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US Internet Firms Ask Trump To Support Encryption, Ease Regulations (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: U.S. internet companies including Facebook Inc and Amazon Inc have sent President-elect Donald Trump a detailed list of their policy priorities, which includes promoting strong encryption, immigration reform and maintaining liability protections from content that users share on their platforms. The letter sent on Monday by the Internet Association, a trade group whose 40 members also include Alphabet's Google, Uber and Twitter, represents an early effort to repair the relationship between the technology sector and Trump, who was almost universally disliked and at times denounced in Silicon Valley during the presidential campaign. Some of the policy goals stated in the letter may align with Trump's priorities, including easing regulation on the sharing economy, lowering taxes on profits made from intellectual property and applying pressure on Europe to not erect too many barriers that restrict U.S. internet companies from growing in that market. Other goals are likely to clash with Trump, who offered numerous broadsides against the tech sector during his campaign. They include supporting strong encryption in products against efforts by law enforcement agencies to mandate access to data for criminal investigations, upholding recent reforms to U.S. government surveillance programs that ended the bulk collection of call data by the National Security Agency, and maintaining net neutrality rules that require internet service providers to treat web traffic equally. The association seeks immigration reform to support more high-skilled workers staying in the United States. While urging support for trade agreements, the letter does not mention the Trans Pacific Partnership, which Trump has repeatedly assailed with claims it was poorly negotiated and would take jobs away from U.S. workers. The technology sector supported the deal, but members of Congress have conceded since the election it is not going to be enacted.
Trump's strategy appears to be "how can I fuck up the country as badly as possible?" He's considering a climate change denier to run the EPA. He's considering an evolution denier to run the Department of Education. He's considering an oil industry exec to run the Department of the Interior. He's considering a Goldman Sachs exec to run the Treasury. It's like he heard the phrase "fox guarding the henhouse" and thought "hey, that sounds like a great idea!"
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
He got the majority of electoral college votes, which is -- quite literally -- all that matters in this election. The EC was designed in part to ensure it would be next to impossible for a candidate to win if they did not have the support of sparsely populated rural areas as well as densely populated urban areas. That's the way it's always been, and for good reason -- and that's why Idaho has the same number of senators as New York. Those complaining about it now sound like football coaches whining that they lost even though they accumulated more offensive yards then the other team. If the election WERE to be won by a majority vote, and that was stated at the outset, then Trump would have just campaigned in the urban areas like Clinton did, modified his platform accordingly, and he still would have beaten her. You can't change the rules after you lose...
No, not really. If you have the support of the eleventh most populous states, you automatically win the EC, and thus the election. The EC wasn't designed to give small states a voice, it was designed pretty much exclusively so that a vote wouldn't require a guy on horseback to have to ride all the way down south to Alabama and bring the result back up. Any effect it has on the balance of power is a side effect, and I don't really think it's a good one either. People living in rural areas rarely, if ever, have to deal with the consequences of their policies - is it fair to give their vote 4x the count exclusively because they live farther away???
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
The exaggeration has reached the point I genuinely don't know what side you are on. But this is politics - where it is impossible to produce satire that cannot be mistaken for the real thing.