Slashdot Mirror

You make it sound as if the left has never gerrymandered. There's some good reading on the topic here.

http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...

De Beers and jewelers try to convince us that diamonds are an investment and that they hold their value. Completely and utterly false. I remember this great article from years ago:

http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...

(turn off javascript to view the article so the anti-ad blocker won't pop up... it's just not safe to disable ad blocking).

The entire demand for diamonds was created by De Beers. It's a marketing scam.

Um, not really:
http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...

And have what are essentially slaves to dig up new ones.

Perhaps synthetic diamonds should be marketed as "cruelty-free diamonds". As far as synthetic vs. natural -- if it's made up of carbon atoms arranged in a face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice (to paraphrase Wikipedia), it's a fucking diamond. All the work of digging up "natural" stones, etc ... doesn't make them better, just more expensive. Of course, I'm sure The Diamond Industry will disagree (and have me killed). :-)

The De Beers cartel has certainly put a lot of effort into controlling the diamond market so you may want to keep a low profile.
The Atlantic magazine's excellent article from 1982 enlightened my younger self as to the utter scam that is the diamond industry
http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...

It was Flavor-Aid, not Kool-Aid!

http://www.theatlantic.com/hea...

Reading comprehension is not really your thing, is it? I didn't write Kool-Aid.

Thanks for playing though. We have some lovely parting gifts for you.

It was Flavor-Aid, not Kool-Aid!

http://www.theatlantic.com/hea...

Your statement was probably modded down for being misleading. I too can show where Trump's support comes from:

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

voters who agreed with the statement “people like me don't have any say about what the government does” were 86.5 percent more likely to prefer Trump. This feeling of powerlessness and voicelessness was a much better predictor of Trump support than age, race, college attainment, income, attitudes towards Muslims, illegal immigrants, or Hispanic identity.

Trump's support comes from people who feel they are disenfranchised. It should be no surprise that poorly educated white men feel disenfranchised; poor education has always reduced one's influence, and currently being white and male each mean you are openly discriminated against.

When Brendan Eich's backing of a popular, but ultimately-losing political movement came to light, Mozilla — undoubtedly pressured by Google, who provides 90% of its money — forced the inventor of Javascript to voluntarily step down.

The ongoing collapsing of Her Beautiful Wickedness is no dissimilar — although reasonably popular and, some would say, even with a reasonable chance of getting the same 52% of the vote that Brendan-backed Proposition 8 has gathered, Hillary may lose on legal grounds.

To avoid being seen as a hypocrite, Mr. Schmidt — who didn't merely donate some money, but was actively helping her — ought to resign soon.

And I could buy Stolichnya at the height of the civil war.

Fact Check. We investigate the claim made by a Slashdot poster "Ol Olsoc", that he could buy Stolichnaya at the height of the civil war.

Because it is unclear, which civil war the poster was referring to — and he did not respond to our request for clarification in time for this publication — we give the poster a benefit of the doubt and examine both relevant civil wars: that of the United States and in Russia.

Stolichnaya brand of vodka, according to Wikipedia, was first introduced in 1901. This is four decades after the American Civil War ended.

To be able to buy alcohol during the Russian Civil War, which ended in 1922 (its "height" taking place even earlier), the poster would've had been born in 1901, which would make 115 years-old today, when he made his claim. No people that old are currently alive, however, and scientific consensus is that living beyond that age is impossible. Maybe, the poster was buying alcohol illegally at younger age, but even then he'd have to be above 100 years of age, which is exceedingly unlikely given his manner of speech and presence on the Internet technology web-sites such as Slashdot.

Thus, we rate Ol Olsoc's claim as mostly false and assign it three out four Pinocchios.

Putin to the US is probably kind of like G.W. Bush was to the rest of the world 15 years ago.

Probably-shmobably. There is no obvious difference between the world's sentiment towards America since 2000. The only profound change is among Russians, actually, from 37% approval in 2000, to 46% in 2008, to 15% in 2015.

