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From the New York Times:

"After Mr. Gruber helped the administration put together the basic principles of the proposal, the White House lent him to Capitol Hill to help Congressional staff members draft the specifics of the legislation."

Even Scalia believes you need to look at the law's construct (in constrast to the architect's personal opinions):

Who said that we "must do our best, bearing in mind the fundamental canon of statutory construction that the words of a statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme"? Why, it was Justice Scalia (actually quoting an earlier opinion by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor) in a decision just a year ago.

And who said that "a provision that may seem ambiguous in isolation is often clarified by the remainder of the statutory scheme" because "only one of the permissible meanings produces a substantive effect that is compatible with the rest of the law"? Why, Justice Scalia again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06...

There isn't a great deal of difference to me between a government or a multitude of corporations making themselves privy to an increasing share of our personal lives

Actually, the difference is vast: for a corporation to compel either you or another corporation to reveal any data, it has to win legal case — or, a least, convince a judge to issue a subpoena. The government has been gradually lowering this bar for itself over the years — recall the "National Security Letters" (and how easy they are for the government to obtain).

And that's when it bothers with the legal process at all — often it can simply just bust in and take your stuff (without warrant), seize any property on mere accusation of it being used in a crime, and confiscate bank accounts without even an accusation, only suspicion , or, as was the case with Reason.com, demand your "voluntary" cooperation or else...

But my point was not, that the government ought not to investigate legitimate threats against judges and public officials — even hard-core Libertarians would agree, that this is, actually, a proper role of the government. The point is, this particular investigation was patently illegitimate — the "threats" were bogus and hyperbolic and DoJ could not possible have hoped to ever win a conviction.

Their intention was to simply harass the dissenters by hitting them with subpoenas and giving them threatening "talking-tos". The prosecution, in other words, was malicious. That's the disgusting part.

The aspects of Libertarianism that relate to being largely left alone to pursue our lives appeal to me [...] The eagerness of Libertarians to remove regulations on corporate behavior

But there is no difference! What's good for the goose, is good for the chicken as well:

• If a corporation can not discriminate on race or age in hiring a secretary, then you can not discriminate on same in hiring a babysitter.
• If a corporation's employees can vote to obligate their employer to only hire from the same union they just joined, by what logic should your local supermarket be unable to vote itself into becoming the sole legal source of groceries for you?
• If a strip-club can not turn away a transgender entertainer, then you can not be averting your eyes from "her" either — and it would be manifestly bigoted of you to not stick your dollar-bills right next to "her" penis.

Even more obvious examples abound. For example, the EPA considers any billabong in the US to be under its control and protection — so both private citizens and corporations alike now need a Federal Government's approval to build anything on their property, if it happens to have a lake, a stream, or a swamp, however small...

The people who would lose their insurance are more likely to be white, employed, from the South and high school graduates.

So you don't contest that there were three prosecutors, two of which thought that the charges should be investigated, and now the attempt is actually being made? That's a start.

Many people will jettison logic and equality before the law to defend Assange.

Sweden has a long history of independence with regard to the US and the Soviet Union (and now Russia). Calling Sweden a "lapdog" of the United States is ludicrous. Sweden declined US requests to extradite deserters during and after Vietnam, for example. Almost 1,000 Americans fled there after desertion.

The few (what was it, 2?) that Sweden surrendered to the US for rendition we believed to be involved in terrorism, they were not known to be innocent. (A lie of yours?) Sweden is not inclined to support further renditions, and Assange isn't believed to be involved with terrorism. Or are you prepared to make a revelation about previously unknown links between Assange and ISIS or al Qaeda?

Assange is wanted in Sweden for crimes committed in Sweden. Suggestions that it would be easier to extradite him from Sweden where both the UK and Sweden would have to agree instead of just extraditing him from the UK where only the UK has to agree are sheer fantasy and a flimsy excuse for Assange not facing justice. It is as simple as that.

Sweden Angered By Julian Assange Fight, Says It Won't Extradite Him If He Faces Death Penalty

I've lived in the San Francisco area almost my entire life. In the SF area, the vicious cycle works like this:

1. Some progressive people live in an urban area, and they decide that they cannot stand urban areas, urban development, or tall buildings. They protest any construction, relentlessly, for decades. Any time anybody tries to build anything, the result is protests, lawsuits, and so on. This has been going on since about 1980. As a result, there was almost no housing development in this area for 3 decades despite steadily increasing population and prices. Granted, some construction started about 4 years ago, but it's WAY too late and not nearly enough. (Apparently, the same thing is happening in New York. The most preposterous example of this is people who've moved to Manhattan and decided that they can't stand tall buildings in Manhattan because tall buildings cast shadows).

