We the public, hear the words.... Trump, Russia, Mueller.... We stop listening. Nobody cares. Move on... Seriously.
We the public choose to be mindless drones that don't give a fuck if our democratic institutions are manipulated, discredited, and which hostile governments are interfering in our system and using mass propaganda to sway public opinion, because we already have become mindless drones that click and share every link that confirms our preconceived notions. Who really cares if its fake or not, as long as it confirms my biases. As mindless drones, we only care about the dopamine kick, if Putin decides to sponsor it by sharing fresh news on Hillary's undies, who cares. Mindless drone needs more food, badly.
Not sure if they qualify as "Killer App", but there are some fully-featured games out by now that are well beyond the "tech demo" stage and are a blast to play. Some examples for the most high-quality games out there are: House of the Dying Sun, GORN, The Lab, Raw Data, Rez Infinite, Space Pirate Trainer, Vanishing Realms, Waltz of the Wizard.
Then there is Google Earth VR, which could be a killer app, if you're into exploring the world Google Earth-style, in VR. I frequently find myself using it to check out some places. It will not replace travelling anytime soon, but it really can convey a feeling for what any place on the planet is "like". It's the next best thing to being there in person.
Beyond that, VR is great as a modelling tool, Google Blocks or MasterpieceVR are just a few example applications that make it easy for ordinary people to create quite impressive 3D models.
Sure, you want your guns in the 21st century because you're paranoid. I don't know, I guess it's an American thing. I won't argue with that. But do you really need this? Do you have to make it so easy for anyone to get military-grade automatic weapons? Why?
I practically always use public transport, because I can make good use of the time - read a book, follow my news, sometimes even do a bit of coding or just thinking. Driving is a waste of time if you have good public transport to resort to, especially if you are a commuter and do it every day. Also, the short walk to the bus or tram stop is good for my health, considering I have a sedentary job like most of us. Also, cars are noisy, expensive and they stink. I wish more people would use public transport.
You could make the point that it is good for knowledge to spread across the globe. By China catching up technology-wise and learning from the west, they can break new ground faster instead of having to reinvent the wheel. At some point the technology will also flow back and humanity benefits as a whole.
The question is, what will people like you who are always demanding "evidence" accept as evidence? If the many, reputable sources, such as independent journalists of the BBC or New York Times are not trusted by you, who will you trust? I could cite as an example for the Russian fake news intended to agitate, that is mentioned in one of my links this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
But if you don't trust the BBC or the New York Times, then you will probably not trust Wikipedia either, right? Or the citations in Wikipedia. So what will you trust? Do you expect me to personally deliver you some documents? Those could be faked too. Do you want to have a personal appointment with the girl to find out the truth? She could have been pressured into lying. In the end it comes down to what sources you decide to trust and which not. Or maybe the "show me the evidence" is also just a convenient excuse to dismiss what you don't want to hear so you may remain with your preconceived notions.
As far as I remember, it was the Bush administration who was pushing the made up WMD story in Iraq and feeding the bogus "evidence" to media and allies..
