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I bought a Sony T637 in 2004, still my 2nd favorite phone. floAt's Mobile Agent and a slew of accessories made it very very sweet at the time. Admittendly,. coming from a Siemens S46,

And it had Bluetooth.

I bought the only BT headset available at the time, a Jabra. Remember, the crescent-shaped abomination that announced to the world 'I am a true geek, lost to my passion for technology and finding new ways to ignore YOU'. Surprisingly, it neither made me a pariah nor prevented my meeting and marrying my wife. She got a headset also when she got a new phone, for the real reason BT was invented was to prevent headphone cables from becoming entangled in the stick shift... Yes, really. All else was superfluous until the Millennials destroyed the manual transmission market.

  Since that phone, of course, I've bought nothing else The BB 7105t I next had included BT, no stereo yet. And then The Dream - HTC G1. Bluetooth was supported a few months after launch, so yes, I was in virtual hell for a bit, but they came through. And then I could finally retire my Minidisc player... I've still got it, with remote, a bunch of blank discs, battery case, and car mount, if you;re interested. I'll even throw in a new rechargeable battery if you give me a few days, make an offer. MiniDisc is underrated tech.

I really cannot imagine using corded headsets. the hassle, the limitation, not being able to leave the phone on the garage workbench while I mow the lawn, just touching my ear to answer a call. It really is time for the Butlerians to relent and use the useful technology that is Bluetooth. Or not, and whine about having to use a dongle-enabled wired set of buds for however long they must.

Don't get too hot about it, she might suggest that she wants to cool you down with a water pistol. This could cause a serious misunderstanding.

I am *not* dead wrong. Russia has a terrible position. They're no Soviet Union. They're surrounded, where are they going to go?

Uhh, Crimea, for a start? They have Syria, too.

The US won't allow anything to happen to its captive vassal states in Europe.

I think the people of Ukraine would disagree with you on that.

The European Union is already strong enough to defend against Russia

So far, they've been strong enough to impose some sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine and the taking of Crimea. But it's kinda over... nobody believes Russia is going to just pack up and leave. Re-draw the maps: Crimea is now part of the Russian Federation.

Don't fall for the old "blame the dirty foreigners" line, it's the oldest trick in the book.

Unless the dirty foreigners are actually playing dirty. They play dirty in Ukraine, they play dirty in Syria. They play dirty on the high seas. They have vast oil wealth, hold real estate interests worldwide, and maintain the largest nuclear stockpile in the world, which Putin said (over dinner) could destroy America in a half-hour or less.

And then there's that whole internet hacking thing. If the shoe fits, wear it.

The Russians spent $100,000 on Facebook ads, some of which were 'politically divisive' according to the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

Google has uncovered less than $100,000 in ad spending potentially linked to Russian actors, the source said.

Twitter and Facebook recently detected and disclosed that suspected Russian operatives, working for a content farm known as the Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg, Russia, used their platforms to purchase ads and post content that was politically divisive in an effort to influence Americans before and after the November 2016 presidential election.

The Internet Research Agency employ hundreds of so-called "trolls" who post pro-Kremlin content, much of it fake or discredited, under the guise of phony social media accounts that pose as American or European, according to lawmakers and researchers.

Compare that to spending by US entities

https://www.opensecrets.org/pr...

Amount raised by candidates: $1.5 billion
Amount raised by super PACs supporting them: $618 million

So there was over $2 billion spent if you add up candidate and super PAC money.

And consider that 300 million odd Americans were also posting 'politically divisive' things to FB. Which dutifully censors all the ones that are anti Democrat and promotes all the ones that are anti Republican

Not to mention the Guardian is hardly innocent of posting 'politically divisive' things about US politics itself.

If the Russians could swing a US election with a five hundred thousand dollars, maybe the Democrats and the Republicans should just hire them next time. It'd save them a lot of money.

Or maybe the Democrats should stop whining - they had more money, the support of most of the tech companies and media and still lost even though the Republicans selected someone who was widely seen as a joke candidate.

Hilary went into that election with a double digit lead and ended up neck and neck, despite all the money and support from the media and tech companies.

Thanks for letting us know. I can't imagine such a vast trove of information being wholesale blocked by a modern country.

You are welcome.

More precisely, Wikipedia was blocked for a brief period of time -- perhaps a day -- in 2015, over some article about a drug. However, very soon the officials backtracked, so not all ISPs have even implemented the ban by the time the block was lifted.

Using Google translate, you can read the Russian Wikipedia entry about that event. Or just can read about that story in some English media, such as Guardian.

My point is that nobody left

Yes they did!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-p...
https://www.theguardian.com/te...

And so on.

Google were pretty quick to respond so many of the advertisers returned.

they simply can't afford to.

Except that they can and they did.

BTW. Christians need not be smug since you can easily find plenty of genocide there although not as much as Islam.

Well now, that all conveniently hinges on what you count as 'christian'.

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

"The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will."

-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The oath taken to join the SS also directly mentioned God, and the Catholic church was in official alliance with the third reich, Hitler's birthday being an occasion of celebration in all churches within Germany. 'Gott mitt uns' was inscribed in each and every belt buckle of German soldiers.