2. When rents increase, those people who prevented housing construction decide to blame Google, blame Yahoo, and so on, not blame themselves. Remarkably, they start protesting the construction of housing again. I live in Oakland (just east of SF) and there have been protests against building new housing on EMPTY LOTS, during a housing shortage of critical proportions. People show up and start chanting "we want development without displacement!", as if displacement was caused by too much housing.

Recently I walked around the area south of market st, and saw that typical rents for a 1 bedroom are $6000-$7000 per month, and it's not a luxury area at all. Oakland is getting bad too, but not that bad yet. As a result, the progressive faction has now erupted into a fit of hysterical rage and they vomit on buses which transport tech workers to work.

segfaults are good, except:

a. when it's a mission critical system, and causes the system to hurt itself, break, etc... PLC's don't segfault, hence why they are preferred.
b. when no one is around to handle the segfault.

Segfaults only make sense for man-in-the-loop systems. Nothing else. Man-out-of-the-loop and you end up with a dead spacecraft (yes, they got luckly!).

A column in the New York Times today touched on this.

Traditional concern with broad distributional justice has given way to narrow movements like feminism, gay rights, black power and disability rights.

Collective action, where co-workers cooperated with each other as colleagues and allies, has given way to individualism and competition.

The result is greater inequality and more poverty.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06...
Why Don’t the Poor Rise Up?
Thomas B. Edsall
JUNE 24, 2015

1. Start your own computer consulting business.
2. Charge $50-$150 per hr, and collect all of it, rather than the paltry $20/hr or so equivalent you'd get as an employee with the employer skimming the rest.

As long as people want to take the "easy" way out and just be an employee so they don't have to deal with administrative tasks, there will be an excess supply of employees, and employers can get away with paying low wages and demanding excessive overtime. Finding clients on your own and doing your own accounting is a PITA, but the increase in your compensation far, far exceeds the pain.

Just be sure not to call yourself a computer consultant. Form your own corporation with at least one additional employee (spouse as secretary or buddy who also wants to do computer consulting), or work another job as an employee. Along with screwing computer professionals over with FLSA, Congress also screwed them over by making it impossible for them to work as independent consultants. You have to do it working for a company with 2+ employees, or do it part-time as a second job.

Just to concur, I also work at Google and the security is pretty incredible. They baked it into the RPC system (predating but similar to the publicly-available gRPC) so you don't even have to think about it - it just happens automatically and still doesn't get in the way (which is a remarkable achievement). I work pretty closely with one of the teams responsible for most of the user traffic, and they did some pretty heroic stuff to secure their part (which was some huge percentage of "all of it") in like a week.

Internally the sentiment in response to seeing our golden geese on the NSA slides was pretty much outrage and "explod[ing] in profanity" just about covers it. I think the higher ups were pretty outraged and frankly felt betrayed by their country, as Google's always cooperated with lawful, reasonable, and limited-in-scope requests, so to have them breaking in to dark fiber is pretty treacherous. I know I felt betrayed. (Some sense of the outrage can be seen in David Drummond's statement)

Google's actually pretty admirable from the inside. I wish we could publish more of what we do to protect user data, as without knowing it it's easy to be cynical. This video is worth watching, as far as legal requests go.

... challenged ourselves to remove barriers that prevent adults and children from enjoying our cereals ...

Should have thought of that a year ago.

New York Times, April 2014

When 'Liking' a Brand Online Voids the Right to Sue

Right now Europe is far more scared of the US going out of control than they are of Russia

You're absolutely right. That's why Europeans are asking that Russia predeploy heavy weapons in their territory in case of military actions.

RIGA, Latvia — In a significant move to deter possible Russian aggression in Europe, the Pentagon is poised to store battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 American troops in several Baltic and Eastern European countries, American and allied officials say.

The proposal, if approved, would represent the first time since the end of the Cold War that the United States has stationed heavy military equipment in the newer NATO member nations in Eastern Europe that had once been part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine have caused alarm and prompted new military planning in NATO capitals.

Uhh, something is backwards about this...

