If we're headed for self-driving cars this seemingly trivial problem should be closer to 100% not 78%.
Sounds like the problem is the corners. Need additional cameras for checking to the sides for scenarios where you are turning and backing up and also when other objects are moving. And it does require much additional computation to predict movement of multiple objects relative to one another so bare bones automatic breaking is really about just automatically stopping when something is already in the warning area regardless of whether it is moving or not. To get to 100% you need to add side views and have software that is extrapolating movements of other vehicles, people, children, pets, shopping carts, etc.
These are largely solved problems from a technology perspective with multiple ways of doing it for some companies like Waymo and maybe GM and a few others, but putting these features into cars and making these features affordable for mass production and consumption is going to take a few more years.
Still...dumb automatic breaking can help avoid 62% of accidents... that is a win. Looks like at least minor accident rates are going to go down by at least half in the next ten years which is a huge hugely good thing for everyone besides repair shops and insurance companies.
Unfortunately I would suspect that to avoid most fatalities it will require more sophisticated autonomous driving among all the car makers which is a level that apparently only a few companies have achieved so far.
As if criminals, political operatives, and oppressive governments won't get hold of the required information regardless. Just publish everything and give the rest of us a fighting chance to figure out what's going on and defend ourselves.
Agreed. The idea that oppressive governments won't get a hold of these tools and "only the good guys" keeping technology a secret is good for society is a dangerously naive notion. I mean if you guys want to invite me to your good guy cabal meetings and have some good bonus, stock options and profit sharing then count me in.
I think there is an idea for a start-up. Autonomous campers which just drive around all night or find cheap parking someplace. Your camper could drive up to 4 hours away from work while you slept and get you back in time for work.
The rules of supply and demand and how they scale into an economic system ultimately are related to the physical constraints of that supply and demand.
Wikipedia (just like Encyclopedia Britannica back in the dead tree days) is a secondary source (i.e. it contains no original research and every fact in it should come from some other, cited, primary source). Secondary sources are not typically cited in a research paper, not because of concerns about accuracy, but because primary sources are always preferred.
Seconded.
Once you get to high school and especially the University level and beyond, then a secondary source isn't a proper source for anything other than non-academic power point slides. Unless the discussion contained within the secondary source is the actual important part that you are citing. So for instance if Wikipedia had a section that contained an interesting point you wanted to cite.
Same with books about a subject written by authors. If you are interested in what they are saying about a subject then they are the citation. If you are interested in some information they are relaying from some other source, then you go to that source and cite that original material.
I've been thinking along these lines. You can't automate fact checking without choosing authoritative sources which itself would be biased. Many fact checkers will betray their biases by carefully choosing which aspects of a story or statement to fact check leading to very different results.
For instance the sky is blue is a fact (sort of). But saying "the sky is blue during the Trump administration" could be called a lie or truth depending how you parse it. Pro Trump and you simply agree that the sky is blue on some days during the Trump administration. Anti Trump and you say it is a lie because not every day has blue skies and there were more days with blue skies during the previous administration. And there are many variations of ways you could score even a simple statement that wasn't even probably meant as a statement of fact in any important sense.
Instead you could automate bias checking so that when keywords or phrases with negative or positive connotations are associated with people and companies and parties you can detect how the article is biased... in its headline, in its above the fold content which subjects are associated with positive language and which area associated with negative language.
So something like pulling out the subjects and scoring it based on the words with negative connotations more closely associated with them in the article and how prominent they were in the article. So negative words in the headline would be more heavily weighted than negative word near the end of the article.
With the result of some Bias scoring: (-10 "Donald Trump" -8 "Republican" -3 "Paul Ryan" -2 Elephants +4 "Hillary Clinton" +6 Democratic Party )
It wouldn't get to the facts, but it does get to the propaganda slant of the content. And then people can see whether the content justifies the slant.
So as things stand... If crypto-currencies had value besides their utility then they would be considered securities and would be subject to additional tax reporting requirements for every transaction and would have all the reporting overhead associated with running a mutual fund but with much higher numbers of transactions and ownership turnover.