The engines, which are sound technology

It is called "economic sanctions". Look it up. You impose them to make the manufacturer suffer financially from being unable to sell their goods.

are irrelevant to the relationship between Mr Putin and Mr Trump

They are irrelevant, because no such relationship exists. But the holes in Obama's sanctions-regime remain unexplained. If buying RD-180 engines was wrong, why is it Ok to RD-181? Even more generally, if Russia should suffer under sanctions, why did it require an Act of Congress to stop buying those RD-180ies last year?

Why didn't Obama stop the practice himself? The answer is simple: NASA's rocket would not fly without those, and Obama — who's never seen a problem, which was not best solved with government money — would not allow NASA, the state enterprise, to fall further behind private space firms... Even if that meant helping Putin finances — a small price to pay for "fundamentally changing America".

Not a lot in terms of Trump? Wow, you are really firmly in the bubble, aren't you?

To refresh your memory, over the course of 40 years, corruption allegations against Trump have ranged from "mafia ties to unscrupulous business dealings, and from racial discrimination to alleged marital rape"

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

But but but MSM, terrible conspiracy against poor ickle defenceless Donald, etc etc. I know you won't believe any part of it. That's part of the hilariousness of it all.

A Wall Street endorsed 1% candidate is what's best.

Ah yes, because having a wall street endoresed 1 % is bad surely electing someone who belongs to said 1 % and has said: “It's very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.”

According to the Times, a building on the Avenue of the Americas in New York City's Manhattan borough that is partially owned by Trump has a loan of $950 million that was paid for by a few different entities, including the Bank of China and Goldman Sachs.

Yes, yes indeed, this is the candidate that will put wall street in its place and change the status quo!

How... how does this shit fly with the american public, seriously?

If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, she'll be entering office as a war criminal having achieved that status well prior. She has backed possibly every war the US is engaged in and shows no signs of pulling the US out of its many occupations. Her belligerent stance on Syria, for instance, is to push for a "no-fly zone" which she acknowledges (to her bankster friends who also bankrolled Pres. Obama's candidacy) will "kill a lot of Syrians". Patrick Cockburn disagrees any US president would actually do this, but that doesn't stop her from making it known she is fine with the bombastic talk. She'll continue all of Obama's wars just as Obama continued and expanded G.W. Bush's wars. We don't know precisely where she'll expand US wars to, but it's likely to be some other poor country just as Obama expanded wars into Yemen. She'll continue the extrajudicial assassinations of Obama's drone wars (which Obama engaged in far more than Bush, making the drone wars a hallmark of Obama's presidency).

The drone strikes deserve some special attention because so few people seem to know about them. If any other country did this the US would have no problem identifying them as "state-sponsors of global terror" or calling them "terrorists". Each of these wars kill a lot of women and children (putting into perspective how much Clinton cares about women), including Americans (as we've seen with the Al-awlakis, such as killing a father and son 2 weeks apart in separate drone attacks) without due process. And the drones kill completely unsuspected innocent passers-by (such as one infamous wedding party attack. The US kills so many civilians they can't keep track of them all but are clearly ashamed by the deaths so they released (on a Friday before a holiday weekend when mainstream corporate media are least likely to carry the story) an internal assessment of civilian killings in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya (including those killed including during Clinton's stint as Secretary of State). In that assessment we find an undercount due to the US reclassification of any military-age male as an "enemy combatant" in a desperate attempt to reduce the civilian death toll. There's every reason to expect more of the same from Hillary Clinton should she become president.

Domestically, Clinton's anti-poor/anti-working-person policies are bound to worsen the plight of women. Taking so much money from global banks ensures a continuation of no prosecutions for global banksters, no matter what fellow Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren says. Global trade pacts will help the US more efficiently exploit the poor. The TPP is a fine example of this: the TPP was known to, and does, receive massive international disapproval hence the TPP negotiations and early drafts were done in secret even keeping US congresspeople in the dark. Regardless of what Clinton says or hints to the US public, Clinton picked a pro-TPP vice presidential candidate in Tim Kaine and Clinton picked TPP boosters in her cabinet setup committee. It's hardly surprising that in April 2015 TheIntercept.com reported that "TPP Propon

... old notebook with HDMI plugged on TV, with kodi.tv on int (I use it with Debian Jessie and LXDE: any old computer cam play 1080p without problem there...)

Wow that fails the Mom test about as hard as possible. I'm sure it works beautifully for your needs but that doesn't work for 99.999% of people out there.