I doubt it, car sales are dropping, all over the developed world. More and more people are walking, riding bikes and talking public transport. In all the cities I have lived(Launceston, Brisbane, Melbourne and Shanghai) in bicycle use and infrastructure has increased while I was living there. Also there will be big changes when the self driving cars start going commercial, some of the above problems may be solved. Studies have proved that traffic jams are often caused by the inconsistent braking and acceleration of drivers. With self driving cars, they maintain a constant speed, and optimally brake and accelerate, thereby reducing congestion. Plus other interesting ideas could occur, such as sending your car home after dropping you off, or sharing cars, so that they are almost like taxi's, that arrive on time. All that parking space can be re-allocated to bike paths or more car lanes. see car sales drop. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01...

Your first link times out, and the second is completely irrelevant — it talks of income inequality, rather than of rewarding the "not caring" for others. Fail

I don't have to demonstrate it. Many peer reviewed papers have already demonstrated it.

There is, I'm sure, a special place in Hell for people claiming there being "many" papers/articles supporting their point without citing any.

In fact, we reward the most sociopathic with the greatest rewards.

You keep calling them "sociopathic" despite my demonstrating already, that the term does no apply... Seems like you are suffering from certain pathologies yourself.

Just look at the fallout from the 2008 financial collapse. The only people that made out were the ones that caused the collapse.

The people that caused the collapse were the Democratic lawmakers, who pressured Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into making it easier for people to take out loans they could not afford . The assholes didn't get any exceptional reward for their efforts and a more charitable person than myself may even claim, that they weren't assholes at all, but acted out of sheer (stupid) compassion towards the poor...

A reasonably well-governed society rewards people for doing something other people want — not for being sociopaths

We're not talking about a "reasonably well-governed society". We're talking about the post-Capitalist United States.

You haven't convinced me, rich people are disproportionally sociopathic. You did imply it, but offered no evidence.

Here's your evidence:

http://www.scientificamerican....

http://opinionator.blogs.nytim...

I have two sources for that. Neither side in this argument-trope is actually "lying" there are two very valid ways to count it:

In direct spending Obama actually outspends Romney: http://elections.nytimes.com/2...

But the metric you'll often hear is that Romney's "dark money superPACs outspent Obama 2:1" https://www.opensecrets.org/ou...

In any way I do the math, Romney had no more than a 20% total money footprint advantage. That wasn't enough to overcome his party's handicap. In that cycle he could not simultaneously please the grassroots TeaPartiers and his Wall Street pals and alienating either would have lost him the election quite assuredly. I don't intend to comment on whether he would have made a good president only that as a gamer, the one he was playing does not look winnable.

No, not everything where men currently dominate. Not mining, not oil rig work, not farming, not anything involving manual or dangerous labour.

There was actually a lawsuit a while ago about a company that wouldn't let women work in the car battery division. Because of the risk of lead getting into the workers' systems, and the effects of lead on a developing fetus, no woman of child-bearing age was allowed to work there, unless she had her tubes tied.

Of course, the job paid more than other areas, because the men and older women who worked there were exposing themselves to lead poisoning every day.

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03...

other stories of it: https://www.google.com/webhp?c...

Let me introduce you to Dale Akiki. Patently false accusations, including that he had sacrificed a giraffe in a church classroom during Sunday services, landed him in an extended court trial. He was eventually exonerated, but for a long stretch of the 1990s, everyone in San Diego knew he was a satanic pedophile.

An interesting article, thank you. It recounts a shameful period of American history, when people were convicted of child abuse based on manufactured evidence. However, I do not agree that "everyone in San Diego" believed that Dale Akiki was a satanic pedophile. My daughter was living in San Diego at the time, and I don't think she believed it. In fact, I would venture to guess that most people in San Diego who were even aware of the trial treated it as theatre.

Let me introduce you to Dale Akiki. Patently false accusations, including that he had sacrificed a giraffe in a church classroom during Sunday services, landed him in an extended court trial. He was eventually exonerated, but for a long stretch of the 1990s, everyone in San Diego knew he was a satanic pedophile.

And nobody else donates based on Cuba policy.

Sure they do. Here is just one, there are many others. They have been calling for opening cuba for quite a while now. Rumor was it was going to happen in 2009 but Cuba arrested and USAID worker delivering communications equipment.

http://farmfutures.com/story-g...

And there is a lot of money involved in there too. Corporate farming spends a lot of money on politics and cargill is one of them.