Just as the dollar went off the gold standard... meaning there is no longer any specific amount of gold in a vault that you could cash in the dollar for. Cryptocurrencies are as good as whatever people want to exchange for them. Otherwise a gold backed cryptocurrency... or more ideally a currency could be backed by a basket of ownership in things corresponding to the widest possible collection of assets representing a slice of the total economy.
It would be good to have the option to have a currency that could represent an actual slice of ownership in the economy rather than merely a utility for maintaining value during a transaction.
It would be a good option anyway. An option that is undermined in the US by tax and securities law which make a value backed currency impractical given that you would lose too much money to regulatory overhead well beyond simple taxation in every transaction and it would be considered a separate security with its own reporting requirements. Basically barter transactions between owners of a mutual fund.
Really the US could innovate in this space to make it practical to have asset based currencies where only redemption of that currency are taxable events beyond a transaction type sales tax and there are minimal requirements for reporting as long as all the assets are from publicly traded stocks and mutual funds. Basically currencies backed by mutual funds or ETFs.
The benefit of promoting this would be the US government... or any government that helps create such a currency through simple regulations could just build in some small tax into every transaction. Just high enough to cover costs and get some money while not pushing people into another currency, cash or the black market. Say 1%. And it wouldn't kill the dollar because ultimately the dollar is going to be the official currency for paying taxes and will reflect the value of the US economy.
The cost of compliance with information disclosure regulations is also part of the issue, here. Sarbanes-Oxley is estimated to cost more than $500K/year. That is no small sum for companies with a few million in profit, so the bar for going public is concomitantly raised. A good rule of thumb is that you need to be at $100M+ of revenue to even consider this. Lots of very good, profitable companies do not make that threshold.
Simple solution. Drop the quarterly reporting requirements for companies with market caps under a billion. Replace with a yearly reporting requirement and reduce the reporting requirements on smaller companies and you significantly cut the compliance costs. It shouldn't cost more than the cost of paying your accountant which you would do anyway and paying for periodic audits.
I think the idea is that you bring wireless to the building and then multiple units in that building sign up
There is only one "unit" in a single family dwelling. The claim isn't that it isn't economical for Google, it was that it wasn't economical for the consumer.
The claim by Google? Well ya, that's BS. Obviously some people were signing up and it was economical and preferable for them. I was just talking about the price model for Google.
I understand that there may be LOS issues, but if you are in the middle of a group of large apartment buildings you'll have those, too. They are also a different excuse than "not economical for the consumer".
Smaller companies are willing to live on smaller margins
Google has enough inertia that they can operate at a loss for a long time in a small division to grow it into a profit center.
With deep pockets they can operate at a loss. Sure, but having more overhead means that it puts the path to profitability farther out... maybe too far for management given the adoption curve and competition ramping up with Gigabit Internet. If they had lower overhead... more like a scrappy start-up then maybe they dig in and compete and lower costs further or improve service further rather than closing up shop in a market.
What I wonder is why nobody is flaming google for their stupid excuse for not providing service to single-family homes. "It wouldn't be economical for the consumer". What? It's $60/month for gigabit internet service. That's cheap. Why wouldn't it be economical for someone to have that service? Hidden fees and taxes? What? Compared to Comcast 100Mbps it's absolutely marvelous pricing.
I think the idea is that you bring wireless to the building and then multiple units in that building sign up and you run wires down to those units so that 1 unit wasn't economical but 2-3 or 10 was worth it. And then there are line of sight issues potentially for smaller buildings.
Still I wonder if it was one of those things which Google messed up by getting involved with. Smaller companies are willing to live on smaller margins as they have fewer levels of management and investors to feed.
The FCC's rollback of Net Neutrality rules was ostensibly predicated on the premise that the FCC "doesn't have the authority" to enforce Net Neutrality. If that's the stance the FCC wants to take that's fine, but they then can't turn around and say they do have the authority to preempt states from adopting their own Net Neutrality measures. You can't have it both ways. Things would be different if Congress had passed a preemption, but as it stands I think the FCC would have a very hard time winning this fight in court given their contradictory statements on their ability to adjudicate how ISP's handle delivery of data.
