Slashdot Mirror

https://www.theguardian.com/bo...

Whether you agree with Dr Zuckerberg or not, it's interesting what she has discovered in the way of misinformation and the practices.

the rest of the world they bring a wireless payment device to your table and it asks if you'd like to leave a tip, you enter the amount to tip and it calculates the total and then authorises the total using your pin

There is also absolutely nothing preventing you from using your card to pay the value of the bill, and then as you leave the table handing a cash tip directly to the waiter. This has always been done where I'm from, even more so since there was a bit of a fuss in the UK when it became widely known that some chains weren't giving the entire tip from card transactions to waiting staff.

Because, as every Illiberal knows, forest-management is simply a pre-text for allowing logging companies to cut trees down. For profit (spit!).

When the logging companies "manage" the forest, they only take the oldest and largest lumber, that is worth the most $.
The smaller trees and undergrowth, the stuff that dries out and burns easier gets ignored.

Because, as every Illiberal knows, forest-management is simply a pre-text for allowing logging companies to cut trees down. For profit (spit!).

Nope. Turns out it is inefficient, and not only causes widespread ecosystem disruption (farmed forest lands), it demands lots of power to transport those wood pellets from the US to the UK.

I think these are a bigger eye sore than the homeless.

Depends on the business, it's probably a plus for a haunted house.

Also, the problem is not the design. I'm sure there are nicer designs that do the same thing, like a statue or a cattle guard.

For your second point; homeless people don't tend to travel far from where they live. Often they lack the means to. A large percent suffer from mental disorders (which is why they're homeless in the first place) and many become addict to drugs or alcohol as a crutch. They're not going to leave their suppliers.

Bussed out: How America moves its homeless is an article from last year which shows how the homeless can end up thousands of miles away. Many cities offer 1-way tickets to the homeless based on the promise the homeless won't come back. A 2013 news article announced that Nevada Gets Sued For Dumping Homeless Patients With Mental Illnesses Onto Buses. A stark quote in that article claims that Nevada "may have systematically sent away as many as 1,500 patients over five years".

I think these are a bigger eye sore than the homeless.

For the record the big uptick in homelessness started under Reagan. He closed the insane asylums. It was part of a libertarian movement that said it was wrong to keep these folks locked up. Of course we didn't provide them any alternative housing or mental healthcare services (since in addition to "freedom" the idea was sold as a way to save money) and, well, predictable results.

https://www.theguardian.com/en...

That journalist from some backwards country use to using "pounds" is Robin McKie from the capital of the United Kingdom you nit wit!

- - - - When Apple's products are specifically designed to work less optimally after 2 years, - - - - -

Not really sure what this is supposed to mean.

This, just the first example I found :- https://www.theguardian.com/te...

Yeah, in Italy - where they also jail scientists for not predicting earthquakes.

Except we're not making earth more liveable, we're risking exterminating ourselves also.

Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN -
https://www.theguardian.com/en...

None of the links in the summary go to the article authored by Bershidsky. Instead, it doubles down on putting lipstick on a pig.

Here's the Bershidsky link:

Apple Used to Be an Inventor. Now It's Mainly a Landlord.

Now I have three entries for Bershidsky in my idiots file:

"Rent extraction from a user base that finds it hard to go away may sound a bit like extortion," Leonid Bershidsky writes in closing. "But it's more honest and upfront than extracting data from users in ways they often don't understand and then making money off the data, as Facebook does.

Good grief, the average user understands practically nothing of the business model of either company. And Apple changes the design or the usability or the usage terms of what you already possess with basically no warning or explanation all the damn time.

I can hardly think of any company more opposed to the smallest glimmer of visibility into their future intentions than Apple.

Here's the second paragraph on B. from my idiots file:

The U.S. Intelligence Ship Is Too Leaky To Sail — 25 May 2017

Manning spent seven years in prison (though she'd been sentenced to 35), but Snowden, Assange, Petraeus, the unknown Chinese mole, the people who stole the hacking tools and the army of recent anonymous leakers, many of whom probably still work for U.S. intelligence agencies, have escaped any kind of meaningful punishment.