Dude, you remember ACTA? How Obama said "I don't need to get this ratified because it's already enacted in statutes?"

Same thing applies. There's no statute sending you to jail now for violating copyright then a treaty agreeing to send you to jail for violating copyright is a dead letter until Congress passes a statute.

And you do not think that would happen if they pass the treaty? In fact, the treaty would be law of the land, they would have to. The DMCA was the result of the WTP and WPPT treaties passed. It's also why so many other countries are trying to pass DMCA style laws that get shot down all the time. Their treaty obligations require it.

And posts like this are another reason I think the EFF is great in theory, but stupid in practice. People go to their website, read a comprehensive description of the issue, and come away spouting obvious nonsense..

You can bury you head in the sand all you want, it will not make things different. The EFF is not the only source for this crap, hell, even slashdot have articles posted on it.

And how could we have stayed in?

lol.. by not demanding rediculous concessions that removed their sovereignty and walking away from negotiations when they were baulked at. The Iraqis were willing to renew the bush era SOFA agreement but Obama and team decided that wasn't good enough. He had to put his own brand of stink on it.

Bush recognized them as sovereign with a Parliamentary system. Their PM wanted us out. What was Obama supposed to do? Magic psychic powers?

Leon Panneta seems to think Obama through Iraq under the bus. Iraq's PM did say that exempting US soldiers from Iraqi law was something parliament had to debate and approve, and guess what, they did just that. But Obama kept pushing for more and they couldn't do it in time. This has been discussed to death and the consensus to anyone paying attention is we got out and abandoned Iraq for Obama's political promises. But it's even worse, Obama wanted to distance the US from Iraq so much, he even ignored pleas for airstrikes on ISIS.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06...

At least Obama's failed wars cost less then $1 Trillion, he didn't tank the economy, and his domestic policy got us universal health care.

Yes, the slowest recovery on record and most economist agree that Obama's policies was part of that. Your right, he didn't spend 1 trillion in wars, he thinks leading from behind- so far behind that even people in his own party questions his leadership, is the right thing to do. You see the hell hole the world is in today because of it. The Ukraine was invaded, Iran is about to get nukes and we are mentally masturbating over giving them the abilities to do so while the secretary of state is breaking his legs fucking off at the meetings. ISIS has almost taken over Iraq, Israel doesn't trust us, Turkey is starting an arms race because they do not think NATO will aid them if ISIS makes it past the their borders, Libya is a hell hole that Hillary thought would be a great accomplishment- you know, overthrowing a dictator who already surrendered his WMDs to Bush and red lin

Please move to Texas. When a fertilizer plant explodes in your neighborhood, wipes out the volunteer fire department and burns down half the town, you will appreciate why California has taxes and regulations.

From the article: "But Texas has also had the nation's highest number of workplace fatalities - more than 400 annually - for much of the past decade. Fires and explosions at Texas' more than 1,300 chemical and industrial plants have cost as much in property damage as those in all the other states combined for the five years ending in May 2012."

I was actually in Texas when that happened. I float back and forth between Austin and San Jose... But you're missing my point: There are multiple tech hubs, and some have significantly different lifestyles and costs of living. You can "do a startup" in Austin, or Portland, or Seattle, or even Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Austin and San Jose are kind of the opposite ends of the shelf. Austin housing is starting to catch up after 10+ years of stagnation... The Bay Area has finally recovered from the '08 crash.

You've identified one of the problems in Texas, and assumed it's entirely regulatory in nature (hint: cows are dangerous). But you can't just ignore the glaring problem that there are no politicians in the California legislature that have more than a few years of skin in the game due to term limits. They don't care about long term solutions, because they won't be around to take credit for them, or even be around to take the blame. Hence the horrible commutes, and the CalPers mess... They just raise taxes to kick the can down the road, and you get things like $600/yr car registrations, and 13.9% income tax rates, and find yourself blowing $40 at McDonald’s for a couple Happy Meals, etc... Those things add up, but they're just money... What keeps driving me out is the traffic. Spending three to five hours a day in a car commuting keeps me from raising my kids, damages my health, and prevents me from participating in the community I live in.

Please move to Texas. When a fertilizer plant explodes in your neighborhood, wipes out the volunteer fire department and burns down half the town, you will appreciate why California has taxes and regulations.