But I presume in your books this does not count as 'real christianity', am I right?

It's likely very true that Hitler himself was not truly religious (in fact current historical consensus seems to be that he was fairly irreligious and just saw the importance of religion as a tool), but he consistently and repeatedly made references to the faith and is was a central theme in Nazi propaganda to emphasize that unity of the church (and god) with their cause. And the church agreed with this, wholeheartedly, the Pope said not one thing against Adolf.

And if you think that was the end of the church's genocidal tendencies you'd be wrong again. The catholic church openly took one side over the other in the Rwandan genocide, with catholic priests openly preaching murder and committing it themselves even, all in the name of god. Less than 30 years ago.

If however it is your opinion that as the views of the nazis (or of the Rwandan catholics) do not align with the modern interpretation of Christianity it's therefore alright to not count the holocaust or Rwanda as a 'christian genocide' even though Christianity was deeply involved in both, then you ought to give other religions the same courtesy and understand that the way states, especially theocratic states, implement and enforce their religious views does not define the entire religion or its believers. Right now there's a budhist-lead genocide going on in Myanmar.

The point that this should drive home to you is that as satisfying as it'd be to think religions cause totalitarianism, most often it is the case that totalitarian states co-opt religion and religious tendencies for their own purposes. In North Korea this has gone so far that the ruling elite has made themselves to be worshiped as gods, and created a religion where Kim is seen as an all-powerful miraculous figure.

I've met and talked with batshit insane theocratic muslims and christians alike. I've also shared bread with deeply religious people from both faiths who abhor totalitarianism because they've experienced its iron grip first-hand. I've also met many more followers of both faiths who are de facto atheist but choose to not use that term because it'd cause familial issues so they call themselves christians or muslims although you'll sooner find them in a bar than in churches or mosques.

In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.

-Alan Watts

We programmers have been automating our own work for decades now. One could argue that we are working ourselves out of a job, but somehow there always seems to be more work--more automating--to do!

Back in the 30s, Keynes predicted we would all be working four-hour days by now. Somehow, that didn't quite work out.
https://www.theguardian.com/bu...

I love all the automated tools I can now use every day, to do the drudge work I used to have to do manually. Who would want to go back to those days? What actually happens is that automation allows us to do MORE than we could do before, and to do NEW things we could never do before. The total amount of work doesn't seem to be shrinking at all.

My interests have not been represented in quite a few years. I am white, heterosexual, have medical insurance provided by my employer(s), college educated with BS and MS degrees in my chosen professional field, widowed, no kids, make too much money to claim lower bracket tax deductions and not enough money to take advantage of the higher bracket tax deductions, and practice no denomination of religious beliefs.

In fact, you are exactly the demographic that the Democratic party represents. Sure, they give some lip service to progressive ideas and identity politics, but that's because that's what people like you want to hear. But the establishment Democrats do nothing to support policies to actually help the poor and working class - they help people like you. It's why urban centers on the costs are so blue.

Uh, I'm not sure where you get your information however the Democrats haven't supported the middle class and especially the white, male middle class for years. They emphasize support for minorities and the working poor who are abundant in the urban centers on the coasts.

Yea, I'm calling bullshit on that. As I said, they pay lip service to it, but these days, the party really represents the well-to-do.

In the past, Democrats could support progressive, redistributive policies knowing that the costs would fall largely on Republicans. That is no longer the case. Now supporting these policies requires the party to depend on the altruistic idealism of millions of supporters who, despite being relatively well off, often feel financially pressed themselves.

The Democratic Party’s pursuit of well-off whites undermined its ability to deliver gains for all workers.

So no wonder Democrats are enamored with all of that rhetoric about inequality and class warfare. Their constituents, the audience they are addressing, are far more likely to live in the American equivalent of Rio de Janeiro, a class society starkly divided between squalid, hopeless, crime-ridden favelas and safe, beautiful downtown playgrounds for the rich. The Democrats are arsonists posing as the fire brigade, offering to solve a problem they created.

The Democratic party once represented the working class. But over the last three decades the party has been taken over by Washington-based fundraisers, bundlers, analysts, and pollsters who have focused instead on raising campaign money from corporate and Wall Street executives and getting votes from upper middle-class households in “swing” suburbs. Democrats have occupied the White House for 16 of the last 24 years, and for four of those years had control of both houses of Congress. But in that time they failed to reverse the decline in working-class wages and economic security. Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama ardently pushed for free trade agreements without providing millions of blue-collar workers who thereby lost their jobs means of getting new ones that paid at least as well.

Good for convincing advertisers that FB ads really can make a difference and are bang for the buck?

Twitter didn't seem as successful:
https://www.theguardian.com/me...

So if I'm in law enforcement in Canada, I could say I have a magic device that detects corruption, point fingers, and then people just have to deal with it?

Probably not::

The Royal Mounted Police in Canada decided against an order when they asked how it worked and McCormick replied: "It just works."

We have the technology to move away from 100-year-old energy sources, why not use it?

We already are moving to solar based power generation. Last year worldwide generation increased by 50% more than the prior year. Why interfere with the market when it's already moving in the direction we'd like it to?

