Slashdot Mirror

A Critical Review of Global Surface Temperature Data Products
The overall conclusion of this report is that there are serious quality problems in the surface temperature data sets that call into question whether the global temperature history, especially over land, can be considered both continuous and precise. Users should be aware of these limitations, especially in policy-sensitive applications.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p...

Or free from extraneous influence

Well lets forget those decades of research by thousands of climate scientists.

You found an unpublished paper by an economist!!

Clearly he must have found a bunch of issues that the climate scientists weren't aware of and had no idea how to correct for!

ABSTRACT: Monthly surface temperature records from 1979 to 2000 were obtained from 218 indi-vidual stations in 93 countries and a linear trend coefficient determined for each site. This vector oftrends was regressed on measures of local climate, as well as indicators of local economic activity(income, gross domestic product [GDP] growth rates, coal use) and data quality. The spatial patternof trends is shown to be significantly correlated with non-climatic factors, including economic activ-ity and sociopolitical characteristics of the region. The analysis is then repeated on the correspondingIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gridded data, and very similar correlationsappear, despite previous attempts to remove non-climatic effects. The socioeconomic effects in thedata are shown to add up to a net warming bias, although more precise estimation of its magnitudewill require further research.

https://www.int-res.com/articl...

Ohhh! This time he found a small (now defunct) journal and a co-author who is one of the few climate scientists who is a skeptic! (and incidentally is funded primarily by oil companies).

That totally proves that the planet isn't warming and that all those other signals like drought, shrinking glaciers, shifting plant growth patterns, ocean temperatures, etc, etc, are somehow misleading.

A Critical Review of Global Surface Temperature Data Products
The overall conclusion of this report is that there are serious quality problems in the surface temperature data sets that call into question whether the global temperature history, especially over land, can be considered both continuous and precise. Users should be aware of these limitations, especially in policy-sensitive applications.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p...

Or free from extraneous influence

ABSTRACT: Monthly surface temperature records from 1979 to 2000 were obtained from 218 indi-vidual stations in 93 countries and a linear trend coefficient determined for each site. This vector oftrends was regressed on measures of local climate, as well as indicators of local economic activity(income, gross domestic product [GDP] growth rates, coal use) and data quality. The spatial patternof trends is shown to be significantly correlated with non-climatic factors, including economic activ-ity and sociopolitical characteristics of the region. The analysis is then repeated on the correspondingIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gridded data, and very similar correlationsappear, despite previous attempts to remove non-climatic effects. The socioeconomic effects in thedata are shown to add up to a net warming bias, although more precise estimation of its magnitudewill require further research.

https://www.int-res.com/articl...

Why would anyone trusty anything from Rational Wiki? This is a site that reports Donald Trump is an honorary Cossack, based on a second hand report from a Russian tabloid of questionable veracity.

As ever, this promotes something that supports the general bias of the site, so they mention that this is a thing, and assert it strenuously, but don't put any weight on the studies that contradict the findings. There's a single link to a paper that claims "Evidence of factual backfire is far more tenuous than prior research suggests. By and large, citizens heed factual information, even when such information challenges their ideological commitments." but no mention of this in the article body.

Ironically, Rational Wiki is a victim of confirmation bias. Although to be fair, I'm pretty certain the entire site is satire.

If the colleges would cut the useless administrative bloat (see The Changing of the Guard: The Political Economy of Administrative Bloat in American Higher Education) that they've acquired, I suspect that government funding could even be decreased further. Tax payers are uninterested in funding the expensive adult daycare that college has become for a large number of students.

If the government would get out of the student loan business, this problem would likely become self-correcting.

If you want to see what the Bank of England models are, why not read the research papers, such as https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p...

If you claim critique based on research methods, at least skim the paper first. It is free and the main body of the paper is only 42 pages long with the remaining 38 pages providing background information, references, and data summaries. Start reading on page 18, the "Empirical Strategy" section.

The authors make much more than correlation after discussing it in the previous section and then demanding more evidence. They proceed with an explicitly causal model that is verified by statistical evidence. It isn't obvious if you don't have modeling background but "structural evidence" refers to structural equation modeling, which is rigorously designed to determine causality. Controlling for interactions is done to isolate variables and included known differences in demographics between municipalities.