As long as you believe all that matters is engineering, people will fail to utilize the technology that engineering can bring.

Nicely done. You just lumped Steve Jobs in with Arnold "the Knife" Morris.

The Pitchman

The last of the Morrises to be active in the pitching business is Arnold "the Knife" Morris, so named because of his extraordinary skill with the Sharpcut, the forerunner of the Ginsu. He is in his early seventies, a cheerful, impish man with a round face and a few wisps of white hair, and a trademark move whereby, after cutting a tomato into neat, regular slices, he deftly lines the pieces up in an even row against the flat edge of the blade.

Sure, sharpened steel is a great technology, but will people actually use it unless first impressed by a delightfully manicured tomato? ... But wait, there's more!

The turn requires the management of expectation. That's why Arnold always kept a pineapple tantalizingly perched on his stand. "For forty years, I've been promising to show people how to cut the pineapple, and I've never cut it once," he says.

Steve's legendary pineapple was his insistence that RISC would blow CISC out of the water. That pineapple never danced (excluding, for a while, one or two hand-picked Photoshop effects). Miraculously, it still hasn't danced.

Why Linus Torvalds Prefers x86 Over ARM

How could this be? Let's dissect.

The Underappreciated True Story of 48-Year-Old Boxer Bernard Hopkins

In 1982, after racking up nine felonies, he was sent to Graterford Prison for 18 years.

That sure sounds like the 8088 I knew and loved.

Over the next two years he scored 21 victories in 21 fights, 16 by KO and 12 of those in the first round.

Ditto.

"Younger guys would think that an old boxer must be an easy target," Sugar said, "Only to find out when they stood in front of him they couldn't hit him with a handful of stones."

To it's credit, The DEC Alpha actually landed a punch. Others, not so much.

At 41, Hopkins finally seemed washed up. But he adapted, deciding to put on a few pounds and move up in weight class. "It was a new life for me," he said. "I could finally eat pasta and not worry about going over the weight limit."

It was AMD that finally provided the magic milkshake.

At 46 years, four months and 10 days he broke George Foreman's record to become the oldest fighter ever to win a world championship.

Ye olde 8088 has sure come a long way.

Where x86 went up in weight class, Jobs ultimately—not with the once-franchise iMac, but the iPhone—successfully went down in weight class. That much-vaunted 10" chef knife went nowhere fast after decades of trying, but he stuck with it—full marks—and finally made a freaking fortune on pastel-coloured paring knives.

Meanwhile, Ritchie improved steel. Advantage: Ritchie.

take everything with a grain of salt. Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science Study Finds: Studies Are Wrong:

Yes, but being a single parent is a risk factor. You usually don't have as much time to focus on your job, etc. Or it can be the opposite: if you have a child, you want the best for them and maybe make extra sure you keep your current job, etc.

And about skin color, blacks have a larger unemployment rate than whites:

http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...

So you are not supposed to look at the employment status because due to this you might infer the skin color and apply racist bias? This is just totally nuts. Of course, you should not use skin color information to infer employment status, which would be racist, but using employment status information to make your loan decision should be possible, just as using information on whether you are a single parent or not.

http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...

Batteries have a higher energy density than explosives. For this reason there are many layers of defence. The charging circuitry knows the maximu safe rate. Inside the battery are thermal cut outs. The circuitry of the battery is designed to control the rate of charging. The battery series as a whole should be extensively tested under all sorts of situations and failure cases.. Each batttery should be tested separately. In the case of most failures of the battery then it should simply stop accepting charge and act dead. In order for something like this to happen many layers of design, manufacturing and testing need to have failed pretty disastrously.

The people behind this are proper engineers (not the clowns who call themselves "software engineers") and this is their bridge fall down / go to prison moment. The main hope is that Samsung senior management also gets it because such a widespread failure, especially delivered multiple times, clearly doesn't come from the individual engineers alone.

You don't have a right to defend yourself from your own government. No such right exists.

You might possibly have a right to defend yourself from someone who is lunging at you with a knife, or pointing a gun at you, but only if they aren't wearing a badge. Sometimes even if they aren't in the case of undercover agents.

Like hell you don't.