"Globally there is now 305GW of solar power capacity, up from around 50GW in 2010 and virtually nothing at the turn of the millennium."

I knew Facebook has been restricting pages non-advertised posts for a while now but now they're testing to remove them once in for all and create 2 feeds. Meaning your main feed will have ads and friends posts only. I don't know if this has been shared but here For me this is bullshit. It already means social media feeds are dying because they're literally becoming ad spots. Instagram is the same, it doesnt allow company accounts to be shown in feed unless they pay for it. I don't believe there will be a kill switch for users to stop it either if you want to use fb you will have to go through ads.

How about declared dead after they couldn't find the plane for over 9 months and no one had established contact?

This article is a load of crap. It's an example of how these data models have failed to achieve anything useful. Firstly after almost 2 years they announced that they were looking in the wrong place: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/... and also that they were confident that after spending $200m the plane was not in the search area they established. https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

Good work big data!

They might have had information things on things which hadn't been patented. Ideas for future projects that were never implemented. Yes, they should have scanned in all those documents, and put the backup hard disk drives in a fire safe. But it wasn't justified on cost probably. Not the first time that an research institution has lost original work:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk...

These PT/MEO guys, I got a cool story for ya.

(this is a long comment so beware)

PT/MEO/Altice (or whatever name they decide is less tainted this week) are basically our FCC's (ANACOM) golden boys, and have been for decades. But maybe the best description is to say ANACOM is PT's lapdog. I bet that's how the other 2 ISPs see it.

Initially, PT was the state's telecom, and they got state-sponsored everything including tubing, copper, fiber networks, you name it, paid by good ol' taxpayers money, mine and my parents' (because state worker salaries have been frozen since 2007 - first by seniority, then in 2010 by merits such as academic degree).

The country was sacked 2-3 years ago due to loss of soberanity to the Troika), from international handouts we got from them for our much over-hyped so-called bankruptcy. This induced in the sale of most state-owned companies, including PT/MEO to Altice.

International purchasers of our "on sale" country usually got cool perks on clauses, and we also got ourselves one of the top golden passports programs in the world in the process, so top level management could move money around tax havens easily. Shit like this is common practice here and not just on de-nationalization of stuff - when we build our state-of-the-art toll-highways, contractors, who pay something like 10-30% of the roads (remainder state-subsidized) get the revenue from tolls over the next 20-50 years as a benefit, while maintenance and toll collection are all still state's responsibility. According to my own very basic calculations, they get something like 10 times initial investment, while the state itself gets a very hard hit on anual budget.

Oh and guess what, we are one of the top countries getting hammered by the Panama Papers offshoring of cash.

But this was just an example. Let me tell you what ALTICE got when they purchased PT/MEO at discount, at least that I know off: total monopoly on rural areas, which ANACOM likes to name "non-competitive zones", and which for a country like Portugal is not a lot of land % but is near the 30% family houses. A 30% population, state-sponsored monopoly. FUCK.

So since my family lives in one of these areas and we are not happy with their service, I decided to contact PT/MEO through their client feedback page, mentioning some very knowledgeable, yet all public details about my actually not very common issue - I am from a village which has very old copper lines, sometimes not reaching the 1mbps, and with constant drops in service. We also have a 3g signal from the only provider that is reachable, PT/MEO obviously, who offer a data-capped service. The copper DSL service requires a 15euro fee just to have the phone line, which is mandatory, and we still have to pay 25€ extra for 24mbps DSL (read: 1mbps with drops). The 3g plan is 30€ a month, and it is simply unusable on primetime. None of these plans include a mobile phone plan or mobile phone data or cable or satellite TV, which is an extra 20-30€. My family's telecom bill goes beyond 100€ most months. RE-FUCK.

But here's the real kicker: WE HAVE FIBER ON OUR STREET THAT NOBODY WILL SELL US.

Before PT/MEO was sold, they were in the process of kick-starting state-sponsored fiber link called Redes de Nova Geração all over rural areas, operated by, guess who.... PT/MEO. This was done in a similar 30/70 scheme as the highways but instead of tolls, PT got to be the operator and re-sell fiber to our other 2 telecom carriers, so that it would be shared, just like in cities here, to induce in FAIR competition. When we have competition around here, things like a 25€ triple-play plan, like we have in EVERY SINGLE CITY IN PORTUGAL

Given that they dropped their price on avocados and that some millionaires and politicians keep attributing the poor millennial's inability to afford to buy houses to their consumption of avocado on toast I would say Amazon's price drop is attempting to single-handedly solve* the housing affordability crisis facing our next generation.

* For those of you who don't get the obvious sarcasm, this was obviously sarcastic.

why were only a few hundred admitted to hospital

Among the official count of these hundreds admitted to hospitals are also included those who said that felt anxiety watching the news on TV.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/08/catalonia-demo-injuries-fact-checking
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/ 2017/10/19/how-fake-news-helped-shape-the-cataloni a-independence-vote/
http://www.politico.eu/article/russia-catalonia-re ferendum-fake-news-misinformation/

And of course those who blatantly lied and got caught red handed.

http://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20171003/431773709255/la-mujer-que-denuncio-que-la-policia-le-habia-roto-los-dedos-admite-ahora-que-solo-es-una-inflamacion.html

For instance there are now claims that there is some form of collaboration between Russia and 'Black Lives Matter'. That's just the kind of things governments come up with to discredit activism.