In particular, understanding these results requires some understanding of the actual role of the AfD in German politics, but your point was about research method, which wasn't legitimate given the content of the actual paper.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who checked.

http://wadhwa.com/bio/

It's actually a Bachelor of Arts, in something called "Computer Studies", which I'm guessing is now called Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Information Technology. Or he may have gotten a vanilla IT degree, but either way, he does not have a CS degree nor an engineering degree.

The guy sounds like a charlatan. He's undoubtedly intelligent, but his list of accomplishments does not include actually inventing or creating anything, and all his "research" is fluff.

He obviously sees himself as some kind of guru, which may seem a little racistly on the nose, but he has no problem going there.

I wonder if those judges have ever had second thoughts about their decisions, which resulted in taking away people's houses, based on possibly fraudulent statements by banks?

I'm not an attorney, but I have quite a few good friends who are attorneys. I can answer that for you. For most if not all - nope....And the number one dirty secret of the legal profession is that lawyers always get paid no matter what.

As somebody who has had my own experiences with the civil "justice" system, I agree. The system is rotten.

Here is a 12 minute video with two law professors explaining that because judges are lawyers, judges will rule in ways that favor the legal profession : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbs_3lePAjE

In an earlier article on the subject, one of the law professors in that video wrote "Here is my lawyer-judge hypothesis in a nutshell: many legal outcomes can be explained, and future cases predicted, by asking a very simple question: is there a plausible legal result in this case that will significantly affect the interests of the legal profession (positively or negatively)? If so, the case will be decided in the way that offers the best result for the legal profession".

Claims with no citations? You're either an idiot or an outright troll/liar.

A small sampling of the citations linked in the post in question:
http://www.city-journal.org/20...
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi...
http://www.umass.edu/legal/Ben...
http://www.jstor.org/discover/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publ...
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub...
http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/abst...
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/abst...
http://www.jstor.org/discover/...
http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinf...
http://www.jstor.org/discover/...
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles...
https://www.ncjrs.gov/app/abst...
http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/...
http://www.sentencingproject.o...
http://online.wsj.com/articles...
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...
https://www.law.upenn.edu/live...
That's enough citations that I then have to add in this line because the stupid post filter thinks the average line length is too short. That's enough citations that I then have to add in this line because the stupid post filter thinks the average line length is too short. That's enough citations that I then have to add in this line because the stupid post filter thinks the average line length is too short. That's enough citations that I then have to add in this line because the stupid post filter thinks the average line length is too short. That's enough citations that I then have to add in this line because the stupid post filter thinks the average line length is too short.

Elsewhere it seems that legalization and rise in demand/trafficking are tied together.
Study: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p...
Article summarizing study: https://journalistsresource.or...

I now think decriminalizing prostitution for sex workers, while keeping it illegal for Johns, might be a better solution. I used to be hopeful that legalization would be the answer. Then I saw that study and I've seen nothing to really contradict it (except your example of New Zealand).
(To be fair, the legal, on the books sex workers would see improvements under legalization. Possibly at the cost of the trafficked, however.)

The problem is worse with self-driving computers. Who wants one more than 2 years old? Not even the state authorities who will license them.

Auto manufacturers would like to solve this by having everyone lease their car. An alternative is for the car to have plugs for self-driving and network features, allowing the user more control. The paper has more detail on the social and legal issues.

I have a 2007 Prius, a 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee, and a Trailmanor travel trailer. Obviously I commute in the Prius and save the big SUV for tasks that need it. When I bought the Jeep, I rejected the connected version and went for a model with a dumber radio. I doubt I'm alone in making that choice.

The issue isn't whether prostitution can be done between two consenting adults. Nobody really cares about that except people trying to divert the argument from the real issue. The real issue is whether a non-consenting individual can be forced to do it. And studies have found that legalizing prostitution is correlated with an increase in non-consensual prostitution.

I am continuing to push several of my CONgress critters to change some of our bills. In particular, I would like it to be that anything that is CLEAR TEXT, either saved on a system or sent over the net, is fair game for American intelligence. The reason is that it is similar to sending a postcard. It is also the fact that China and Russia also have easy access to this so should ours.