Opposition to gun control was what drove the black militants to visit the California capitol with loaded weapons in hand. The Black Panther Party had been formed six months earlier, in Oakland, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Like many young African Americans, Newton and Seale were frustrated with the failed promise of the civil-rights movement. Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were legal landmarks, but they had yet to deliver equal opportunity. In Newton and Seale’s view, the only tangible outcome of the civil-rights movement had been more violence and oppression, much of it committed by the very entity meant to protect and serve the public: the police.

And Mashiki fails to note that they were doing so in order to track the process and thus improve their ability to make arrests.

You mean they were not tracking the process, ignoring informant information, and not doing any arrests. And according to the FOIA requests, the Obama administration went even further and blocked agents from actively perusing investigations against solid leads. Did not inform the Mexican government unlike the Bush administration did, illegally engaged in straw sale purchases, and in the end was so shitty that they "lost" thousands of weapons. Openly discussed and/or blocked ATF lab reports which showed that the weapons that the administration had approved for gunrunning were being used to commit crimes. Which came directly from Holder's office. And attempted to use "executive privilege" in order to block all information on it. Which of course is why it was such a big scandal...unless you watch the US news, in which case they simply brushed it off as nothing. Much like you did, and of course if all that had happened under a Republican president, you would be screaming from the rooftop right now.

But much like Yeland Lee(who was gunrunning as well FYI also a democrat), the only difference between the two is that no one in the Obama administration actually went to prison over it.

I just read that due to fear of the police, and a belief they won't help you anyhow --- calls to 911 are down drastically too.

Apparently being nice is good for business. Or being really brutal.

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

No, I'm refusing to take the bait you're trying to use to change the subject, as a way to distract from the fact she only avoided indictment because of political support from the administration.

Nope, you're refusing to address a serious problem, and making a tedious excuse for your refusal to do the right thing. Yet it was a subject you brought up.

Why do you lack the courage to denounce an actually abusive system, so badly that you immediately start to retract your support for your own statement?

Did you not realize someone would notice what you said, and support you? Are you afraid that you'll be subject to criticism for taking on a sacred cow?

Regardless, not a SINGLE person in the US military is there but for having volunteered to be there.

Indeed, the rich and privileged have managed to end conscription, leaving themselves free to benefit, without risk of paying the price. And there are still concerns about lying recruiters, and even targeting of the impoversished for recruitment.. Recent editorial on conscription. Which is why there are severe questions about the prosecution of individuals in the military, since it is not representative of the public, which leads to abuse, since nobody cares about them.

And then there's Trump's proposals.

So needless to say, these are some serious issues, and you should treat them with a modicum of consideration, not attempt to ignore them.

The UCMJ is publicly available to read before you decide to start taking a paycheck and benefits from the DoJ, and nobody - NOBODY - is even a little bit foggy on whether or not being in uniform and carrying around weed are compatible. Anyone in uniform who's too dumb to know that should be in the brig just for being that dumb.

Which would be one thing except For all the shit it has lead to happening. I'd rather they smoke weed than commit suicide to be honest.

It's ok, you can continue to stick your head in the sand and ignore the problem. You can do that. Totally.

You shouldn't. But you can.

Both military and civilian government employees who work with the clearances to handle classified material are subject to the same rules.

Nope, different rules and protocols. Was true even when it was Francis Gary Powers, who absolutely was not working for the DOD, absolutely not. And of course, there are severe problems with that system, as came up in a story the other day.

And then there was the story about misuse of databases by individuals engaging in personal affairs. Which is another problem that gets ignored.

Any involvement of the military in Hillary Clinton's prosecution would violate the Posse Comitatus Act.

Whew! It's a good thing you made that counterpoint to an argument nobody is having with you.

You're the one bringing it up, when it's meaningless what would be done under the UCMJ to someone who isn't subject to it anyway. Now something meaningful is the treatment of individuals to injustice under the UCMJ. You brought that up, but the swerved away from it.

It's a hot-potato, I'll grant you, but if you're brave, you can handle it. Right?

Er what? Apple doesn't want to be the one that law enforcement has to go to every time they need another phone to be cracked. How many times in how many jurisdictions a day would that be? Also that would apply to any country not just the US. I wouldn't want to be that custodian.