That report was by The Guardian, a far left UK paper, who went digging for Russia links to discredit Trump and prove Hillary's 'Russia collusion' narrative.

https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

The main topics covered by the groups run from Russia were race relations, Texan independence and gun rights. RBC counted 16 groups relating to the Black Lives Matter campaign and other race issues that had a total of 1.2 million subscribers. The biggest group was entitled Blacktivist and reportedly had more than 350,000 likes at its peak.

Actually backing BLM and Texan independence is straight out of Dugin's playbook. Quite literally - Foundations of Geopolitics has a set of recommended things a Russian government should do to destabilise the US and backing 'separatism' and 'Afro-America racists' are among those things.

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

The book emphasizes that Russia must spread Anti-Americanism everywhere: "the main 'scapegoat' will be precisely the U.S."

In the United States:

Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements - extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics."

Also if Russia's goal is to 'spread Anti-Americanism everywhere' it doesn't make sense to back one US party over the other. Presumably the FSB are smart enough to realise that changing the POTUS at the top of the system isn't enough to convert the US from a strategic competitor to an ally.

The reason for that is that isolationism and abandoning allies isn't a viable strategy for the US. Trump may have said some isolationist things as a candidate but like US POTUSs before him he's ended up abandoning them in office for the simple reason they are disastrous

https://slashdot.org/comments....

Putin is a foreign policy realist, and he'd presumably expect this. Actually I suspect he thought he'd get honeymoon period like he did with W Bush and Obama and then the US would revert to business as usual. Unfortunately for him that hasn't been the case with Trump. Trump bombed a Syrian airbase which had Russian personnel on it, though he warned them first. He also shot down a Syrian jet

http://time.com/4823314/syria-...

I.e. he's actually noticeably more hawkish on Russia than Obama and W Bush were in the first year in office.

On my desktop I can see the link at the end of the Title on both the main and story pages but it's not there on my phone.

Here's the Guardian article, here's Transport&Environment's press release and the briefing and study.

If her name was Hillary Johnson, you wouldn't care enough to lie about her.

Kristian Saucier is fascinated by your alternative facts, and would like to subscribe to your Hillbot newsletter, as are David Petraeus and Sandy Berger.

Are you completely ignorant that CNN lost all credibility when they are forced to retract stories about Trump Russia collusion with employees having to resign?

Just because someone pissed in a jar and labeled it 'Truth' and you drank it, doesn't mean the rest of us are that gullible, or base our opinions on single sources.

This "evidence" you allege was obviously not enough to bring charges.

Tell that to the sailor sent to prison for taking unauthorized pictures on his unsecured cell phone. Hillary exposed far larger amounts of far more classified information and then destroyed much of the evidence. If she were anyone else, she'd be serving an effective life sentence.

From a legal standpoint, if the Secretary of State emails their staff classified information originating from the State Department, they are de-facto declassifying it.

You should find this statute that lets high level officials unilaterally share information outside the official declassification process and tell David Petraeus, so he can get his plea deal to federal charges vacated.

We tried buying off NK with tons of stuff in exchange for ending a nuclear development program, but they kept developing nuke capabilities and that "Agreed Framework" ended.

Because not only did you keep threatening them militarily, you kept practicing invasions of the country while actually invading TWO countries for bullshit reasons. And since then has overthrown two democracies and repeated the Iraq "mistake" in Syria and Libya.

And you wonder why NK wants nuclear weapons and missiles capable of delivering them.

President Xi is more belligerent than any Chinese leader since Mao

Yes, belligerent because he want's a Chinese sphere of influence around traditional Chinese waters and territory. As opposed to the United States, which wants hegemony over the entire planet, and isn't belligerent at all.

Putin is also not crazy, but he's been whipping the Russian military into an anti-US and anti-Western frenzy to support his own power and again

Putin cut Russia's defense budget, which is now smaller than the last increase given to the Pentagon. And how much of a frenzy would you American Exceptionalists be in if Russia overthrew the government of Canada and immediately started to bring it into the Warsaw Pact?

North Korea's leader will definitely want to try to nuke everybody he can if the US attacks just to take as many people with him as he can.

Right. Because the U.S. would sit by twiddling its thumbs if a foreign country invaded it.

How many US Presidents have run for office on a 'We need to stop intervening abroad" platform? Every single one has backed down from it once they're in office, presumably based on issues like the ones I raised.

Admittedly none of them have done much to stop Iran or North Korea getting nukes, but all of them have been at least rhetorically committed to stopping that.

Actually Trump is an interesting case. When he was running he wanted to change the US's arrangement whereby the US extends its nuclear umbrella and in return Japan and South Korea do not build nukes. He even signalled that if the price for withdrawing US guarantees was that they did build nukes, he'd be fine with that.

http://time.com/4437089/donald...