I would also include mass surveillance for law enforcement purposes but see below

Then anything that is ENCRYPTED means that there is an ACTIVE attempt to block others from seeing the data. As such, we then require a warrant for our intel world to see the data (basically decrypt it).

The problem with this is that under law and jurisprudence, encryption does *not* provide any expectation of privacy.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p...

Allowing a warrant to force encryption will become no different than no encryption. That is how the FISA court works now limited only by technical measures.

If we pass this, it will no doubt anger a number of ppl here because it gave America's intel world the same carte blanche that the rest of the world have. This will no doubt cause MS, Google, Yahoo, etc to push through encryption on nearly everything.

That is basically my thought as well. I add that law enforcement might as well do it also because they are going to do it anyway whether through their own efforts, because the national intelligence agencies are doing it for them which currently happens, or by corporations doing it for them which is often the case now and then they will cover it up with parallel construction. The situation where warrants are required or national intelligence agencies or law enforcement are limited as far as mass surveillance just serves to decease those who believe mass surveillance is not occurring. The solution is technical; encrypt absolutely everything.

The preferred solution for law enforcement and national intelligence is false confidence that private data is secure by law limiting demand for strong encryption and security which is the current situation.

At the same time with this bill, I am pushing for USPO to offer up personal digital keys that are FULLY VETTED (i.e. like passport, pix and fingerprint) and they would then have a distributed network of the key-servers. And when it is trivial for somebody to obtain a single digital-key, then e-mail, blogs, etc will become not just secured, but will also be less spam, and BS that we see even in in /.

If any agency other than the individual controls the private keys, then they are not secure. If the design is not open and verifiable, then it is not secure.

With this approach, it will really push for the world to encrypt our data.

Amen.

I am not sure of a situation where you give personal information to someone, and they make it public after making no guarantees to you that they would keep such information secret. Are you foolish for giving the information without such guarantees, or should you expect that because the information is personal, you should automatically assume it should be kept secret? Why should you have such an expectation?

Well, Congress actually stepped in and enacted more (but not maximal) protection than required by passing the Stored Communication Act. In relevant part (Â 2702(a) for the law nerds following along) makes an ISP civilly liable if they voluntarily disclose your content except with your lawful consent. That is, the default in the "make no guarantees" is that the ISP cannot disclose anything.

So appreciate the bizarro-fact that Congress passed a law creating protection that the Constitution doesn't require and appreciate the new default :-)

Sex trafficking would largely go away if we legalized prostitution between consenting adults -- it would be regulated and anyone forced into it could openly go to the police and seek help.

I'm not so sure that this is true. I used to believe it at one point, but then I came across this study: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p...
It finds that legalizing prostitution drives up demand for sex workers so much that sex trafficking increases.

As usual, various media and political groups have interpreted the actual findings to their own benefit. I looked at the source paper. The conclusion is very tenuous and as the authors wrote, "should be interpreted with caution".

If you look at their data, you will see the scatter plot in Figure 1 which supposedly demonstrates the relationship between legality and trafficking. However, once you ignore the line that they drew on it, you'll see the relationship doesn't actually exist. Every combination of legal status and trafficking volume is represented in the chart.

So even assuming everything they did to gather this data was perfect, the relationship is still barely there. Setting any sort of public policy based on that is just dumb.

They are implausible because you are getting numbers wrong. I suspect you have not read the study.

Only former Uber and/or Lyft users were in the study.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p...

Dare you title it 'Logic'? From the actual UMich press release, that links to the study not the article in the Slashdot summary that links to the wrong Reuters article,

In an unexpected finding, wealthier respondents were less likely to purchase a vehicle than those whose household income is below $100,000 a year. The researchers speculate that this is because those in a higher income bracket likely already had a vehicle at their disposal.

There's a clue. Or MAD MONEY at their disposal. Perhaps the researchers' ability to speculate stops short of imagining that ride sharing as it stands and those trip fares are a luxury item... and it does not provide a reliable or economical means to meet daily commitments. Today it does not even provide survival income for most that offer the service. A Ponzi scheme that draws from both ends to enhance the corporate middle. New Yorkers go to great lengths not to rely exclusively on taxicabs to commute (as little as 6%) in a city that was constructed around them. How has this all changed?