From the article: "But Texas has also had the nation's highest number of workplace fatalities - more than 400 annually - for much of the past decade. Fires and explosions at Texas' more than 1,300 chemical and industrial plants have cost as much in property damage as those in all the other states combined for the five years ending in May 2012."

that Times has a news saying juuust the opposite. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06... I'd rather live in SV just to avoid extreme crowds and sky high prices in London.

So only multirotors are in the sights. What about Fixed Wing [airplanes/jets/etc], they can do pretty much the exact same thing as Multirotors [I REFUSE to call MRs Drones as drone kill people, no multirotor has so far killed anyone!] And what about Helicopters. Again can do the same as pretty much any Multirotor except they HAVE killed people and yet no mention of them.

The problem is not the technology, it's the idiots who go buy a DJI with 0 idea of what they are doing and lose control and fly in places they should not.

The media then plays on the fears of the average joe who doesn't know the difference between a "Drone" after seeing images like this
preditor drone and this Multirotor

I build multirotors for people all the time, I fly them all the time, and I have yet to hurt anyone or anything other than the multirotor itself.

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...

On May 31, 2004 Royal Bank Canada (unrelated) had a similar massive failure of a software upgrade. As a result none of their customers had transactions processed, and it took almost a week to fix and clear the backlog. Not only did this impact individuals banking with RBC, but if an employer's payroll was through RBC, none of their employees got paid. Mortgage payments, car payments and other bill payments were bouncing all over the place.

As far as where people bank, I'm surprised how many people willingly pay $5,$15, or $25 per month at a bank that they're only at because their parents set up a kids account there years ago. We have two free "virtual" banks in Canada: PC Financial, and Tangerine (formally ING) that are tangentially associated with a real bank (and you have free access to their ATM network): CIBC, and ScotiaBank respectively. They both have unlimited free debit, ATM(at their ATMs), online bill pay, etc. PCF even has unlimited free cheques.

The linked-to article from the CDC accounts for that. In Figure 3, you'll see the heavily skewed distribution of sugar-drink consumption. About 50% of the population (myself included), consumes zero on any given day, but it goes waaaaay up from there. The 178/103 cal value I used is the average, reported by the authors, across the entire population.

I would argue, however, that this does not change my math, since I'm talking averages. If half of the population isn't drinking any, the way to cut the average consumption in half is for those that are doing the drinking to have a commensurate decrease in their consumption. The ones most affected by drinking would also be most affected by cutting back. (As you have said.) While the half that isn't consuming these drinks would see no weight loss because of others' cutting back (although there's evidence to suggest that your own weight is influenced by the weight of your friends), the ones that are drinking would see more substantial weight loss (and boy do they need it).

Again, on average, the math works out in the way that I have described

Personally I don't like dietary studies all that much, because saying there's "a link between x and y" typically doesn't take a correct "all other things being equal" approach. For example, vegetarians LOVE to cite studies that show diets that include meat include all kinds of health problems, but none of them have created a control that keeps alcohol consumption, high sugar consumption, and smoking the same between all participants. Because vegetarians are less likely to do those things to begin with, the studies commonly show in their favor.

However because you asked for it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09...

That's very much a valid study because they seem to have done a proper control.

Many nutritionists and health authorities have “actively advised against” low-carbohydrate diets, said the lead author of the new study, Dr. Lydia A. Bazzano of the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. “It’s been thought that your saturated fat is, of course, going to increase, and then your cholesterol is going to go up,” she said. “And then bad things will happen in general.”

The new study showed that was not the case.

By the end of the yearlong trial, people in the low-carbohydrate group had lost about eight pounds more on average than those in the low-fat group. They had significantly greater reductions in body fat than the low-fat group, and improvements in lean muscle mass — even though neither group changed their levels of physical activity.

While the low-fat group did lose weight, they appeared to lose more muscle than fat.

“They actually lost lean muscle mass, which is a bad thing,” Dr. Mozaffarian said. “Your balance of lean mass versus fat mass is much more important than weight. And that’s a very important finding that shows why the low-carb, high-fat group did so metabolically well.”

Are you sure about that?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04...

Strange things are brewing.

The Metcalf sniper attack was a "sophisticated" assault on PG&E Corp's Metcalf Transmission Substation located outside of San Jose, California on April 16, 2013, in which gunmen fired on 17 electrical transformers. The attack resulted in over $15 million worth of damage.[1][2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08...

I guess it was a power substation, not a fiber optic link, but it was kind of in the same area.