Meaningful to whom?

Assange must follow new Ecuador embassy rules, says judge — 29 October 2018

A judge in Ecuador has ruled against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, rejecting his request to loosen new requirements that he says are meant to push him into leaving his asylum in the country's embassy in London. ... Relations between Assange and Ecuador have grown increasingly prickly as the years have dragged on, with no resolution in sight.

Every young boy dreams of someday becoming an unwanted house guest in a foreign embassy with ten times more power over your daily conditions that a regular landlord or your 1 of 7 step mother.

Cooped up in near solitary confinement, and now he even has to pay for his own porn feed. The brilliant Bershidsky wants to file that under a mild downside.

And here's strike three:

Trump's Business Record in Russia Is Humiliating — 29 August 2017

Trump never had what it took to be a player in Russia — not when it was a land of limitless opportunity as it began its flirtation with capitalism, and not today. This may not be comforting to Americans. To have a leader incapable of negotiating with Russians is probably worse than having a president with business ties to the Kremlin-connected elite.

s/Kremlin-connected elite/Russian mafia/

Turns out, door #2 has a second name.

- - - - When Apple's products are specifically designed to work less optimally after 2 years, - - - - -

Not really sure what this is supposed to mean.

This, just the first example I found :-
https://www.theguardian.com/te...

If we feed everyone today, soon we will have ten billion people on Earth. We have already reduced wilderness by a radical degree and are killing off natural species as a result. Letting humans starve now prevents both ecocide and having to let more starve later. Gates' plan will work about as well as Windows 10...

None of the abductees held at Quantanamo Bay have been convicted of a crime.

That's completely irrelevant. The alternative to their ending up in Guantanamo was death, and any other country (except, maybe, Israel) would've shot them on the spot — and you wouldn't have cared... Indeed, you didn't care when we were doing just that with a certain Nobel Peace Prize laureate at the helm.

gee, what could possibly go wrong?

"Experts confirm that Iran's president did not call for Israel to be 'wiped off the map''" The Guardian, 14 June 2006.

There are many reasons to criticize Iran but a constantly quoted mistranslation is not one of them.

Knock it off.

This is the exact quote:

Our dear Imam (referring to Ayatollah Khomeini) said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine. Is it possible to create a new front in the heart of an old front. This would be a defeat and whoever accepts the legitimacy of this regime has in fact, signed the defeat of the Islamic world. Our dear Imam targeted the heart of the world oppressor in his struggle, meaning the occupying regime. I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world.

"wiped off the map" wasn't an isolated case. The sentiment is repeated in the statement multiple times, so hanging your hat on the exact translation is somewhere between specious bullshit and disingenuous chicanery.

And even then, that "wiped off the map" has been used and has continued to be used by Iran:

The Iranian presidential website stated: "the Zionist Regime of Israel faces a deadend and will under God's grace be wiped off the map," and "the Zionist Regime that is a usurper and illegitimate regime and a cancerous tumor should be wiped off the map."[84]

Iran had used the phrase "Israel must be wiped off the map" previously as well. In 1999, a military parade carried slogans that read "Israel must be wiped off the map" in Farsi and English.[85]

Joshua Teitelbaum of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs discovered pictures of Iranian propaganda banners that clearly say in English: "Israel should be wiped out of the face of the world."[86][87]

In March 2016, Iran tested a ballistic missile painted with the phrase "Israel should be wiped off the Earth" in Hebrew. The missile is reported to be capable of reaching Israel.

Other Ahmadinejad quotes follow. I'll pass on the Holocaust denial ones, because they don't directly address Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's clear calls for and support of the literal destruction of Israel and the genocide required to do that.

But if you want to argue that Ahmadinejad didn't call for the destruction of Israel - multiple times - go ahead. You'll just mark yourself a bigger fool.

Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken. Today the reason for the Zionist regime's existence is questioned, and this regime is on its way to annihilation.

any freedom lover and justice seeker in the world must do its best for the annihilation of the Zionist regime in order to pave the path for the establishment of justice and freedom in the world

Israel "has no place in the region."

The Zionist regime has lost its raison d'être. Today, the Palestinians identify with your name Khomeini, your memory, and in your path. They are walking in your illuminated path and the Zionist regime has reached a total dead end. Thanks to God, your wish will soon be realized, and this germ of corruption will be wiped off.

... like a cancer cell that spreads through the body, this regime infects any region. It must be removed from the body.

This entity [Israel] can be compared to a kidney transplanted in a body that rejected it. “Yes it will collapse and its end will be near.

Go ahead. Keep trying to defend him with a "mistranslation" defense.

It's like arguing "Your honor my client didn't murder anyone with a rock! He used a brick!"

"Experts confirm that Iran's president did not call for Israel to be 'wiped off the map''" The Guardian, 14 June 2006.

There are many reasons to criticize Iran but a constantly quoted mistranslation is not one of them.

Try again:

"Green house gases can remain in the atmosphere for different amounts of time, from months to millennia, and affect the climate on very different timescales."

"The lifetime in the air of CO2, the most significant man-made greenhouse gas, is probably the most difficult to determine, because there are several processes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Between 65% and 80% of CO2 released into the air dissolves into the ocean over a period of 20–200 years. The rest is removed by slower processes that take up to several hundreds of thousands of years, including chemical weathering and rock formation. This means that once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can continue to affect climate for thousands of years." https://www.theguardian.com/en...

Do you have something to refute or are you blowing a lot of hot air again?

Even though you don't like reality doesn't mean you get to assert alternate "facts".

Pentagon is still preparing for global warming even though Trump said to stop
Climate change threatens half of US bases worldwide, Pentagon report finds
The Pentagon erases ‘climate change’ from report drafted during Obama administration

That last one shows how an ill-informed leadership can steer misinformation to suit a political message, even at the risk of our national defense.

There are many reasons not to use Facebook. I realize that it has its uses as well.
But I only need this old bit of news not to open an account on their site again.

Facebook reveals news feed experiment to control emotions
Protests over secret study involving 689,000 users in which friends' postings were moved to influence moods
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
---
It has published details of a vast experiment in which it manipulated information posted on 689,000 users' home pages and found it could make people feel more positive or negative through a process of "emotional contagion".
---

I now avoid Twitter altogether, while the updates from people you follow could be useful and interesting, the following comments are guaranteed to make your day worse. Twitter seems perfect for people with no insight or talent to blare out their stupidity and get it amplified by other numbskulls.
Worst of it all is that the panicking old news is latching on to that to create clickbait news in a failing attempt to stay alive. Self-destructive behavior.
"Let's see what people say on Twitter", for the love of God, NO! You have lost all credibility as a serious source of information.

Sounds like a UK high street jewellery chain, Ratners. It collapsed after Ratner himself said his stuff was "crap". He went on to say :-

one of the sets of earrings was "cheaper than a ... prawn sandwich but probably wouldn't last as long"
  Ratner's comments have become textbook examples of why chief executives should choose their words carefully

(from The Guardian)

Unfortunately, Facebook seems to be having a slower death.

What, COINTELPRO doesn't ring a bell?

There will be no second revolution because they'll find you first.

And before you assume it's a left- or right-wing thing: this is reflexive action of government to protect itself. It is blind and it is as subtle as a sledgehammer.

Bugs are animals, and many of them are thriving on our leftovers...

Nope.

Bugs dying off too:

https://www.theguardian.com/en...

There are clearly more COPD deaths in certain areas, it would be really great if we could have less deaths.

We need MORE human deaths, not fewer. The only way to avoid even more of this is my having dramatically fewer human beings.

We bred to an unsustainable degree. From here we should favour policies which reduce average human lifespans and drive down fertility rates.