It does not help that press releases touting the latest cloud-centric 'ride sharing' schemes glibly traverse between the realms of scheduled carpooling and the idea of random car-for-hire when it suits them. Carpooling was always a great idea. The idea that there is a Uber-slave parked and waiting (on the edge of a 'surge' area, a shifting blob on their smartphone screen) a few blocks away is poised to serve a personal need, is not.

Time and again I have observed milestones of technological progress being bargained away lightly, such as the personal automobile that (in sprawling medium density cities like Austin down to rural) does empower the individual to meet daily commitments and take trips. I have heard stories told by younger folk who start off in the utopian mindset and quickly realize that as they pursue the dream they begin to impose personally on others, their friends, who have made the commitment to own automobiles. And a few bucks tossed in here and there by-me does not compensate for the imposition on-you. Ultimately they shift priorities and at least consider the idea of car ownership, whether it is affordable to them or not.

And tragically it is not affordable to them. Unless they take the bus or walk, they're going to be late for work. Ironically some have made the commitment to own a car and parking is available, but they cannot afford to park. What aspect of 'city planning' has failed them? Only in the densest cities with the greatest commitment (principally in China) can one lay more than even odds that a shared bicycle will be available. How are taxicabs going to change the world? The UMich study is not wrong in any great way, nor is it right. It's just fixated on a tiny smidgen of statistical delta that is overwhelmed by the 'noise' of a distressed economy and a weird obsession with unworkable schemes.

The second biggest issue of our time is probably the recent world recession. Bush inherited a balanced budget (surplus even - from Clinton's small tax raise), gave out the biggest tax cut to the rich in who knows how long, and a few years later we had the great recession. If you want to get into details, there's multiple reasons for that, but the one thing it proves is that doling out tax cuts for the wealthy in America can't save the economy, not in our time at least. If you're pragmatic, you have to bet that it actually does a lot of harm.

The right is sooo idealogical. The left, sometimes talks ideology, but usually looks at every situation and tries to choose what's actually best for everyone, even the right. We've seen that trickle down economics, invented on a napkin by politicians, has failed miserably, so we don't believe in it. We've seen that starting stupid wars is ... stupid. People die (good people, a lot of righties even). If you're going to war, make sure it's for the right reasons.

Not even going to bring up race?

We all know that black people go to jail at higher rates than whites. Considering or not considering race as a factor is also terrible.

Race is also a problem. According to other research by Professor Starr https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p... It's real, and it's happening. Interestingly, the bias in favor of women is that the gender gap is about six times as large as the racial disparity. Read the articles for the info.

https://www.law.umich.edu/news... For those too busy to read the citation, the research by Professor Sonja Starr indicates men receive prison sentences that average 63% longer than women convicted of the same crime. Women are also twice as likely to avoid incarceration altogether. The paper itself: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p...

So what we have here a bit of a minefield. If we are to continue this practice, the algorithm must take gender into account, and purposely hand out sentences that are much less for females than males. This would become glaringly obvious during testing. Input identical parameters except gender. Codified and simply proven gender discrimination, built right into the program will result in a pretty short gender discrimination trial.

But if gender is not taken into account, and suddenly females get identical sentencing, you can bet there will be a lot of legal agitation from a different group.

I see it as an entertaining thing to watch unravel. I would expect to consume much popcorn.

I could only find this : https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p.... Had to follow a couple of links. Seriously, this Guardian article should not even be considered when it starts mentioning research and not even providing sources.

It's so easy to say "new technology will doom us all". I'm not using facebook, but I'm always cautious when reading those full-of-bullshit articles.

In this paper, we investigate the impact of the minimum wage on restaurant closures using data from the San Francisco Bay Area. We find suggestive evidence that an increase in the minimum wage leads to an overall increase in the rate of exit. This paper presents several new findings. First, we provide suggestive evidence that higher minimum wage increases overall exit rates among restaurants, where a $1 increase in the minimum wage leads to approximately a 4 to 10 percent increase in the likelihood of exit, although statistical significance falls with the inclusion of time-varying county-level characteristics and city-specific time trends. This is qualitatively consistent but smaller than what Aaronson et al. (forthcoming) find; they show that a 10 percent raise in the minimum wage increases firm exit by approximately 24 percent from a base of 5.7 percent. Differences in sample and specifications may account for the differences between our study and theirs.