But the food industry has a vested interest in feeding you crap:

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

If everyone ate fruits, veggies, and lean meat, then how can they sell you overpriced sugary crap?

Prevaricator.

Has all to do. Fear of RTGs caused a lot of noise surrounding Cassini, which went on and echoed. By the time Rosetta/Philae were designed, as stated in TFA:

All previous deep space probes have used RTGs [Radio-isotope Thermoelectric Generator], but the ESA has not developed RTG technology. They couldn’t get it from NASA (who wouldn’t provide it) or Roscosmos (which would violate the ITAR treaty).

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.

Assad is a puppet, put and kept in place by outside money. He's not even worth discussing, any more than ISIS, or any of these other little groups that keep "mysteriously" popping up to help sell another war. "Controlled Chaos" is the operative term here. Destabilization is the goal. Basically the idea is to scare off competing investments in the area. Seems to be working. And to throw in another jab, if you want to credit Ms. Clinton for anything, this would be it. Her sales record is second to none.

It's a crime to support certain terrorist organizations and perfectly acceptable to support others -- which congress member was a supporter of the IRA? Oh yeah -- Peter King: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03...

I find it very disturbing that certain beliefs are so totally verboten that to speak of them at all seems to be a Federal crime, and worse than that, so many people don't even see it as a problem. What we have are random politicians or cabinet members declaring a group to be off limits -- no declaration of war, no trial with public evidence, just a bureaucratic determination. So what group is next? Model rocketeers? Certainly the Sierra Club. At the word of an official in DC you could basically be killed or imprisoned -- at least this kid got a show trial. God Bless America, Home of the Free [to think and speak in an approved manner].

But hey, thanks for telling us the NSA is spying on some bad Americans. And, by the way everybody spies on everybody. Russians on us. We on the Russians. China on us.

"bad Americans". Like all the ones that use electronic communications, you mean those bad Americans?
Does the fact that China and Russia do something unjust make it OK for America to do that thing to its own citizens?
What if it was ruled illegal in federal court. Would that affect your viewpoint?
I'm not sure you've really thought this through...

It seems like their even disclosing the fact they know if the Russians and Chinese had access would be considered a state secret.
This. A thousand times this.

Did MI6 really blow sources in both China and Russia just so they could make Snowden look bad? Why would they do that?

It all sounds like the 'drained laptop' stories from early on in the Snowden saga, which turned out to be just speculation: http://publiceditor.blogs.nyti...

You can see why Google had to shaft Apple and push Android though. Imagine the situation they would be in now if Apple dominated all mobile and they were dependent on their 'generosity' to allow advertising and services through...

To a large extent Google's mobile advertising business is already dependent on Apple's "generosity". Up to 75% of Google's mobile ad revenue is dependent on Apple's continued placement of Google as the default search engine on its iOS devices http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05... - a treasured position which Google pays Apple an estimated $2 billion a year to hold onto http://bgr.com/2015/05/27/ipho.... The loss of of mobile advertising revenue from iOS platforms would knock over 13% off Googles total revenue (nearly $9 billion in 2014 numbers)

Yes, things could be a lot worse if Google had not entered the market with its own mobile operating system... But with support for ad blocking, Apple is going after Google, not Android (after having earned 90% of the smartphone profits in 2014, Apple needs Android as much as Microsoft needed the Mac in the late 1990's to stave off the scrutiny of regulators around the world).

According to Jason Calacanis https://www.linkedin.com/pulse..., Tim Cook is slowly getting revenge on Google on behalf of Steve Jobs - without doing it directly... "We did not enter the search business," Jobs said. "They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them..." So, Tim Cook is playing the slow revenge game....

Given the revenue challenges that all Android OEMs are facing (with the obvious exception of Samsung), by going after Google's ability to remain Android's the benevolent benefactor - i.e. ad revenue - Apple may yet give Steve Jobs the revenge he sought... only it will not be the thermonuclear victory he envisaged... its a slow war of attrition.

I guess we should have that sexist movie A League of Their Own deleted and Tom Hanks ostracized for saying "there's no crying in baseball".

https://sports.yahoo.com/blogs...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12...

http://www.thegoodphight.com/2...

iOS drives 75% of Google's mobile revenue meaning this could really hurt them depending on how much is blocked. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05...

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... ...

