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Is Technology A Bigger Story Than Donald Trump? (backchannel.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the huuge dept.

Steven Levy writes at Backchannel that "Technology and science is a bigger story than Donald Trump," arguing that regardless of who's president, future generations "will primarily regard these times as the era during which tech changed everything." Remember, there have been economic crashes and horrible wars throughout history. But people carrying supercomputers in their pockets -- supercomputers that change their lives hundreds of times a day -- is new and earth shattering... we are doggedly optimistic about the future, and how technology, with all its black mirrors, will make life better.
He ultimately calls the rise of tech "the story of our time" (although in a semi-related development, American researchers are now worrying about federal funding cuts). And Motherboard warns that with Canada's new push to attract foreign tech workers, "there's a very real possibility that the U.S. could face a brain drain as some of its top science and tech talent moves to greener pastures."

264 of 430 comments (clear)

  1. They are totally different stories by NaCh0 · · Score: 1

    Technology is bigger in the sense that more than the US uses technology.

    Mixing government and private sector tech blurs the issues in an unnatural way.

    1. Re:They are totally different stories by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I would just question the underlying assumption that improvements in technology will always makes our lives better. That's traditionally been that case in the past, but it doesn't necessarily follow that it will always be the case in the future. We could be reaching a point of either diminishing returns or even a point when technology actually could have a detrimental effect on our lives.

      The internet is a good example. It's improved our lives in many ways, but it's also created a whole new class of problems, headaches, and information overload. Are we really quantifiably happier today than we were 30 years ago? Well, we certainly have much easier access to much more information and benefit from its convenience. But has it made our overall lives that much BETTER?

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    2. Re:They are totally different stories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I'm going to say yes, just because I want the site to go back to tech stories and not constant political freakouts.

    3. Re:They are totally different stories by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      We've been receiving diminishing returns on technology since the steam engine, but on the other hand, given the its decreasing prices and increased pace of development, this has been substantially compensated for.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    4. Re:They are totally different stories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I would just question the underlying assumption that improvements in technology will always makes our lives better. That's traditionally been that case in the past, but it doesn't necessarily follow that it will always be the case in the future. We could be reaching a point of either diminishing returns or even a point when technology actually could have a detrimental effect on our lives.

      The internet is a good example. It's improved our lives in many ways, but it's also created a whole new class of problems, headaches, and information overload. Are we really quantifiably happier today than we were 30 years ago? Well, we certainly have much easier access to much more information and benefit from its convenience. But has it made our overall lives that much BETTER?

      Before the internet we had reasonably trusted news sources via the major networks and newspapers. The quality of those sources is perhaps less, but still better than some others, but now we have the internet, with sources of everything from good quality to complete fabrication, and a lot that mix and match to target political enemies. Did the internet improve things there? Nope. Of course if previously we were living in a government that controlled the news then the internet might have helped.

      At any rate, as far as canada goes, right now I'm only staying because of familiy, which is mainly my mother, but I could easily see myself there someday, hopefully in the distant future. I am an engineer, so presumably I could eventually get admission.

      The election of Trump just seems like it might be the signal of a coming darkness. Hate was used to get him elected and I find it difficult to believe that good things can be built on a foundation of hate and lies.

    5. Re: They are totally different stories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You are always welcome in Canada! The weather is freakin' cold, but people are warm.

    6. Re:They are totally different stories by Kjella · · Score: 1

      The internet is a good example. It's improved our lives in many ways, but it's also created a whole new class of problems, headaches, and information overload. Are we really quantifiably happier today than we were 30 years ago? Well, we certainly have much easier access to much more information and benefit from its convenience. But has it made our overall lives that much BETTER?

      Well a lot of shitty things like abuse and neglect happen pretty much regardless of technology. Apart from that, how happy people are often depend on how miserable they want to be. For example many wallow in their lack of direction, purpose, true love and so on. Others take on the weight of the world and every shitty part of it. Yet others live so insulated from real misery that the worst thing that could happen in their belieber minds is that Justin Bieber quits. My parents saw WWII, my great-great-something parents lived through the Black Plague, what do I really have to complain about? But we mostly compare ourselves to our peers, if we're worse off we're miserable. It's not all psychology, but it's more psychology than science and technology.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    7. Re:They are totally different stories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      All fair points but is that down to technology or our maturity and capability to use it? The traditional media contains a lot of very biased reporting, and people showed a tendency to pick the source that was biased in a way that fitted with their preference. In the UK we just had a newspaper calling some of our judges "enemies of the people" for daring to suggest our elected representatives need to be consulted before we can be deprived of rights in a campaign, which some who by that kind of line lap up. Others who are appalled by that kind of attack on our independent judiciary have intentionally put out stories claiming that a historic newspaper article by Nazis called some of their judges the same thing which were false (it wasn't judges and the phrase wasn't quite the same) and it's being lapped up by people who agree with them. Just look at Fox News to see how shockingly uninformative traditional media 'news' can be.

      All this has shown is that people like to get 'news' that confirms their views rather than challenges them. Technology has simply allowed more news sources to fit more nuanced niches...

      But what do you do? Give government sweeping powers to punish people for sharing misleading or untrue information? Do we want a state where events can be hushed up or people can be disappeared without making the news like in China for example?

    8. Re:They are totally different stories by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

      Surely on SlashDot technology Trumps you

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    9. Re: They are totally different stories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Psychopath Treats Other Psychopath As Equal, details at 11.

    10. Re:They are totally different stories by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      We could be reaching a point of either diminishing returns or even a point when technology actually could have a detrimental effect on our lives.

      All technology has a good and a bad side. Even technology that saves people's lives adds to the population. The technology that created the nuclear weapons can generate power when done right. New technology can put people out of work, but that might beat subsistence farming. It sure dose for me anyhow.

      The internet is a good example. It's improved our lives in many ways, but it's also created a whole new class of problems, headaches, and information overload. Are we really quantifiably happier today than we were 30 years ago?

      I am. I'm pretty certain that you aren't. If I might make an observation, I've noticed that a lot of people have problems adjusting to new things. They also might have what I call "Old Dude Syndrome" which is the capability of some folks, mostly middle aged men, to become incredibly angry about incredibly small things.

      And those friends of mine who voted a particular way in the last election had about a day at most of joy, now have become either angry about everything all over again, or strangely quiet and worried. But that's another story.

      Well, we certainly have much easier access to much more information and benefit from its convenience. But has it made our overall lives that much BETTER?

      Oh hell yeah! Where do you want to draw the line of what is allowable? Electromagnetic communication? Early industrial revolution? Subsistence farming? Iron, Brass, Stone? The wheel?

      I have a weird affliction in that while I have advanced in age just like everyone else, I have not managed to think like an old person. Coupled with not looking my age, people tend to think I am in my early 40's, not my early 60's . All of that gives me na interesting perspective, since my friends are largely my own age, and advancing into olde farte status.

      Enjoy the technology. There are lots of weird people out there who never had internet access, and merely bring their weirdness to it. Don't let them define the internet.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    11. Re:They are totally different stories by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Technology is bigger in the sense that more than the US uses technology.

      Mixing government and private sector tech blurs the issues in an unnatural way.

      Precisely, and also, /. is supposed to be a technical site, not a political one. What's it about everybody these days that every site wants to become political? On LinkedIn, there are umpty stories about Clinton and Trump, and here too, there are stories not just about Trump's views on Apple or Amazon or Net Neutrality, but everything in his campaign.

      If /. just stopped covering this, it will be less of a battlefield. Of course, that also means far fewer clickbaits, so don't expect it either.

    12. Re:They are totally different stories by anybody_out_there · · Score: 1

      I would just question the underlying assumption that improvements in communities will always makes our lives better. That's traditionally been that case in the past, but it doesn't necessarily follow that it will always be the case in the future. We could be reaching a point of either diminishing returns or even a point when communities actually could have a detrimental effect on our lives.

      The city is a good example. It's improved our lives in many ways, but it's also created a whole new class of problems, headaches, and population overload. Are we really quantifiably happier today than we were 100 years ago? Well, we certainly have much easier access to many more jobs and benefit from its conveniences. But has it made our overall lives that much BETTER?

      Now, get off of my lawn :-)

    13. Re:They are totally different stories by Clopy · · Score: 1

      Improvements in technology don't automatically make our lives better, unless they are accompanied by improvements in society. We're in the doorstep of another major breakthrough regarding work automation. In theory, that should mean that we should be working less for (at least) the same wealth. In practice, inequality will increase, a few people will become wealthier and more people will loose their jobs and become poorer. So, Betteridge's law of headlines.

    14. Re:They are totally different stories by penandpaper · · Score: 1

      Well said. I think the post you are responding to is a sentiment that has been around for centuries. Particularly so since the Industrial Revolution when technology exploded. It is easy to see that technology is changing faster and faster. The speed of which technology changes does not change what technology does for us as a species nor the morals and ethics an individual should have when using said technologies.

      All technology has a good and a bad side. Even technology that saves people's lives adds to the population. The technology that created the nuclear weapons can generate power when done right. New technology can put people out of work, but that might beat subsistence farming. It sure dose for me anyhow.

      No matter how well-intentioned an invention or discovery maybe it is the user that determines the moral use. This has always been the case and always will be (AI might be an exception since if it can make decisions on its own it creates is own moral and ethical questions but ignoring that for now). We should not think that the trend of technology will stop making our lives easier or better. That is the point of technology from the first rock tools to super computers creating simulations of the universe. Just because the speed at which technology progresses is increasing does not mean the fundamental principle behind technology will change. Those first rock tools allowed early humans to change the environment to better suite their needs but also allowed for more efficient tribal conflicts. Are we better off as a species because the first inventions could be used for immoral things? Yes, we are. Those immoral actions are the result of individuals utilizing tools to change the environment to their needs; even if their needs means the end of a rival tribe.

      Even the internet and the 'information overload' is not something new. The printing press had a similar effect which would eventually lead to the highest levels of literacy the world has ever seen. Are we better off because the printing press created more yellow journalism? Yes, we are because at the same time literacy empowers the individual. The internet gives those literate individuals more information which forces them to sift through that information to find truth. The amount of information or the speed at which information is consumed will not change the fact that the world is better off by communicating and understanding each other.

      Any future tech will have the same moral dilemmas. It is the individual that will decide if it is good or bad no matter how well intentioned (or not) it was created.

    15. Re:They are totally different stories by hodet · · Score: 1

      I think about this a lot. I was raised in the 70's and 80's and while life was much simpler in technological terms back then, we were definitely just as happy back then as we are today. The only thing that has changed is how we deal with boredom. When I was a kid we did a lot more social things to pass the time. You just did not have the option of plunking yourself in front of a computer and immersing yourself with such low effort. There was TV, but it wasn't like it is today, it was pretty horrible by comparison.

      However I have memories of my parents visiting friends for coffee and cards and dragging us kids along. I have memories of going to the cottage on weekends, and friends cottages as well. I am not trying to glorify an ideal past that never existed either. When there was nothing to do the boredom was stiffling.

      But overall, to the question of "we're we happier 30 or 40 years ago, I would say no. That is more a question of character than environment. People are predispositioned to happiness or misery (or somewhere along that spectrum) based on the people they are. Would I go back to those days? No way! But I suspect I would find other ways to maximize my quality of life.

      Going forward, will technology make us happier? Doubtful. The increased amount of time will be welcome for some who make the most of every situation. For others who are unhappy, they will continue to be, no matter what.

      Just my $0.02.

    16. Re:They are totally different stories by John.Banister · · Score: 1

      Hell yes it has. The internet lets smart people communicate with other smart people in a much less location dependent fashion. The results of their collaboration make the world a better place. The most obvious example is the alleviation of suffering brought about more rapidly by advances in medicine that happened more rapidly because people can send one another documents via the internet. When I read product reviews online and don't have to spend my money twice because I bought something shitty the first time, that's not just convenience, that's actual money I can use to improve my life in other ways. The same holds true for my ability to find good second hand stuff I'd otherwise never have learned about and for being able to learn the specific pitfalls associated with particular diy projects from people who have made that information available online. Quantifiable happiness is controlled by chemicals in the brain. If you want to learn how to change your life circumstances so as to reliably trigger them more frequently, there's articles about that on the internet.

    17. Re:They are totally different stories by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Are we better off as a species because the first inventions could be used for immoral things? Yes, we are. Those immoral actions are the result of individuals utilizing tools to change the environment to their needs; even if their needs means the end of a rival tribe.

      It must be remembered that almost everyone today has a better standard of living than royalty of say, the middle ages. And that didn't happen through prayer.

      Even the internet and the 'information overload' is not something new. The printing press had a similar effect which would eventually lead to the highest levels of literacy the world has ever seen. Are we better off because the printing press created more yellow journalism? Yes, we are because at the same time literacy empowers the individual. The internet gives those literate individuals more information which forces them to sift through that information to find truth.

      I think that at base is a problem that is not technological in nature. Critical thinking. I think above all else, Critical thinking, or near enough to it, must be taught to people. As well as the truth that there are people out there who profit by others not using critical thinking. I know that when I read something, there is a good chance it is bullshit, and knew that long before the internet can along.

      I can look it up. And after you look at neough things, you can get a pretty good idea of what the truth is. There are examples in the various denialist schools of thought where after enough research you fin dout who is lying and who is telling half truths and who is telling the truth.

      With a lack of critical thinking skills, one falls back onto more emotional skills, such as confirmatin bias, or wishful thinking.

      And ends up becoming an olde fate, thinking and declaring that technology is bad. Just like some members of earlier generations have. Yet they all seem to think that the technology they grew up with was okay.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    18. Re:They are totally different stories by Humbubba · · Score: 1
      If knowledge is power, Google, YouTube and the NSA rule. And the military have been there all along, funding the nascent Hi Tech Munition\Cyborg\Computer revolution since the 1940's. They are there now, funding Bioengineering. Genetic DARPA challenges ain't far off. There's a whole lot of Hi Tech human\animal\plant\computer\electro-mechanical hybrid engineering going on.

      With Dr. John Zhang's miraculous spindle nuclear transfer in late 2016, a three-parent child was born, a deadly mitochondrial disease avoided, and the age of human genetic engineering officially began.

      Philip Mirowski and Yuval Harai are making my brain hurt. I'm having visions of the future: only a very few biologically enhanced and augmented sapiens will comprise the new master race. Intelligent automation will make the lower classes redundant, and at that point, most all of us are lower class. We won't go gently into that good night, and our betters know that. What did they plan for our finale?

    19. Re: They are totally different stories by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1

      I honestly think that on the "Nazi" scale, you rank much higher than the person you replied to. You've already demonstrated a much higher level of bigotry.

    20. Re:They are totally different stories by Dogtanian · · Score: 1

      At any rate, as far as canada goes, right now I'm only staying because of familiy, which is mainly my mother, but I could easily see myself there someday, hopefully in the distant future. I am an engineer, so presumably I could eventually get admission.

      I'm assuming you're an American, and I'm not a Canadian. Bearing that in mind...

      I've noticed that a lot of Americans on the left seem to bring up Canada most often when they're dissatisfied with their own country. As if Canada only exists as a "liberal" utopia for your convenience, an escape route ready to welcome you when your own country gets too much, happy to be forgotten about when your flight of fancy about escaping there slips down the priority list once more.

      It's almost as if you're not *actually* wanting to move there because you're interested in Canada and Canadian culture itself- as if all this says more about your implicit sense of entitlement that you'll fit into someone else's country you had no interest in except as a proxy for your own problems with America.

      Say what you like about Cracked, but I found that this article from an actual Canadian somewhat crystallised this opinion and a whole lot more:-

      Now, if you're [in a position of genuine threat] you'll find that Canada is a welcoming country. [..]

