Tigers, lions and hyena's oh my aren't people, and aren't trained to deal with hostile situations. Cops are. And when said cops fuck up - like shooting at the first unarmed guy to come out the door within seconds when they were at distance and behind vehicles and ballistic shields - they should go to jail. For a longer sentence than the prank caller.
This fellow used social engineering to create a context for the cops: that they had an active shooter/imminent mass murder situation, and that he'd tied up his victims in preparation to murder them. The cops accepted this context. I mean who would call in a "prank active shooter" situation?
This guy comes to the door, and the cops think he's the person about to carry out a massacre. Split second decision - he goes back in, kills everyone, maybe a member of the SWAT team and himself. Or take him out now. Split second life and death decision.
Because who the f*ck calls in a prank active shooter/imminent massacre situation?
The "prankster"-cum-murderer created a context for the cops, which they accepted. Just like when a social engineer creates a context for IT support employee, and gets that person to change/give out passwords. The prankster successfully fooled the cops, had them accept a false context, and they responded, in a split-second life and death decision, based on that false context.
The prankster-cum-murderer just "locked the guy in a cage with a lion", the analogy to this situation being the prankster-cum-murderer "made the cops think this guy was about to commit a massacre."
Simple, effective regulations like Glass-Steagall, instituted during the Great Depression, worked for generations. But they were slowly weakened, then eliminated.
Simple, clear regulations, which don't require massive regulatory departments in companies in order to comply, are the most effective. Wall Street companies today, the ones whose heads have lunch with Federal Reserve heads, and to whom central bankers and Treasury officials go to work after their term expires, don't want simple, clear regulations.
The regulations don't deal with the core destructive and problem-causing issues which are also massively profitable. All regulations which have any teeth are walked back by politicians. See "How Wall Street defanged Dodd Frank". Now, Dodd-Frank was a joke for a lot of reasons, but the big reason was its intentional complexity and incompleteness and its unwillingness to deal with core issues. But even the pieces of Dodd-Frank that had small teeth were defanged.
Back in 2008, the big issue was lenders not having 'skin in the game' - they could make loans and shed all repayment risk when they sold off the loan to investors or the government. It's a license to print money and a perverse incentive to create bad debt. If you google "QRM safe harbor and risk retention", you'll get some history (QRM = qualified residential mortgage). There was an attempt to make lenders retain some small portion of repayment risk, instead of the government taking all of it, but that was walked back, as the above search will tell you.
The current Wall Street economic model is "privatize the profits and socialize the losses." Not a thing was done to address that. "Too big to fail" was never addressed - the biggest banks are even bigger today than in 2008 ("In the US, since the crisis, the six largest US banks now control nearly 70 per cent of all the assets in the US financial system, having increased around 40 per cent (against overall asset growth of only 8 per cent). JP Morgan, the largest US bank, has over $2.4 trillion in assets, larger than most countries." -- The Independent)
So. Instead the regulations are along these lines: Instead of just outlawing robbing people, they outlaw robbing people at 12 Noon. The rest of the day is fine. But then they add, 'well you can't rob people at 3 PM either'. And so on. They refuse to deal with the core issues (i.e. "you can't rob people"), instead nibbling ineffectually around the edges.
"Complexity breeds loopholes." That's the point of complex regulations - to breed loopholes. It's fantastic because it keeps competitors out of the business, because you need vast legal and accounting departments to stay abreast of the regulations. And it does little to stop the destructive behavior.
* If I lock someone in a cage with a hungry lion - it's not I who killed them. * I release a cobra into someone's bed and it bites them - it's not I who killed them. * I chain someone to a pole in hyena country - it's not I who killed them.
This is all true - but it ignores the context, which is that I put them into an extremely dangerous situation which led to their deaths.
Supernova explodes, blowing gas and dust across the galaxy. A chunk of it starts swirling, eventually forming the solar system and earth. Let earth spin for a few billion years and life as we know it starts. Let life run for a few billion years and consciousness as we know it, forms.
So there's some property of the universe that tends towards life and consciousness, given certain conditions. How basic and pervasive are these properties? What is the nature of them? I guess that's the question. The universe organized into us. Why and how? What does it imply? How does the inanimate organize into life and consciousness?
Won't we still have second strike capability though? The vast network of nuclear missiles in the American West and the nuclear missile submarines. Sure, it would not be instantaneous, but eventually systems would come back online, the population would be clamoring for vengeance on those who carried this out, and we'd have massive targeted strikes on wherever Russian political and military leaders were thought to be.
Trans-national efforts (wars, colonization) are done for few reasons (this isn't an exhaustive list but I think the most weighted issues):
1) Glorification of the leader 2) Improvement of the country's economic status, which ancillarily benefits the population 3) Turning young men's aggressive tendencies and tribalism outwards instead of inwards to the country
Economic conquest satisfies 1) and 2). I think 3) has been solved for Europe and Asia with the slaughter of nearly a 100 million people in WWI and WWII - the most aggressive were killed off, along with their genetic lines. Today, we have small conflicts around the world, generally contained, and fought by special operations and mercenaries. Latin America and Africa have not yet conflicts resulting in megadeaths, though they have had constant lower-level warfare, much like the Europeans had for hundreds of years. That might actually result in honing of aggressive tendencies rather than wiping it out.
