon round the disk drive and said, ‘Don’t make me cut this ribbon because you’ll make me cut it many times’.”

Hi Nigel, why don't you make an account?

Just to bring some light in the darkness where you live, compare the currency fluctuations of the British Pound vs. the Euro and the US$.
You will find the UK economy to be not independent but mainly linked to the rest of Europe and hardly to the US.
http://markets.ft.com/research...
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote...

Their currency is manipulated. Their stock market has 2 books, one set you can see, the other you can't.

Unlike the West. LOL.

The west sells food that poisons humans. The west has no respect for personal property (unless you're a billionaire). They are poisoning their environment such that you can no longer catch a fish in the ocean whose belly isn't filled with plastic. Oh, and don't get me started on the censorship of western news media.

It was in the financial times and reuters and many others last october. not news.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0...

Posting as AC to preserve mods. There is an interview with Roland Fryer in this weekend's Financial Times http://click.email.ft.com/?qs=... (subscription needed). Roland Fryer is a black Harvard Professor who had cops point a gun at him 6 or 7 times during his youth and he is an economist using data to see what is actually going on.

His data shows that black people get pushed and shoved around much more than white people, all things being equal but when it comes ot killings, there is no difference, statistically speaking. The result is that lots of black people hate cops but cops get an unjustified rep for too much violence.

If cops would behave better in day-to-day life there would be less trouble when the chips are down. Karma.

Wikipedia admin accounts are bought and sold, and high end editors with more than X amount of edits get paid to post.

They get paid to edit and add bias, remove defaming info, add defaming info.

add SEO, by creating a "pseudo source" on a webserver that a webmaster wants to boost the pagerank on, they'll create a professional looking article with circular cited sources so you are in a long chain of sources that will eventually link back on itself.

these get cited often as source in articles when they are fake sources, just used to boost SEO on a website.

Here's just a few examples proving Wikipedia is useless, and only used to add/remove specific info, add bias that's not easily detected with logic fallacies, typical propaganda tricks.

Paying $1 per edit: http://www.blackhatworld.com/b...

Hiring a few different editors (various accounts from different ip's to look legit) to modify articles: http://www.blackhatworld.com/b...

Wikipedia admin selling services: http://www.blackhatworld.com/b...

Hiring editors to make edits: http://www.blackhatworld.com/b...

There's thousands of links on that one site, then other sites as well.

"Paid to write wikipedia articles" is supposed to be against the rules, but you can find thousands, most even include usernames, but wikipedia don't really give a shit. unless you are a new account of course, if a 1 day old account writes a really good article you get banned. The reason for banning is they accuse you of being a professional or paid writer since they think no brand new account can write a complete article including sources by themselves so the admin accounts are bought/traded/ even hired out as well as editors of all levels that have a successful history.

http://www.wizardsofwiki.com/h...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3f72...

Getting paid to edit wikipedia for leading companies:
http://www.businessinsider.com...

moral of story, never use wikipedia, it's all a facade of ads.
like southpark this past season, it's a "cloaked" ad. :P

After all, fully implementing all features and requirements/targets of COP21 would reduce the global temperature in the year 2100 by only 0.05 deg C. About 25% of the error tolerance for global temperature in the first place. Essentially, COP21 is a "feel good" agreement - it does nothing other than redistribute tens of trillions of dollars.