      But for everyone else -- and I really apologize for how harsh this is going to be -- Canada is not your fucking safety school. If you drive across the border, there will not be a career magically waiting for you in the middle of an economic downturn. If you're a middle-class white guy and your first instinct is to abandon your country when you experience a setback, I'm not sure how you expect to ace a job interview here. "I was sad about my country so I decided to fall back on yours" is not a good answer to "What attracted you to this position?"

      I spent a lot of time on social media during election night, because it was a great excuse to not work, and two things stuck out to me. I saw lots of Americans asking themselves how they could have gotten so out of touch with the world, and then several of my American friends with a history of making exhaustingly cliched maple syrup and igloo jokes asked me how my government worked. Because up until then, they had no clue and no interest. That's not an approach to life that helps you settle down in a new country -- it's the approach that got you into trouble in the country you're in now.

      --
      "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
    21. Re:They are totally different stories by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Before the internet, we had overly trusted news sources. Have you ever been behind the scenes of something the media reported on big-time? That would destroy your faith in the old news sources. (Except, of course, that people kept believing the media because they had no other source of information.) Verifying anything the media reported on required a good deal of work, and likely travel. I'm saying that the Internet improved news for the most part.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    22. Re:They are totally different stories by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      FWIW, I know a guy who thinks everything has gone downhill from hunter-gatherer societies. I'm getting to be a fossil, but I'm not quite old enough to remember how it was back in the Paleolithic.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    23. Re:They are totally different stories by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Improvements in medical technology made my life a LOT better. I probably wouldn't be here, annoying people with odd ideas, if it wasn't for that. So, I suppose, if you want to argue that it didn't make your life better, you could.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    24. Re:They are totally different stories by MercTech · · Score: 1

      The one thing that reaching old fart status is to realize the promise of technology never pays off the way it claims to. The "Internet of Things" is already providing a downside not mentioned in the promise of hackable vehicles and hackable door locks on homes. Tech shortcuts are more efficient but one still needs a backup plan. i.e. Keeping a supply of old school receipt books in a retail establishment so you can stay open when the power, or network, goes down.

      --
      NRRPT/RCT
  2. Frack Betteridge by rmdingler · · Score: 1

    I sure hope so.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  3. Yeah, no. by pushing-robot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Technology is a great enabler, but what changes society is who uses it and for what purpose.

    If you had to describe the 1940s in a sentence, it probably wouldn't be "A lot of important new technologies were invented."

    --
    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    1. Re:Yeah, no. by pushing-robot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      (...though I certainly would not mind if the most newsworthy events of the next four years were gadget releases.)

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    2. Re:Yeah, no. by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      Unix time begins at 00:00:00 UTC 1970.

      The first computer mouse was patented.

      Xerox PARC opened.

      However if you live near Kent State you may look back on 1970 a bit different.

    3. Re:Yeah, no. by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Actually, before the 1960s this was the biggest leap that technology took. You could say, it literally exploded.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    4. Re:Yeah, no. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Indeed; the transistor turned out to be the invention of the century, so as to speak.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    5. Re:Yeah, no. by fmoliveira · · Score: 1

      IMO the most noticeable thing I would notice after traveling back in time to the 40s woud be the lack of current technologies. (if not arriving in the middle of a battle from the WW)

  4. "Future generations" are unlikely to be human by aberglas · · Score: 1

    Or even biological.

    Over the next 100 years or so computers will start to really think.

    What would they think about us?

    Why would they want us about?

    Would natural selection play the same role in shaping their moral values as it has in shaping ours?

    http://www.computersthink.com/

  5. No! by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    Nothing's bigger than Donald Trump. He's the biggest. And the growing season is too short to find greener pastures in Canada.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re:No! by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Well, considering he's singing up another climate change ... questioner ..., probably we WILL find greener pastures in Canada soon...

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:No! by AchilleTalon · · Score: 2

      If you think Canada can match USA science budget you are surely dreaming or smoking or both. Canada has always lagged behind in science funding. Even behind countries like Portugal when you scale the funding to the size of its economy. The size of the USA economy is much larger than canadian economy and the percentage dedicated to science funding is higher in USA than in Canada. Don't be fooled by some green patches in the pastures and conclude the pastures are greener in Canada.

      --
      Achille Talon
      Hop!
  6. Ask yourself by ckatko · · Score: 5, Informative

    Would people be running these stories if Hillary Clinton was elected?

    1. Re:Ask yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Who cares? We're thanking our lucky stars she wasn't.

    2. Re:Ask yourself by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Probably, why not? Some people seem to have a chip on their shoulder, they see any action as a repudiation of how they voted. However if Clinton had one there would still be stores, and protests. It's all the same in the long run.

    3. Re:Ask yourself by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Very likely we wouldn't. Clinton was the "normal" choice. Trump is the much more newsworthy one. As a European, I can only say thank you. Because we're facing the same problem the US is facing: Disenfranchised, disenchanted and utterly disappointed voters that have zero faith in its politicians, and who also think that the media are basically nothing more than a mouthpiece of "the establishment", who are basically doing the same that many Trump voters did: Vote for whoever, if necessary a dishwasher, as long as it's not a politician of "the system".

      This should now show us whether it makes a difference to vote for a loudmouth populist. It doesn't get any more loudmouthed or populist, and he has pretty much all the necessary means to do whatever he wishes to do to "fight the rotten system", both domestic and foreign.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    4. Re:Ask yourself by x0ra · · Score: 1

      Which would only concern men...

    5. Re:Ask yourself by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Yes. For the same reason that the steam engine was a bigger story than Abraham Lincoln, too. Individuals matter quite little in the long run.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    6. Re:Ask yourself by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Funny

      I, too, like social experiments. When they're performed on other nations.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    7. Re:Ask yourself by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2

      I keep hoping one of the European countries implements a basic income system, so everyone else can see if it works well by freeing society from fear of abject poverty or implodes upon itself with overburdensome taxes on the most productive citizens.

      Hey, we've just launched a crazy four-year right-wing experiment here, so it's up to someone else to try some crazy left-wing experiment elsewhere. Let's help each other out here!

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    8. Re:Ask yourself by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      We seem to have diversified recently, so I'll let you know how the multiple experiments ended.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    9. Re:Ask yourself by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's a shame there wasn't longer between Brexit and the US election, then you might have had time to see just how badly that experiment is working out. Having said that though, the US is seeing the same immediate effects - open bigotry and bigoted attacks taking a sharp rise, people scrambling to protect themselves before it all goes to shit...

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    10. Re:Ask yourself by cryptizard · · Score: 1

      Except that 4 days after the election he appointed 100% career politician Washington insiders to his advisory team, dropped his guarantee of congressional term limits and backtracked on almost all of his major campaign promises. Good stuff, glad those people voted for a "non-establishment" candidate...

    11. Re:Ask yourself by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2

      The Political Left has only themselves to blame. They were the ones Trumpeting Trump as much as anyone in the beginning ... "Yes, PLEASE RUN!" thinking all along that he couldn't actually win anything. Then he won the Republican Nomination and they all thought "Great, this is great! We'll get Hillary!" And they echo chambered their rage and hatred of the "other half" of America. I mean, how stupid can you be to vote for Trump? Right?

      But the Left ran the one candidate with probably more baggage than Trump, and no amount of Echos in the Chamber could drown out the sounds of that hatred and contempt for America, and Americans that was coming from the likes of the FBI investigation, and conclusion that she was "reckless" with National Security and the torrent of emails from WikiLeaks exposing her.

      Lets see, you had the full MSM on her side. Sitting President on her side, Every Democrat and a large part of the Establishment Republican Party on her side. She had a Billion Dollars of campaign funds helping her. You had all the Bushes on her side. I can't actually think of anything other than a few Talk Radio shows and Hannity on Fox that was actually supporting Trump .

      And here it is, she lost. She lost to Trump. She has nobody else to blame but herself. She was the only candidate that was worse than Trump

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    12. Re:Ask yourself by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      Clinton was the "normal" choice

      And yet she "lost". Keep telling yourself that Clinton was normal. She represents everything people hate about DC, and you wonder why she lost. She was "normal" and a large part of America is sick n tired of that "Normal"

      Liberals keep blaming everyone but themselves. Which is fine by me. No introspection means next time, they'll run more of the same hatred against "Normal" people. Pregnant women on the way to hospital are assaulted because she looked like a "Trump supporter". Idiot University students rush onto I5 (major Highway) in San Diego and gets hit by a car, but its "Trumps fault".

      And the Coup de Gras the "Safety Pin" posts. Nothing better represents the whiny liberal echo chamber than something designed to hold diapers on babies.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    13. Re:Ask yourself by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 1

      The Political Left has only themselves to blame. They were the ones Trumpeting Trump as much as anyone in the beginning ... "Yes, PLEASE RUN!" thinking all along that he couldn't actually win anything. Then he won the Republican Nomination and they all thought "Great, this is great! We'll get Hillary!" And they echo chambered their rage and hatred of the "other half" of America. I mean, how stupid can you be to vote for Trump? Right?

      But the Left ran the one candidate with probably more baggage than Trump, and no amount of Echos in the Chamber could drown out the sounds of that hatred and contempt for America, and Americans that was coming from the likes of the FBI investigation, and conclusion that she was "reckless" with National Security and the torrent of emails from WikiLeaks exposing her.

      Lets see, you had the full MSM on her side. Sitting President on her side, Every Democrat and a large part of the Establishment Republican Party on her side. She had a Billion Dollars of campaign funds helping her. You had all the Bushes on her side. I can't actually think of anything other than a few Talk Radio shows and Hannity on Fox that was actually supporting Trump .

      And here it is, she lost. She lost to Trump. She has nobody else to blame but herself. She was the only candidate that was worse than Trump

      ^^^ There is so much win in this.

    14. Re:Ask yourself by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      This is true. It is not just the fault of the left. Had Hillary run I guarantee that the Trump supporters would have been in the streets protesting against a "rigged" election.

      The problem is that we had two candidates who weren't very good at campaigning, two candidates who were very much hated by the other team, both of them spent most of the time with negative campaigning, and half of eligible voters stayed home and didn't bother to vote. I know a lot of people who voted for Trump but none of them actually like Trump, he's their hold-your-nose candidate. With half of the electorate abstaining (and who can blame them) it would not take much to have swayed that needle off of the center. So neither side should be claiming the high ground, neither side has a clear outright majority and certainly not a mandate, so telling one side or the other to just suck it up and shut up for four years is absurd (since when in this country has the opposition ever shut up?).

    15. Re:Ask yourself by HiThere · · Score: 1

      When do you think rule of law was EVER practiced? The only times I can think of were the feudal period when the law was "I've got the weapons, so do what I say.". Even then you can find exceptions. If you couldn't there never would have been a Magna Carta.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    16. Re:Ask yourself by HiThere · · Score: 1

      I understand that it is *supposed* to mean that. I'm not aware of any period in history when it actually did. And if the king is the one saying "I've got the weapons, so do what I say" then that is exactly the "rule of law". Or if it's the local baron, and the king doesn't object.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    17. Re:Ask yourself by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Clinton didn't lose by much. She got the popular vote, and very small changes in a few states would have given her the election.

      She had a clear lead in the polls until Comey interfered with the election. Given the closeness, and where the polls went after that, I'd say that Comey cost her the election by doing something of really questionable legality against DoJ policy.

      The information I've been seeing about Trump supporters getting aggressive and violent is more credible than the reverse. Got any sources for large-scale anti-Trump violence?

      The safety pin thing is intended to stop harassment and assaults, which I have reasonably credible evidence is happening. It's intended to make people feel safer. Are you in favor of targeting innocents for personal attack?

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    18. Re:Ask yourself by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      "Normal" was supposed to mean that Clinton would have been the choice of the status quo, the "business as usual" situation. Hence electing her would not have resulted in any stories. What would you want to write about, that nothing is going to be different from how it was during the last administration?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  7. Re:Trump's Failure by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    Trump isn't dictator, no matter how he dreams. Republican strategy includes him only a technique to get Pence into higher office, just a question when.

  8. Depends by quax · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There are times when science and technology does not trump politics. Everybody knows Einstein but also Hitler.

    If Trump works within the system this will be but yet another presidency. This is what every American should wish for.

    If he on the other hand breaks the US Republic his name would live on in infamy.

    This unlikely to happen unless the rumor in intelligence circles is true, that the FSB managed to compromise him on one of his business trips to Moscow.

    1. Re:Depends by quax · · Score: 1

      The man is vein, a video that'll show less than stellar sexual performance would terrify him.

    2. Re:Depends by quax · · Score: 1

      Genuine affection or Stockholm syndrome? Could be either could be both.

    3. Re:Depends by quax · · Score: 1

      I only share anonymous sources with anonymous cowards.

    4. Re:Depends by Gussington · · Score: 1

      There are times when science and technology does not trump politics. Everybody knows Einstein but also Hitler.

      Everyone knows what Hitler did, do you think the average man on the street could name anything Einstein did? This audience obviously can, but I don't think Joe Sixpack could come up with anything other than 'maths' or 'physics'.

    5. Re:Depends by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      The only thing that destroys republics, are pure democracies. And eventually those always end in Totalitarian Regimes voted in by ignorant populace.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    6. Re:Depends by HiThere · · Score: 1

      This was clearly stated as a rumor. You don't need to believe in its truth to believe that it's an actual rumor. And I find nothing suspicious about that being claimed to be a rumor.

      It's true that an anonymous source isn't all that trustworthy, but neither is a rumor. And neither is questioning the truth of something because you don't know who is sharing it rather than because you don't have any evidence for it. (The word of an honest man is a kind of evidence, but I generally find other evidence preferable. The honest man can only tell you what he believes.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    7. Re:Depends by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Tell that to the Romans.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    8. Re:Depends by quax · · Score: 1

      Tell me when you find a pure democracy.

  9. Re:Trump's Failure by Jzanu · · Score: 2, Informative

    Trump is a liar already so he will be a single term president, and probably less than that.

  10. 100 years from now by the_Bionic_lemming · · Score: 2

    100 years from now that phone in your pocket will be laughed at if some idiot stands up and makes the claims that the OP did.

    --
    _ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
  11. Re:Trump's Failure by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He is already reversing course on all the rhetoric used to rile up the populist vote.

    Trump's supporters don't expect him to follow through on the literal statements he made during the campaign. Only his detractors took him literally. When he promised to build a wall, his supporters were not expecting a physical wall, just that they would finally see a politician take illegal immigration seriously.

    Disclaimer: I didn't vote for Trump, but I know plenty of people that did, mostly relatives.

  12. Trump won BECAUSE of technology. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Think about it:

      - Internet giving voters access to information outside the mainstream press filtering. Especially:
            - Wikileaks.
            - Snowden. (Driving dissatisfaction with the power structure on both sides of the asile.)
      - Social media organization/recruiting.
      - Jobs crash;
              - H1Bs replacing white-colars in tech.
              - Illegals replacing blue-collars.
              - Tech replacing more white- and blue-collars.
    And I could go on.

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
    1. Re:Trump won BECAUSE of technology. by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      You left out Hillary's infamous emails, and the Benghazi-related (or not related if you go by GOP) Youtube protest video.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    2. Re:Trump won BECAUSE of technology. by jbn-o · · Score: 1

      A major expenditure for political campaigns is media buys—buying TV ads, for instance—but Trump was given billions of dollars in gratis TV coverage (1, 2). That's not "technology".

