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User: Kirth

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  1. "Liberal" Bias? No. They're just more centrist.

    It's like calling Hillary Clinton "Liberal", where she is clearly Authoritarian: https://www.politicalcompass.o...

  2. If you want backdoors, you undermine your security. And this is asymmetric. Because the security of your hospitals, power plants, electrical grid, communications infrastructure, emergency response, water treatment plants, military(!) and so on, will also be subverted. In contrast, any adversaries probably don't care about infrastructure because they don't run any.

    Basically what these morons are saying is "we want to open our whole infrastructure to abuse by criminals, terrorists and other adversaries".

  3. Throttling happens on consumer plans.

    Oh yeah? Is that some kind of traditional wisdom handed down from your forefathers in the USA?

    Because that's not what's expected in the rest of the world.

  4. Europe and other countries on Judge Blocks Release of Blueprints For 3D-Printed Guns (nbcnews.com) · · Score: 1

    Printed plastic guns fall under the precisely the same legislation as other guns (depending on their type): Illegal to print and own unless you have a license for the type of gun.

    The files on how to make them are perfectly legal.

  5. Welcome to the moon, judge Mendes on In a Blow To E-Voting Critics, Brazil Suspends Use of All Paper Ballots (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 2

    Where people hacking your voting machines within 90 minutes is apparently only a conspiracy theory:
    http://fortune.com/2017/07/31/...

    I guess you believe in the easter bunny and the security of E-Voting?

  6. Re:The real problem is having an open discussion on Valve Slammed Over 'Horrendous' Steam School-Shooting Game (eurogamer.net) · · Score: 2

    Coming from a country with a high percentage of guns per capita, but with a very low homicide rate, I can give you a hint: We have rifles, not handguns. And that is true for most of the countries with similar profiles: Canada, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Iceland, Germany, New Zealand, Finland.

    This might not be the reason for less homicides, but there is probably some underlying factor influencing both, homicides and handgun proliferation.

    So you might really want to start looking into that: Why do your people want to have handguns?

  7. Using Technology for the Wrong Purpose on UK Police Say 92 Percent False Positive Facial Recognition Is No Big Deal (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    This is exactly using technology for something it is completely unsuited.

    Facial recognition is useful as second or third-factor authentication of a small and clearly defined user base. Like checking the face of a person wanting to pass a security door whilst the same person is in possession of a RFID badge. Not only do you match against a smallish set of people who "shall pass", but against the very small set of people who may pass with that specific RFID badge, exactly one, that is. And in this case, security is immensely increased by facial recognition.

  8. US companies on Placing Election Ads On Google Will Require a Government ID (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 1

    You want one, you got one. It's not a problem to found or even to buy a US company who can do it.

  9. ... they will now insult you on Microsoft Touts Breakthrough In Making Chatbots More Conversational (windowscentral.com) · · Score: 1

    Microsoft already proved it with their racist AI that they're able, but now they've gotten better, their bots can now insult everyone!

    In fact, I was running such a bot a few years back, modeled after Captain haddock

  10. Everyone who claims Linux is an alternative doesn't use their PC for gaming. Or, is part of the extremely tiny minority of gamers that is happy with the limited subset of games run on Linux.

    That subset is about one third of the games that run on Windows. That's around 4000.games. More than you can play through in your life anyway.

  11. Re:Consensus government on Is Russia Conducting A Social Media War On America? (time.com) · · Score: 1

    This sort of thing doesn't scale.
    [citation needed]

  12. Re:Is Linux now a reasonnable gaming OS ? on Valve Reveals Steam's 2016 Top Earners -- Including 'No Man's Sky' (pcgamer.com) · · Score: 1

    Around 24% of all games on Steam are available on Linux. So, yes.

    On a related note, Linux gamers seem to make up somewhere around 1.5%. So maybe Doom would be on Place 12 if it hadn't released Windows only.

  13. Re:Yes on Are We Seeing Propaganda About Russian Propaganda? (rollingstone.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think you're pretty much right in regards of the analysis what is happening, but you've subscribed to some propaganda on who is doing what. Because the forces at play in the US are first and foremost authoritarian and to the right (the latter of which doesn't really matter in the scheme of things).

    I think this here shows this neatly:
    https://www.politicalcompass.o...

    "left" and "right" are solely economic points of view. You could also call them "socialist" and "capitalist". There's nothing in there about "liberty".