That's certainly a factor; but I know from being an Apple aficionado since 1976 that they just don't like the gummint much. Perhaps it comes from having their R&D labs raided by the FBI way back when, when it was rumored that Woz and John Draper (a/k/a Captain Crunch) were working on a digital "Blue Box" peripheral for the Apple 1...

Rumor has it that some stuff was confiscated. But I've never gotten Woz to confirm (or deny) the story. But after a few minutes of Google-fu, it looks like this may actually be the real story after all....

Some Wonder If It Means the US Has Given Away The Internet

"Some" refers to geniuses like Trump who worry about "The Cyber" and 400-pound hackers "sitting in their beds." And people like Ted Cruz, who is Ted Cruz.

At the other end of the argument, you have people like Tim Berners-Lee who wrote an editorial in the Washington Post rebutting Cruz's nonsense.

Slashdot has been wasting electricity with this "story" before. Seems like a waste. Or does Slashdot, like Trump and Cruz, also believe climate change is a hoax?

That was TWENTY years ago. Let's re-run the litany of documented Clinton scandals since then, shall we? Meh...look here for all that...

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

For f's sake, Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives and BARELY spared removal from office when the necessary votes fell just short in the Senate. The last person that happened to was Andrew Johnson back in 1868. Quite an exclusive club. Scandal follows the Clintons like the dust cloud follows Pigpen.

Addendum

Here is an article on the topic that explains the "Tea Party" tax exempt filing situation. I must disclose it's from a left-leaning source, but it gives you nuggets of info to cross-check in other ways.

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

Meanwhile...
The IRS targets individuals because they don't follow the correct political views.
Peter Thiel is investigated by department of Labor because he supports Trump.

The facts show that only 1/3 of the 501c4 organizations questioned were classified as conservative. http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

So, since Peter Thiel is a conservative you think he shouldn't be investigated?

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

This is getting as bad as the birthers. Which Trump says Clinton started, the gaslighting asshole.

Clinton did start it. Even far-left magazines and newspapers who aren't in the tank for Clinton can trace how Clinton ops in 2008, told investigative reporters that they should look into it. And many actually did, going as far as sending investigative teams to look into it. It was one of her campaign strategies.

None of these links say anything about Clinton starting anything of the sort.

This is getting as bad as the birthers. Which Trump says Clinton started, the gaslighting asshole.

Clinton did start it. Even far-left magazines and newspapers who aren't in the tank for Clinton can trace how Clinton ops in 2008, told investigative reporters that they should look into it. And many actually did, going as far as sending investigative teams to look into it. It was one of her campaign strategies.

Until recently, there were no laws against transsexuals using the women's bathrooms. This is a post-2000 phenomena. It's speculated that this is in reaction to gays and lesbians gaining the right to marry - people are now looking for a new target.

You sort of got it right. It's as I said in my last post: "But that's the nature of "progressivism", as the big problems are tackled you start making mountains out of molehills."

Progressives moved on from gay marriage to transsexuals. The North Carolina state law was in response to a city ordinance that "allows transgender people to use the bathroom corresponding to the gender with which they identify".

If someone no longer has a functioning penis and testicles, what harm is there in letting them use the women't washroom? Just what are you afraid of? Can't be them raping others and getting them pregnant with their demon seed. They're far more likely to get assaulted if you send them to the men's washroom, because lots of guys are into trans porn and "doing a transsexual" is on their bucket list, and others would feel it's their right to beat them up because of what they are.

WRT harassment, legally it makes no difference if the person was born female or became female. The same rules apply to both in the eyes of the law. Harassment is harassment, and not protected speech.

I agree, but I don't agree with your definition of "harassment", and the general approach to "harassment" is to take the first step and ask the person you considering "harassing" you to stop contacting you. I'm not emailing transsexuals or confronting them in the street with their original name. I completely reject your goals to broaden the scope of "harassment".

You are posting in a public forum which transsexuals read. I can guarantee that it's not just non-transsexuals who have read our back-and-forth. You have also already said that the reason you continue to refer to Chelsea Manning by her old male name is because that's how you first knew her when she got into the spotlight. You also said that transsexuals should be called by their old name and sex because they aren't really women, but men who have cut off their penis. It's obvious that you approve of this sort of trans-baiting because you're doing it right here, and by debating it, you are offering your encouragement to others to do this as well. In other words, you are suborning harassment based on sex.