Since the Ukrainian vote to join the EU, Russia has gone on an all-out propaganda offensive with the intention to split the west and weaken NATO. Russia regards the Ukraine as its "home-turf" and buffer against perceived NATO "aggression", and it regards the EU as the gateway to NATO membership for eastern European countries that were formally part of the Soviet Union. Russia feels as if NATO is encroaching on its sphere of influence and waging an "underhanded" war of political expansion. Looking at a map you will see how one by one, former Soviet republics have been converted into NATO countries. Russia also feels that this NATO expansion is a violation of a promise made to Gorbachev at the dissolution of the Soviet Union, that NATO would not expand to the east. For this reasons Russia has decided to go on the offensive and start fighting NATO. Not by military means, since it does not have the means to seriously compete with NATO, but by information warfare, taking full advantage of the traits of our open societies, such as freedom of speech and of the press. Using fake news and trolls that sow discontent and dissent, it intends to cause a rift between our countries and institutions. Russian agents already provided plenty of cannon fodder to the Brexit crew and succeeded in swaying public opinion. Everything that causes a rift through the EU and NATO is good for Russia. Russia is very active in spreading fake news and inciting discontent around far-right groups in Europe, using the refugee crisis to full effect (fake news about rapists, terrorists and other criminals among refugees) to strengthen the far-right and to politically destabilize European nations, especially Germany and France. Fortunately these activities have only had marginal success thus far, with the far-right Front National in France and the AfD in Germany gaining some votes, but not enough to pose a serious threat to the political establishment. It had resounding success in the U.S. were it just so managed to tip the scale in favor of Trump, the weaker candidate, and the US government and especially foreign policy is practically paralyzed and ineffectual at the moment. If you want some information or evidence on these activities, it's really only a good google search away. Russian activities in Germany and Europe: https://www.nato.int/docu/Revi... http://time.com/4889471/german... https://www.politico.eu/articl... http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
Unless we get a runaway climate change effect, which will be worse, by a long shot. Some people might survive a nuclear war. Not much will survive a planet with average temperatures in the hundreds of degrees C.
So you think a shortage of essential resources, such as water and arable land, will not lead to food shortages and famines? And that these in turn will not lead to discontent masses, unstable countries, mass migrations, radicalization, nationalism and xenophobia? Do you not know what desperate people are capable of, and what those people who are scared of desperate people are capable of? Also, ever heard of runaway climate change?
Or maybe, you need to take your head out of your ass and acknowledge that climate change is a real thing, threatening the health and stability of the human civilization on this planet, like 99% of the scientists believe.
But since Trump says it's fake news, and he is a very stable genius, you might as well keep your head inside of your ass where it's nice and warm.
Why would anyone expect the cost of natural disasters to do anything but go up? The price of everything is going up, from real estate to building materials to labor. Every time there is damage the cost of repair will be greater, sometimes much greater. Every year is probably going to be the most expensive. To claim (or imply) we had larger disasters than ever before is simply false, we've had bigger hurricanes, and worse wildfires.
While you are correct about rising costs, the jump from 214 billion to 300 billion is an almost 50% increase. This is well beyond inflation or GDP growth since 2005.
Numerous well researched sources claim that the frequency of natural disasters is increasing. E.g. https://www.economist.com/blog...
Meanwhile in Europe we have been having much too warm temperatures for this time of year. Last week it was 15C (59 F) in central Europe where I live, which is practically spring temperature today it was 8C (46F) when it should be around the freezing point. It's not the first time that Northern America receives all the dose of winter cold from from Europe. A couple of years ago we had the same situation - record lows in the US, much too high temperatures across Europe and Eurasia.
Nevertheless, global warming is a scientifically proven fact regardless what happens in Northern America, which is only a relatively small area of our globe. The oceans which cover two-thirds of our planet are warming, this is fact. The polar ice caps are melting, also fact. The glaciers are retreating, another fact.
Please just check this website of one very credible, US agency for the details if you still feel like denying it because Trump says so: https://climate.nasa.gov/
As a "neutral" non US-citizen observing from the outside, I think me and the rest of the world agree that it is not quite fair to compare Democrats with Republicans one to one.
The Republican party has a much greater affinity for science-denial, spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation among its supporters. Something like the Tea Party movement or an unqualified millionaire real-estate mogul like Donald Trump being president is only possible in an environment that the Republican party fosters. If I listen to a right-wing commentator on Fox News and compare it to a left-wing commentator on, say, MS-NBC, both might use hyperbolic and emotionally loaded language, but while what the left-wing guy will say is mostly based on -real- facts and a healthy dose of critical thinking, the right-wing talk is based mostly on warped facts using cherry-picked information and their all-time favorite: suggestive questions. Suggestive questions that spread uncertainty and propagate what the audience is supposed to believe while giving plausible deniability when confronted, because you didn't state any facts - "it was just a question after all". Questions like: "Is Obama really not a muslim?" "Is Obama's birth certificate actually real?"
It's so obvious to me as an observer of US politics and society, and its just baffling how naive most conservatives are and how resistant to criticism when confronted with how backhanded and manipulative the conservative media is.