    If you think there is some great conflict between "authoritarian" and "libertarian" at play there (or even "the Left" or "the Right" are on the side of "liberty"), you've just become the playball of propaganda. Because the only side here that's even playing is authoritarian, and it has won, it sets the policies, and orchestrates the propaganda. Of course it's nice to be able to constantly blame "the other side" for the shit you're doing. Which is what happens. Even if the other side happens to be firmly in your own camp.

    Yes, there are people in the US fighting for liberty, but they're not "the Left" or "the Right", they're the ones that don't run your country. At all.

  14. We've all been waiting for these... on Google's New Emoji Aimed At Promoting Gender Equality Are Coming (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    ...medieval punctuation marks of course.
    https://www.buzzfeed.com/charl...

  15. Re:That list... on Terrorists No Longer Welcome On OneDrive, Outlook, Xbox Live (betanews.com) · · Score: 1

    What I don't understand: There's a load of organizations and companies that have their addresses listed, with things like "Baghdad, Iraq". I mean, the "Baghdad Stock Exchange" (yes, that's the ISX) is on there, and they've even got an American advisor. So how does this end up on that list? Because if it really does something illegal, it can be persecuted immediately.

  16. Re:We build mountains. They build flag poles. on Al-Qaeda Calls For the Execution Of Bill Gates and Others To 'Damage the US Economy' (betanews.com) · · Score: 1

    I think you're on to something there. But I'm not entirely convinced, because I think there is actually that network of flatterers and sycophants in place here as well, with the most obvious consequence that the people on top don't actually have any idea on what happens at the base of the mountain. Yes, if the top get removed one of those sycophants becomes the new top, but he's still completely removed from the reality below.

  17. Re:Sheesh... on Online Voters Name British Vessel 'Boaty McBoatface' (telegraph.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    Of course Eris is the only correct name they could have choosen. All Hail Eris!
    Go read the Principia Discordia http://www.principiadiscordia....

  18. Descriptive Term on Free Lightsaber Event Now Battling Lucasfilm's Lawyers (siliconbeat.com) · · Score: 1

    I've got one of these, and it's very officially a light sabre, named so in 1796. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    I can't see how anyone could trademark that..

  19. groove "back" for email? on Javier Soltero: The Outsider Microsoft Tapped To Reinvent Outlook (windowsitpro.com) · · Score: 2

    They never understood email. And the article is mostly about streamlining the UI (Which was enormously cluttered; which idiot had the idea you need to have html mark-up in emails anyway? No wonder...)

    Subsequent innovations, like the recent change to use MAPI over HTTP as the default connectivity protocol
    WTF?
    Yes, that explains everything. They still don't understand email.

  20. Re:Does it STILL USE X11 on OS X ?? on Wine 1.8 Released (winehq.org) · · Score: 1

    install https://www.playonmac.com/ it's a wine frontend/manager.

  21. Re:more guns needed on Mass Shooting In San Bernardino Kills At Least 14 (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    You actually might be right there. BUT what helps against mass shooting incidents will have some consequences otherwise, namely more dead by accident, people shooting their whole family and then themselves, more handguns going into the hands of criminals and so on.

    And importantly: Most of the people shot in the USA are shot with handguns, not long guns. (And incidentally, international data supports that. In other countries with a huge proliferation of guns usually it means "long guns", and they consistently have factor 10 less people killed with firearms, per capita. They do have mass shootings, done with long guns, though).

  22. Bogus on The Long Reach of Windows 95 · · Score: 1

    I was that 15 year old in front of DOS and Windows 3.1. And when Windows 95 came, I decided it was exactly the same shit all over again and switched to Linux.

  23. Re: Oracle's monopoly? on Oracle: Google Has "Destroyed" the Market For Java · · Score: 1

    Kiss most programming languages goodbye, especially Java. Because they would violate the API of C.

  24. Re: Treason - Peace on on Germany Won't Prosecute NSA, But Bloggers · · Score: 1

    The fun thing about this, is that the German Verfassungsschutz might well be the one that really is commiting treason, by ignoring the Verfassung (the Constitution) it is sworn to protect, and by spying illegally on German citizens. However, given the definition of treason in the German Verfassung, which might require foreign involvement, maybe not.

    But then, the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND, same as the CIA in the USA), DID spy on German people and DID deliver the information to the NSA. Which quite clearly is treason. And the Verfassungsschutz doesn't want to investigate, which could be constructed as collusion to treason.

  25. Wrong Headline on Secret Service Agents Stake Out the Ugliest Corners of the Internet · · Score: 1

    What have threats to the POTUS to do with "Stake Out the Ugliest Corners of the Internet"?