Heck, WMD were found: http://www.defense.gov/News/Ne... [defense.gov] http://www.nytimes.com/interac... [nytimes.com]

You're embarrassing yourself.

So I guess Saddam gassing all the Kurds didn't really happen, and we should have never gone in there to put a stop to the systematic genocide Saddam was up to...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... [wikipedia.org]

Saddam gassed the Kurds with the gas that you gave him. And later Rumsfeld dropped by to shake his hand.

Don't expect to be given the moral high ground over Saddam. During their mercifully brief but incredibly bloody reign, Rumsfeld/Cheney killed more Iraqis than he did during any period of the same length.

That gas was expired long before the lying started: the best the Iraqi Air Force could have done with it would be to hurl it from the plane and hope to hit someone in the head with the canister.

What false premise? It was pretty clear at the time that everyone thought there were WMD in Iraq. Before Bush was elected all the Democrats were saying it.

http://politics.slashdot.org/c...

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

Heck, WMD were found:

http://www.defense.gov/News/Ne...
http://www.nytimes.com/interac...

So I guess Saddam gassing all the Kurds didn't really happen, and we should have never gone in there to put a stop to the systematic genocide Saddam was up to...

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

Just last week they decided that "threatening" remarks on the Internet weren't no thing in the absence of clear evidence of intent to do more than blow off steam. Oh. Wait. That was a threat against some nobody, a precedent that clearly does not apply if the aggrieved party is instead a high and mighty judge. [_EMILY_LATELLA_] Never mind. [_/EMILY_LATELLA_]

German hands caught in the cookie jar:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05...

http://www.spiegel.de/internat...

Honest question. What is the "theoretical" benefit from the NSA spying? The U.S. gave up $35Bn (and, frankly, specific companies had the brunt of it), but is there "savings" because of our security?

I'm not trying to get into a political discussion of "NSA is over-stepping its bounds." I also realize that the "savings" is entirely implicit. But I do wonder if there are some other, immeasurable, benefits of the agency.

First off I am not defending the NSA's actions; I am just trying to give an honest answer to this question.

Since the stated goal is to protect America from attacks, looking at the financial costs of the 9/11 attacks is a good way to find the costs on the other side of the argument. According to the New York Times, the successful attacks on the World Trade Center had an immediate economic cost of $178 billion. This includes $24 billion for the value of life lost, using similar actuarial tables that insurance companies or wrongful death lawsuits would.

The $35 billion figure is over a 4 year period, so thats about $9 billion per year. With this reasoning, if the NSA PRISM program could prevent one 9/11 scale attack every 20 years, it could be argued that it is worth it. This does not count the actual cost of running the NSA operation though, but that allegedly only cost about $20 million so it barely factors in.

If you accept the argument that war is inevitable when the US is attacked like we were on 9/11, then the total cost of 9/11 could be closer to $3 trillion. If American was safe enough because of NSA spying that it didn't "need" to fight foreign wars, that would be a huge economic cost saver.

This obviously does not factor in the cost of our loss of freedom, but I am trying to play devil's advocate here.

Over the last 10-15 years NYC has significantly redesigned a lot of streets to fit bike lanes. They lowered the speed limit from 30 to 25 (past year or two), and added a lot more pedestrian stuff too I think. They also redesigned some traffic flow regarding right and left turns. (I am not sure all that was about bikes though).

Here's an article from 2010:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes....

Most Citi bikes go ununsed as far as I can tell. Bikes are good, but I am not sure this was a good use of resources and space. I personally would've rather seen cleaner, faster, quieter and more reliable subways than more advert-bikes. But it's not so sexy for citibank to donate a tiny fraction of the MTA's budget for some billboards/posters.

That said, citibikes are far from the worst thing to waste money and time and space on. I just dont think it's clear if they are really a net positive.

I honestly don't mean to create that dichotomy

Fair enough - and you definitely didn't create that dichotomy (I shouldn't have said that), but the prevailing view, as I see it, is that education is seen as a thing segregated to professional educators in a classroom situation, and that universities or technical for-profit schools have status as recognized educational authorities, and to some extent your post feeds that view.

Lots of expensive for-profit technical schools and 4-year universities take money from students and offer little in return. Even an art history degree, if it isn't rigorous, has little intrinsic value.

I think part of the issue is the specific mindset that locks people in to giving money to colleges DESPITE the ridiculous costs. Next, asking better questions about why it's so expensive is a good place to start: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04...