      Trump was up against a horrible Democratic Party candidate who built on a long line of screwing the poor and ignored the lessons of Brexit. As corporate media lined up to bolster her, enough of the Trump voters' interests were left out. While she got busy calling them names (like being a "basket of deplorables") poor voters tried to make rent and feed their families. Every Trump jibe echoed around (such as the rubbish from news parody shows) without acknowledging what had been happening to the disenfranchised for 30 years under Democratic and Republican rule that Trump had nothing to do with setting up. Reacting to a bad economy with no end in sight had a lot more to do with Trump's victory than "technology".

      --
      Digital Citizen
    3. Re:Trump won BECAUSE of technology. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Trump won BECAUSE women voters are idiots.

      Let's not generalise, only 42% of them voted for him.

    4. Re:Trump won BECAUSE of technology. by houghi · · Score: 1

      Internet also makes it a LOT easier to spread propaganda and lies and blow things way out of proportion and give people much more attention than they should have, making them sound much more important than they actually are.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    5. Re:Trump won BECAUSE of technology. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      The reason we have journalists is so that they can evaluate and filter information for us. While it sounds great to have all the information available, in practice what tends to happen is people believe false reports because they confirm their existing views.

      Wikileaks dump of unedited information lead to all kinds of conspiracy theories that turned out to be unfounded. Social media amplified rumours and outright lies. Unfortunately the media doesn't do its job properly either, having moved from largely reporting news to reporting opinion.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:Trump won BECAUSE of technology. by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      having moved from largely reporting news to reporting opinion.

      A particularly pernicious form of this is the insistence on reporting "both sides" under the guise of neutrality. Some times it works, but often it involves going whack-job or basically counter-factual to actually get the other side. There are not two sides in every debate and even when there are, the sides are not always evenly matched.

      Case in point, with Brexit, one "side" claimed that the 350 million a week would go to the NHS. The thing is this was reported as a valid opinion. It was not. It was a blatant lie, the leave camp people saying it knew it was a blatant lie and the very same leave camp reneged on it (their #1 promise) less than 24 hours after wining the referendum.

      And yet despite the obviously untruthful nature, it was propagated as if it was true by the media because they wanted to be "fair" to "both sides".

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    7. Re:Trump won BECAUSE of technology. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      A criminal complaint has been submitted over that claim. I hope they proceed with it.

      This all goes back to the post-factual nature of our politics. There is no objective truth, facts are whatever you believe is true right now. Journalists are just as guilty, because they switched from factual reporting to opinion and so had to pretend those opinions were valuable and in fact more important than the facts, otherwise why pay for them when the facts are widely available for free?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    8. Re:Trump won BECAUSE of technology. by swb · · Score: 1

      This all goes back to the post-factual nature of our politics. There is no objective truth, facts are whatever you believe is true right now. Journalists are just as guilty, because they switched from factual reporting to opinion and so had to pretend those opinions were valuable and in fact more important than the facts, otherwise why pay for them when the facts are widely available for free?

      I would say we're post-truth, not post-fact. Everyone has facts, but even the facts themselves are often a lying-with-statistics variety, fragments of a whole selected to advance a cause. But even when verifiable facts are used, they're used selectively to manufacture a reality that isn't true but gains followers and can't easily be refuted because its assembled from facts.

      It's like two photos taken at a zoo. One photo is dominated by people with a few animals, one is photo is dominated by animals with a few people and the argument is about whether the zoo is filled with animals or people.

      Journalists used to do something like show both pictures and then explain how they're taken at almost the same spot but pointed in slightly different directions, explaining how the pictures show different views of the same reality.

      Now they seem to do a lot more to promote one of the photos and somewhat discredit the other photo, depending on their orientation.

    9. Re:Trump won BECAUSE of technology. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Interesting take on it, and I think I agree with a lot of what you are saying. Facts have just become tools used to create fantasy worlds, carefully selected or excluded as needs be.

      The worrying conclusion is that the only way to fight it is to do likewise and create other, more popular mythologies. Well, either that or let it get really bad like it did in the 1930s. You can't just point out how stupid any of it is, because it's more like a religion backed up by a holy book than a political philosophy.

      It's going to be interesting when people realize that Trump isn't the messiah.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    10. Re:Trump won BECAUSE of technology. by epine · · Score: 1

      So that's your photo carefully taken in one direction.

      But surely you've caught wind of the problem of false equivalency, where the second camera angle ends up being some convenient, attention-grabbing, shit-throwing monkey, who is only in it for the publicity, and consumes his dreary dinner only with relish for the opportunities it will soon create.

      if (p != NULL)
          publish (*p + *q);

      What could possibly go wrong?

    11. Re:Trump won BECAUSE of technology. by swb · · Score: 1

      I have deeper worries.

      1) The masses as a whole lack the substantive ability to synthesize facts into a coherent truth. Historically, religions and later political organizations and the media have all served as aggregators and synthesizers of factual information into coherent truths, in many cases suppressing facts to preserve the intellectual integrity of the truth they promoted. Many of these organizations have a long history of internal secrecy and doctrinal opposition to the masses gaining information and structuring their own truth. The Catholic church as a matter of theology believed its priests were the agent of religious belief and it seems not just coincidence that the rise of movable type led to Martin Luther and Protestantism once bibles could be mass produced and it became practical for the literate to read the bible and divine their own relationship with God.

      The Chinese *openly* practice this line of thinking. I don't think it's just totalitarianism, but an actual concern that the stability of society depends on information control and the ability of the party to advance its own reality.

      That being said, I'd hate for this to be actually *true* because suppression of information and the control of truth is inherently corrupting and diminishes the advancement of science and technology.

      2) One of my other major worries I label, somewhat hyperbolically, "species panic". Regardless of what kind of population the planet can technologically support through mathematically optimized application of policy and technology, we have passed some level of resource consumption, ownership, and scarcity and in combination with mathematically suboptimal organization and it is panicking the human species akin to the panic of forest animals in a fire. The global disruptions of Islamic revolution, the Arab spring, mass European immigration, Brexit, and even Trump are all symptoms of species panic.

      The various multicultural globalists and environmentalists (which generally include Clinton) are in pursuit of optimization. The problem with optimization, like suppression of information, is that it is inherently corrupting, requiring dominant control over resources (material, political, military) in order to optimize them. And optimizing them is a process of picking winners and losers without regard for any specific category, often paradoxically to their presumed power relationship. Poor whites lose materially because international trade contributes to optimal economic organization. Devout Muslims lose because all significant religious belief needs to be in line with optimal social and political organization.

      I hate for this to be true, because it kind of leads to a bleak dystopian future of machine-organized life lacking in individual choice, ultimately dominated by a corrupt elite.

    12. Re:Trump won BECAUSE of technology. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      That's really insightful. And likely true, unfortunately.

      What I still find very hard to accept is the amount of doublethink required for a lot of this. For example, how both Brexit and electing Trump were thought of as ordinary people sticking it to the establishment and the ruling class. Brexit was championed by two Eton millionaires, two of the toffiest toffs in the country, and Trump literally built his empire using cheap immigrant labour instead of Americans and clearly is pretty far from a common man.

      People must try really hard to ignore those things. Like religiously hard. It's easy to mock religions for believing all kinds of unlikely things, but it's not like people have been indoctrinated since birth to think that Michael Gove and Boris Johnson are average working class people. In fact right up until they started campaigning for Brexit they were often mocked for being excessively posh.

      machine-organized life lacking in individual choice, ultimately dominated by a corrupt elite.

      That pretty adequately describes 2016.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    13. Re:Trump won BECAUSE of technology. by swb · · Score: 1

      What I still find very hard to accept is the amount of doublethink required for a lot of this. For example, how both Brexit and electing Trump were thought of as ordinary people sticking it to the establishment and the ruling class. Brexit was championed by two Eton millionaires, two of the toffiest toffs in the country, and Trump literally built his empire using cheap immigrant labour instead of Americans and clearly is pretty far from a common man.

      I think that doublethink and doublespeak are so common anymore that nobody really notices, life has generally become a continual stream of paradoxes that produces so much cognitive dissonance that ignoring it is pretty much rational and necessary for sanity.

      I think both sides have been guilty of deliberate doublespeak and contortionist logic to try to suppress counterfactual arguments.

      The multicultural globalists tend to doublespeak on crime in minority neighborhoods and the nature and role of Islamic fundamentalism in terrorism because it contradicts their goal of optimizing populations and social structures. Conservative globalists tend to doublespeak on capitalism and its contribution to economic inequality.

      machine-organized life lacking in individual choice, ultimately dominated by a corrupt elite.

      That pretty adequately describes 2016.

      The sort of gothic horror reality of it, though, is that humanity was once stuck in the trap of a Mother Nature-organized life, dominated by a corrupt elite. We're passing that sweet spot in civilization where we were produced enough surplus to not be worried about famine or the weather to keep the elite in check.

    14. Re:Trump won BECAUSE of technology. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      I think that doublethink and doublespeak are so common anymore that nobody really notices, life has generally become a continual stream of paradoxes that produces so much cognitive dissonance that ignoring it is pretty much rational and necessary for sanity.

      Indeed, it even has a name: Oh Dearism.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  13. Re:Trump's Failure by elrous0 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Lighten up, Francis. Trump isn't going to eat your baby, put you in a concentration camp, or start WWIII.

    I feel like I'm listening to the crazy shit about Muslim Obama coming to take our guns away all over again, only this time the batshit insanity is coming from the left.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  14. US or World? by fermion · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Depends if you are talking US or the world. The people who voted for Trump in the primary likely see technology as a threat. They are largely uneducated rural people who expect to be paid to mine coal even if no one wants it or assemble products even if a robot can do it better. Can you imagine what computers would be like if we were still forced to hand solder components because we were required to support semi-skilled workers? No surface mount.

    So even though the people who elected Trump is broader, the basic tenet of isolationism and coal miners is still inherently anti-innovation. The wind mills and solar panels that are being installed in Texas and other states, and are going to be a significant part of the energy grid in the next decade, is an extensional threat to the unskilled workers who elected Trump. The semi-skilled service jobs that require an associates degree and significant computer literacy are beyond the average Trump supporter who thinks that they deserve a middle class income for doing work a computer could do more accurately.

    Which further opens the path for Asia and Germany to take over the technological world. Our trains are not designed in the US, but in Germany. More of out high technology is not only going to be built, but engineered, in Asia.

    --
    "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
    1. Re:US or World? by Jzanu · · Score: 1

      Nice try, but globalism is killing the inefficient work in bad locations for profit itself. It is powered by capitalism and the people resisting it are fighting the tide. They voted Trump because they were fooled by promises he has already broken.

    2. Re:US or World? by Howitzer86 · · Score: 1

      It might eventually come to this, but I don't think it's there yet. I'm also not sure if it would be a bad thing to respond like that. If you can devastate civil life with something, be it technology or unfettered free trade, you're obviously going to want less of it. You'll want to tax it, regulate it, and otherwise encourage industry to do without it.

      Also, it might be time to accept that we Americans will never have an Unconditional Basic Income. It is incompatible with the American spirit to tax ourselves enough to sustain anything like that, assuming it's sustainable at all. It may be better for the sake our individual and national pride to take the long way around and guarantee work rather than income.

      Even if it takes freezing society inside a 2010's era technological bubble, it may be worth it to avoid an environment where you can live an entire life without purpose and at the mercy of sustained government charity.

    3. Re:US or World? by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      And yet when it happens to slashdotters we get incessant whining about H1Bs.

      You mean like all those "I'm going to close Gitmo" votes Obama got?

    4. Re:US or World? by Jzanu · · Score: 1

      The autistic fucktards who thought learning code would get them a job for life have to wake up too. Job enhancement is the name of the game, one way or the other. Workers have to keep building new skills in new domains or they face obsolesce faster than the iShiny.

    5. Re:US or World? by Nostalgia4Infinity · · Score: 1

      Among white college graduates – a group that many identified as key for a potential Clinton victory – Trump outperformed Clinton by a 4-point margin.

    6. Re:US or World? by Jzanu · · Score: 1

      What happens to frozen 2010 USA when faced with competition from 2050 EU and China? USA loses. Ignoring technology isn't a solution.

    7. Re:US or World? by Jzanu · · Score: 1

      Decades ago - code is and always has been a dead end job easily relocated - 90s fear was Southern US expansion and hollow Silicon Valley. Reality is that it is an artificially valued and imaginary service that people tried to treat like a product. The real money is in identifying how real problems are solved, not in making new versions of spreadsheets and video games.

    8. Re:US or World? by rmckeethen · · Score: 2

      I think you're missing the point.

      White, blue collar voters in the Rust Belt aren't blaming technology for the decimation of the American middle class, nor are these people the kind of stereotypical redneck hillbillies you seem to be implying they are. Folks in red states have cell phones too you know, and computers work just as well in rural America as they do on the coasts.

      But what's not working in rural America is rural Americans, and they're losing their jobs all over, not just in West Virginia coal mines. And these jobs aren't being replaced by technology; in most cases, jobs are getting shipped out of the country, to Mexico and elsewhere, because businesses can pay pennies on the dollar to workers in those countries versus what an American worker would make. Again, that has nothing to do with technology, but it is why white men and women in Wisconsin, Ohio and other formerly blue states voted for Trump by wide margins.

      Globalization, free trade, NAFTA -- all of these bi-lateral international agreements aren't doing bupkis for the part of America where factories close and two-thirds of the town is out of work. Economists will tell you it's better to ship those jobs to Mexico and elsewhere because those places can make the same products for less money, and American consumers win with lower costs for goods on store shelves. But what the Rust Belts sees is that it doesn't matter if you can buy a pair of shoes at Walmart for $0.53 less if you don't have a job! And again, this is what's happening in all kinds of small towns all across America. When Hillary Clinton starts talking about trade agreements, all it does is piss-off people who already lost their job in the last round of trade deals. When Trump says he'll repeal NAFTA, white, rural America sees him as their champion.

      Ultimately, it doesn't matter if Trump can bring back the lost mining or factory jobs; at least he says he'll try, which is far more than the establishment in either party has said for decades. And unless Facebook starts opening factories in rural America, and technology turns its engines of innovation towards helping to solve the middle-America employment problem, high tech just looks like another part of the problem, not part of a solution for the Unemployed States of America.

    9. Re:US or World? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      White, blue collar voters in the Rust Belt aren't blaming technology for the decimation of the American middle class, nor are these people the kind of stereotypical redneck hillbillies you seem to be implying they are. Folks in red states have cell phones too you know, and computers work just as well in rural America as they do on the coasts.

      I''m not sure he meant that all people reasoned like this, but some of the more educated easily could have.

      But what's not working in rural America is rural Americans, and they're losing their jobs all over, not just in West Virginia coal mines. And these jobs aren't being replaced by technology; in most cases, jobs are getting shipped out of the country, to Mexico and elsewhere, because businesses can pay pennies on the dollar to workers in those countries versus what an American worker would make. Again, that has nothing to do with technology, but it is why white men and women in Wisconsin, Ohio and other formerly blue states voted for Trump by wide margins.

      Now you're even contradicting yourself! How could jobs be shipped out of the country if it weren't for cheap shipping (technology), computer-enabled business communication (technology) and long-distance electronic financial exchange (technology)?

      Globalization, free trade, NAFTA -- all of these bi-lateral international agreements aren't doing bupkis for the part of America where factories close and two-thirds of the town is out of work. Economists will tell you it's better to ship those jobs to Mexico and elsewhere because those places can make the same products for less money, and American consumers win with lower costs for goods on store shelves. But what the Rust Belts sees is that it doesn't matter if you can buy a pair of shoes at Walmart for $0.53 less if you don't have a job! And again, this is what's happening in all kinds of small towns all across America. When Hillary Clinton starts talking about trade agreements, all it does is piss-off people who already lost their job in the last round of trade deals. When Trump says he'll repeal NAFTA, white, rural America sees him as their champion.