In my book, the difference between right and left boils down to people who only worry about themselves and people who try to help the most people.

Except you want to help them by hurting me. And most of the time your "helping" doesn't work any way.

Unfortunately, the "only worry about themselves" doesn't extend to leaving other people alone, they view everything through the prism of their own life, with no ability or desire to understand other circumstances.

Other way around, actually. Ideological Turing tests have been performed and conservatives understand liberals, while liberals do not understand conservatives.

And that's why post-500BC Greeks were the most technologically advanced and best educated society of their time, right? Because they didn't have patents? Wait. No. They actually did! They exchanged temporary protection of profit for public release of information, and the result was that everyone who was interested could learn from that information, leading to a more enlightened society.

Their system was closer overall to a chili cookoff than a patent system. Also, it wasn't the Greeks in general, it was the city of Sybarus, and primarily about culinary dishes. But the real advantage the Greeks had was that they had democracy. That's why you come off as so ridiculous. The Greeks had a much more advanced system of governance and created a number of new academic fields, allowing for great technological advances, and you're attributing it to a system that applied to food in one city.

Yes, the competition was the guy who spent his time and money, and had R&D costs to recoup and, therefore must sell at a higher price to do so, versus the many other guys who stole his invention and did not have those costs. Do you not see how that disincentives invention? Yes, let me sink all of my time and my life savings into making something to improve the world, just so some asshole can come along and undercut me so I lose everything.

The sole inventor is a myth. Innovation happens when ideas "have sex", and patents are roughly the equivalent of a condom. Patents may act somewhat as an incentive for putting resources into an individual improvement, but where technology actually grows is in a series of iterative improvements, and the patent gets in the way of those other improvements. Even within accepting the of patents as an inventive. There's also the well documented evidence that external incentives encourage tunnel-vision thought, while innovation comes from lateral thought. This is demonstrated by things such as faster solving of the candle problem by those without an incentive.

The real question, though, is what would you rather have? A world with limited intellectual protection, where you might spend billions to develop a life saving drug, knowing that you'll make that money back once the drug hits the market? Or a world where nobody wants to put up those billions because they'll be undercut for pennies on the dollar right out of the gate, when you really need that drug.

False dichotomy. You are also ignoring that most drugs these days are created in university labs with federal funding, and that the patent system encourages "me-too" drugs that would not be seriously sought if there wasn't a legal monopoly involved. If we took the federal funding we already have towards drugs, and cut out the dead weight of those me-too drugs, we'd end up producing about the same number of useful drugs (at free market instead of monopoly prices), and probably a little bit more.

However, as you point out, the process is quite expensive. There can definitely be improvements made in the way we do so, but we don't, because Big Pharma likes that high barrier to entry. It keeps profits a good bit higher.

Until those reforms happen, I would argue that medicine is one of the lowest priorities for patent abolition, and abolition may have to wait until we have such reforms. Not because patents are efficient, but because the system we currently have is so deeply rooted in patents that for the pharmaceutical industry, we're getting into TBTF territory. Also, drugs have the added benefit of being much more discrete than many other fields, since they have objective chemical formulas. This means that some of the most problematic elements of patents, such as thickets, are largely absent from pharmaceuticals.

That said, I think we could probably move q

Research shows that, as a group, only men pay tax:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p...

http://judgybitch.com/2016/08/...

I'm citing a study done by the University of Pennsylvania . Do you have anything more reliable?

Very odd that this story comes out now, as I just read study about CO2 and fossil fuel emissions that concluded there is no correlation between emission and CO2 concentration. Here's a link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p... I'm not a statistician, so I can't attest to it's accuracy or validity, but it was an interesting read.

It's not a study, but just an analysis. And it is neither peer-reviewed nor properly published, but just uploaded to the Social Science Research Network - think arXiv, but without any pedigree for natural sciences. The author is an Emeritus - and was a professor of Business Administration (!). Google Scholar shows an h-index of 6, with a153 citations in total. But nearly all the publications are on SSRN or equivalent, and nearly all the citations are self-citations - indeed. ResearchGate computes the h-index without self citations as 1. These are not numbers your average research assistant would be happy about.