Well there is that... and states and municipalities should have every right to dictate terms of use for the telecoms that are using the public rights of ways to hang or lay their cables. I know the interstate commerce clause is usually interpreted to give federal law the benefit of the doubt... but at some point if the Federal Government is saying they are stepping back from regulations then the states have every right to step in at least for activities inside their respective states.
"Reality Check" is more than a saying. Reality matters. Whereas you can become a unicorn or Pegasus in virtual reality and fly among the clouds. In there real world we need to live, breath, make babies, drink clean water, not kill or hurt one another over stupid things.
While I think virtual reality is great in many ways for expanding the human experience and improving our communication and imaginations and has great potential.
If we get to the point where we care more about our virtual worlds than the real one, then we are going to be worse off for it.
Both individuals and society needs to have a greater focus on making our own world a paradise of opportunity and plenty rather than merely distracting ourselves from the reality ahead.
"seems to indicate ISP throttling, but can happen for many reasons."
And therein lies the chicken and egg problem. Unless you have the data about download rates and latency you can't even begin to find out WHY your speeds are slower to certain services. And to some extent that shouldn't be on the customer to even care about. The ISPs are advertising certain download speeds and with services from large providers that can afford adequate infrastructure to meet demand there really should be no excuses for regularly not meeting demand for those services. The ISPs and content providers are presumably already getting paid by their customers and the ISPs will know which services are popular so they should both have an incentive to work it out. If the market is healthy and working for people then there is no reason that ISPs and content providers can't invest time and money in making the overall service better.
Technically I agree though, unless the data is being centrally collected and analyzed to spot patterns and then used by consumer groups to ask the ISPs and content providers what the issue is then it could also just be a temporary issue that is more understandable.
Would be best if the FTC could do this kind of analysis systematically and see if ISPs are really providing the services and speeds they are advertising and apply some pressure to improve service up to those advertised standards. If it is a one time slow down due to a particularly popular cat video then that is one thing, but if customers are never getting advertised download speeds from some popular services then that means the ISPs and service providers need to up the peering bandwidth and provide for peering closer to the customers to reduce latency.
But as an individual (unlike just feeling like an app is slow) you could at least with some hard numbers, perhaps taken multiple times at different times of day, then go to your ISP and ask what the problem was accessing certain services and then yourself go to the FTC to file a complaint for false advertising and the BBB and the state consumer protection agency to get it all on record that companies aren't providing the advertised services.
I disagree with this approach. If Congress wants Net Neutrality they should write it as a law, not just force the FCC to not repeal the existing rule which DOES NOT apply to wireless carriers.
Wireless carriers will be the big winners here. It gives them freedom their wired carriers don't have.
I only disagree with this approach because it doesn't look like it will work so it appears to be more posturing than actual lawmaking. Yes a full law (with some clear short term exceptions for encouraging real infrastructure investments that will eventually improve service for everyone) would be preferable.
Otherwise if they can cobble together a few more votes in the Senate and a bipartisan majority in the House and just get president Trump to sign it because it appears to be popular enough then so be it. But given other priorities I doubt they can get it together without leadership support in the next several weeks as required by the Senate rules. So we are left with posturing ahead of a very partisan election to fund raise and motivate supporters... which will make it even less likely to get a compromise reform that is better for net neutrality just as other issues have become more and more polarizing and less grounds for constructive deal making.
There are plenty of laws that states pass that interfere with interstate commerce far more than local enforcement of net neutrality would. Many, if not most, businesses or individuals require state and local licenses in addition to any Federal Licenses they may need. Then they need to pay state and local taxes and comply with state and local regulations. In some instances you can't even sell stuff directly into a state unless you go through a local distributor. Thinking alcohol and cars, but probably other things.
The US considers itself a "single market" under US Federal regulations, but in many more ways it is not.
The cumulative effect of all those state and local regulations are barriers to interstate trade and commerce that amount to state and local protectionism.
It would have been better if you had posted the link to the right roll. The one you posted is about rapid DNA analysis, not the counter individual network act. Try http://clerk.house.gov/evs/201... And weep.