As for the percentage of men who would date or marry a transsexual, many do without even knowing it. The reason the percentage isn't higher is because of a lack of supply to meet the demand.

Again, this "many". What percentage of men will date or marry a transsexual?

So sure, it's a small number, but in real terms that's still 315,000 in each category, or 630,000. That's more than the total population of Las Vegas, and way more than Pittsburgh or Boston, or the population of Wyoming.or Vermont..

So fucking what? Google tells me there are 318.9 million people in the United States as of 2014. A tiny percentage of a very big number can still look big, but it would be absolutely foolish to waste an abundance of time/energy/money on such a small percentage.

Let's take your line of reasoning further. By your thinking, the government shouldn't be spending money subsidizing the development and distribution of orphan drugs. Orphan drugs, in the US, are those developed for conditions that affect less than 200,000 people. There's a 50% tax credit for R&D costs, $30 million in grants for phase 1 and phase 2 trials, and other advantages granted to developers of orphan drugs. Is it a waste of money to find a treatment for a condition that affects less than 200,000 p

Until recently, there were no laws against transsexuals using the women's bathrooms. This is a post-2000 phenomena. It's speculated that this is in reaction to gays and lesbians gaining the right to marry - people are now looking for a new target.

You sort of got it right. It's as I said in my last post: "But that's the nature of "progressivism", as the big problems are tackled you start making mountains out of molehills."

Progressives moved on from gay marriage to transsexuals. The North Carolina state law was in response to a city ordinance that "allows transgender people to use the bathroom corresponding to the gender with which they identify".

WRT harassment, legally it makes no difference if the person was born female or became female. The same rules apply to both in the eyes of the law. Harassment is harassment, and not protected speech.

I agree, but I don't agree with your definition of "harassment", and the general approach to "harassment" is to take the first step and ask the person you considering "harassing" you to stop contacting you. I'm not emailing transsexuals or confronting them in the street with their original name. I completely reject your goals to broaden the scope of "harassment".

As for the percentage of men who would date or marry a transsexual, many do without even knowing it. The reason the percentage isn't higher is because of a lack of supply to meet the demand.

Again, this "many". What percentage of men will date or marry a transsexual?

So sure, it's a small number, but in real terms that's still 315,000 in each category, or 630,000. That's more than the total population of Las Vegas, and way more than Pittsburgh or Boston, or the population of Wyoming.or Vermont..

So fucking what? Google tells me there are 318.9 million people in the United States as of 2014. A tiny percentage of a very big number can still look big, but it would be absolutely foolish to waste an abundance of time/energy/money on such a small percentage.

That's way more than the number of people who have gotten zika, and look at how much fuss that's causing.

Zika is probably overblown too, but you are talking about birth defects here.

why the people who are so outraged don't say anything about transsexual men using men's bathrooms. Just more old-fashioned misogyny.

It's the opposite of misogyny. The concern is over sexual predators using women's bathrooms. And male-to-female is much more common than female-to-male, so it tends to get talked about more.

As for men dressing up as women always being for laughs, try watching Transparent.

Not for laughs, but for virtue signaling, "progressivism", and drama of the cause du jour. You don't see men taking women's roles in an average Hollywood movie or show.

As sad as it seems, more than 100 million people in the USA have a BIG problem with a $500 investment:

  Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency.

If they can't scrape up $400 for an emergency, they probably can't afford a $500 investment for an epi-pen they might not need. A visit to the ER not only introduces a time delay which puts the person's health at greater risk, and it might also mean bankruptcy.

The risk associated with use of a $30 device is probably acceptable to people who would otherwise risk death or bankruptcy. Having options is a good thing, even if they come with risk.

and I say that as one of her supporters.

When NY Times called her a "congenital liar" in 1996, the only question was, whether "congenital" was the right term — the "liar" was deemed quite apropos.

Fast forward 20 years to 2016, her loyal supporters — such as yourself — beg her to, please, stop lying .