That would indicate you believe Chrome is scraping the content of the pages visited and sending that to google. That seems unlikely... I'm sure its something they'd like to do, but it would at least get reported.

Here you go.

yeah but me turning all my google location services off also meant that they cannot log or store any of my location information, didn't it?

With every act of political violence committed by left wingers (rarely highlighted in most press coverage),

Scalise getting shot got plenty of coverage just as the latest MAGA bomber is and rightfully so. Less attention is given to acts of vandalism and clashes between groups like Antifa and The Proud Boys or other alt-right groups.

Have you even heard of Marc and Elizabeth Hokoana? They're a couple accused of going to a Milo rally with the intent of provoking someone into giving them an excuse to shoot a leftist "snowflake". And they did shoot someone, he just didn't die so it didn't get as much attention but as far as I can tell the charges are still pending and haven't been dropped.

The victim is such a pacifist that he wants "restorative justice" for them rather than prison.

'I refuse to be like them': why the man shot while protesting Milo Yiannopoulos doesn't want revenge

They do get coverage but most people recognize that neither extreme is representative of either Democrats or Republicans.

somebody says: You're going to hate the new rules.

(I'm a different Anon)

This is not a good response and will only lead to more violence which seems to be the one thing in common the more extreme "black bloc" and the alt-right share.

The Hatfields and the McCoys. Nothing good will come from justifying violence with violence.

Recall that the founders of this industry are mostly scam-artist assholes of the highest caliber. Palmer Luckey in particular is famous for his "shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real" mission-accomplished moment after secretly funding Trump's internet disinformation campaign. Small wonder he's now trolling around US military circles; they're renowned for being enormous slush-funds with no accountability and often actively damaging to public interests. Caveat emptor.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/23/oculus-rift-vr-palmer-luckey-trump-shitposts

OK, let me use small words. He joined that group because he was crazy; the group did not make him crazy.

So, you believe the near-doubling of antisemitic violence since Trump was elected is just some weird coincidence?

https://www.theguardian.com/so...

And is a near-doubling of white supremacist propaganda since Trump was elected also just some weird coincidence.

https://www.adl.org/news/press...

and you shouldn't be using that word. You're misusing it. Perhaps intentionally in order to get real conservatives on your side. I've said this before, but Hilary Clinton was and is the best true conservative in America. She'd have kept everything the same, only making a few minor changes to keep everything on course. She lost because Americans don't want actual conservatism. They want change, and it's no wonder why.

Also nobody is in favor of small government when it suits them. Folks who get it with a natural disaster want the Fed to come in and help. Most people support a large, national military for defense. And our interstate highway couldn't be built by a small government. The "Conservative" Red states get more money from the fed than they put in and if you touch those subsidies expect their Senators to fight tooth and nail against you.

What you're really in for is "small enough to drown in a bathtub" government. In other words, small, local governments that can be pushed around by large power organizations. Even if that's not what you want, it's what the folks who fund and run the "small gov't" movement do. And they make the rules.

Everyone has got to know about this international intelligence sharing agreement Echelon UKUSA/SIGINT that created 5 eyes by now. Surely? It has been in operation since the 1940's. I shouldn't be surprised that not even the article mentions it. It is the governance document for this kind of telecommunications surveillance.

I have a scan of the agreement however I've found it difficult to find the text online. The NSA links to the UK/USA seems to be broken for me. Maybe they're just interested in who is interested. ;). However a bit more digging and I found this article from the guardian that link to UK National Archive copy of the agreement. It was not available online for some time after I got it - so I suggest you grab a copy to get some idea how this agreement works. After all that's one reason it was kept secret for so long.

Essentially agencies can't spy on domestic citizens so they ask a counterpart agency to spy for them. I read somewhere that even back as far as the 90's it was doing signal processing to "gist" (as in get the gist of) about 500,000 phone conversations using data centers the size of football fields and promote them to analysts automatically. They had two nuclear submarines that would be positioned over undersea fibre optic telecommunications nodes so I think you can surmise just how well funded this agreement is if five western nations are involved.