In the same New York Times interview in March, Trump indicated that Japan and South Korea might need to obtain their own nuclear arsenal to protect themselves from North Korea and China if the U.S. is unable to defend them. "It's a position that we have to talk about," he said. "If the United States keeps on its path, its current path of weakness, they're going to want to have that anyway with or without me discussing it, because I don't think they feel very secure in what's going on with our country."
"At some point, we cannot be the policeman of the world. And unfortunately, we have a nuclear world now," he later added.
Trump also said Japan and Korea might need to pay more for their own defense. "You know, when we did these deals, we were a rich country. We're not a rich country. We were a rich country with a very strong military and tremendous capability in so many ways. We're not anymore," he told the newspaper. "We have a military that's severely depleted. We have nuclear arsenals which are in very terrible shape. They don't even know if they work."

And then in office people obviously explained why this is a bad idea - China might decide that it should strike first - and he backed off.

James Mattis made it clear the US remains committed to defend Japan.

https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

The Pentagon said defense secretary James Mattis called his Japanese counterpart Itsunori Onodera on Wednesday and "underscored that the US commitment to defend Japan, including the US extended deterrence commitment, remains ironclad".

The Pentagon statement said Mattis "also underscored the United States would work with Japan to enhance its ballistic missile defense capabilities".

It was not immediately clear if the Spy-6 radar system was discussed. Mattis also called his South Korean opposite number, Song Young-moo, who this week called for US tactical nuclear weapons to be deployed on the Korean peninsula for the first time since 1991, as well as other strategic assets such as aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and B-52 bombers.

The US has thus far opposed any redeployment of nuclear weapons. The Pentagon statement on the Mattis-Song conversation said only that the US defense secretary stressed that "any threat to the United States, its territories, or its allies will be met with a massive, effective, and overwhelming military response".

Trump himself told the South Koreans that the US remained committed to its existing security guarantees

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the...

President Trump and Acting President Hwang Kyo-Ahn of the Republic of Korea (ROK) spoke by telephone today. Acting President Hwang congratulated the President on his inauguration. The two discussed the importance of the U.S.-ROK alliance. President Trump reiterated our ironclad commitment to defend the ROK, including through the provision of extended deter

Sort of, except for the part about cryptocurrency depending on stable government. One of its selling points is that it *doesn't* depend on government. So it's more of a fork, targeting a world where you have communications and thus want to conduct long-range commerce, but don't trust/rely on banking/government support to do it.

Considering remote tribes in Africa can get cellular these days, it's quite feasible to me that we would retain basic internet access even in times of failed governance, and being able to order scarce goods from other regions is exactly what makes cryptocurrency more liquid/functional than other forms that rely on physical barter for already-local goods. For example, Venezuela: https://www.theguardian.com/te...

Hmmm... now, why would American society be divided?

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

For those who can't afford health care though working two jobs, the only way to keep them docile is to turn them against imaginary bogey men. This works, because they don't have an inkling as to how obscenely wealthy the 0.01% are.

"Nuclear power as it is right now is as cheap as any wind or solar and it can get cheaper if we start building them again" - because nuclear is subsidised, have a read of these articles
http://thehill.com/opinion/ene...
https://www.theguardian.com/en...

Mod parent up. This is Slashdot, not Huffington Post. We should expect a higher level of accuracy in the details we know most about.

Regarding the labeling, Stallman cleared up that confusion decades ago, by insisting that the complete OS be called GNU/Linux. More recently, in 2011, he also made the Android naming clear:

"Android is very different from the GNU/Linux operating system because it contains very little of GNU. Indeed, just about the only component in common between Android and GNU/Linux is Linux, the kernel. People who erroneously think "Linux" refers to the entire GNU/Linux combination get tied in knots by these facts, and make paradoxical statements such as "Android contains Linux, but it isn't Linux". If we avoid starting from the confusion, the situation is simple: Android contains Linux, but not GNU; thus, Android and GNU/Linux are mostly different."

Source:
https://www.theguardian.com/te...

Bats, purple martins and other insectivores get a vanishingly small amount of their calories from mosquitoes - less than 1% of the stomach contents of bats. Mosquitoes are quite small and therefore not very calorically rich. Unlike midges and gnats, they don’t really swarm in a way that would allow insectivores to get a whole bunch in one swoop, so generally mosquitoes are providing fewer calories than the expense required to fly at them. Bats, martins and the like mostly end up eating moths and midges. Some species of dragonfly are mosquitovores but, again, not as a large percentage of their caloric intake.

There are a handful of species that target mosquito larvae, which bunch up enough to be worth it. The aptly named mosquitofish is one such creature.

But the saving grace even among mosquitofish is that they don’t care what species of mosquito larva they eat - getting rid of the handful that target humans will leave space for the hundreds of other species that exist in the US (let alone the thousands worldwide). There are approximately 3,500 species of mosquito and only about 40 that target humans. Most of the human targeting mosquitoes are invasive species in nearly all of their range, brought by humans. (Aedes aegypti and the Asian Tiger mosquito, for instance, shouldn't be found in the Americas...)