So, her being a liar is well-known and perfectly established — and has been for many years. Presumably, all those lies have not been enough to dissuade her from supporting her until recently. Why are you abandoning her now, when she needs you most?

I doubt they do anything to Manning at all. Isolation and deprivation of human contact is quite enough to drive a person absolutely mad on its own. I wouldn't be surprised if the guards are under strict orders not to talk to her at all. That she tried to commit suicide earlier this year doesn't surprise me at all. One of the former wardens of the United State's supermax prison which has similar isolation for all inmates described it as something like hell. About the only thing worse than that without physically assaulting a person is sleep deprivation for extended periods, which will get you to own-shit-as-crayon levels of crazy in under a week.

Check out the Hackaday prize, over at Hackaday.io.

Actually, you don't even have to get too clever to save lives. In early 2015, the South Pacific country of Vanuatu was devastated by cyclone Pam, a category 5 storm that severely damaged almost half the country. (Full disclosure: the UNICEF photos are mine.). In spite of some islands being completely denuded of shelter, only 11 people died.

The people of Vanuatu deal with an average of 1.5 cyclones every year, but this was an unique event. There had never been a storm of this intensity measured in the country before, and certainly not one that passed directly on top of more than half the population. 3000 years of dealing with cyclones meant that people knew how to cope, but it was telecommunications that allowed us to warn people in time for them to seek shelter. Ironically, on Tanna (the worst-affected island) the majority of casualties occurred when the wall of a building designated an emergency shelter collapsed.

One national telco saw its entire national network knocked out. But within 10 days, they had better than 90% of it back in operation. I myself saw the CEO manhandling a microwave antenna into the back of a chopper during the height of the relief effort.

So yeah, it's not glorious; it's not clever. Sometimes tech just needs to be available to save lives.

P.S. The owners of a Very Large Internet Company saved a lot of lives in the immediate aftermath of the storm when they sent their superyacht to assist with relief activities. The vessel was small enough to get into the countless tiny passages, and large enough to support a helipad for medevacs. On top of that, the 40,000 litre desalination unit could keep entire villages supplied with water until barges could arrive. They don't want their names to come out because this is one of the few places in the world they can get away and just be people. But thanks guys. You rock.

The Atlantic makes it seem like the hack has made him more likable than ever.

Hate to be a killjoy, but I think they implemented for their *paying* customers. The young man, genius that he was, found a backdoor.

In front of a judge, finding a backdoor looks really novel, perhaps fun, and yes, criminally illegal. I wish that T-Mobile and a prosecutor could just laugh it all off, but in this nutzo world, they won't, and the result is likely to be draconian, sad as that may be.

Are you saying that in today's uptight world we would never have had something like this nor this would ever have existed because Jobs and Woz would end up in jail?

Are we going to have special payroll police, with a list of professions, qualifications, and certifications, with a minimum salary for each?

There's already been talk of exactly that sort of thing due to the myth that men earn more than women for the same job.
Obama's New Equal-Pay Rules

Since 1990? Geez...that's setting the bar pretty low...let's go back a few hundred years, I bet it's more like 80%.

Sadly one of the main culprits almost sounds like a footnote - 'logging' is often done to clear land for livestock, just look at the Amazon. And most of the 'agriculture' is also to support that same livestock. In the US, 1/2 of ALL land is used for livestock - either space they take up, or for producing their food (and 70-90% of all corn, soy and wheat grown in the US is fed to livestock). XKCD has a stunning graphic showing the mass of all mammals on the planet.....and much is (you guessed it) livestock, followed by humans, with a sprinkling of wild mammals. NatGeo illustrates how much land there is on the planet, how much remains 'untouched', and how much we consume. We use up almost 40% of the entire non-ice land for 'agriculture', the vast majority as pastures, and you'll find much of the cropland is also devoted to this area.'Free range' is actually worse, demanding even more space than 'factory farmed'.

If you really care about this issue, consider what you're eating. When it comes to resource use (water, energy, space), livestock are at the top, or near. And it's a change we all can make. (And there's never been greater vegan options to choose from, give them a try if you haven't!)

And what about Tim DeChristopher's message about protecting the environment? Oh, the court explicitly banned any mention or consideration of his message or even motives. The system can declare open season on activists whenever it wants.