Sorry copy paste screwed up... but yes it was the Rapid DNA Act of 2017 that was the FISA extension. Passed 256 to 164
It would have been better if you had posted the link to the right roll. The one you posted is about rapid DNA analysis, not the counter individual network act. Try http://clerk.house.gov/evs/201... And weep.
Funny enough the "Rapid DNA Act of 2017 is actually the http://clerk.house.gov/evs/201...">correct roll call. The text of what was on the schedule as the "Rapid DNA Act of 2017 was completely replaced with the text for the FISA 702 extension.
This was the Amash amendment Roll Call for the amendment that would have included some privacy protections.
Apparently it is a somewhat common practice that bills get swapped out in this fashion. It threw me at first also.
Somewhat encouraging to see President Trump express some push back and to see 183 votes for some reform.
President Trump could easily just order additional reforms himself, or at least order a report on how many Americans are getting their communications swept up without a warrant.
Until there are meaningful restrictions and requirements to report "incidental" collections of Americans communications then we know this still law and others are being used for mass surveillance of Americans on American soil.
When congress yet again passes the buck on this law it will be up to the President to step up and order those restrictions and reporting be put into place.
The question to me is harm. Is the state harmfully interfering with freedom of association by using people's party affiliations to draw district maps that harm those people and their parties chances at election... The answer is unquestionably yes because that is the whole point of Gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering should be ruled unconstitutional on freedom of association grounds. People exercising their right to freely associate should be considered similar to the way any protected class would be.
Political affiliation is a protected right. As in the right to associate with a party.
Using knowledge of people's individual political affiliations to harm those people is definitely unconstitutional. In this case, and more broadly, the gerrymandering clearly makes it less likely that a party's candidate will be elected to office and less likely the interests of those people will be represented.
It is a simple remedy... Don't allow party affiliation or any demographic that could be taken as a proxy for party affiliation to be overtly part of the decision making.
Unless discrimination for or against partisan affiliation is disallowed as a consideration the same way race is disallowed then we aren't really making much progress.
I don't trust an "Independent" unnaccountable whatever to be some committee of angels.
Yes, the results matter but also we shouldn't be gerrymandering simply to seek the most number of competitive races either... Some districts are going to not be competitive because people with similar political leanings choose to live near one another... The gerrymandering of geographically disperse areas together using partisan affiliation or demographic tendencies to vote one way or another is the issue.
Legislatures can follow the rules the courts come up with as well as any "Independent" committee could.
If the legislature wants to make a city and immediately surrounding areas it's own district then it should be allowed to do so.
"Fair" isn't the concern... The constitutional principle at stake is freedom of association... Using people's association with a political party to disenfranchise them.
The solution is the hard part. Courts are now tasked with finding some principle of law that states can use going forward to figure out what is allowed and not allowed. Up until now gerrymandering on political grounds has survived. Only race has really been made off limits by the courts.
Just doing the opposite... ie making districts that have even numbers of partisan inclined voters doesn't sound like a great solution either. You could very well have gerrymandered looking spaghetti districts as a result of that mapmaking.
Partisan affiliation should just be put out of bounds as a consideration just as race has been. And then as long as the districts don't look gerrymandered (meaning they don't have long thin parts sticking into other districts.) then whatever the results are should be acceptable.
Gerrymandering is, by definition, the manipulation of the Congressional districts in a way to assure an outcome beneficial to one party of another.
What makes it "insidious" or not is beyond speculation. That is is just a stupid, inflammatory adjective on the Judge's part.
BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.
Well at some point it does become obscene in the extreme. Looking at these maps and reading a bit at how they are formed... ie throw as many Democrats as possible into a few districts and then spread the remaining Democrats out in all the other districts. I don't really see how this is any different than the prohibition on using race as part of drawing new districts.
The courts should make this simple and delegitimize partisan affiliation and voting history as a valid consideration. The only legitimate data that are used to draw the maps should be where people live and then the districts should be draw to closely match the existing underlying political boundaries (ie cities, towns and counties) in a geographically compact area.
Slashdot Mirror
If we're headed for self-driving cars this seemingly trivial problem should be closer to 100% not 78%.