Contrast that with the enormous chemical inputs we put into our lakes, streams and rivers in order to just control mosquitoes - we are surely inadvertently killing off other species of insects just trying to control mosquitoes. And when we drain a wetland because of mosquitoes, we impact far, far more species than even the worst case scenario of mosquito extinction.

There have been a number of discussions among ecologists and the consensus is that wiping out human-targeting mosquito species is fine. Even E.O. Wilson, the famed biologist and campaigner for biodiversity, wants to kill them all. (He’s actually slightly more cautious, but basically wouldn’t spill any tears over eradicating human-feeding insects.)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/11/israel-hack-uncovered-russian-spies-use-kaspersky-lab-2015-report-us-software-federal-government

The only proof I have seen is talk about a security vulnerability discovered by Israeli intelligence in Kaspersky, which they reported to the US government.

Uh, the "discovery" by Israeli intelligence that you're dismissing was not merely "a security vulnerability," but was watching Russians exploiting that security vulnerability and rifling through files.

This was not theoretical.

All the statistics show cops do not as a rule kill unarmed black people with any greater frequency than they kill any other unarmed group and actually less.

Why do you keep lying? Especially about such easily disprovable facts?

Black males aged 15-34 were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by law enforcement officers last year, according to data collected for The Counted, an effort by the Guardian to record every such death. They were also killed at four times the rate of young white men.

The Guardian: Young black men again faced highest rate of US police killings in 2016

Oh, do tell us! I got my adapter when I bought my iPhone 7. Came right in the box. Wasn't a charge for it at all.

It's not mutually exclusive for Apple to provide dongles in the box, and also change the price at launch of separately sold dongles.

But hey, I don't want to get in the way of your little story.

Your snark was unnecessary, making you wrong twice.

Actually the evidence is mounting. This article has a good summary with plenty of links: https://www.theguardian.com/us...

I find this report by the Director of National Intelligence particularly interesting: https://www.dni.gov/files/docu...

We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trumpâ(TM)s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment;NSA has moderate confidence.

Moscowâ(TM)s influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operationsâ"such as cyber activityâ"with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid socialmedia users or âoetrolls.â

The extent to which Trump was involved in this has yet to be determined. The investigation is on-going. It seems that some of his staff did meet with people working for the Russian government and communicated with them in other ways, but to be fair that in itself isn't proof of actual collusion. Trump and his team may well be victims of Russian government manipulation too. It certainly undermines his victory.

We don't know the full extent of this for some time, and even then the way Trump has interfered with the investigation means that any conclusions are unlikely to be accepted now.

Try again.

See: "A US jury indicted Alexander Vinnik on Wednesday after his arrest in a small beachside village in northern Greece on Tuesday, following an investigation led by the US justice department along with several other federal agencies and task forces.

Vinnik was described by the justice department as the operator of BTC-e, an exchange used to trade the digital currency bitcoin since 2011, which was allegedly used to launder more than $4bn for people involved in crimes ranging from computer hacking to drug trafficking." The fellow was involved since 2011 and is an absolute criminal pandering to criminals."

Americans killed by guns in recorded history: 0

Is that like that philosopher who insisted that nobody was killed by a sword, they died from not avoiding the sword?

Here's a shock for you, guns do kill people.

On a side note, concealed carry warning and brandishing probably stops that many robberies, rapes and murders in a week...

Because...you must think that attempted robberies, rapes, and murders are so common that there are thousands a week! What kind of crime-ridden world of fear do you live in?

Americans killed by medical mistakes each year: about 250,000

And we've got a whole group of people arguing about that problem too!

Americans killed by antibiotic resistant bacteria each year: 23,000

Also discussed.

Clearly guns are not that big a threat unless you are an alt left fascist progressive looking to dominate and subjugate the American people.

Nope, guns are a big threat to the American people, what with deaths from toddlers with guns, whereas imaginary fears of alt-left fascist progressives looking to dominate and subjugate the American people aren't a threat at all, except so insofar as they lead right-wing pseudo-conservative trolls to instigate feigned outrage in America.

Every dictator in the last 100 years from Stalin to Mao on down the line disarmed their people first and then murdered millions of them.

Nope. In fact, many dictators armed their people, then told them to go forth and kill "not their people" because well, that's a great way for dictators to keep power.

You must not be familiar with history.

Guns are in fact inanimate objects controlled by their wielder, which is why every LEO in the country carries one.

Guns, are in fact, tools that ought to be regulated like many other tools, such as lawnmowers, chainsaws, pressure washers, and nail guns, and no, not every LEO in the country carries one. For example. And some shouldn't.

Any group that uses "gun deaths" are political shills with no interest in truth.

I wonder if you realize that group includes yourself.

Gun deaths usually include suicides (who just use different methods in gun free countries), criminals shot by police or citizens, and other justified shootings that are actually a good thing for society and end up saving lives.

Nope, actually, they're not using different methods, the suicide rates are often lower, self-defense and other justified shootings are excluded from the counts though actually...the number of such shootings is a problem, not even counting the various incidents.