      That's obviously short-term thinking on part of the Rust Belt because the living standards in "Mexico and elsewhere" are going to grow and the benefits of this trade are going to decrease until the point at which cheap people will be replaced by cheap robots. Of course, cheap robots can be sited anywhere, even in the US (it also eliminates the shipping costs and associated CO2 emissions), but it still won't re-job the Rust Belt.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    10. Re:US or World? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      Can you imagine what computers would be like if we were still forced to hand solder components because we were required to support semi-skilled workers? No surface mount.

      I ordered a batch of populated circuit boards recently (they're yet to arrive---it was really recent). They're going to be hand assembled because I didn't order enough for it to be worth setting up the machines: there's the programming overhead for the machines, and the overheads of using more components since they have a minimum strip size etc etc. Naturally, it's not the cheap X5R decoupling ceramics which were too small quantity, it was the expensive 0402 0.1% thin film resistors where they needed more to fit in the machine. Actually I got both quotes, and they were nearly identical, it turns out I was right on the dividing line.

      It's 100% surface mount, designed for machine assembly in larger batches. People apply the paste by hand using a stencil, place the components with tweezers, a foot pedal controlled vacuum pickup tool and I believe for tough things, slidable stage with a magnifier on board. The first prototypes, I did myself in a small, cheaply equipped workshop, using the same techniques. I can do 0.5mm pitch LGA chips and 0402s without much problem.

      So, surface mount and hand assembly are not mutually incompatible. Not only that but there are machine assembly systems for through hole (still popular with power components), involving things like wire benders whose task is I hope clear, followed by wave soldering to automatically solder everything that's been placed.

      Anyway, with out reference to whatever points you were making, that's how things are in electronics at the moment.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    11. Re:US or World? by guruevi · · Score: 1

      CNN exit polls are a really, really bad quote to have. CNN had Clinton up by a landslide (around 300 electoral votes) the weeks before the election.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    12. Re:US or World? by guruevi · · Score: 1

      This is exactly why Trump won though, this "uneducated rural bumpkins" misinformation. You surely have never worked in rural areas, because they too have computers and Internet.

      Farms are no longer run by farmers, farmhands and maids nor horses and oxen. They are run by high tech, self-driving, GPS-guided farm equipment that can detect quality grades and ripeness of product. You don't touch those devices without at least an electrical or mechanical engineering degree. Planning a farm requires people with agricultural engineering degrees, hyperlocal weather forecasts and a lot of non-plant farming (meat, eggs, milk, ...) have chemical labs on site for continuous testing.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    13. Re:US or World? by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      exit polls support this.

      They polls have gotten Michigan and Wisconsin wrong since the primaries.

      "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters"

      The same thing clinton was thinking but never said outloud?. I dealt with the hate her side spewed during the primary so pardon me if I don't listen to you the next time you call Wolf.

  15. Trump resort and casino Moscow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    That's naive, the clear risk is his inaction. Trump is applying for Casino Hotel rights in Moscow, Putin will grant him those once he's President, and that Casino will magically be the most profitable ever, with millions of dollars being lost everyday by just a handful of grey looking men who just popped out of the nearby Kremlin.

    And in exchange, Trump will hogtie NATO to block the military and give Putin a clear run at Europe and Asia.

    INACTION, is enough to do the damage.

    Remember Bush? Remember his CIA and NSA desperately trying to get him to sign off on a meeting with FBI? "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the USA.... crashing hijacked planes into buildings"... Bush wouldn't even arrange the meeting that would let the FBI go arrest "Bin Laden" ( = the family that bailed out his failed Arbusto business).

    Bush had conflicting business interests, and so wouldn't even organize the meeting between the CIA and FBI to go arrest the hijackers.

    Trump? He's up to his neck in Russian links, he'll block any action to secure US interests against Putin.

  16. Like IBM in the 1930's by dcollins · · Score: 1

    As revolutionary, and as fondly remembered, as IBM's Hollerith computer in the 1930's.

    --
    We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
  17. Yes by Black+Parrot · · Score: 1

    Technology is a "bigger" story than, uh, Weefinger.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    1. Re:Yes by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Yes. Those who fatuously praise the oncoming Singularity don't understand the process. It's so dangerous that I would be violently against it if I didn't have even less faith in people being able to survive human control of their governments. We've already been within 30 seconds of nuclear war, and hypersonic missiles are going to increase the instability.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    2. Re:Yes by ooooli · · Score: 1

      Singularity, sure, but I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about current technology. How about giving homeland security blanket permission to track the location of everybody you don't like. Easily done using their phones.... You're a muslim/communist/dissenter and you choose not to carry your phone around? What do you have to hide? Also, how did you get on the shit list in the first place; you must have done SOMETHING...

      If more than 3 of them end up in the same location, maybe send the FBI (or what the hell, the CIA) to "respectfully" check in on them... or hey, just record the conversation, while you already have access to their phones.

      This is just one example, and no new tech is needed to implement it. Only an executive order, a friendly court, and some people willing to set it up.

      I'm not saying this is what's going to happen; I'm just saying that in the worst case, everybody who knows how to do this will need to make a choice to either enable it or not. Sitting on the sidelines building cool shit and pretending it's both more important and irrelevant to current affairs is just not an option.

    3. Re:Yes by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Actually, you ARE talking about the Singularity. Your comment was about the increased rate of technological change happening faster than people could easily adapt to it, and that is the very essence of the Singularity at any particular point in time. (The other part is that if you look over a long period of time that rate is increasing.)

      FWIW, I still guess that human level AI will be achieved around 2030. There was awhile when I was thinking I should push it back to 2035, and there are some indications that it will happen before 2030, but nothing convincing, and short term fluctuations are to be expected.
      N.B.: "human level AI" doesn't mean that it will equal humans in all areas. It should be expected to surpass humans in some areas, and to be inferior in others. I wouldn't care to predict in what areas it would be inferior, however.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  18. Re:Trump's Failure by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    You mean by linking an article contrasting campaign trail promises with actual actions? How about you find ONE thing Trump claimed explicitly that he will do. One thing, come on. You've got a year plus of shit to trawl through to find ONE thing that he said he'd do that he can actually do, and that he will actually do. Otherwise Trump is just a lame duck before he even starts.

  19. This is going to be interesting by rrohbeck · · Score: 1

    Just wait until computers drive trucks, buses and Ubers, and flip burgers.

    --
    thegodmovie.com - watch it
    1. Re:This is going to be interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Just wait until computers drive trucks, buses and Ubers, and flip burgers.

      Self driving trucks are already in the prototype stage right now. Most Slashdotters might not realize this, but commercial truck driving is one of the last bastions of steady and decent paying blue collar work here in the United States. It has survived because up until now the job could neither be automated nor outsourced. Oh sure there were the occasional Mexican and Canadian truckers due to NAFTA, but by and large it was a 100k+/yr job that was still available to high school graduates after training and a decade or so on the road. Now, those livelihoods are threatened by self driving big rigs. When the commercial driving jobs are finally automated away, both trucking freight and passenger service, things are going to get very interesting here in the United States. I estimate that this endgame is now less than 10 years out.

    2. Re:This is going to be interesting by RPI+Geek · · Score: 1

      Came here to to say this. When self-driving trucks start rolling out (har har) en masse, we're going to need to find new jobs for a LOT of people. A large percentage of the 1.3 million truck drivers will need to find new jobs or else. What they'll do, I just don't know.

      Funny how the map of the most common job per state looks similar to the map of the 2016 presidential election results when you compare "Truck Driver" states and red states. I wonder if this will play out during Trump's presidency or his successor's and how they'll handle it..

      --

      - "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
    3. Re:This is going to be interesting by RPI+Geek · · Score: 1

      ... and I mangled the markup. Oops.

      --

      - "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
    4. Re:This is going to be interesting by HiThere · · Score: 1

      I believe some warehouses have been using self-driving trucks internally for years. Of course, that's a bit different from the roadable truck that's being worked on. I'd guess that one's two years away, but this is without looking at any data, and well out of my area of expertise. Still, I think I read about one that was allowed to drive on the autobahn, though I don't know what the conditions were. IIRC (uncertain) the maker was Mercedes/Benz.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  20. Re:Trump's Failure by elrous0 · · Score: 1

    I was referencing your Red Dawn hyperbole. But yes, I fully expect that Donald Trump will break many, if not most, of his campaign promises just like every President has done since ever. Do you seriously think Hillary was ever going to deliver on all her promises?

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  21. Re:Trump's Failure by Jzanu · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Trump is a traitor to the US, beyond business dealings in Russia that compromise his judgement he has already backed Russian interference in the democratic process that is the foundation of the US. This is Russian revenge for loss in the Cold War, and Putin will attack the US unless he is killed or overthrown first, and Trump will roll over and let it happen if he thinks he can make money from it. Trump will betray the US.

  22. Why worry about brain drain ... by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 1

    ... when the drained brains are already unused because they've been replaced by H1Bs and are unemployed?

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  23. Hacked emails...hacked election lists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Yeh, Internet gave him:

    Hacked Democrat emails
    Hacked Florida Election rolls (coupled to absentee ballots filled in with the election roll data).
    The Florida election contractor hacked.
    The Arizona election registration hacked.
    The Illinois election hack.
    The California voting machine maker that was hacked.

    http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/florida-election-hack/index.html

    So yeh, technology gave him his win. Rusky tech, and by win, I mean magic swing, mostly in states that rejected help in securing their elections from hackers.

    And then of course all the money he spent campaigning, comes from casino businesses overseas. So if you were a foreign leader and wanted to donate money to Trump, you just had to go lose some money in his casinos in Panama and its untraceable. Is there a foreign leader with $2 billion in money in Panama banks?

  24. Re:Trump's Failure by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    Not really, the Republican congress can impeach him once he is found guilty of a criminal charge -- there are plenty of those.

  25. Re:Trump's Failure by KeensMustard · · Score: 1
    So he lied?

    Were anything of the things he said true?

    How do you think the coal miners and people working in industries displaced by globalisation will feel when it comes to light he is just going to follow the establishment path on globalisation?

  26. Re:Trump's Failure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Well, except for the fact that since he won the election hate crimes are already rising. Just today there was an incident of hate graffiti at the local high school, first time ever. Sure, it could be a coincidence but i'm hearing of and seeing these incidents rising in many places, wake up and look around...

  27. Re:Trump's Failure by SvnLyrBrto · · Score: 2

    Trump has a rubber-stamp congress, and is a single retirement or death away from having a rubber-stamp Supreme Court.

    How do you figure that for a lame duck presidency?

    --
    Imagine all the people...
  28. Re:Trump's Failure by Jzanu · · Score: 2

    Trump can't actually use it because he has no tact - he's already been bitch-slapped by Paul Ryan, and that's just the start.

  29. Re:Trump's Failure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Republicans in congress will never impeach a Republican president. Party before country.

  30. We lost. Let's take a breath and see what happens by raymorris · · Score: 1

    I voted against Trump, twice. I got my wife to go vote for her first time, voting against Trump. We lost. Trump will be our presodent. He has no political experience or record, so we don't know how he'll do. As Hillary Clinton said the other day:

    --
    Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and a chance to lead. ...
    I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country. I hope that he will be a president for all of our country. ...
    This is painful, and it will be for a long time. But I want you to remember this: our campaign was never about one person - it was about building a country that we love.

    Hillary Rodham Clinton
    ---

  31. Re:Trump's Failure by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    So he lied?

    All politicians lie. His were just more blatant. He didn't even pretend to tell the truth. Many people found his honesty about lying to be refreshing.

    Were anything of the things he said true?

    Yes, some of the things he said were true. For instance, he said that the polls were wrong.

    he is just going to follow the establishment path on globalisation?

    He has effectively already killed TPP. That is not at all what the establishment wanted.

  32. Re:No more wars for oil by quax · · Score: 1

    I have no idea what you are talking about, but rest assured, that there is not a whole lot of oil in Syria (otherwise Assad would have been able to afford a much better army).

    And just for the record, I despise the House of Saud and all that they stand for.

    BTW it seems to me that you think all intelligence professionals are neocons. This couldn't be further from the truth. The neocons came in from the political side. That's why, back when all this started, Rumsfeld tried to duplicate the intelligence work in the defence dept. The CIA analysts weren't hawkish enough for his taste. I have it on first hand account that they warned about, and spelled out all the consequences of going into Iraq. Those guys are underpaid but anything but stupid.

  33. Dunald trump by anamul147 · · Score: 1

    Give him a chance.... https://youtu.be/ao2Q9mYq-0M

    1. Re:Dunald trump by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Why?

      The last Congress has removed any pretense of civility or good faith, so why should anyone give ANY politician, much less the most abusive in recent time, any respect? Particularly one who, if he carries his stated policies though, will be the most damaging to the country president in history. (But he's a known liar, contract breaker, etc. so he may not even be interesting in most of his promises.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  34. This is called FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    In short, I guess we'll have to get use to the non-stop posts that are designed to invoke fear, uncertainty and doubt with the word 'Trump' being spammed into as often as they can. OP isn't trying to make a point. "Trump is here and everything will fail now!!!!"

  35. Re:Trump's Failure by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 2

    Partisans in congress will never impeach a same-party president. Party before country.

    That's what we learned in the 1990s as well.

    --
    If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  36. Re:Trump's Failure by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

    Right, because the head of the Trump business empire has never had to compromise, liaise, or work long hours.

    --
    If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  37. Re:Trump's Failure by KeensMustard · · Score: 2

    All politicians lie.

    So was he lying when he said the election was rigged?

    He didn't even pretend to tell the truth. Many people found his honesty about lying to be refreshing.

    Do you have a clip or cite that you can show us where Trump made it clear that he was lying?

    Did he happen to list the things he was lying about? Was claiming to be 'anti-establishment' on that list?

    Were anything of the things he said true?

    Yes, some of the things he said were true. For instance, he said that the polls were wrong.

    Interesting. Did he say anything that wasn't just inadvertantly true?

  38. Re:Trump's Failure by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    No, I believe that Trump is unfit to serve as dog catcher much less president, and that his interests are not only compromised but that he is a danger to the USA.

  39. Re:We lost. Let's take a breath and see what happe by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Trump will be our presodent. He has no political experience or record,

    Why do people keep saying this? He is the founder and executive of many businesses, a global real estate empire, and now a successful campaign for the preidency. When Barack Obama was elected, the only experience he had was community organizing and a few years as a junior senator. Oh, and the campaign.

    Of the two, even today, who has more years experience running an organization?

    --
    If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  40. can we stop? by jarkus4 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Can we stop with all those irrelevant politics? Trump won, elections are over. When he starts doing something there may be topics for further discussion, but now its just a waste of time. While there may be some people that are still coping with the results, lets keep this stuff out of slashdo as its for tech stories not social studies.

    1. Re:can we stop? by khchung · · Score: 1

      Have you forgotten /. live on clicks? Asking the editors to stop posting these is the same asking them to stop eating, unless you submit something even more clickbaity than Trump.

      Every year, just before Apple announced new iPhones, there would be articles after articles speculating what would be in the new iPhones, then after the announcement, there would articles complaining this change or that, and then in less than a month, there would be articles speculating what the *next* iPhone would have.

      These Trump news are just like the speculating pieces just after an iPhone release. Everything worth saying, plus a whole bunch that isn't, has already been said many time over. How else could you keep the clicks coming, if not to speculate what *might* come?

      --
      Oliver.
    2. Re:can we stop? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      > Trump won, elections are over. When he starts doing something there may be topics for further discussion,

      If he were a normal candidate that would be true.
      But if he were a normal candidate he wouldn't have won the way he did.
      Contemplating the looming clusterfuck of his presidency is nausea-inducing so I can see why you would prefer not to. But don't try to normalize the abnormal. If he gets a free pass until after he fucks people over, its going to be too late for those people.