Sounds like the problem is the corners. Need additional cameras for checking to the sides for scenarios where you are turning and backing up and also when other objects are moving. And it does require much additional computation to predict movement of multiple objects relative to one another so bare bones automatic breaking is really about just automatically stopping when something is already in the warning area regardless of whether it is moving or not. To get to 100% you need to add side views and have software that is extrapolating movements of other vehicles, people, children, pets, shopping carts, etc.
These are largely solved problems from a technology perspective with multiple ways of doing it for some companies like Waymo and maybe GM and a few others, but putting these features into cars and making these features affordable for mass production and consumption is going to take a few more years.
Still...dumb automatic breaking can help avoid 62% of accidents... that is a win. Looks like at least minor accident rates are going to go down by at least half in the next ten years which is a huge hugely good thing for everyone besides repair shops and insurance companies.
Unfortunately I would suspect that to avoid most fatalities it will require more sophisticated autonomous driving among all the car makers which is a level that apparently only a few companies have achieved so far.
As if criminals, political operatives, and oppressive governments won't get hold of the required information regardless. Just publish everything and give the rest of us a fighting chance to figure out what's going on and defend ourselves.
Agreed. The idea that oppressive governments won't get a hold of these tools and "only the good guys" keeping technology a secret is good for society is a dangerously naive notion. I mean if you guys want to invite me to your good guy cabal meetings and have some good bonus, stock options and profit sharing then count me in.
I think there is an idea for a start-up. Autonomous campers which just drive around all night or find cheap parking someplace. Your camper could drive up to 4 hours away from work while you slept and get you back in time for work.
The rules of supply and demand and how they scale into an economic system ultimately are related to the physical constraints of that supply and demand.
Wikipedia (just like Encyclopedia Britannica back in the dead tree days) is a secondary source (i.e. it contains no original research and every fact in it should come from some other, cited, primary source). Secondary sources are not typically cited in a research paper, not because of concerns about accuracy, but because primary sources are always preferred.
Seconded.
Once you get to high school and especially the University level and beyond, then a secondary source isn't a proper source for anything other than non-academic power point slides. Unless the discussion contained within the secondary source is the actual important part that you are citing. So for instance if Wikipedia had a section that contained an interesting point you wanted to cite.
Same with books about a subject written by authors. If you are interested in what they are saying about a subject then they are the citation. If you are interested in some information they are relaying from some other source, then you go to that source and cite that original material.
I've been thinking along these lines. You can't automate fact checking without choosing authoritative sources which itself would be biased. Many fact checkers will betray their biases by carefully choosing which aspects of a story or statement to fact check leading to very different results.
For instance the sky is blue is a fact (sort of). But saying "the sky is blue during the Trump administration" could be called a lie or truth depending how you parse it. Pro Trump and you simply agree that the sky is blue on some days during the Trump administration. Anti Trump and you say it is a lie because not every day has blue skies and there were more days with blue skies during the previous administration. And there are many variations of ways you could score even a simple statement that wasn't even probably meant as a statement of fact in any important sense.
Instead you could automate bias checking so that when keywords or phrases with negative or positive connotations are associated with people and companies and parties you can detect how the article is biased... in its headline, in its above the fold content which subjects are associated with positive language and which area associated with negative language.
So something like pulling out the subjects and scoring it based on the words with negative connotations more closely associated with them in the article and how prominent they were in the article. So negative words in the headline would be more heavily weighted than negative word near the end of the article.
With the result of some Bias scoring: (-10 "Donald Trump" -8 "Republican" -3 "Paul Ryan" -2 Elephants +4 "Hillary Clinton" +6 Democratic Party )
It wouldn't get to the facts, but it does get to the propaganda slant of the content. And then people can see whether the content justifies the slant.
So as things stand... If crypto-currencies had value besides their utility then they would be considered securities and would be subject to additional tax reporting requirements for every transaction and would have all the reporting overhead associated with running a mutual fund but with much higher numbers of transactions and ownership turnover.