Sorry, I know you don't want there to be any problem except not having enough bullets for all those dirty leftists who you hate with all you

It's not a "both sides do it" thing, though. One side has the power to censor or bury content on Youtube, Google, Facebook, and so on. The enemy side doesn't. The Youtube "trending" news carousel has been exposed to be manipulated by the PC police, not an algorithm, and they can and do remove content they disagree with.

I sense this was modded troll because it doesn't acknowledge the propaganda efforts by 'the other side', but this is absolutely accurate in the sense that Youtube, Google and Facebook are not neutral parties but are actively manipulating.

Here is a Youtube employee discussing how the news carousel is curated for example, as they cut ad revenue from content creators and independent journalists who offer opposing viewpoints. What happened to James Damore exposed exactly the corporate culture at Google, which also removed the Gab app from Google Play because it didn't conform to their own censorship rules. Facebook has already been exposed to manipulating user's feeds for effect.

So in keeping with the GP's point about having blinders on in terms of the other 'side', this is inevitable, and from the perspective of conducting propaganda, very desirable. These platforms are massive and have the ability to define reality for a lot of people.

If this goes through, I'd like to start funding my retirement with a bunch of climate bets, tax-advantaged or not.

why can't you make the bets now? mom won't unlock the basement door?

If this goes through, I'd like to start funding my retirement with a bunch of climate bets, tax-advantaged or not.

Re "I wonder how they managed to do that without access to smartphone data?"
When the UK was tracking US and international funding and support in Ireland in the 1980's?
The UK just collected on every call into and out of Ireland. All domestic calls too. Voice prints made it easy.
Funding, support and methods get discovered when interring people talk too much on phones thinking that are hidden in lots of other random calls.
GCHQ listened in on Ireland (18 July 1999) https://www.theguardian.com/uk...
How Britain eavesdropped on Dublin (15 July 1999) http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
What to do about smart phone with new encryption? Gov malware will get under that :)
The other really smart thing the UK did was never tell anyone what they did. Only the UK mil, GCHQ and Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch really got to see what was collected. No courts, police, human rights lawyers, media, telco workers really had any idea what was been done and the UK ensured it kept is secrets and kept on collecting everything in real time.

Contrast that with US methods, crypto, gov malware been commented on in public 2017.

. I was already more familiar than he was with all the tech he name-dropped. I suspect a LOT of us nerds on Slashdot who are old enough would agree.

Which tech did he name-drop that you were familiar with?

I mean, he's never been deeply into technology anyway, he's far more interested in people and their environments. But still, since you're suggesting his work is derivative, I'm curious to hear how.

I am starting to think Gibson may be a coming-of-age fan phenomenon.

I disagree. The writing is still sublime, the books are interesting and fun to read and they continue to explore a coherent future world. The plot of Neuromancer remains fairly unique, albeit at times simplistic.

Shit, you may as well suggest that HMS Ulysses by Alistair MacLean is a coming-of-age fan phenomenon too, or Archangel by Gerald Seymour. These aren't crusty classics like Jane Eyre or Anna Karenina, these are beautifully written human stories.

https://moviepilot.com/posts/2... touches on a few of the things he's influenced, and links to https://www.theguardian.com/bo... which discusses others.

The Guardian to appear to have actual love for him though - see the opening paragraph of https://www.theguardian.com/bo...

But even if you're right and he's of an era, that doesn't detract from the tremendous influence he's had on science fiction, media and the Internet - even before he used it.

. I was already more familiar than he was with all the tech he name-dropped. I suspect a LOT of us nerds on Slashdot who are old enough would agree.

Which tech did he name-drop that you were familiar with?

I mean, he's never been deeply into technology anyway, he's far more interested in people and their environments. But still, since you're suggesting his work is derivative, I'm curious to hear how.

I am starting to think Gibson may be a coming-of-age fan phenomenon.

I disagree. The writing is still sublime, the books are interesting and fun to read and they continue to explore a coherent future world. The plot of Neuromancer remains fairly unique, albeit at times simplistic.

Shit, you may as well suggest that HMS Ulysses by Alistair MacLean is a coming-of-age fan phenomenon too, or Archangel by Gerald Seymour. These aren't crusty classics like Jane Eyre or Anna Karenina, these are beautifully written human stories.

https://moviepilot.com/posts/2... touches on a few of the things he's influenced, and links to https://www.theguardian.com/bo... which discusses others.

The Guardian to appear to have actual love for him though - see the opening paragraph of https://www.theguardian.com/bo...

But even if you're right and he's of an era, that doesn't detract from the tremendous influence he's had on science fiction, media and the Internet - even before he used it.

To be fair, Google has been an excellent custodian of our data, thus far.

To be fair, no, they haven't been. In fact, there have been so many problems with their handling of our data that Wikipedia even has a dedicated page to privacy concerns regarding Google. Which is in addition to the Criticism of Google page that has a section dedicated to criticisms regarding their handling of our privacy.

But in the last 10 years alone, Google has been the subject of several hacks (e.g. a Google Docs vulnerability that allowed anyone access to any document, the Operation Aurora hacks from China, etc.), has given our data away without our permission on more than one occasion (the most egregious of which was their handling of Google Buzz that allowed stalkers and abusive ex-husbands to rediscover their victims), and has eliminated the barrier preventing them from using private information in selling ads.