    3. Re:can we stop? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      When he starts doing something there may be topics for further discussion, but now its just a waste of time.

      He is doing things right now. He's selecting transition team members. Hint: they are all scary AF

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  41. Question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Is Technology A Bigger Story Than Donald Trump?

    Are all headlines placed in the form of questions click-baits?

  42. correction by slashmydots · · Score: 1

    The web of red tape and do-nothing government design is bigger than Donald Trump if I had to specifically pick one thing.

  43. Re:Don't forget to take your meds by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 2

    Why the homophobic rant? What do you have against gay russians?

    --
    If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  44. Re:No more wars for oil by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have no idea what you are talking about, but rest assured, that there is not a whole lot of oil in Syria

    Except for pipes?

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  45. Re:This is fucking retarded. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    Robotics and automation? The main reason why productivity is soaring these days?

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  46. Re:We lost. Let's take a breath and see what happe by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    He is the founder and executive of many businesses, a global real estate empire

    ...which would have been double in size today had fund managers managed it? :-p

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  47. Re:It is cause Hillary didn't win. by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    Not yet. Trump is apparently upsizing the military again.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  48. a little reality on funding by Goldsmith · · Score: 2

    The NSF periodically puts out reports on science funding, which you can read yourself. Or, if you want the most relevant quote:

    ...the U.S. invests twice as much as any other single nation in R&D, despite slipping to tenth in world ranking of the percentage of its GDP it devotes to R&D. In 2011, the U.S. spent $429 billion on R&D, compared to China's $208 billion and Japan's $146 billion. Among other S&T metrics, the U.S. leads in high quality research publications, patents, and income from intellectual property exports.

    To put a little perspective on that, we spend $40 billion a year on startup companies.

    There are a few scientists who will leave the US because they get poached by governments abroad. That has happened already and would continue, no matter what we do. Our pie is the biggest, but we have a lot of people to feed. There are also scientists who will have to leave because of visa issues. That has been happening (a lot) anyway too. We've had a labor surplus in science in the US for a long time.

    The world will not end if other countries are allowed to be good at science. We will not implode if the government cuts science funding. As scientists, there are plenty of structural problems we can improve during a time of change.

    We rely too much on cheap academic labor. We no longer have a working system for transitioning young, high level scientists from training to independence. The government only funds about 1/3 of scientific work, but with the slow and continuing death of real commercial research, the government funds far more than it's share of these young scientists, and this puts stress on the whole system. In general, we have become bad at commercializing scientific work. From the cost to develop new pharmaceuticals, to clean energy, to nanotechnology, we have not delivered in the fields that were supposed to have application. We are now extremely bad at understanding how our work can be applied to everyday life in a non-threatening way (think GMOs...). Our professional organizations organize these calls for increased funding, but we don't address any of our other structural issues. We have an opportunity here to work on some of these things.

    1. Re:a little reality on funding by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Science has NEVER been a commercial success. It intrinsically cannot be. Technology can and has. And technology depends on science, so if you don't support science you don't get technology.

      There are time lags in the system, however, and both negative and positive feedbacks with varying delays. Originally science was supported by wealthy elites. This caused lots of fraud and secrecy (just read the history of the alchemists), and culminated in people like Lord Kelvin. Later there was a transition to academics who experimented on their own time and taught classes to earn their bread. This was indirect support of the elites yielding things like Oxford. Eventually technologies started developing out of this science. (Well, this had been happening all along, though most early technologies had no, or no sensible, theoretical backing.)

      The problem is there are some science projects that are too expensive for any wealthy benefactor to support. This doesn't inherently mean they won't lead to technologies that are tremendously useful, but it sure doesn't guarantee that they will. And there are time lags. Technology tends to pay for itself fairly quickly, and it's still true that the initial innovators often lose their shirts. Look at Xerox. Science is much worse. US prosperity was founded on science developed in Britain. Etc.

      Science is vital to humanity, but often doesn't really reward the country/company/individual who funded it.

      As for GMOs...that's basically technology rather than science, and my distrust of them is due to the testing process, and the perverse incentives it offers to not find any problems. Also to the tendency to promote monopoly control. AFAIKT there aren't any inherent problems with any GMO products available, and after any particular one has been on sale a few decades I'll probably trust it. I'd trust sooner if the testing process was less biased and a bit more careful.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    2. Re:a little reality on funding by Goldsmith · · Score: 1

      Fraud, secrecy and funding through a small number of select people are all still a big part of science. That's precisely the problem.

      I think you're relying on a lot of myths rather than facts. Lord Kelvin was a professor, with a modern academic career path. His father was a math professor, his grandfather a farmer. He is "Lord" Kelvin because he was ennobled later in life. We use the same apprenticeship and government sponsored training system that Kelvin did, as well as the scientists for several generations before him.

      Science is also a money making proposition for a great many organizations, and has been for a long time. Universities in particular turn a big profit on pure scientific research, as do many small business "SBIR shops."

      My biggest quibble though, is that there is a clear demarcation where science ends and technology begins. That's very hard to nail down to the point of being meaningless.

      Think about it from my view. I'm a scientist. I also build and sell what I consider technology. This technology is an integrated graphene-biochemical sensor. People outside of my company and customers very firmly consider this science, because they've barely had a few years exposure to this field as a science and have never seen or heard of this as a technology. At what point is it a technology? This year when we launched a new marketing effort? Last year when we launched our dev kit? A year before that when my design was adapted by a professional engineer? A year before that when I built a complete system using only consumer grade components? Several years before that when I trained other people to build these? In my mind, this became a technology once I'd built the first system and knew how to build more. There were about 10 years of "science" funding between then and now. Having gone through this progression, these advances had much more to do with available funding than any scientific or technical understanding.

      Both my example and yours (Xerox, US profiting off of British inventions) have more to do with business acumen than science or technology. Scientists are part of this process! It used to be assumed that scientists would move strait from the lab to take leading roles at big companies, sit on boards, or serve as CEOs. That's no longer part of scientific culture, and it's at the root of why you don't trust the GMO testing practices. The best scientists now stay at the bench (university) and there is a barrier between commercialization and research.

    3. Re:a little reality on funding by HiThere · · Score: 1

      I agree about the division between science and technology being hard to nail down, but Watt was a technologist, Franklin was mainly a scientist, etc. There is a wavery, jagged, border between the two, but except near that border they are quite distinct.

      Sorry about the "Lord Kelvin" mistake. I know that kind of thing happens. But many of the early scientists were supported by rich and/or powerful patrons. Others substituted the church. Technologists could often be market successes, but scientists had no such option. If I go back before they merged at the edges scientists came from philosophers and technologists from artisans. And I don't think I'm getting this from mythologies, though Aristotle may have had some reason to believe that women had fewer teeth than men. (Small sample size is one possibility.)

      It's also true that technologists do well with a different mental toolkit than do scientists...though again there's a lot of overlap, but the overlap doesn't deny the difference.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  49. Re:Trump's Failure by dehachel12 · · Score: 2

    >He has effectively already killed TPP. does he? I don't think he will. Big money likes TPP.

  50. Re:Yes fuck you and your fact checks by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    Try the free USA - not the brainwashed goosestepping Trump-tards. See here.

  51. Re:Don't forget to take your meds by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    Well it is precisely the homosexual relationship between Trump and Putin that is the source of danger to the US. Danger to the security of classified information including actual nuclear launch codes and missile locations, and other sensitive military information that Trump will soon sell to the Russians to fuck over America.

  52. Re:Trump's Failure by Jzanu · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Oven? Alright, gloves off - you are a fucking neo-nazi, go suck your Führer's cock if you can find it in the ashes left after he cowardly shot himself.

  53. Detractors live in a reality distortion field by jgfenix · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As an external observator it tell that if you continue to think as only a racist madman and understimate him he will win a second election. Also its disgusting your sense of moral superiority while you do things like beat Trump supporters. Who is acting like nazis?

    1. Re:Detractors live in a reality distortion field by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      As an external observator it tell that if you continue to think as only a racist madman and understimate him he will win a second election. Also its disgusting your sense of moral superiority while you do things like beat Trump supporters. Who is acting like nazis?

      Making up false stories for propaganda purposes is something that the Nazis did.

      The video you linked to has been debunked.

    2. Re:Detractors live in a reality distortion field by jgfenix · · Score: 1

      Well, I didn't know that. But the truth is that used Trump as a reason/scapegoat to beat him up. What would have happened if a group of white people had beaten up a black man yelling "you f**g n**er? That would be racism, a hate crime. The would be in the news all over the world Double standards.

  54. Re:Trump's Failure by Jzanu · · Score: 1, Interesting

    No, I'd prefer to treat you like the allies treated the nazi scum you idolize. In a war I will shoot you in the head.

  55. Mmmmh by nospam007 · · Score: 2

    "the U.S. could face a brain drain as some of its top science and tech talent moves to greener pastures."

    Canada being where it is, at this time of the year, shouldn't it say: "moves to whiter pastures?"

  56. Re:Trump's Failure by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

    All politicians lie. His were just more blatant. He didn't even pretend to tell the truth. Many people found his honesty about lying to be refreshing.

    Wait so people found his blatant lying refreshingly truthful? What mental contortions did you have ot jump through to come up with that?

    Yes, some of the things he said were true. For instance, he said that the polls were wrong.

    In other words he said a bunch of stuff, some is true, some is not, you have no idea which is which except in hindsight, but that's OK because he's super honest? U wot mate?

    If you reply, you get bonus points for dragging the other party into this even though it has nothing to do with what I wrote.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  57. Re:We lost. Let's take a breath and see what happe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    > Of the two, even today, who has more years experience running an organization?

    When Trump showed up at the whitehouse to meet with Obama, he didn't even know he would have to hire new staff for the west wing. So much for organizational experience.

    During their private White House meeting on Thursday, Mr. Obama walked his successor through the duties of running the country, and Mr. Trump seemed surprised by the scope, said people familiar with the meeting. Trump aides were described by those people as unaware that the entire presidential staff working in the West Wing had to be replaced at the end of Mr. Obama’s term.

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/leading-contender-for-donald-trump-s-chief-of-staff-is-rnc-chairman-reince-priebus-1479069597

  58. Re:Trump's Failure by Z80a · · Score: 1

    Bigger money than what he have.
    He might be rich, but he's no monsanto, and anything that fucks em more than fucks him is effectively a good deal.
    Also anything he can profit over indirectly, like building infrastructure using his own companies etc..

  59. Re:Trump's Failure by Noble713 · · Score: 1

    Trump is a traitor to the US, beyond business dealings in Russia that compromise his judgement

    Are you equally critical of the Clintons and their business dealings with Russia? http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04...

    he has already backed Russian interference in the democratic process that is the foundation of the US

    Are you equally critical of the Obama administration's interference in the internal politics of Ukraine? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    Putin will attack the US unless he is killed or overthrown first

    Please describe the Operational Plan/Scheme of Maneuver that you anticipate for Putin's attack on the US. Cyber attack? Strategic bombers? Nuclear weapons?If you are going to make such an accusation, you must foresee some "End State" that Putin would expect to accomplish. What is his objective with a direct confrontation, by your estimation?

    Right now Russia has its hands full with its Air Force operating in Syria and its Little Green Men operating in Novorussia/Eastern Ukraine. It's a country of ~130 million with a shaky economy and a military that is only partly through a period of modernization....a modernization that has been rudely interrupted by low oil prices and Western sanctions. They're not really in a position to go on the offensive against what remains the most powerful conventional military on the planet by far. And maybe you missed the part where Putin stated he was willing to talk about resetting/normalizing relations with the US, now that the Neocon Hillary isn't likely to be the Commander-in-Chief: http://nypost.com/2016/11/09/p...

  60. Re:Yes fuck you and your fact checks by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    Google finds links based on terms. Try reading it faggot. Read if you are able to.

  61. Re:Don't forget to take your meds by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    You are a fucking idiot and need look into history and Russian polical motivations. Russian politics is dominated by creating a buffer zone, especially a buffer zone through occupation of surrounding nations. That brings it into direct conflict with the EU and actual US interests. Trump is a traitor already lubing up for Putin to ream his ass. Fuck Russia and Fuck Trump.

  62. Re:Trump's Failure by KeensMustard · · Score: 2
    Agreed.

    I just find it odd that his supporters built a case to elect him based on his statements and then when he is elected acted as if they knew all along that he was lying.

    He said he was anti-establishment: they said to elect on that basis. Turns out he is as establishment as they come.

    What reasons remain to have him as president?

  63. Re:Trump's Failure by KeensMustard · · Score: 1

    All that matters is who people feel is on their side.

    Which - again - makes me wonder what happens when the people who gave up their chance at peace and prosperity in order to elect him becuase he claimed he was going to 'drain the swamp' find out he has no intention of draining anything but their bank balance.

  64. Re:Yes fuck you and your fact checks by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    Faggot you need to read the article I actually linked to not one that fits the playbook of your spoon fed counter-claims. Read it all because you are an ignorant fucking son of a bitch.

  65. Re:Yes fuck you and your fact checks by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    Oh and cowardly faggot I have no problem putting a bullet through your head if you even have the balls to ever threaten me in person.

  66. Re:Don't forget to take your meds by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    You are a fucking cunt, take your vague faggot threats and elsewhere and grow the fuck up. All Russian scum will be killed if they attack the USA.

  67. Re:Yes fuck you and your fact checks by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    Faggot now you're running scared eh? You are a piece of shit retarded motherfucker, go back and hide under your fucking blanket before I say boo!

  68. Re:Don't forget to take your meds by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    Trump weakens the USA by fanning racism and then going "not my fault". Republicans weaken the USA with political grandstanding. Democrats are the only party actually responding to the threats faced in international scene, and the only party capable of using diplomacy to further the aims of the USA.

  69. Re:Yes fuck you and your fact checks by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    Motherfucker you try that shit really, you'll go home in less than a pine box.

  70. Re:Don't forget to take your meds by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    No you're just a fucking idiot that's all. Trump is the risk and hopefully he'll recognize it and hand the presidency to Pence.

  71. Re:Don't forget to take your meds by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    Also rust belt didn't vote for Trump, rich white people did.

  72. Re:Yes fuck you and your fact checks by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    You stupid little faggot try that shit even one god damn time - you won't live to see 12.

  73. Re:Don't forget to take your meds by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    Trump is the genuine risk right now, Pence doesn't have the handjob ties Trump has to Putin. If Pence fucks up the evangelicals will eat him alive.

  74. Re:Don't forget to take your meds by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    You fucking idiot look at the god damn facts. The carts are easy to read. Look at them!

  75. Re:Trump's Failure by Paul+Carver · · Score: 1

    Agreed.

    I just find it odd that his supporters built a case to elect him based on his statements and then when he is elected acted as if they knew all along that he was lying.

    He said he was anti-establishment: they said to elect on that basis. Turns out he is as establishment as they come.

    What reasons remain to have him as president?

    Well, "he's not Hillary Clinton" is a pretty solid one.

    I didn't vote for Trump and don't expect great things from him, but I certainly would not have voted for Clinton. If there hadn't been a third candidate that I could vote my conscience on then I would have had to think long and hard before choosing between "voting for 'not Clinton'" or "not voting". I really dislike not voting, so it would have been a tough dilemma.

    But I certainly wouldn't have voted for the candidate whose best characteristic is that the democratic party bosses believe she is marginally less horrible than the republican candidate. I can't support the democratic bosses attempt to force us to accept a bad choice by aiming for "just slightly less bad than the republican option"

    If the democratic party aims higher next time they'll have a shot at receiving my vote. But they'll have to aim much higher.