Just as the dollar went off the gold standard... meaning there is no longer any specific amount of gold in a vault that you could cash in the dollar for. Cryptocurrencies are as good as whatever people want to exchange for them. Otherwise a gold backed cryptocurrency ... or more ideally a currency could be backed by a basket of ownership in things corresponding to the widest possible collection of assets representing a slice of the total economy.
It would be good to have the option to have a currency that could represent an actual slice of ownership in the economy rather than merely a utility for maintaining value during a transaction.
It would be a good option anyway. An option that is undermined in the US by tax and securities law which make a value backed currency impractical given that you would lose too much money to regulatory overhead well beyond simple taxation in every transaction and it would be considered a separate security with its own reporting requirements. Basically barter transactions between owners of a mutual fund.
Really the US could innovate in this space to make it practical to have asset based currencies where only redemption of that currency are taxable events beyond a transaction type sales tax and there are minimal requirements for reporting as long as all the assets are from publicly traded stocks and mutual funds. Basically currencies backed by mutual funds or ETFs.
The benefit of promoting this would be the US government... or any government that helps create such a currency through simple regulations could just build in some small tax into every transaction. Just high enough to cover costs and get some money while not pushing people into another currency, cash or the black market. Say 1%. And it wouldn't kill the dollar because ultimately the dollar is going to be the official currency for paying taxes and will reflect the value of the US economy.
The cost of compliance with information disclosure regulations is also part of the issue, here. Sarbanes-Oxley is estimated to cost more than $500K/year. That is no small sum for companies with a few million in profit, so the bar for going public is concomitantly raised. A good rule of thumb is that you need to be at $100M+ of revenue to even consider this. Lots of very good, profitable companies do not make that threshold.
Simple solution. Drop the quarterly reporting requirements for companies with market caps under a billion. Replace with a yearly reporting requirement and reduce the reporting requirements on smaller companies and you significantly cut the compliance costs. It shouldn't cost more than the cost of paying your accountant which you would do anyway and paying for periodic audits.
I think the idea is that you bring wireless to the building and then multiple units in that building sign up
There is only one "unit" in a single family dwelling. The claim isn't that it isn't economical for Google, it was that it wasn't economical for the consumer.
The claim by Google? Well ya, that's BS. Obviously some people were signing up and it was economical and preferable for them. I was just talking about the price model for Google.
I understand that there may be LOS issues, but if you are in the middle of a group of large apartment buildings you'll have those, too. They are also a different excuse than "not economical for the consumer".
Smaller companies are willing to live on smaller margins
Google has enough inertia that they can operate at a loss for a long time in a small division to grow it into a profit center.
With deep pockets they can operate at a loss. Sure, but having more overhead means that it puts the path to profitability farther out... maybe too far for management given the adoption curve and competition ramping up with Gigabit Internet. If they had lower overhead... more like a scrappy start-up then maybe they dig in and compete and lower costs further or improve service further rather than closing up shop in a market.
What I wonder is why nobody is flaming google for their stupid excuse for not providing service to single-family homes. "It wouldn't be economical for the consumer". What? It's $60/month for gigabit internet service. That's cheap. Why wouldn't it be economical for someone to have that service? Hidden fees and taxes? What? Compared to Comcast 100Mbps it's absolutely marvelous pricing.
I think the idea is that you bring wireless to the building and then multiple units in that building sign up and you run wires down to those units so that 1 unit wasn't economical but 2-3 or 10 was worth it. And then there are line of sight issues potentially for smaller buildings.
Still I wonder if it was one of those things which Google messed up by getting involved with. Smaller companies are willing to live on smaller margins as they have fewer levels of management and investors to feed.
The FCC's rollback of Net Neutrality rules was ostensibly predicated on the premise that the FCC "doesn't have the authority" to enforce Net Neutrality. If that's the stance the FCC wants to take that's fine, but they then can't turn around and say they do have the authority to preempt states from adopting their own Net Neutrality measures. You can't have it both ways. Things would be different if Congress had passed a preemption, but as it stands I think the FCC would have a very hard time winning this fight in court given their contradictory statements on their ability to adjudicate how ISP's handle delivery of data.