I'm not a statistician, either, but I can see at least one obvious problem (apart from data quality): He uses CO2 measurements from a single source, Mauna Loa, and works on an annual time scale. But CO2 does not magically spread around the world - it takes about a year until a pulse has reasonably mixed world-wide. Also, of course, human emissions are only a small part of the total flow of CO2 (although significant because they only go one way). So the signal he is looking for is quite small.

We have several ways to know that atmospheric CO2 increase is largely anthropogenic. The easiest is simple accounting. We know that the increase in atmospheric CO2 corresponds to about half of our emissions (much of the rest is currently absorbed by the oceans). If the cause of the increase is not our emissions, then a) they need to magically vanish somewhere and b) an equivalent amount has to magically appear from somewhere. Oh, and the new magic source has to magically match the isotope ratio of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion.

Very odd that this story comes out now, as I just read study about CO2 and fossil fuel emissions that concluded there is no correlation between emission and CO2 concentration. Here's a link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/p... I'm not a statistician, so I can't attest to it's accuracy or validity, but it was an interesting read.

The fact is that the UK has been told they have to not only allow him his freedom, but have to also compensate him for the illegal detention they've put him under.

By a nonbinding body (WGAD) that rules in favour of almost all plaintiffs that come before it (usually unanimously, unlike in this case). Both the UK and Sweden have stated the WGAD ruling will have no bearing on the case at hand. Assange raised it in his most recent appeal with the Swedish courts (yet another in a long row of them). He lost.

The fact is that Sweden has and can interview him in the embassy, and were dragging their feet (read:political corruption).

Read: Ecuador is demanding that Sweden sign some sort of treaty - the exact details of which have not been publicly disclosed by either side - before they'll allow the prosecutors in, something that Sweden is against. This has been a stalemate for the past 16 months. Before that, Sweden had been insisting on the interview taking place in Sweden in order to follow the standard Swedish process, which is: 1) the initial investigatory phase is carried out, including any interviews 2) if the prosecutor believes charges to be likely and the subject will not voluntarily enter custody, the prosecutor recommends to a judge that the subject be formally anklagad (suspected of/charged with a crime); 3) the judge issues a warrant and the subject is brought into custody; 4) the subject is interviewed (for a second time, if there were interviews conducted in the initial phase), with every matter they are to be charged with put be put forth to them; 5) the subject is formally åtalad (charged/indicted); this begins a time limit on when the subject must be tried (although it can be extended if there are conditions that prevent the person from being tried immediately); and 6) the subject is tried (this cannot occur in absentia). As a general rule, while investigatory interviews are conducted anywhere, final interviews are conducted in Swedish custody, so that if the person is åtalad there is no risk that they could escape trial. This was the route sought by prosecutor Ny up until 2015, when - due to the shortage of time remaining on the lesser charges, and criticism from a lower court for her not seeking less conventional options to try to break the deadlock, Ny sought an interview in the Ecuadorian embassy. The deadlock on this latter issue remains to this day.

The anklagad/åtalad distinction has often been a stumbling ground in the english-speaking press because it doesn't directly map to stages in US or British legal systems, which generally only recognize one stage of charging, while Sweden has two (one to bring a subject into custody, and one to initiate a trial). However, there is significant jurisprudence that anklagad equates to being charged within the context of an EAW - whatever language one chooses to use for other contexts.

A general summary of peer-reviewed rankings of the Swedish legal system on different aspects can be found here, more detailed information about what the categories mean and how they're assessed here (extremely detailed here and here) , and more detailed information in general here.

Well, if I end to end encrypt all communications and stored data in such a way that the storing company does not hold the key, only I do, then I DO now have a reasonable expectation of privacy and the entire third party doctrine collapses legally.