It is like a Berlin wall of surveillance for the western world.

Replace streetlights with a reflecting satellite in a 90 minute orbit ?

https://www.theguardian.com/sc...

You do a good job not killing innocent people because you aren't tasked with law enforcement duties.

No, but the law enforcement personnel of other countries are so tasked, and they manage to get the job done with a *much* lower kill ratio.

Ok, I'll bite. Why don't you compare police caused deaths by country: US police kill more in days than other countries do in years

Now are you going to say those other countries police don't know a fucking thing either?
Present some facts or fuck off.

So, you are seeking to contradict me on the basis of the synonyms I chose? "Right wing" and "Right-minded" are the same things, dear. Interchangeable synonyms, like "sex" and "gender".

Nor is there a difference — in this context — between the terms "umpire", "referee", as well as "judge" and "arbiter".

And they're generally pretty fair because of how the rules work

The rules work because these moderators (yet another synonym) are picked to not have their own affiliation with either side. This is a concept long-known in the world of sports — next time you watch Olympics or World Cup, pay attention... Never is a match judged by arbiters from the same country as one of the teams, for example. Indeed, often the referees are from a different continent.

But we don't have to limit ourselves to the domain of sports. For example from a different world, you and the majority of Twitter employees would always point out the inherent unfairness of any criminal conviction, rendered against a Black by a White jury...

Don't like it? Make some rules.

Quite amazing for you to insist on it being "pretty fair", while still inviting me to "make some rules" to address the unfairness...

No, Twitter is not fair, we both know it, Jack Dorsey knows. No, it is not for the government to make rules for them — that would be tyranny.

Lastly, my disliking something is not a good enough reason for me to demand it legally banned — this is something you, a Left-minded, would do good to understand (if not accept).

... the value of political contributions and tolerating Trump's 'Business' panel.

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

The definitive Facebook nudity policy mistake: Napalm Girl from the Vietnam War. The moral terror that photo inspires must never be forgotten...but hey, we gotta ban it because prepubescent genitals! Not the destruction, violence, pain, and mortal horror, mind you. Just the naked kid with third-degree burns on her back and arm. Someone might mistake it for pornography, you know.

If you want to know what happened to the girl after that photo, I encourage you to read this. It's definitely worth it.

The definitive Facebook nudity policy mistake: Napalm Girl from the Vietnam War. The moral terror that photo inspires must never be forgotten...but hey, we gotta ban it because prepubescent genitals! Not the destruction, violence, pain, and mortal horror, mind you. Just the naked kid with third-degree burns on her back and arm. Someone might mistake it for pornography, you know.

If you want to know what happened to the girl after that photo, I encourage you to read this. It's definitely worth it.

> Correct. Fortunately these diversity initiatives only exist in the mad ramblings of the far right, as admitted justification to further oppress people.

Tell that to Harvard, they're in court over that.

> Funny that the only mention I can find of this is on literal fake news sites. Not a single public record has any mention of this.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jun/15/harvard-sued-discrimination-against-asian-americans
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/15/620368377/harvard-accused-of-racial-balancing-lawsuit-says-asian-americans-treated-unfairl

If you want to call those "literal fake news sites," it's a free country ... :)

Guess I'd better use DuckDuckGo to dig up public records for this and an earlier lawsuit:

http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/SFFA-v.-Harvard-Complaint.pdf
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/14-981

> It's well known that conservatives only allow others that believe math and science and reading comprehension are all liberal conspiracies.

Most relevant to this, here's Linus' daughter, signing the post-meritocracy manifesto. So instead of building the best Linux for the benefit of everyone, we should worry more about politics.

Here's a liberal trying to decolonize science so we can get rid of the racism, in which they're saying things like "through black magic" people can send lightning to strike someone and then asking "can you explain that scientifically?" Is this part of that magical liberal bias in reality? :)

CNN has declared that "math is racist" (archive).