Well there is that... and states and municipalities should have every right to dictate terms of use for the telecoms that are using the public rights of ways to hang or lay their cables. I know the interstate commerce clause is usually interpreted to give federal law the benefit of the doubt... but at some point if the Federal Government is saying they are stepping back from regulations then the states have every right to step in at least for activities inside their respective states.
"Reality Check" is more than a saying. Reality matters. Whereas you can become a unicorn or Pegasus in virtual reality and fly among the clouds. In there real world we need to live, breath, make babies, drink clean water, not kill or hurt one another over stupid things.
While I think virtual reality is great in many ways for expanding the human experience and improving our communication and imaginations and has great potential.
If we get to the point where we care more about our virtual worlds than the real one, then we are going to be worse off for it.
Both individuals and society needs to have a greater focus on making our own world a paradise of opportunity and plenty rather than merely distracting ourselves from the reality ahead.
"seems to indicate ISP throttling, but can happen for many reasons."
And therein lies the chicken and egg problem. Unless you have the data about download rates and latency you can't even begin to find out WHY your speeds are slower to certain services. And to some extent that shouldn't be on the customer to even care about. The ISPs are advertising certain download speeds and with services from large providers that can afford adequate infrastructure to meet demand there really should be no excuses for regularly not meeting demand for those services. The ISPs and content providers are presumably already getting paid by their customers and the ISPs will know which services are popular so they should both have an incentive to work it out. If the market is healthy and working for people then there is no reason that ISPs and content providers can't invest time and money in making the overall service better.
Technically I agree though, unless the data is being centrally collected and analyzed to spot patterns and then used by consumer groups to ask the ISPs and content providers what the issue is then it could also just be a temporary issue that is more understandable.
Would be best if the FTC could do this kind of analysis systematically and see if ISPs are really providing the services and speeds they are advertising and apply some pressure to improve service up to those advertised standards. If it is a one time slow down due to a particularly popular cat video then that is one thing, but if customers are never getting advertised download speeds from some popular services then that means the ISPs and service providers need to up the peering bandwidth and provide for peering closer to the customers to reduce latency.
But as an individual (unlike just feeling like an app is slow) you could at least with some hard numbers, perhaps taken multiple times at different times of day, then go to your ISP and ask what the problem was accessing certain services and then yourself go to the FTC to file a complaint for false advertising and the BBB and the state consumer protection agency to get it all on record that companies aren't providing the advertised services.
I disagree with this approach. If Congress wants Net Neutrality they should write it as a law, not just force the FCC to not repeal the existing rule which DOES NOT apply to wireless carriers.
Wireless carriers will be the big winners here. It gives them freedom their wired carriers don't have.
I only disagree with this approach because it doesn't look like it will work so it appears to be more posturing than actual lawmaking. Yes a full law (with some clear short term exceptions for encouraging real infrastructure investments that will eventually improve service for everyone) would be preferable.
Otherwise if they can cobble together a few more votes in the Senate and a bipartisan majority in the House and just get president Trump to sign it because it appears to be popular enough then so be it. But given other priorities I doubt they can get it together without leadership support in the next several weeks as required by the Senate rules. So we are left with posturing ahead of a very partisan election to fund raise and motivate supporters... which will make it even less likely to get a compromise reform that is better for net neutrality just as other issues have become more and more polarizing and less grounds for constructive deal making.
Also, Interstate Commerce Clause.
There are plenty of laws that states pass that interfere with interstate commerce far more than local enforcement of net neutrality would. Many, if not most, businesses or individuals require state and local licenses in addition to any Federal Licenses they may need. Then they need to pay state and local taxes and comply with state and local regulations. In some instances you can't even sell stuff directly into a state unless you go through a local distributor. Thinking alcohol and cars, but probably other things.
The US considers itself a "single market" under US Federal regulations, but in many more ways it is not.
The cumulative effect of all those state and local regulations are barriers to interstate trade and commerce that amount to state and local protectionism.
It would have been better if you had posted the link to the right roll. The one you posted is about rapid DNA analysis, not the counter individual network act. Try http://clerk.house.gov/evs/201...
And weep.