This leads to outcomes like what is mentioned in this article. The abundance of Republicans is shockingly uninformed about some basic facts such as Obama's religion or climate change.
The irony of it all is that the Republican party has its greatest followers among the lower-income classes - exactly those people who would benefit the most from more social policies. It's the textbook example of the super-rich controlling the hearts and minds of the serfs so that the super-rich can stay in power. Because make no mistake - conservative policies are mostly designed to benefit the top 2%.
From my humble perspective, the price of Bitcoin is rising so spectacularly because there are so few sellers.
Who in their right mind would sell Bitcoin when it has been rising non-stop and therefore *seems* to be such a great investment? It's a self fulfilling prophecy - everyone expects it to rise so nobody is selling so those who want in have to pay exorbitant prices.
But this same fact also makes it completely unsuitable as a currency. The volatility is too high and the fluidity is too low. At the moment the system is setup more like a Ponzi-Scheme: Those buying now at exorbitant prices are hoping to find a bigger fool that will buy from them at even greater prices. It will work for a while but nobody can tell when the whole thing will unravel.
So I understand Bitcoin from this Ponzi-Scheme/gambling point of view. The big mystery to me are those people that are really invested into Bitcoin out of conviction that it is the future. As I understand it there are severe technical limitations that make it impractical to perform transactions in Bitcoin and put the whole thing at risk: - being a node in the Bitcoin network will require increasing amounts of very powerful hardware, so at some point only corporations or very rich people will be able to handle it, making it less democratic and independent than it was envisioned - Bitcoin takes an ever increasing amount of energy to operate - transactions will take longer and longer to run as the blockchain gets bigger and bigger - when Bitcoin ever reaches the mainstream it will become borderline unusable because the sheer amount of transactions will take forever to process
Sounds to me like Bitcoin doesn't scale very well.
Futures are not a way to "manipulate" the price. Futures are basically a gamble. Participant A agrees to sell the commodity to participant B at the current price, but the actual exchange of the commodity will happen in the future at time X.
If the price at time X has dropped, A can buy the commodity for cheap and sell it to B at the agreed (former) price and make a profit. If the price at time X has risen, A has to buy the commodity for the more expensive price to sell it to B at a loss, and B wins.
It's a way for sellers to make money in a falling market, but always a gamble because its impossible to know the future price for sure.
Google should downlist American media too, because they also "inject themselves into US politics"
Bugger off with your straw man arguments. Russia is a hostile country waging an aggressive information war against the west with an army of internet trolls and fake news intended to spread FUD. It is financing right-wing groups in Europe, an invasion of eastern Ukraine to prevent it from joining the EU and NATO and is just generally causing trouble all over the world. Protecting a dictator who used chemical weapons against his own people, providing separatists with an anti-aircraft missile launcher that was used to down a civilian airplane over Ukraine, all the while always denying all involvement. Meanwhile in the interior the country is cracking down an all independent media.
and the government of your country should be taken seriously? has credibility? hahahaha!
Well, yes. My country is a western European country where we have real division of powers, a free press, freedom of speech, no Internet censorship and people can demonstrate, complain and bitch about the government and our leaders all they want without getting thrown into jail or shot. So you know, all those little things that Russia doesn't offer.
Oh, and the leaders of my country where not connected with Panama or Paradise papers, unlike some people in the inner circle of Putin's Oligarch/KGB club.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not concerned with video games changing peoples' behavior, turning normal people into psychopaths.
Absolutely. I'm vastly more concerned about Donald Trump and Faux News turning normal human beings into violent psychopaths.
We the public, hear the words.... Trump, Russia, Mueller.... We stop listening. Nobody cares. Move on... Seriously.
We the public choose to be mindless drones that don't give a fuck if our democratic institutions are manipulated, discredited, and which hostile governments are interfering in our system and using mass propaganda to sway public opinion, because we already have become mindless drones that click and share every link that confirms our preconceived notions. Who really cares if its fake or not, as long as it confirms my biases. As mindless drones, we only care about the dopamine kick, if Putin decides to sponsor it by sharing fresh news on Hillary's undies, who cares. Mindless drone needs more food, badly.