BTW, a party that will commit fraud in order to hoard money away from state/local campaigns into the hands of the already wealthy Clinton is no doubt interested in creating as much hysteria as possible to deflect attention.

Hacking voter registration systems is a serious issue for sure. For one thing, those systems should not be online. Another thing is that the Snowden leaks show the US routinely breaks into foreign municipal and university systems to steal their data. They even leak data for political impact. But no corp. infotainment brand in the US is going to make an issue out of it. Which is odd, because supposedly Americans would be the first people you would expect to be capable of stopping our government from doing this.

And lets not forget infotainment's penchant for labeling any activity by Russian or Chinese individuals as a government conspiracy against the West. They segue from intentionally vague language intended to erase any distinction, to more serious language calling for bombing campaigns. A similar tactic was used in the coverage over Iran's "nuclear program", an erasure of the nuclear power / nuclear weapons dichotomy they do not commit when discussing US programs.

As for Russian government involvement in the two voter db hacks: Contrasted with the DNC hack, it looks rather iffy. Did N. Korea's government commit the Sony hacks? Probably not, but interestingly enough we expect our government to keep blaming them anyway.

EVEN our NATO allies are not trusted... they are spied upon in minute detail. So the good will that had grown for a time between nations has been pissed away because of this paternalistic, power-mad attitude emanating from the US establishment (and assorted hangers-on in the other four of the Five Eyes). And please don't pretend that we didn't set the bar...or that it's not an important issue.

A Russian disinformation campaign has already been in full swing in Germany for over a year.

Funny. I live in Germany. Show me this information war, because I don't see any sign of it.

OK. Look here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.htm

A Russian disinformation campaign has already been in full swing in Germany for over a year. Russia has identified Germany as the key player in European politics and foreign policy and Russian internet trolls are flooding the comment sections of German news sites with pro-Russian propaganda while trying to sow distrust in German institutions, the government and mainstream German media.

That's well documented.

  http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/the-kremlins-troll-army/375932/

or here http://euromaidanpress.com/201...

or here http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05...

I've seen absolutely nothing that suggests that more criminals are getting away with crimes now than they did a couple of decades ago.

Clinton ?

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

Aluminum actually increases the RF hitting your head. You need actual tin foil, not aluminum.

(Actual study results appear to be offline now, but here's a news article on it: http://www.theatlantic.com/hea... )

Actually no we won't. The cost of flooding and storms will cost more then the normal BNP growth if nothing is done.

So the world will be less good off, if we don't do anything about climate change.

http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...

Wouldn't have done any good, bankers are untouchable. We know there was a ton of fraud in the 2008 financial crisis, but prosecutors didn't bother to prosecute more than a few people because:

Any narrative of how we got to this point has to start with the so-called Holder Doctrine, a June 1999 memorandum written by the then–deputy attorney general warning of the dangers of prosecuting big banks—a variant of the “too big to fail” argument that has since become so familiar. Holder’s memo asserted that “collateral consequences” from prosecutions—including corporate instability or collapse—should be taken into account when deciding whether to prosecute a big financial institution. That sentiment was echoed as late as 2012 by Lanny Breuer, then the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, who said in a speech at the New York City Bar Association that he felt it was his duty to consider the health of the company, the industry, and the markets in deciding whether or not to file charges.

Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences, if you shout "fire!" in a theatre you will get banned regardless of your rights.

Congratulations, you've checked the box for "the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech."

Nevermind dropping the whole "falsely" thing. Banning someone for yelling "fire" when there is a fire, however small, is the height of idiocy.

On the other hand, I imagine one will also get thrown out for yelling "movie" in a crowed fire station, if, for no other reason, than not being funny or original.

Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences, if you shout "fire!" in a theatre you will get banned regardless of your rights.

Congratulations, you've checked the box for "the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech."

Nevermind dropping the whole "falsely" thing. Banning someone for yelling "fire" when there is a fire, however small, is the height of idiocy.

Citation: http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...

I clicked on the link. I didn't get beyond the first line: "Why is crime rising in so many American cities?" An article that starts with a line that, while it may be true, is highly misleading and intended to deceive, or perhaps just pander to existing biases is not an article that can be taken as a reliable citation.

Citation: http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...