Sorry copy paste screwed up... but yes it was the Rapid DNA Act of 2017
that was the FISA extension. Passed 256 to 164
It would have been better if you had posted the link to the right roll. The one you posted is about rapid DNA analysis, not the counter individual network act. Try http://clerk.house.gov/evs/201...
And weep.
Funny enough the "Rapid DNA Act of 2017 is actually the http://clerk.house.gov/evs/201...">correct roll call. The text of what was on the schedule as the "Rapid DNA Act of 2017 was completely replaced with the text for the FISA 702 extension.
This was the Amash amendment Roll Call for the amendment that would have included some privacy protections.
Apparently it is a somewhat common practice that bills get swapped out in this fashion. It threw me at first also.
Somewhat encouraging to see President Trump express some push back and to see 183 votes for some reform.
President Trump could easily just order additional reforms himself, or at least order a report on how many Americans are getting their communications swept up without a warrant.
Until there are meaningful restrictions and requirements to report "incidental" collections of Americans communications then we know this still law and others are being used for mass surveillance of Americans on American soil.
When congress yet again passes the buck on this law it will be up to the President to step up and order those restrictions and reporting be put into place.
The question to me is harm. Is the state harmfully interfering with freedom of association by using people's party affiliations to draw district maps that harm those people and their parties chances at election... The answer is unquestionably yes because that is the whole point of Gerrymandering.
Gerrymandering should be ruled unconstitutional on freedom of association grounds. People exercising their right to freely associate should be considered similar to the way any protected class would be.
Political affiliation is a protected right. As in the right to associate with a party.
Using knowledge of people's individual political affiliations to harm those people is definitely unconstitutional. In this case, and more broadly, the gerrymandering clearly makes it less likely that a party's candidate will be elected to office and less likely the interests of those people will be represented.
It is a simple remedy... Don't allow party affiliation or any demographic that could be taken as a proxy for party affiliation to be overtly part of the decision making.
Unless discrimination for or against partisan affiliation is disallowed as a consideration the same way race is disallowed then we aren't really making much progress.
I don't trust an "Independent" unnaccountable whatever to be some committee of angels.
Yes, the results matter but also we shouldn't be gerrymandering simply to seek the most number of competitive races either... Some districts are going to not be competitive because people with similar political leanings choose to live near one another... The gerrymandering of geographically disperse areas together using partisan affiliation or demographic tendencies to vote one way or another is the issue.
Legislatures can follow the rules the courts come up with as well as any "Independent" committee could.
If the legislature wants to make a city and immediately surrounding areas it's own district then it should be allowed to do so.
"Fair" isn't the concern... The constitutional principle at stake is freedom of association... Using people's association with a political party to disenfranchise them.
The solution is the hard part. Courts are now tasked with finding some principle of law that states can use going forward to figure out what is allowed and not allowed. Up until now gerrymandering on political grounds has survived. Only race has really been made off limits by the courts.
Just doing the opposite... ie making districts that have even numbers of partisan inclined voters doesn't sound like a great solution either. You could very well have gerrymandered looking spaghetti districts as a result of that mapmaking.
Partisan affiliation should just be put out of bounds as a consideration just as race has been. And then as long as the districts don't look gerrymandered (meaning they don't have long thin parts sticking into other districts.) then whatever the results are should be acceptable.
Gerrymandering is, by definition, the manipulation of the Congressional districts in a way to assure an outcome beneficial to one party of another.
What makes it "insidious" or not is beyond speculation. That is is just a stupid, inflammatory adjective on the Judge's part.
BTW, Gerrymandering has been happening since the beginning of the Republic.
Well at some point it does become obscene in the extreme. Looking at these maps and reading a bit at how they are formed... ie throw as many Democrats as possible into a few districts and then spread the remaining Democrats out in all the other districts. I don't really see how this is any different than the prohibition on using race as part of drawing new districts.
The courts should make this simple and delegitimize partisan affiliation and voting history as a valid consideration. The only legitimate data that are used to draw the maps should be where people live and then the districts should be draw to closely match the existing underlying political boundaries (ie cities, towns and counties) in a geographically compact area.