  76. Re:Yes fuck you and your fact checks by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    You are a stupid autistic little fucktard. Go take a nap faggot.

  77. Re:Yes fuck you and your fact checks by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    Fuck off you little ignorant shit for brains slack jawed faggot.

  78. Re:Yes fuck you and your fact checks by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    Take that shit back to your internet hole, you fucking piece of shit.

  79. Re:Trump's Failure by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    That sort of no-bid government contract award is part of the very definition of cronyism and corruption.

  80. Re:We lost. Let's take a breath and see what happe by guruevi · · Score: 1

    Or maybe those fund managers would've lost it all in all the crashes over the last few decades. Millions lost their pensions invested by these 'fund managers'. Some people do business and invest in less profitable, less risky yet more stable avenues, real estate is one of them.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  81. My story with Canadian immigration for tech worker by fubarrr · · Score: 1

    My story with Canadian immigration for tech worker: I worked in the country for 5 years under a student work permit and postgraduate work permit. My last employer filled for LMIA two times, and both applications were returned without explanations without even being officially rejected. The immigration lawyer handling the process told that ESDC does that for a half of applications and that he can't guess any reason for that other than being its policy. Appealing to the ESDC through every possible channel only resulted in this: "ESDC does not consult public on individual LMIA applications"

    After that I said Canada bye not because I had no option to stay there, but because I simply felt fed up with weak tech job market and attitude of immigration officials.

  82. Re:Yes fuck you and your fact checks by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    You are an ignorant powerless little internet faggot trying to make threats but you know what? You'll get the shit kicked out of you soon enough.

  83. Re:Yes fuck you and your fact checks by Jzanu · · Score: 1

    God damn you fucking Russian hackers can't even run text mining correctly.

  84. Humm by M0j0_j0j0 · · Score: 2

    He underestimates the power of lies, of greed and of human nature itself, the dark ages prove that "the scientific method", can be put aside as easily as any other threat.

  85. Re:We lost. Let's take a breath and see what happe by Herkum01 · · Score: 1

    Because the government is not a business and the president is not a CEO that gets to do whatever he wants.

  86. Re:Trump's Failure by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    If only people had paid attention to Brexit. Just the same, within minutes of the biggest liar winning, he starts reneging on his promises. Further down the line will likely be similar too, with legal challenges blocking what he wants to do or at least delaying it.

    I suppose the main difference is that he has his own legal problems to deal with, although there is a criminal complaint about the lying during the Brexit campaign too. So many parallels.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  87. Re:Trump's Failure by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

    This is what I don't get. A lot of people voted for Trump because "he says it like it is" or because "I'm sick of politicians lying", but then they say that Trump doesn't mean the literal things he says he'll do? So, essentially, Trump wasn't "saying it like it is" - he was saying what needed to be said to rile up his base and he was lying about what he'd do so that he could win the election.

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  88. Only If We Survive by JimSadler · · Score: 1

    Yes our technology is much more important than even our lives as it can persist. But socially we are doing next to nothing to prepare for advanced technology . As jobs continue to vanish due to advanced technology and the masses are stressed more and more, and particularly with Luddites in control of the US government, we may see laws that banish a great deal of technology or even complete social disorder such that people live more like rats who forage for scraps. And we also face the spectacle of blaming some minority for our woes. The ignorant will always want to place blame on a minority when times are hard. In history the Jews or the black folks are the typical victims of that kind of thought. As employment becomes ever more of an issue I suspect we will hear people claiming it was the Jews who are responsible and others claiming that black folks and Latino people have wrecked the economy. The racist creeps will come out of the woodwork as the masses are stressed.

  89. QTWTAIN by DrXym · · Score: 1

    Trump is a far more serious threat to the world than tech. The next 4 years are going to be marked by a profoundly anti-science, alt-right administration that will find new and novel ways to fuck the planet and people who live on it.

  90. Re:Trump's Failure by Anonymous+Meoward · · Score: 1

    You do know, of course, that the "But Hillary would have been worse" defense won't work. Right?

    --
    --- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
  91. just no by holophrastic · · Score: 2

    this is the age of incremental crappy technology that pushes everyone to spend more time at work and away from their families. that's probably a first for technology.

    If you want to talk about technology advancement, look at refridgeration liberating women from full-time canning.
    Look at cars growing cities. And roads.
    Look at the post office making written communication cost pennies -- think of everything coming by mail, like bills.
    Look at telephones allowing families to connect.
    Look at beer, bringing drinkable non-toxic water far from fresh-water sources, allowing civilization to build cities in the first place.
    Look at sewers and plumbing and running water.
    Look at flight.

    All of the above improves life with family, life with friends, and the building of cities. They make us safer, and sounder, and comfortable in our own homes. They save lives.

    Supercomputers in our pockets do absolutely none of that. They merely give us information, most of which we don't actually use once we acquire it, and they provide entertainment in the most anti-social manner possible, and they push us to spend more time working for less wealth.

    Try again.

    1. Re:just no by yes-but-no · · Score: 1

      Supercomputers in our pockets do absolutely none of that. They merely give us information, most of which we don't actually use once we acquire it, and they provide entertainment in the most anti-social manner possible, and they push us to spend more time working for less wealth.

      Try again.

      Free flow of information will calm people. It does not trigger panic riots. The list you have given solves physical work; smartphones solve information flow/ ease of access. Humans don't run around causing problem when they know the real picture. Lot of human chaos/suffering that happened in history is because of rumors and lack of information flow -- truth couldn't reach them in time [say a food shortage or group violence] and people react out of fear.

    2. Re:just no by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      So...you're saying that the free flow of information is the dissemination of truth? Have you not been reading slashdot today? Information flows from good and bad soures alike. True information is no more prominent than false information.

    3. Re:just no by atikare · · Score: 1

      this is a very myopic view of the whole information tech revolution. I'd argue pretty much every business in the pre internet world had a component of information asymmetry as key enabler. whether you take stock brokerage or real-estate sale or arbitrage the bushels of wheat between rural & urban markets etc. Its easy to dismiss internet as porn glut but do you know that because of internet the way traditional arranged marriages used to happen in India has changed significantly. Its because earlier the 'market' was restricted to friends and family & now suddenly it is much bigger plus it has many more positive societal effects. do you know that middle-man cannot gouge the little farmer nearly as much because now the farmer has much clearer picture of going rates for grains in urban markets (An IIT Bombay prof actually created an app for that). I can go on.. But here's the problem, IMO, the effects of information asymmetry going away are very ephemeral (so far) because our society/government/law is still structured in very old school ways so it leads to something else with positional advantage expanding and eating away the gains (for instance google eating newspaper revenues).

      I would even argue that a guy like trump is actually a product of information age as so long as its no longer possible to subdue any public information anymore, just try imagining Hitler create a mass apparatus like he did in information age. Trump just took this thing to next level of troll-ism.

      one more thing, 'supercomputers in your pocket' are just getting started, just wait till you see the self driving cars on streets.

    4. Re:just no by yes-but-no · · Score: 1

      True, both sources of information is there. As long as we have free flow of information, the good will win. good means whatever really happened; ie false/rumors will die out. Of course in the age of digital morphing/video edits, you can create any picture or video and spread a rumor. People will become kinda numb to those sensational news and the end result is more calm and peace; you can't easily provoke a group to act in a violent way.

      Surely this is better than say 100 years ago, where a rumor can lead to a village/country going on a war on the neighbor.

    5. Re:just no by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      Ah self-driving cars. So, more people in traffic longer, but they aren't bored because they are working. We've had self-driving cars for a very long time. We've called them trains, busses, taxis, planes, chauffeurs, and horses.

      Driving is a pleasure, especially with the right car. I don't want to sit in your self-driving car for an hour's ride to a meeting. I enjoy driving my sportscar for an hour to my meeting.

      And I sure as hell don't want to work for that extra hour, just because society says that I should be working always.

    6. Re:just no by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      You've got it backwards. Between consumers who have zero money invested in weeding out the truth, and players who have huge amounts of money invested in the lie, the side with the money always wins.

      It doesn't matter that six weeks later the truth comes out. It matters that for those six weeks, the lie achieved a result. It's already too late for the truth.

    7. Re:just no by yes-but-no · · Score: 1

      sure, power will be able to own/control lot of the media [similar to pre internet n smartphones]; now for a person to reach for Truth, he can go to reliable sources. Of course vast majority may still go to sources that are spreading lies. That's their choice. Even today lot of people choose to remain stupid/ choose to suffer/ choose to close their eyes -- the point is they like to believe in one kind of reality -- again we can't say that is wrong. The growth of free/easy flow of information is not to wake up someone acting like sleeping; but to truly wake up someone who desires to be woken up.

      Like any other technology, you cannot make people reach for Truth if their liking is to believe in lies. You can take a horse to the river; but you can't make it drink.

      As I see it, technology only helps those who already want to be helped. Not all and may be it's in the nature of the human species that vast majority wants to believe in the non-Truth. A liking for hate/violence/suffering/misery.

    8. Re:just no by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      You're 100% wrong. Here's why.

      1. Those people who choose not to validate/authenticate/corobberate have huge influence over everyone -- voting for government, making dumb investments that pump and burst bubbles, making purchases and hence deciding when products work in the marketplace.

      2. Psychology is the study of how it isn't their choice in the first place -- or how to make it not their choice.

      Those two combine, very interactively, to mean that dumb people, professionally treated as dumb people, can be controlled to influence the smart people in a way that the smart people cannot control at all.

      Think about dinner plans. If your family members vote on where to go for dinner, and you have two parents and five toddlers, it really doesn't matter how much access to information your toddlers have, you are going to mcdonalds five nights a week, if not seven. That's why we've made it illegal to advertize happy meals during children's television shows and the commercials during those time-slots too.

    9. Re:just no by yes-but-no · · Score: 1

      As someone said "No problem is too big, that you can't walk away from it". A smart person can stand alone when there is a barrage of mis-information hitting him/her all around. It takes intelligence and awareness. Feeding mind is nothing different from feeding body; you can choose to drink soft-drink or plain-water; you can cook n eat healthy veges or eat at mc'ds. If a society bans all home cooking and buying of veges, then we have a serious problem; because the one who chose to see the light can't do anything because the system has denied him/her the opportunity.

      about your statement on influencing everyone. it's not everyone.. only those who are not intelligent/aware enough. If someone tells me I need to eat in mc'ds or pay a mortgage for life, I know what is really needed. The point is each individual chooses how much they are going to work on seeing the Truth. It doesn't come easily.

      the toddler example is not true for adults; as adults you have a choice to break free from the programming (mind programming by the group/society). The system will make it tough; not doubt about it. But if you follow your inner voice and search for Truth; you should be able to find it.

    10. Re:just no by holophrastic · · Score: 1

      You are 100% wrong. Here's why:

      You said "no problem is too big that you can't walk away from it". Sure. If you want to walk away from your city's problems, you can live in the country. "walking away" isn't a solution when you don't want to leave everything behind.

      Your inner voice and your search for truth won't sway an election, or any scenario in which a majority rules.

      Given the opportunity cost of fighting the system, you're always forced to sacrifice some of what you want for the rest -- purely because of others.

    11. Re:just no by yes-but-no · · Score: 1

      All my statements is for personal - a single individual - liberation. You already stated how the majority/group thru' herd mentality will push you towards the wrong sources. So there is no way you can do a group-dance here; it's a solo performance. Yes, you may need to live by yourself -- who knows off the grid may be -- I never said the path is easy or you can take along your friends/group/society with it.

      The game itself is to make one individual compete against the society; so it is kind of illogical to expect to take your opponent (society) with you to the finishing line.

      To state the obvious if it's not clear -- you must be a non-conformist/rebel -- there is no way you take a majority with you. In fact the odds of one making it out of the woods is 1 in a million if not a billion.

  92. Re:Trump's Failure by Nemyst · · Score: 1

    So his supporters basically reinterpreted his words to please themselves? You know that that's generally not how that works, right?

  93. POLITICAL experience. Obama said Obama shouldn't by raymorris · · Score: 1

    >> He has no political experience or record

    > Why do people keep saying this? He is the founder and executive of many businesses

    He has business experience. He has executive experience. He doesn't have political experience, beyonworking with politicians to get approvals for projects, etc.

    > When Barack Obama was elected

    A few months before Obama launched his presidential campaign, he said he shouldn't and wouldn't run for pursuant because he had no experience. Because "I believe in knowing what you're doing when you -- when you apply for a job." I agree with Obama -he's correct that he lacked experience, severely. Yet the world didn't come to an end.

  94. Have you been living in a cave for 25 years? by RogueWarrior65 · · Score: 2

    People love to associate the economic successes of the 1990s with Clinton knowing full well that correlation is not causation . Meanwhile, the viral expansion of the use of PCs and the internet during that time totally changed the way business is conducted. Technology changes things regardless of who is in the White House...as long as government doesn't stand in its way e.g. the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The first iPhone came out during the Bush administration. Did he have anything to do with it? Nope. Did it change communication as we knew it? Yup.

  95. Nah by Berkyjay · · Score: 1

    I'll totally remember 2016 as the year I lost Medicaid. Not the year I lost my headphone jack on the iPhone.

  96. Re:Trump's Failure by Enigma2175 · · Score: 1

    You believe the media lie that Trump asked Russia to hack Hillary's email server, don't you?

    Of course, you also believed the media's lie that Hillary had a 90% chance of winning last week.

    "Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. "I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press."

    Those are his own words, how is it a "media lie"? I love how Trump supporters vilify the "liberal media" for directly quoting him.

    --

    Enigma

  97. Re:Trump's Failure by scamper_22 · · Score: 1

    It's a very interesting social thought experiment. With all the fact-checkers and lying counts, I think a lot of it is missing one key thing.

    The best way I can relate it is to talk of people I actually know. I have a friend and in the group we all know he is a great exaggerator and troll. If he's telling a story, you known 80% of it would not pass a fact-check. Heck he'll put on a show in front of the guys how he can't do this or that cause his wife won't let him. Thing is, a few of us know his wife doesn't mind him doing half the things. He just uses his wife as an excuse to not do things he doesn't want to do in the first place, but he has to keep up appearances. In a sense, you know what you're expecting from him. The thing is though you do know his general outlook on life. You can't take him for every word he says, but you basically know his direction in life. He is there if you need him. He is pretty reliable and hard working. Earlier in my life, I used to get pretty angry about his ways, until I learned to accept 80% of public face is a show.

    I think a lot of people view Trump like this. Build a wall... no one thinks he is actually going to build a wall, but he will address it when no one else is. Trade wars... he isn't going to tear apart every trade deal, but he'll look into them and make new ones that make more sense to his supporters..

    I don't know Trump well enough to know what he will do in action, but I can see how people think that of him.

    Other politicians are a bit more of an unknown and even if they technically might 'lie' less, you might actually trust them less as you don't know what to expect.

  98. Re:Trump's Failure by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

    This would be different from Clinton how?

    "I am pro second amendment" meaning "I think the Supreme Court is wrong on the second amendment"

    She lies, and even says it is necessary to lie via her comment about public vs private stances.

    The problem is, most liberals are all for her lying to get people to vote for her, people too stupid to realize that she was lying, you know the "basket of deplorables" and "average person" types she hates.

    And, while you all are at it, please don't learn from your ongoing mistakes of belittling people who are different from you, negating them. Eventually you'll have pissed off enough people that a guy like Trump wins. If you really want to have insight, please go back an look at all the people who wanted Trump to run, thinking he couldn't possibly win. You know the people that crowned Hillary over a year ago.

    You want to know why it is shocking? Because most of you liberals live in the echo chamber. Guess what? You all should take a look at this wise warfare strategist ...Sun Tsu.