Not sure if they qualify as "Killer App", but there are some fully-featured games out by now that are well beyond the "tech demo" stage and are a blast to play. Some examples for the most high-quality games out there are:
House of the Dying Sun, GORN, The Lab, Raw Data, Rez Infinite, Space Pirate Trainer, Vanishing Realms, Waltz of the Wizard.
Then there is Google Earth VR, which could be a killer app, if you're into exploring the world Google Earth-style, in VR. I frequently find myself using it to check out some places. It will not replace travelling anytime soon, but it really can convey a feeling for what any place on the planet is "like". It's the next best thing to being there in person.
Beyond that, VR is great as a modelling tool, Google Blocks or MasterpieceVR are just a few example applications that make it easy for ordinary people to create quite impressive 3D models.
Sure, you want your guns in the 21st century because you're paranoid. I don't know, I guess it's an American thing. I won't argue with that.
But do you really need this?
Do you have to make it so easy for anyone to get military-grade automatic weapons? Why?
I practically always use public transport, because I can make good use of the time - read a book, follow my news, sometimes even do a bit of coding or just thinking.
Driving is a waste of time if you have good public transport to resort to, especially if you are a commuter and do it every day. Also, the short walk to the bus or tram stop is good for my health, considering I have a sedentary job like most of us.
Also, cars are noisy, expensive and they stink. I wish more people would use public transport.
You could make the point that it is good for knowledge to spread across the globe. By China catching up technology-wise and learning from the west, they can break new ground faster instead of having to reinvent the wheel. At some point the technology will also flow back and humanity benefits as a whole.
The world does not only consist of misinformed, Faux News watching, American Trump worshippers.
Have some sympathy for the rest of us.
The question is, what will people like you who are always demanding "evidence" accept as evidence? If the many, reputable sources, such as independent journalists of the BBC or New York Times are not trusted by you, who will you trust?
I could cite as an example for the Russian fake news intended to agitate, that is mentioned in one of my links this Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
But if you don't trust the BBC or the New York Times, then you will probably not trust Wikipedia either, right? Or the citations in Wikipedia. So what will you trust? Do you expect me to personally deliver you some documents? Those could be faked too. Do you want to have a personal appointment with the girl to find out the truth? She could have been pressured into lying.
In the end it comes down to what sources you decide to trust and which not. Or maybe the "show me the evidence" is also just a convenient excuse to dismiss what you don't want to hear so you may remain with your preconceived notions.
As far as I remember, it was the Bush administration who was pushing the made up WMD story in Iraq and feeding the bogus "evidence" to media and allies..
Since the Ukrainian vote to join the EU, Russia has gone on an all-out propaganda offensive with the intention to split the west and weaken NATO. Russia regards the Ukraine as its "home-turf" and buffer against perceived NATO "aggression", and it regards the EU as the gateway to NATO membership for eastern European countries that were formally part of the Soviet Union.
Russia feels as if NATO is encroaching on its sphere of influence and waging an "underhanded" war of political expansion. Looking at a map you will see how one by one, former Soviet republics have been converted into NATO countries.
Russia also feels that this NATO expansion is a violation of a promise made to Gorbachev at the dissolution of the Soviet Union, that NATO would not expand to the east.
For this reasons Russia has decided to go on the offensive and start fighting NATO. Not by military means, since it does not have the means to seriously compete with NATO, but by information warfare, taking full advantage of the traits of our open societies, such as freedom of speech and of the press. Using fake news and trolls that sow discontent and dissent, it intends to cause a rift between our countries and institutions.
Russian agents already provided plenty of cannon fodder to the Brexit crew and succeeded in swaying public opinion. Everything that causes a rift through the EU and NATO is good for Russia.
Russia is very active in spreading fake news and inciting discontent around far-right groups in Europe, using the refugee crisis to full effect (fake news about rapists, terrorists and other criminals among refugees) to strengthen the far-right and to politically destabilize European nations, especially Germany and France. Fortunately these activities have only had marginal success thus far, with the far-right Front National in France and the AfD in Germany gaining some votes, but not enough to pose a serious threat to the political establishment.
