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Trump Will Get Power To Send Unblockable Mass Text Messages To All Americans (nymag.com)
President-elect Donald Trump will have access to a system which can send unblockable texts to every phone in the United States once he becomes the president. From a report on NYMag: These 90-character messages, known as Wireless Emergency Alerts (or WEAs), are part of a program put in place after Congress passed the Warning, Alert, and Response Network (WARN) Act, in 2006. WEAs allow for targeted messages to be sent to every cell phone getting a signal from certain geographically relevant cell towers (or, in a national emergency, all of them). While it'd be a true nightmare to get screeching alerts from your phone that "Loser Senate Democrats still won't confirm great man Peter Thiel to Supreme Court. Sad!", there are some checks and balances on this. While President-elect Trump hasn't shown much impulse control when it comes to his favorite mass-messaging service, Twitter, the process for issuing a WEA isn't as simple as typing out a 90-character alert from a presidential smartphone and hitting "Send." All WEAs must be issued through FEMA's Integrated Public Alert Warning System, meaning that an emergency alert from the president still has at least one layer to pass through before being issued. While FEMA is under control of the executive branch (the head of FEMA is selected by the president, and reports to the Department of Homeland Security), the agency would have a vested interest in not seeing their alert system bent toward, uh, non-emergency ends.
I hate pointless fear mongering articles. Best example of fake news there is right here on slashdot.
Trump isn't likely to abuse the alert system but leave it to slashdot to make an issue of it.
Trump won. Get over it already.
I'm so weary of all this one-sided bickering and sniping over Trump that I've decided that Democrats should be considered enemy combatants.
To be more clear, I now consider Democrats to be the equivalent of the "other side" in a war - they will still oppose every and any thing your side does, they can lose a battle and still wage war, incessant and total non-compliance, they will fight to the last man, and any victory - even pyrrhic - is still a victory. Any means are justified in the pursuit of their ends.
All the things an unruly child does, but forever.
In my mind the Democrats are *permanently* a party of dishonour, disgrace, and corruption. A group that simply gets no "benefit of the doubt" or "concessions of fairness" or anything like that. They are children, now and forever. We should treat them as such.
I was thinking through the recent news (last night) that Trump got Carrier to keep 1000 jobs in the US, and how I couldn't see a way to frame that in a bad light. Lo and behold! Recent comments on Slashdot manage to paint this as a bad thing. They even pulled out the Hitler comparison for good measure.
The Democrats are defeated. Leaderless and feckless, the only thing they can do is complain.
No plan, no leadership, and rife with corruption.
It's hard to see why anyone would be a part of that crowd.
I have been woken at 2am by idiotic Amber Alerts about incidents hundreds of miles from my home. If there was some way to block these messages, I would do so. I don't think Donald is going to be any worse than the bozos already abusing this system. The kidnapping of a blonde white girl by her non-custodial parent, is not a "national emergency".
I dunno about Android, but iphones have a night mode that's highly configurable. Calls and texts you want make noise and the rest doesn't.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
How is it that whenever there is a discussion regarding low UIDs you guys seem to crop up. Is there like a mailing list that people report to that you're all subscribed to for notifications?
Maybe I just don't pay attention to UID except when UID is mentioned.... nah, that's too plain and boring. I'm going with the conspiracy theory.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Except that Obama is perhaps the least corrupt individual to hold the Presidency since Jimmy Carter. Sure, he's a politician, and somewhat beholden to his donors - but in the scope of things, he's run a pretty clean administration. So in that light, using "Chicago-machine" to impugn him as corrupt? Why? Because he happened to come from Chicago? That won't fly. So I'm sticking with "Democrat" or 'Urban" or (dare I say it) "Black".
And I'm not one of those Democrats who's willing to chalk Trump's success up to racism. He certainly had the support of just about every racist you can find, but that doesn't make all of his swing supporters racists any more than Obama's coming from Chicago makes him corrupt. What it does make them is less uncomfortable associating themselves with racists and a politician (and party) who courted the racist vote than they are frightened and angry in general about the state their lives and the ability of the government to do anything that might make it better. I doubt they expect Trump to make it better either - they just want him to blow a few things up. Judging by his cabinet picks, they're likely to be disappointed even on that count. Maybe he'll keep them on board with a steady diet of tweeted conspiracy theories and personal insults...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...