In general, a lot of this nonsense traces back to the ideas of critical theory. There are groups who think that every wrong in the world traces back to bad power structures which they need to deconstruct and recreate to achieve fairness. It should tell you something when they're currently trying to deconstruct things like science and meritocracy, though...

The irony is that none of that is necessary and it's actively harmful to the supposed goals. It's true that bad luck, oppression, disasters, etc. unfairly keep some people down or prop others up. The right way to fix that would be to help all disadvantaged people equally. Insofar as certain groups have been historically kept down as such, this would disproportionately help them and right things over time. Instead, it's more fashionable to decide that help must be on the basis of group membership, which instead creates new competition among groups and animosity.

You have to keep pro-Brexit Facebook ads in perspective:

• The UK government spent more than Vote Leave's entire legal spending limit on a pro-Remain leaflet
• They enlisted Obama to state (incorrectly, it turns out) that the UK would be at the "back of the queue" for a trade deal
• They enlisted the IMF to state (incorrectly, it turns out) that a Leave vote would result in a recession by 2017
• Serious consideration is being given to a second referendum to overturn the first, which would never have happened if the result had been the other way — even if the EU continued its rapid evolution into a superstate
• much more

This level of gaming the system clearly dwarfs a few Facebook ads

We have foreigners who openly admit pumping hundreds of millions into the remain campaign, e.g. Soros. Here you have proof and admission of foreigners influencing the campaign. https://www.theguardian.com/bu...

All this vague "aliens are influencing our politics" is just the usual way of the left to discredit people they disagree with by projecting their own tactics onto others.

The UK has fixed limits on the amount of money that can be spent on campaigns, so your statement about Soros pumping hundreds of millions into the remain campaign is complete and utter nonsense. Even the guardian article you linked is about £400,000.

I believe the official campaigns were limited to 7 million each, and the non official ones were limited to 700k each. Even if you add up ALL the spending from everyone involved on all sides of the Brexit debate it still would not come anywhere close to 100 million, let alone several hundred million.

Posting anon to save moderations.

Also isn't there evidence that one or more of the girls has ties to the American CIA?

Also, I know we're not supposed to complain about the Mods, but when Kavanaugh was up for SCOTUS you'd be hard pressed to find anyone on /. that would defend or even humor his accusers but with Assange folks are piling on to hate on him. That's a pretty big change too. Post this story a few years ago and he's be loaded with defenders.

Has /.'s opinion of Assange changed or did we have Russian trolls modding pro-Assange posts up back then that are now gone (or just don't support him anymore)? Either way something's definitely changed.

If folks are mad at Assange because he helped give us Trump you'd expect their anger to show up in the discussions about Kavanaugh. That makes me think /.'s modding system is being manipulated. It might also be /.ers themselves are being manipulated.

Either way something's not right.

Sweden dropped the charges more than a year ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/me...

If they put up an archive of ISIS material they would be blamed for spreading terrorist propaganda by idiots. Idiots like the UK government.

note that it doesn't quite cover why pedestrians might feel endangered.

Are you working under the assumption that being hit by a bike won't cause injury?

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

There's also issue of robberies.

Re 5 eye efforts
"GCHQ has tools to manipulate online information, leaked documents show" (15 Jul 2014)
https://www.theguardian.com/uk...
Welcome to CLEAN SWEEP and UNDERPASS.

Don't laugh. It could happen, according to our big, wet, President. We just have to wait it out.

https://www.theguardian.com/us...

And we know for sure that he knows what he's talking about, because he says he has a "natural instinct for science".

https://www.politico.com/story...

"You have scientists on both sides of it. My uncle was a great professor at MIT for many years, Dr. John Trump," the president said. "And I didn’t talk to him about this particular subject, but I have a natural instinct for science, and I will say that you have scientists on both sides of the picture."

I don't know about the rest of you, but that's good enough for me.

I don't recall the exact article I read, but here's one. Most of the articles I could quickly find said feminism was behind it, although this one was more neutral.