It had resounding success in the U.S. were it just so managed to tip the scale in favor of Trump, the weaker candidate, and the US government and especially foreign policy is practically paralyzed and ineffectual at the moment. If you want some information or evidence on these activities, it's really only a good google search away.
Russian activities in Germany and Europe:
https://www.nato.int/docu/Revi...
http://time.com/4889471/german...
https://www.politico.eu/articl...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
On Russia's overall strategy and interference in the US:
https://www.newyorker.com/maga...
http://www.slate.com/articles/...
That should be a good start to get an idea.
Unless we get a runaway climate change effect, which will be worse, by a long shot.
Some people might survive a nuclear war. Not much will survive a planet with average temperatures in the hundreds of degrees C.
So you think a shortage of essential resources, such as water and arable land, will not lead to food shortages and famines? And that these in turn will not lead to discontent masses, unstable countries, mass migrations, radicalization, nationalism and xenophobia? Do you not know what desperate people are capable of, and what those people who are scared of desperate people are capable of?
Also, ever heard of runaway climate change?
https://www.technologyreview.c...
Some people might survive global nuclear war. A planet with average temperature in the hundreds ÂC? Not so much.
But naaah! No big deal. I'm sure it's gonna be fine! Let's wait it out and see.
Or maybe, you need to take your head out of your ass and acknowledge that climate change is a real thing, threatening the health and stability of the human civilization on this planet, like 99% of the scientists believe.
But since Trump says it's fake news, and he is a very stable genius, you might as well keep your head inside of your ass where it's nice and warm.
Dude, let go of the MS-bashing already. That is SO 20th century!
21st century: MS == good, Google == bad
Why would anyone expect the cost of natural disasters to do anything but go up? The price of everything is going up, from real estate to building materials to labor. Every time there is damage the cost of repair will be greater, sometimes much greater. Every year is probably going to be the most expensive. To claim (or imply) we had larger disasters than ever before is simply false, we've had bigger hurricanes, and worse wildfires.
While you are correct about rising costs, the jump from 214 billion to 300 billion is an almost 50% increase. This is well beyond inflation or GDP growth since 2005.
Numerous well researched sources claim that the frequency of natural disasters is increasing. E.g.
https://www.economist.com/blog...
1% of total area of the ocean by surface area would actually be A LOT.
Killing of 1% of humans would mean to kill 75 million people.
Get a sense of scale.
Meanwhile in Europe we have been having much too warm temperatures for this time of year. Last week it was 15C (59 F) in central Europe where I live, which is practically spring temperature today it was 8C (46F) when it should be around the freezing point.
It's not the first time that Northern America receives all the dose of winter cold from from Europe. A couple of years ago we had the same situation - record lows in the US, much too high temperatures across Europe and Eurasia.
Nevertheless, global warming is a scientifically proven fact regardless what happens in Northern America, which is only a relatively small area of our globe. The oceans which cover two-thirds of our planet are warming, this is fact. The polar ice caps are melting, also fact. The glaciers are retreating, another fact.
Please just check this website of one very credible, US agency for the details if you still feel like denying it because Trump says so:
https://climate.nasa.gov/
As a "neutral" non US-citizen observing from the outside, I think me and the rest of the world agree that it is not quite fair to compare Democrats with Republicans one to one.
The Republican party has a much greater affinity for science-denial, spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation among its supporters. Something like the Tea Party movement or an unqualified millionaire real-estate mogul like Donald Trump being president is only possible in an environment that the Republican party fosters.
If I listen to a right-wing commentator on Fox News and compare it to a left-wing commentator on, say, MS-NBC, both might use hyperbolic and emotionally loaded language, but while what the left-wing guy will say is mostly based on -real- facts and a healthy dose of critical thinking, the right-wing talk is based mostly on warped facts using cherry-picked information and their all-time favorite: suggestive questions. Suggestive questions that spread uncertainty and propagate what the audience is supposed to believe while giving plausible deniability when confronted, because you didn't state any facts - "it was just a question after all".