No, encryption does not create an expectation of privacy:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

Does encrypting Internet communications create a reasonable expectation of privacy in their contents, triggering Fourth Amendment protection? At first blush, it seems that the answer must be yes: A reasonable person would surely expect that encrypted communications will remain private. In this paper, Professor Kerr explains why this intuitive answer is entirely wrong: Encrypting communications cannot create a reasonable expectation of privacy. The reason is that the Fourth Amendment regulates access, not understanding: no matter how unlikely it is that the government will successfully decrypt ciphertext, the Fourth Amendment offers no protection if it succeeds. As a result, the government does not need a search warrant to decrypt encrypted communications. This surprising result is consistent with Fourth Amendment caselaw: it matches how courts have resolved cases involving the reassembly of shredded documents, recovery of deleted files, and the translation of foreign languages. The Fourth Amendment may regulate government access to ciphertext, but it does not regulate government efforts to translate ciphertext into plaintext.

Children, too, have a right to privacy, also with regard to their parents. Even if you don't care at all about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (which the US, as the only UN member state in the world, has not ratified), it is important to their development and well-being.

Renewables are much much less expensive than nuclear power. That is why France is ending plans to replace it's fleet and opting for a phase out. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

The economics really don't work out for nuclear power. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

The data was voluntarily handed over to the service provider so it can be seized and searched at any time. As a practical manner, the government is going to do this anyway whether they say so or not making "should" and "legal" irrelevant despite laws like the Electronics Communications Privacy Act. If you want anything sent over the internet to remain private, encrypt it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Note that encryption does *not* create an expectation of privacy. If the government can seize the data, then there is nothing to prevent them from decrypting it if they can.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

There is another area of major tax fraud where the agent involved has been told to drop it... http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

Have heard this asserted before, but never really bothered looking it up. Had assumed tithes would be a datapoint in study, but nobody seems to mention it (even in my links). http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa... http://news.rice.edu/2012/05/3... https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.do... Looks like there's no difference between the two groups (generally).

Medical records are sheer gold for identity fraud http://www.wsj.com/articles/ho...

Stolen medical records can be used for medical insurance fraud and taking out loans in your name. If you don't pay up, they send debt collectors after you. They are paid by commission so don't care if they debt is legit. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/fem... http://www.philly.com/philly/b... http://www.startribune.com/cri... http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news...

What to do if they send a debt collector after you http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

Shit IT security by health providers is a big problem http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/1... http://www.wsj.com/articles/an... http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/17...

So is doctors collecting information about you they don't need like your SSN which staff can sell to identity thieves http://www.forbes.com/sites/la...

Pardon me, but is there a law in the US that the government can't break people's encryption (for any reason)?

If the data was lawfully seized, then there is nothing to prevent attempting decryption. Further, encryption does *not* create an expectation of privacy under US law.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

As I mentioned elsewhere, the change in Ph levels science is still learning, and some seem to think there is nothing to see concerning your "acidification" claims.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

Evertime there is a Hurricane Evacuation you get a couple dozen that die from car accidents or falling off ladders boarding up their houses to prevent looting, etc. That is one of the reasons politicians are wary of calling evacuations unless really needed.

And yet politicians also seem lined up to cheer for security "theatre" at airports, when it can result in similar indirect deaths and injuries.

What am I talking about? Despite the common fear of flying and airplane accidents, car accidents are MUCH, MUCH more common to result in death or serious injury. Some studies have indicated that people choosing to travel by car rather than plane in the months after 9/11 may have resulted in the deaths of over a thousand more people.

I know a number of people who fly less frequently now partly because of how annoying it is to deal with unnecessary airport security. I have made that choice myself a few times, particularly for shorter road trips (say, less than 5-6 hours) where I'd be tempted to take a shuttle and fly before. Now it's just not worth the extra hassle and time -- I usually allow a lot more time than I used to pre-9/11 when showing up to the airport, in case the security lines are long or some idiot shuts them down with a water bottle or doesn't take his shoes off. And I have to be much more careful about what I pack or carry on with me -- in my car, I can bring whatever I want.

Anyhow, there are many estimates that road traffic increased by a few percent (particularly around holidays) due to people avoiding airports and TSA hassles. Driving is significantly less safe than flying. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the TSA has indirectly caused the deaths of hundreds or even thousands of people due to these kinds of decisions.