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  99. Re:Trump's Failure by penandpaper · · Score: 1

    Yea, if only people didn't insult the other side with all the isms and ists known to man and try to understand the issues that face those constituencies. No, instead they tried the same tactics and tried to push one of the most corrupted politicians in recent memory down everyone throat. Sure, Trump may take that 'most corrupted' title but the fact is, right now, he isn't that.

    I may agree with democrats on issues but the way they operate makes it so I can't vote for the policies I want. The ends do not justify the means and I cannot support unethical behavior with a vote. It appears many Americans can't either.

    Then again, you want to punish people for different political opinions and who 'vote the wrong way'. The sad thing is that calling you for what you truly are, a bigot, doesn't have the same impact because of the bullshit isms and ists insults from the left devalued any meaning those words have. The black lynching mob of KKK members are now the same name as someone that votes against known corruption. Fucking pathetic. You are regressive and intolerant of differing political thought. Why would anyone want to listen to someone like that?

  100. Re:Trump's Failure by penandpaper · · Score: 1

    I think a better way to phrase it; He is bad at lying. It is easier to catch him in a lie to hold him accountable than a seasoned professional liar like Hillary Clinton. She has been at this game a lot longer than Trump and with the media support how were Americans, or anyone, supposed to know what she wanted or thought and how would they hold her accountable?

    At least with Trump the media won't be in love to gloss over any wrong doing and will be willing to say; you lied. Do you really think the media would have done the same for Clinton?

  101. Re:We lost. Let's take a breath and see what happe by Enigma2175 · · Score: 2

    Trump will be our presodent. He has no political experience or record,

    When Barack Obama was elected, the only experience he had was community organizing and a few years as a junior senator.

    Obama also was a State Senator from 1997-2004. He also taught constitutional law for 12 years. Years as a Senator is what is known as "political experience". Donald Trump has none.

    The government is not a business. It has different goals and works in different ways. I don't know why people think it's a good idea to have a businessman run the country but here we are.

    --

    Enigma

  102. Re:Trump's Failure by hodet · · Score: 1

    Pretty sure all those rednecks that blame immigrants for everything in their shitty lives were thinking a big old fuggin wall. With razor wire and 'made-in-america' concrete. They may have to settle for 'made-in-america' fencing and drones to patrol a virtual wall now.

    For the more educated Trump voters, and there were a lot of them apparently, they were willing to ignore it I guess and will probably be relieved if it gets toned down a little.

  103. Avro Arrow and Avrocar in reverse by k6mfw · · Score: 1

    "Canada's new push to attract foreign tech workers..."

    Reminds me when the Avro Arrow (at the time was the fastest flying fighter jet ever) and the Avrocar (a real flying saucer, and led the way to hovercraft vehicles) were cancelled. Prior Canada was the third largest aerospace power. It was said thousands of Canadian engineers moved to US along with German engineers that was a great boost for the US space program. Will they become a major contender? A Canuck Silicon Valley? A Canadian be the first to walk the surface of the Moon since Gene Cernan?

    --
    mfwright@batnet.com
  104. Re:Trump's Failure by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    We tried to explain the issues, but people didn't like the answers. For example, immigrants aren't the reason why well paid manufacturing jobs went away. Globalization, which can't be undone no matter what Trump says, is responsible. The solution isn't mass deportations, it's to deal with the issue by retraining people and making new service jobs. People don't like that because they want to carry on doing the same thing they have always done and be paid well for it, not retrain and start a new career.

    People also don't like to hear that they aren't oppressed. I notice that the "straight white guys are oppressed" idiots have mostly shut up now that straight white guys got a straight white guy who is also a misogynist, racist and general asshat into power.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  105. Re:Trump's Failure by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

    lol you guys. Now it's: "TRUMP LIED BUT ITS CROOKED SHILLARY'S FAULT".

    Is there nothing that Hillary won't stoop to?

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  106. LOLWTFMUSHROOMS by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 1

    He is already reversing course on all the rhetoric used to rile up the populist vote.

    Trump's supporters don't expect him to follow through on the literal statements he made during the campaign. Only his detractors took him literally. When he promised to build a wall, his supporters were not expecting a physical wall, just that they would finally see a politician take illegal immigration seriously.

    Disclaimer: I didn't vote for Trump, but I know plenty of people that did, mostly relatives.

    What a load of bullcrap. I know people who truly and literally believed (and still believe) he will build a wall, literally that every single illegal is from Mexico, literally that every one of them is a rapist and murderer, and literally that Trump will single handedly wave his magic wand (or dick or whatever) and they will all go poof, all of that without ever straining our finances.

    I have people telling me in real life that Obama was a Kenyan and that the FEMA death camps were going to be real. People that packed ammo and shit for the ends of days, who pretty much stopped talking to me (and even started to hate me, literally) when I poked holes in their logic. People that at some point they seemed normal to me, co-workers, neighbors, activity partners. It was like holy shit, was there some type of mass lead poisoning that affected them all at infancy or something.

    People who think themselves decent, churchgoing people who all of the sudden chose to look the other way at Trump's dog whistles and chose to (re)normalize racism just because Trump's campaign was throwing them a bone by making some stupid promise to make their lives better.

    I get that people are frustrated, but to just look the other way at racism and claim "I'm not a racist, I'm voting for policies" when the bulk of those policies make not a goddamned fucking sense.

    I mean, for fucks' sake, we are talking about a country that has people that literally believe the world was created in 7 days, that believes in Jade Helm, Agenda 21, that George Soros is some type of Jewish Nazi illuminati (and on the other side of the political fence, we have people who think vaccines are not needed and who will hear from what David whats-his-face-Avocado Wolfe telling them gravity is an allergy.)

    If you really believe that his supporters didn't believe some or most of that bullshit, I have a bridge to sell to you.

    Do not underestimate the immense amount of ignorance and stupidity displayed by our electorate (be them right or left leaning, there are stupid people in both sides of the aisle.)

  107. Re:Trump's Failure by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

    Find the video. Watch the video. Personally transcribe the video.

    Then come here and tell me he told Russia to hack a computer that had been offline for a year already.

    --
    If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  108. barking at the wrong tree by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 1

    So he lied?

    Were anything of the things he said true?

    How do you think the coal miners and people working in industries displaced by globalisation will feel when it comes to light he is just going to follow the establishment path on globalisation?

    Get your facts straight. Those people weren't displaced by globalization. For every 1 job displaced by globalization, 6 have been done away by automation. I'm fucking tired of giving links and citations for these claims I'm making. Find them yourself if you are interested. But here is the thing as the perfect example: the US is producing more or less the same amount of steel now than 30 years ago. That's between 90 and 110 million tons.

    But this is the thing. 30 years ago, the ration of integrated mills (which include mining pig iron) over mini-mills (specialized in scrap metal) was 8/2. In 2015, that ration was 3/6. We produce the same amount of steel, but with less people.

    And automation and robotics is going to nuke the shit out of those jobs.

    Harking back at globalization makes for a shiny boogeyman. It won't do shit for these people. This is not to say globalization hasn't had a negative impact on many (nor nullify that it has had a positive impact on "other" many in this country.)

    The Rust Belt is bust and not a single political party has done squat to prevent it, nor propose anything to fix it. Not even Trump.

    What you see in the Rust Belt is more or less a mirror image of what happens to a third world country that banks its luck on commodities alone.

    Shit won't get fixed by barking at the wrong tree.

    1. Re:barking at the wrong tree by KeensMustard · · Score: 1
      Here's a thought.

      Maybe you should have made that argument before electing Trump on the basis that he could successfully make America Great again by turning the clock back 40 years on industrialisation?

      No idea why you think my facts are wrong - it was HIM who said it.

    2. Re:barking at the wrong tree by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 1

      Here's a thought.

      Maybe you should have made that argument before electing Trump on the basis that he could successfully make America Great again by turning the clock back 40 years on industrialisation?

      No idea why you think my facts are wrong - it was HIM who said it.

      Who says I voted for him? My reply to you about getting your facts straights are from this post you made (bold for emphasis):

      How do you think the coal miners and people working in industries displaced by globalisation

      Globalization didn't. Automation, recycling and changes in the commodity markets have done a lot more to hit the Rust Belt than globalization ever did.

      Coal is down because Europe (our primary coal customer) doesn't buy so much of that shit anymore. Sales have gone down by 16% since the last peak in 2008. And internal consumption of coal is also down. China now mines its own coal so instead of purchasing 8.3 million tons annually, it now gets by with 0.2 million tons.

      Add automation in mining, and guess what happens? Automation has been decimating coal jobs since the 1930s.

      Don't even get me started with steel where recycling in addition to automation has caused a decimation of employment.

      Globalization is a good boogeyman until you start hitting it at it with facts and numbers.

      But in a world where people can go to adulthood without knowing how to add fractions, I guess it is too much to ask to get a grasp at reality instead of grasping at unreasonable hopes based on empty promises.

    3. Re:barking at the wrong tree by KeensMustard · · Score: 1
      Poor choice of words on my part: I should have said allegedly displaced by globalisation.

      Apologies for causing confusion.

  109. Re:Trump's Failure by HiThere · · Score: 1

    I think you need to think a bit more clearly. You can't legally be impeached for crimes committed before being elected, but only for crimes in office. Of course, the House can legally impeach the President whenever they feel like it, and just list the "crimes before taking office" as additional considerations to he actually abused paper clips.

    But do note that BOTH the House and the Senate are Republican controlled, and it requires super-majority votes to either impeach or convict. (I forget which need to be 2/3s votes, but it's easy to look up if you care to.) So he's not going to be impeached. Certainly not at first, and not for anything he's already admitted to or been charged with.

    It is my hope that Trump will turn out to be a cross between an isolationist and a Mussolini-style fascist (i.e. "the corporate state"). This will be a disaster for the world, but people have lived through changes before. Don't invest in an land near sea level for your grand-children, though. It's possible he won't even be a racist, though that's a bit much to hope for.

    --

    I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  110. Yep... by ooooli · · Score: 1

    ...I buy that this is how silicon valley will think about this whole clusterfuck... helped by the fact that hey, WE all have health insurance, and nobody HERE voted for that clown, and also [insert location] has a long history of basically being its own thing.

    Which, if I'm honest, is exactly how I've been coping with W in power, and with half of my roommates having no insurance, etc. etc.

    Also, don't blame ME, I'm not even eligible to vote! Blah-di-blah.

    But what ppl forget when they say "don't distract us, we're transforming the world here, motherfucker" is that we have the technology to turn the entire world into something worse than 1984... And if the answer to the question "why shouldn't we" is too subtle to penetrate 50.1% of skulls, then suddenly the fact that we can do these things becomes part of the problem. Yay.

    I'm looking forward to the way the shareholders will deal with the ethical dilemma of being paid to dismantle a free society.

  111. Re:Trump's Failure by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

    You just quoted him. Where does he ask for the Russians to get online and hack into a server that was already offline? Does he instead ask the Russians to look through their own computers for the folder called "Hillary Clinton's Emails From Her Unsecured Server" and publish the information they already had?

    The media portrayed it as the first option above. As in "(Hyperventilating talking head) I can't believe Donald Trump just asked Russia to hack into Secretary Clinton's email!"

    The rest of the world realizes they already had.

    --
    If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  112. Re:We lost. Let's take a breath and see what happe by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

    Are you saying that Obama understood that before he became president?

    Either way, it's a pretty small detail, that comes up once in a presidency.

    --
    If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
  113. Re:Trump's Failure by penandpaper · · Score: 1

    If it is globalization then the end of the TPP sounds like a win for anyone against globalization, right? You can blame Trump for that. It might not have ended globalization but fore sure a hit and a slow down.

    Can we please make the distinction between illegal immigration and legal immigration? Obama has started mass deportation not a peep from the left but its okay when the 'right people' do it. Obama refused to uphold the existing immigration laws and when AZ's sheriff decided to enforce it on his own, he was sued by the Feds and rightfully so because constitutional delegation of state and federal power. Or maybe those companies we hear about on /. that have their local workers train foreign replacements is good for the locals and not abusing/breaking the law? Funny enough, there was only one candidate on either side that paid lip service to that issue. Care to guess who that is?

    Sure, support retraining all you want and that is a nice sound bite but that is an appeasement too little too late. If the people in power cared they would have done something more to help those adversely effected by shrinking industries but why would they care about 'fly over' states or coal country? It is hard to replace jobs and promote retraining in a town that was dependent on one industry or factory. I am all for science and climate change policy but lets not pretend that there is an easy solution to the people working in coal country.

    People also don't like to hear that they aren't oppressed. I notice that the "straight white guys are oppressed" idiots have mostly shut up now that straight white guys got a straight white guy who is also a misogynist, racist and general asshat into power.

    Regressives tend to always bring up race and sex when it isn't part of the conversation. Affluent spoiled brats in universities getting a useless degree while bitching about halloween costumes and bad statistics are not oppressed by any measure. I am curious and wanted to ask a bone-fide regressive: When are statistical disparities not racist or sexist?

  114. Re:Trump's Failure by penandpaper · · Score: 1

    huh? Perhaps, you mistaken me for someone else. All I said was the Hillary is a better liar than Trump and the media likes Clinton... Is that false?

  115. Re:Trump's Failure by HiThere · · Score: 1

    You are much more certain of that than I am. I don't expect that result, but it wouldn't surprise me. Trump is a proven liar who changes his story as convenient.

    That said, I'm hoping he will be merely an isolationist-fascist (as in Mussolini, corporate-state). And he may not even really be racist. His recent statements are grounds for cautious optimist that this will be the result, but as he's a known liar I don't know that we can trust them. I am currently slightly less nervous than I was in the early days of Bush the first...though that's not saying much, and it's partially because I now have fewer years left to lose. I do expect him to carry through on his plans for trashing the environment, and think people with young grandchildren should start thinking about what happens when Antarctica melts, as it now appears to me that a 6 degree Centigrade warming by the end of the century is plausible.

    --

    I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  116. Re:Trump's Failure by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    Wait so people found his blatant lying refreshingly truthful?

    Yes.

    What mental contortions did you have ot jump through to come up with that?

    None. Like I said, I didn't vote for him. But I have talked to many people that did. They know he is lying, but they don't care, and they don't expect him to follow through on what he literally said. So by pointing out his lies, you are just talking past his supporters. You need to get out of your bubble, and talk to some of your fellow citizens. How many Trump supporters do you know? Have you talked to them?

  117. Re:Trump's Failure by KeensMustard · · Score: 1

    Well, "he's not Hillary Clinton" is a pretty solid one.

    Well, no, because Hillary Clinton is a private citizen. That's like saying : "he's not Timothy McVeigh" or "He's not Kim Kardashian". There's what? 299 million people in the US who aren't Hillary Clinton.

    This, and to add the fact that most of the things said about Hillary are just lies that Trump and Breitbart made up. Sounds like you continue to believe those lies, whilst openly admitting that Trump lies, and openly lies, and doesn't care for the truth enough to care that he is lying and that everyone can see that he is lying, but somehow, the things he (and Breitbart) said about Hillary were the truth. Or perhaps you don't, and like Trump, don't care for the truth at all.

    When it comes to light that none of those things are true either you'll just say "of course he lies, politicians lie" as if it's our fault for believing your argument. Can you not see how unconscionable your behaviour is?

  118. Re:Well duh by HiThere · · Score: 1

    It may not be startling, but it could be wrong. Whether it is depends on what the president does. This one has promised to scrap environmental controls. That could turn out to be more significant that anything else, as the models don't work well when the temperature goes outside the known range of variation. It *probably* won't turn the Earth into a second Venus, but we can't prove it. (Of course, the models aren't that good even in the tested areas, but they generally hit within known error bars. Outside those limits the error bars grow increasingly.) He could also start a major war, which could also be more significant than any likely technological change within the next 4 years. It might not kill off humanity, but it would likely kill off civilization. (Minor wars are NOT good models of major wars, considering the weapons now available.)