Questions like:
"Is Obama really not a muslim?"
"Is Obama's birth certificate actually real?"
It's so obvious to me as an observer of US politics and society, and its just baffling how naive most conservatives are and how resistant to criticism when confronted with how backhanded and manipulative the conservative media is.
This leads to outcomes like what is mentioned in this article. The abundance of Republicans is shockingly uninformed about some basic facts such as Obama's religion or climate change.
The irony of it all is that the Republican party has its greatest followers among the lower-income classes - exactly those people who would benefit the most from more social policies. It's the textbook example of the super-rich controlling the hearts and minds of the serfs so that the super-rich can stay in power. Because make no mistake - conservative policies are mostly designed to benefit the top 2%.
Trump gets a hard-on every time he gets to undo anything Obama managed to accomplish during his presidency.
Also, the two big cable companies that have divided and monopolized the US market get to make more money for crappy service! What's wrong with that?
From my humble perspective, the price of Bitcoin is rising so spectacularly because there are so few sellers.
Who in their right mind would sell Bitcoin when it has been rising non-stop and therefore *seems* to be such a great investment? It's a self fulfilling prophecy - everyone expects it to rise so nobody is selling so those who want in have to pay exorbitant prices.
But this same fact also makes it completely unsuitable as a currency. The volatility is too high and the fluidity is too low. At the moment the system is setup more like a Ponzi-Scheme: Those buying now at exorbitant prices are hoping to find a bigger fool that will buy from them at even greater prices. It will work for a while but nobody can tell when the whole thing will unravel.
So I understand Bitcoin from this Ponzi-Scheme/gambling point of view. The big mystery to me are those people that are really invested into Bitcoin out of conviction that it is the future. As I understand it there are severe technical limitations that make it impractical to perform transactions in Bitcoin and put the whole thing at risk:
- being a node in the Bitcoin network will require increasing amounts of very powerful hardware, so at some point only corporations or very rich people will be able to handle it, making it less democratic and independent than it was envisioned
- Bitcoin takes an ever increasing amount of energy to operate
- transactions will take longer and longer to run as the blockchain gets bigger and bigger
- when Bitcoin ever reaches the mainstream it will become borderline unusable because the sheer amount of transactions will take forever to process
Sounds to me like Bitcoin doesn't scale very well.
Futures are not a way to "manipulate" the price. Futures are basically a gamble. Participant A agrees to sell the commodity to participant B at the current price, but the actual exchange of the commodity will happen in the future at time X.
If the price at time X has dropped, A can buy the commodity for cheap and sell it to B at the agreed (former) price and make a profit. If the price at time X has risen, A has to buy the commodity for the more expensive price to sell it to B at a loss, and B wins.
It's a way for sellers to make money in a falling market, but always a gamble because its impossible to know the future price for sure.
Google should downlist American media too, because they also "inject themselves into US politics"
Bugger off with your straw man arguments. Russia is a hostile country waging an aggressive information war against the west with an army of internet trolls and fake news intended to spread FUD. It is financing right-wing groups in Europe, an invasion of eastern Ukraine to prevent it from joining the EU and NATO and is just generally causing trouble all over the world. Protecting a dictator who used chemical weapons against his own people, providing separatists with an anti-aircraft missile launcher that was used to down a civilian airplane over Ukraine, all the while always denying all involvement. Meanwhile in the interior the country is cracking down an all independent media.
Russia is a rogue actor these days.
Not when it's a few thousand space Nazi's riding a massive holocaust weapon.
and the government of your country should be taken seriously? has credibility? hahahaha!
Well, yes. My country is a western European country where we have real division of powers, a free press, freedom of speech, no Internet censorship and people can demonstrate, complain and bitch about the government and our leaders all they want without getting thrown into jail or shot.
So you know, all those little things that Russia doesn't offer.
Oh, and the leaders of my country where not connected with Panama or Paradise papers, unlike some people in the inner circle of Putin's Oligarch/KGB club.