Anyhow -- going back to hurricanes, there are plenty of other reasons why politicians may be hesitant to call for evacuation. It does lead to panic. But it also generally increases spending on emergency services (something that requires more tax dollars, something politicians don't want to have to raise), while simultaneously moving people out of their jurisdictions, where they don't patronize local businesses for days (and, as you point out, looting can make things even worse), even with a "false alarm." People lose income as well if they evacuate for something that turns out to be a "false alarm," which also can be a hit for the local economy. Thus, the local economy takes a hit, the government budget takes a hit in providing extra services... all economic problems that politicians want to avoid unless absolutely necessary. I'm not saying they don't take unintended deaths into account, but that's probably not their primary concern.

It's called the riot index, comparing the 'savings' of austerity to the costs of the resulting property damage. Maybe, Finland doesn't want it to go that far.

So, you think that they should have increased the deficit by even more than the $1 trillion they did in Obama's first year?

Weirdly yes. The Federal Government's budget as a currency issuer does not work the same way as a household or state budget. (both of whom are currency users not issuers) The additional deficit could have been accomplished either through a temporary tax cut or an increase in spending. The limiting factor on government spending under a fiat currency regime is not their ability to borrow, which is infinite, rather it is inflation which has been remarkably low lately. It's a hard concept to grasp, especially for a fiscal conservative like me, but that's how our system works. Here's a good explanation if you're interested: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

That claim is such utter bullshit that it isn't even worth for a citation. Use your head, man. I mean, how utterly ignorant can you be?

Yes, it's worth a citation. In fact, I have a couple for you. Here's a Fortune Magazine article that shows my claim is true. There's even a nifty graph for you to look at and not understand.

http://fortune.com/2015/04/13/...

https://fortunedotcom.files.wo...

http://nelp.org/publication/gr...

the fact is that the US has one of the highest effective corporate tax rates in the world (go look it up).

Yeah, I looked it up:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex...

And here's the full (peer-reviewed) article, for your perusal. Let's hope you are more capable of perusal than you are of simple Google searches.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Pa...

The date of the publication of the original article ( http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa... ) was April 4, 2014

Date of today - July 6. 2015

Has Slashdot become a museum of obsolete news?

No - AmiMojo is just a fucking idiot.

Certainly some early adopters pick products that don't take off, and mathematically some of these will have done it multiple times.
But the article claims that some people are actually predictors-- that their product choices have predictive value for product failure.
Is this actually true? It's easy to select out a set of people who have bought failed products, and then cull out of that set the ones who have not also sometimes bought successful products. But is this group statistically able to make future predictions?
I'm doubtful. Clearly, the way to not select products that don't grab a market niche... is to not be an early adopter. Lots of products fail; if you're an early adoptor, you're likely to be adopting failed products. If you instead wait to see where a product is going before buying-- you never buy products that fail a month after launch.
FWIW, the original article is here:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

Here's a link to the study in case anyone is interested. I don't have the time to go through it in detail right now myself, but perhaps someone else could pick over it.

You'd think that Slashdot editors would try to include that kind of link in the summary as if there's anything worth reading it's the source itself.

Screwed up the link to the PDF -- better link to abstract here, where you can get PDF.

Here

You hit the nail on the head:
Student loans are the absolute worst debt one can get because they don't go away.

There are many criteria for determining what the worst type of debt is. Student loan debt tends to be at a much lower rate than most loans other than mortgages. So while student loans are worse when going through bankruptcy, they are one of the better forms of debt to have for the 85%+ of people who will never declare bankruptcy. The asset the borrower bought is also likely the most valuable asset they will ever have.

Also, student loans are not always immune to bankruptcy. A 2011 study found that about 40% of bankruptcy filers who attempted to discharge student loans were at least partially successful (25% received full discharge, 14% received partial discharge). The issue is that only 0.1% of filers even attempted to discharge their student loans.

The study found 69,000 filers who were good candidates to have their loans discharged, but only 300 actually attempted them. The author couldn't be sure how many of those 69,000 filers who have succeeded, but it would almost certainly have been over 40% of them since they were very demographically similar to those who did successfully discharge student loan debt. These demographic markers where seekers who (1) have a medical hardship, (2) are unemployed, and (3) earned less income in the year before filing for bankruptcy than the median discharge seeker earned.

So it is very likely that at least 10% of bankruptcy filers who have student loan debts could discharge their student loans in full, and an additional 5% could receive a partial discharge. And I want to stress the words at least these 15% of borrowers could get help with student loans from bankruptcy.