    --

    I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  119. Re:Trump's Failure by KeensMustard · · Score: 1
    He intends to fire upon disputed cities in Syria using nuclear weapons, killing millions of people.

    His nuclear policy is to abandon containment , and he sees no problem with other countries building nuclear weapons for defensive reasons, including Saudi Arabia - a policy that is like handing those weapons directly to ISIS.

  120. Re:Trump's Failure by KeensMustard · · Score: 1
    So that's a yes - he lied?

    Were anything of the things he said true?

    How do you think the coal miners and people working in industries displaced by globalisation will feel when it comes to light he is just going to follow the establishment path on globalisation?

  121. Re:Funny you should mention that... by HiThere · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but those considerations were always true. The requirement for native-born was probably to avoid British agents being elected. It isn't that valuable, but it's a decent 1st screen. People who obsess over it are generally revealing that they are bigots who are ashamed of being bigots and are looking for some more acceptable reason to reject the candidate. You could use similar arguments to say the minimum age shouldn't be 35, but should instead be 50 ... or 25.

    --

    I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  122. Re:Trump's Failure by KeensMustard · · Score: 1
    You're doing it again - repeating Trump's lies as if they were truth. And then later, you'll say "Politicians lie!" as if it weren't you yourself spreading the lies. Either you believe him (then you're a moron), or you are lying to us.

    I'll say it again:

    I just find it odd that his supporters built a case to elect him based on his statements and then when he is elected acted as if they knew all along that he was lying.

    He said he was anti-establishment: they said to elect on that basis. Turns out he is as establishment as they come.

    What reasons remain to have him as president?

    What reasons remain to retain Trump as president?

  123. Re:We lost. Let's take a breath and see what happe by Xyrus · · Score: 1

    Trump will be our presodent. He has no political experience or record,

    Why do people keep saying this? He is the founder and executive of many businesses, a global real estate empire, and now a successful campaign for the preidency. When Barack Obama was elected, the only experience he had was community organizing and a few years as a junior senator. Oh, and the campaign.

    Of the two, even today, who has more years experience running an organization?

    Running a business and running a government aren't even remotely related. He's already finding out pretty damn quick that they aren't hence the considerable amount of backtracking he's already had to do from his ludicrous campaign promises.

    --
    ~X~
  124. Re: Trump's Failure by KeensMustard · · Score: 1

    And yet you voted for him.

  125. Re:Trump's Failure by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

    Trump demonstrably lies more,much more than Clinton.

    Now you've got the House, Senate, POTUS and SCOTUS. When it's all fucked you'll be out of luck blaming it on Hillary.

    Nan who am I kidding. The Donald could literally stab you in the face himself and your dying breath would be "But Hillary..."

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  126. Re:Trump's Failure by penandpaper · · Score: 1

    Um, I am not sure who lies more because I think Clinton is better at lying so it is harder to sift through the lies and truths. I wouldn't be surprised if they lied an equal amount i.e. whenever they speak. At least the media will be useful in this endeavor because they actually hate Trump instead of making excuses for Clinton.

    Half the country thought Trump was the lesser evil of the two... "But Hillary" is a manifestation of that. Big shocker. That is irrelevant now except when justifying the outcome of the election to cry babies. After the tantrums from babies it will be "But Obama".

    Honestly, for a low /. ID it comes off that this is your first election.

  127. Re:Trump's Failure by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

    Um, I am not sure who lies more because I think Clinton is better at lying so it is harder to sift through the lies and truths.

    IOW you can't be arsed to find out so you just go with your biases. Seriously, people have already looked at this for you. It's a 10 second google search away. Trump gets caught lying more because he lies much more.

    I wouldn't be surprised if they lied an equal amount i.e. whenever they speak.

    Of course you wouldn't The fact that you know Trump lies more has no bearing. Hillary is axiomatically bad so there must be some reason she's as bad. Never mind there are sites out there which have done fact checking. Nah doesn't matter HILLARY MUST BE AS BAD.

    "But Hillary" is a manifestation of that.

    No, it's not. Well maybe it's a manifestation of abject stupidity. The belief in Trump is quasi religious. It literally does not matter what he says or does. Like you for example: no matter that he's caught lying far more, Hillary must be as bad because REASONS.

    You are both incapable of independent thought and blind to the facts. No wonder you're a trumpanzee.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  128. Re:Trump's Failure by penandpaper · · Score: 1

    lol, sure thing buddy. You go ahead and think that all you want because you're a big boy aren't you?

    It wasn't one thing that did Hillary in. It was everything in aggregate. Trump won because he was the Not Hillary candidate. Trump is bad and Hillary is bad. Deciding who is worse is an opinion that doesn't matter anymore because enough people think Clinton was worse. Get over it. There are plenty of reasons just because you are blind to them or don't think they are important doesn't mean they don't exist.

    I think you are incapable of understanding why people voted the way they did without dismissing them off as idiots or racists or whatever the new flavor excuse is purported to be by media talking heads. Power to ya, just don't be surprised if the DNC didn't learn their lessons and lose in 2020.

  129. Re: No more wars for oil by quax · · Score: 1

    Old canard.

    In Afghanistan it was supposedly also all about a pipeline. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    That one never materialized, but there is one that will benefit India.

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

    Pray tell what is the Syrian pipeline supposed to connect to?

  130. HB1 Reduction Coming... Yay! by richman555 · · Score: 1

    I am optimistic about the possible lowering of HB1's in the country. It might not be the end all solution however it will make a positive impact for US technology workers. Getting a tech job today is very difficult and it shouldn't be as we have all this tremendous "Demand".

  131. Get a tech job with Trump... by dbreeze · · Score: 1

    ...and be the next Snowden... https://www.greatagain.gov/ser...

    --
    When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
  132. Re:Trump's Failure by deadwill69 · · Score: 1

    Best comment ever!

  133. Re:Trump's Failure by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

    You go ahead and think that all you want because you're a big boy aren't you?

    Big enough, my man, big enough.

    It wasn't one thing that did Hillary in.

    You're right, it was one thing she was. She's certainly done no more than many other politicians and presidents and less than Trump. I wonder what it could be...

    I think you are incapable of understanding why people voted the way they did without dismissing them off as idiots or racists

    I understand but ultimately it's "I'm not a racist, sexist homophobe, but I just voted for a racist sexist and his incredibly homophobic VP and party". Intentions don't matter: the road to hell is already paved with all the good ones.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  134. Re:Trump's Failure by KeensMustard · · Score: 1

    See, here's your problem

    Your evasiveness is not a problem for me. Don't let it worry you.

    Did he lie? Yes

    See? It wasn't that hard after all was it.

    Yes, for a very narrow view of specifically cherry-picked quotes, read completely literally, with no acknowledgement or comprehension of the context and nuance surrounding both the statement and the policy proposal, and which admits NO possibility of evolving views, changing opinions, or new facts being entered into evidence.

    What things was he telling the truth about?

    TPP is already dead in the water. That was very much an "establishment" policy.

    And we know that Trump won't replace the TPP with something worse, because he said we wouldn't and he wouldn't lie to us, would he?

    Stephen Bannon selected as Trump's strategist is being heralded as one of the most awful, anti-establishment moves in history, and it's only hours old.

    You're right about the 'awful' bit, and we certainly know that Bannon won't simply merge seamlessly with the establishment machine, because he is not a liar, with a history of lying. Is he?

  135. Re:Trump's Failure by penandpaper · · Score: 1

    Intentions don't matter: the road to hell is already paved with all the good ones.

    That is rich considering "the ends justify the means" actions from Hillary and all the busy-body-do-gooder-virtue-signaling-hypocrites that refuse to act like an adult when they don't get their way or are confronted with a different point of view.

  136. Patriot by FatBob316 · · Score: 1

    I am an American. and I am ashamed that Donald Jabroni Trump is the President. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  137. Re:Trump's Failure by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

    That is rich considering "the ends justify the means" actions from Hillary

    Contrast with Trump's end of "I'm gonna make myself rich", you know by whatever means necessary. Tell you what, find me a time Trump has taken an ethical stand on anything at all. No excuses, no stuttering "but but Hillary", justify *your* choice.

    and all the busy-body-do-gooder-virtue-signaling-hypocrites that refuse to act like an adult when they don't get their way or are confronted with a different point of view.

    So now your excuse for voting Trump is that you don't like some of Hillary's supporters. If we're going to play that game, then I say the people you dislike are better than the actual literal Nazis---you know the ones who actually like Hitler, hate the Jews, etc---who seem to all love Trump.

    You really want to play the "who has the worst fan" game, cos you're gonna lose that one too.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  138. Re:yes, please do Try again. by holophrastic · · Score: 1

    I think you've forgotten the hundred years of that before smartphones. You're thinking of cellphones, telephones, and radios. Zero computation necessary.

  139. Re:Trump's Failure by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Clinton came out against the TPP when she saw what it had become. I wrote to my Senators, and one of them told me that it might come up after the election, so it appears there was no great support for it. I do appreciate Trump being against it.

    You are talking about a lot of people who have it bad off. The system has failed them, and they have a lot of legitimate complaints. Trump knew the right things to say to motivate them. Trump's also a world-class liar, and has been demonstrating that by backpedaling on promises with the election a week old.

    The unfortunate thing is that those people will be in no better a situation in 2020, since nobody that was elected cares about them, except for many of their own representatives in Congress, and they were insufficient to help up to now. They're blaming the wrong people.for what's happening to them, and elected an entrenched member of the establishment to help fight it. This isn't going to end well.

    What we need is for the straight white guy and the black Muslim lesbian to be able to work together for things they want in common. Neither party has been at all helpful with that.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  140. Re:Trump's Failure by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    What reasons remain to retain Trump as president?

    Pence.

    I really don't know what Trump is going to do. I have a good idea what President Pence would do. I'm wishing Trump a healthy and energetic four years.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  141. Re:Trump's Failure by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Could somebody explain this to me? I am completely failing to understand this.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  142. Re:Trump's Failure by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    I've had friends that weren't particularly honest. I liked them anyway, because of who they are.

    Now, let's consider who Trump is. He's a flamboyant con man, a bully, and someone who uses unethical business practices. He stiffs small contractors and tells them to sue if they don't like it. He does things on the basis of what would cost him less.

    Now, let's consider the guy in a small town in Missouri who used to do a hard day's work for a reasonable paycheck until the big factory closed down, and who is really struggling and insecure now. Knowing what Trump has done, why did that guy think Trump might make things better?

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  143. Re:Trump's Failure by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Am I angry at Clinton for going along with several other high officials in allowing Russia to make a deal, in line with the policy towards Russia at the time? That doesn't seem to make sense, and in any case it wasn't interfering directly with US democracy.

    Am I angry with Obama for interfering with government in Ukraine? I don't really know what went on, and won't for years. The waters are much to muddied for that. I do think we should interfere less with other countries' governments, if that's what you mean. However, there is a difference between my government meddling in other countries' democratic processes, which I'm against, and other governments meddling im my country's democratic processes, which I'm more against. A Ukrainian traitor isn't really my problem. A US traitor is.

    Putin's not going to physically attack any NATO country (Ukraine is not in NATO). . Not unless he has plausible deniability, anyway. He's likely to do other hostile things.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  144. Re:Trump's Failure by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Impeachment is not so much a legal as a partisan action, and the Constitution is really vague on the High Crimes and Misdemeanors thing. I don't see anything about the crimes having been committed during the term.

    Trump isn't much of a Republican. He ran on the Republican ticket, but his person and policies are not what the Republicans want. It's entirely possible that the Republicans would want him removed from office in favor of Pence. The House could impeach easily, but the Senate needs a 2/3 vote to convict, and that could be much more difficult.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  145. What? Steven Levy waxing rhapsodic about tech??! by michael_wojcik · · Score: 1

    So Levy's penned yet another masturbatory hagiography of technology? (Well, at least this one is short.) Now that's news!

    "Earth-shattering", eh? Please. "Significant economic and social consequences" would be fine, but the earth remains unshattered, people continue to be people, and overall for the vast majority of humanity life continues pretty much as it has for most of the modern era, even if quality of life is gradually inching upward.

    For the most part we continue to live ordinary lives filled with mundane concerns and ephemeral diversions, in insular communities of mostly like-minded folk, bundled up into squabbling nation-states. Peasant or president, willfully ignorant or cosmopolitan intellectual - our lives would still be highly recognizable to members of some number of previous generations, depending on how recently modernity has swept us up into its arms. The (admittedly huge) changes in information and communication technology of the past half-century[1] certainly affect everyday life, but they haven't really transformed in any fundamental way. Sure, the telegraph is a lot more convenient now, and we have a lot fewer horses on the roads. But for everyone but the poorest, things like window screening and refrigeration and electric lighting have had a far greater impact on both the nature and quality of life.

    [1] And yes, I lived through most of them too. I'm a little younger than Levy, but not enough to matter in this case. And unlike him, I actually work with those technologies.

  146. Re:Trump's Failure by KeensMustard · · Score: 1

    Hard to tell from your incoherent response, but I assume you are claiming that Trump did not say he would launch nuclear missiles from a submarine in the persian gulf at syria?

  147. Re:Trump's Failure by KeensMustard · · Score: 1
    Yes, that's a fair point.

    However, it could easily end up exactly as per the GW Bush years, when Cheney ran the show and Bush spent most of his time on holiday. Trump doesn't seem have much of an idea about what he wants and no idea about how to execute it. He can't lead any trade negotiations because nobody will trust him to keep his side of any bargain, even if he wanted to.

    This puts the power entirely in the hands of the establishment that he regularly disparaged or the campaign trail - much more so than Obama, who could hardly be said to be establishment, and was at least smart enough, and hardworking enough and had enough influence to get his way sometimes against their wishes.

  148. Yes by rhyous · · Score: 1

    Yes.

    Look, most Presidents have very little to do with the economy and how America is doing. For example, the PC boom in the early 90s and Internet boom throughout the 90s made President Bill Clinton look good. The economy was humming, so he got to spend his time "doing" other things.

    The DotCom crash happened in 1999. The economy was hit but would have survived if not for the second crash that occurred after 9/11. Clinton was a terrible president who gets all the accolades of a great economy that are undeserved. If anything, he was too busy dealing with his extramarital sex life to have any clue what was happening with the DotCom world.

    Bush Jr. was also a terrible President but he looks way worse than Clinton because both 9/11 and the housing bubble happened during his years in office. Neither were his fault. But hey, he was in office, so blame him.

    In reality, Trump has to work with the balance of powers. Usually a president can't do too much damage.

    Similarly, Obama came after the housing crash and there was nowhere to go but up and he was just in time to catch the mobile market and the Cloud markets that are booming and driving the booming economy. He passed Obamacare, which had a very low approval rating. Forcing a bill down the people throat when the majority vote against it is not a good thing. However, trying to help everyone have health care is a good thing. So who knows if we good or bad. Usually, it is hard to tell if a President was good or bad until about 20 years after they leave office.

    Trump could be in for a shock if the mobile and cloud tech bubbles pop. The economy could tank and there is nothing he or anyone else can do about it.

    When it comes to the economy, the President has less power, than Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, NetFlix, etc...

  149. Re:Trump's Failure by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    That doesn't put the power entirely in the hands of the establishment. Trump can get awfully stubborn, and he has the actual power. It'll be interesting and I hope not catastrophic.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  150. Re:We lost. Let's take a breath and see what happe by RyoShin · · Score: 1

    Absolutely correct. Shit, I wish I hadn't used up all my mod points yesterday.