I know it sounds like I'm dishing a lot on Google, but that's actually not my point here. Google has every reason to protect that data to the best of its ability, since their business depends on protecting our data so well that we continue giving our data to them voluntarily. The fact that not even Google—a company who lives and breathes in this space—can protect us from hackers, their own greed, and their lack of creativity in imagining how a feature could go wrong should tell us that no company who builds their business on collecting this sort of data can be trusted to keep it safe.

That's my point.

It's certainly an improvement when used right. But for a start, it would be nice if the description under each link reflects the content of the page being linked to. Often they don't, at all.

At some point I started getting more of my news fix from blogs and such instead of newspapers, radio, and TV. When I go back to old school media, I often find myself missing those links to interesting background and different perspectives linked to in articles and comments on blogs and electronic publications. Sometimes a hastily written article on a crappy blog with a boatload of heated comments (with more links) under it provides more insightful information on a topic than a well-crafted op-ed article in print.

Over the past few years I've watched with a kind of sickened admiration as Amazon has grown from an online bookstore to a purveyor of 'all things'. Really, their expansion to a definitely-not-a-monopoly player within a market, their subsequent embrace of another market, followed by expansion within that market, and so on, is a thing of beauty. In a sense it's been like watching the growth and evolution of a living organism.

One perfect example of this effect hit the news only the other day: After its retail sales had reached a certain size it made perfect sense, from an economies of scale perspective, for it to start performing its own logistics and deliveries to the detriment of long standing logistics companies. The obvious end point, again benefiting from economies of scale, is to then actually enter the logistics business.

I can't help feeling like a bit of a doomsayer here, but we all know the step that follows embrace and extend.

I suspect that I know what some of you are thinking right now: Amazon is not a monopoly. Amazon has tons of competition. Amazon isn't anything like Microsoft. Amazon doesn't even make a profit. (I could go on, but I'll save us all the time...)

I know Amazon is not a monopoly, any more than (another perfect example of the strategy) Google is. They're very cleverly making sure of that. Any time they're in danger of being considered a monopoly they simply expand into another market and bingo they're in competition with dozens of other players. As this market consolidates, or rather as Amazon (or Google) grows into the main player in this market, they expand into another.

I must admit though I hadn't thought of prescription drugs (although I had wondered about when or if they'd start selling pot - in the US at least) as one of their next markets. Somewhat blinkered there. And I'd actually thought they'd go with fairly high quality frozen ready meals first, rather than outright buy a supermarket chain. Just goes to show I wasn't thinking Bezo's-big enough.

^ And it's this last thought that's starting to worry me!

Burr said the committee had come to a conclusion on at least one issue: that it had faith in the conclusions of the intelligence community assessment (ICA) presented by the CIA, FBI and NSA to Barack Obama and Donald Trump in January.

That assessment found that Vladimir Putin and the Russian government had intervened extensively in the presidential election and âoeaspired to help president-elect Trumpâ(TM)s election chances when possible by discrediting secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to himâ.

I respect the will of the British people and it seems unlikely that there was much Russian interference with the Brexit. If they meddled with it, then probably not in a substantial way with much effect. The Brexit was basically directly caused by the fact that Syrian war refugees tried to go for a better live in Europe at the same time as Cameron had scheduled the EU vote. That these two events occurred roughly at the same time was a mere historical coincidence, of course. If ISIS would have gotten stronger a few years later and the Syrian civil war broke out a bit later, then there'd almost surely been no Brexit, since the UK was and is doing well economically. But if there happened to have been an economic crisis at the time of the vote, then there might have been a Brexit again because of the tendency of politicians to use the EU as a scapegoat for all of their failures. This is how public opinion swings back and forth.

Anyway, you Brits really need to expedite the Brexit. Recent UK laws, especially the heavy regulation and censorship of the Internet and extreme surveillance of citizens, are not fully compatible with EU constitution and shared EU values codified in existing directives. Ironically, though, leaving the EU will not really 'fix this issue' for the UK. The Brexit will make it easier for the UK to continue to violate human rights, but you will continue to be bound to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). You will have to reverse your own Human Rights Act first and cancel the ECHR treaty, before you can safely continue to turn your country into a fascist nanny state.

I expect this to happen within 5 years after Brexit, i.e., 2019-2024.

You haven't been out in the world much have you? Busses that are more like taxis = marshrutka: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... share taxi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and if you want a proper integrated city transport system, Helsinki seems to be doing it right: https://www.theguardian.com/ci...

the updated offence will ensure that only those found to repeatedly view online terrorist material will be guilty of the offence, to safeguard those who click on a link by mistake or who could argue that they did so out of curiosity rather than with criminal intent.

Here's a website that would be illegal to visit more than once under Amber Rudd's proposal. It shows how to make a Frag Grenade using materials from airport terminals.

Here are some other links you might also want to click on.

cat videos
more cat videos
cat videos yay!

I am hoping Amber Rudd can explain the dilemma here.