I read a quote by a Euro-sceptic: "What Germany couldn't achieve with tanks and bullets, they will achieve with lawyers and accountants."
I remember several years ago, the book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" came out. I haven't read it but it was recommended to me by normal people. I heard the summary from them and thought, "Wow, I didn't know you had kooky thoughts." After the 2008 financial crisis and the response to it, and more of an understanding of how finance and economics actually works, it seems much more plausible.
Also the standard knock on electrification is that if your electricity is majority generated by coal or other dirty or dangerous means, you're actually using coal-fired or nuclear cars.
I most assuredly support clean tech and vehicle autonomy, but I have a suspicion there's a lot of hype here for non-obvious purposes.
The billionaires on this planet has unlimited funds for keeping YOU out of their wallets
This is an important point. Billionaires become billionaires in no small part because of their ability to form social networks with political leaders, who also are highly capable social networkers. This has led to the de facto legalization of bribery for politicians ("if money is speech, corporations and the wealthy have a lot more of it than you"), and selective blindness after the Financial Crisis of 2008, to the crimes of the financial sector (no financial sector executive went to jail for any deceptive and unethical behavior related to the crisis).
It's like that XKCD comic of a crypto-nerd's dream of a secure system. The social engineering aspect of the donor class plus politicians cannot be ignored. They would work, as they do now, to boost each other. And it's no small stretch to consider they would work to undermine any secure voting system, in order to preserve the status quo. That the status quo was preserved after something as cataclysmic as the Financial Crisis, a once in a century event, is a testament to their power.
If I could log into a website securely, I mean as securely as as a bank's business-to-business website with a PGP encryption angle. Like: * Username * strong password * PIN (i.e. second password) * RSA key-fob token number supplied by the voting office. * I'm accessing the site from a static IP registered with the voting office. * I submit a PGP public key to the voting office, and they send me another PIN via email with an attached encrypted text file that I can decrypt with my private key, that I use as part of the login process.
Then I'm in. I'm authenticated. I select the candidates I wish to vote for and click the "submit" button when I'm done.
* The back-end database is physically secured with a police presence. The DBAs have Top Secret clearances with polygraph. * My vote is stored electronically, but also printed with my name and PGP public key. That is then scanned into a separate database. * I can, after the election, log in again with the credentials above and see that what's in the database matches my scanned ballot. * I can easily submit a complaint if they don't match.
THAT kind of a system I'd be comfortable voting online with. If I couldn't log in prior to the election (online voting would only be available prior to election day), then I'd need to do it the old fashioned way, of waiting in line and going to a physical polling place on election day.
BUT: Recall the debacle the federal government had with Healthcare.gov. And then see the OPM hack, where even fingerprints were taken. This database would be under constant, epic, assault by... everyone. So, I have a dim view that even the federal government, much less a state government could implement such a system. And getting staff for this system would be difficult. It would be a relatively mundane job BUT requiring the best people all the time. And those people would be willing to subject themselves to in-depth security clearances, as this is an issue of national security. That kind of staffing is very hit or miss for all but the top tech companies, for multiple reasons. And you add another layer of complexity due to the clearance requirements that even the top tech companies don't have.
So, it comes back to that Gordian Knot of staffing and project management. One can easily conceive of a secure system. The ability to implement it is quite another, different, problem.
Most people are probably okay drivers. They keep their eyes on the road, don't drink or cell phone or text while driving, drive mostly courteously and intelligently. I commute through heavy traffic every day and that's what I see.
HOWEVER: There's that core of imbeciles who can't get insurance because their driving records are so terrible - they're the ones most likely to wind up killing someone. I see a smaller group of people driving like idiots. (for example: during a snow/ice storm in Maryland one night, I was driving on a main highway. It seemed like everyone was leaving following distance, driving cautiously. There was ONE car I saw speeding and weaving in an out of traffic. Probably had a really miserable driving record. Also, the most aggressive drivers I've known have had really awful driving records, again, so bad they could not get private vehicle insurance).
I wonder: Of all the accidents, the fatals in particular - how many of those people could not get private automobile insurance.
They give anaesthesia to paraplegics even though they can't feel anything below the severed nerve location. That's because paraplegics will go into shock from the pain, even though they can't actually feel the pain. Like if a paraplegic gets a broken leg. So the pain is an actual phenomenon that anaesthesia somehow blocks.
There are multiple attributes that separate us from animals, just as there multiple attributes that separate whales from dogs. Language is not even the biggest, as many animals have vocal communication, though not as complex as human vocal communication.
No, the huge thing that separates man from animals is the ability to record information in a medium outside of one's mind, such as in a book or a stone tablet or a hard drive. That's the thing for which animals have no analogue.
But none of that changes the observation that we are an evolved product of the natural world, just as animals are, and we share vast numbers of similarities to animals as well (origin mythos notwithstanding).
Star goes supernova, blowing off gas and dust. Solar system forms. Sun, earth, other planets form. Spins for a few billion years. Life forms on earth. Bacteria, plants, sea creatures, dinosaurs, mammals, then one particular mammalian hominin grew to dominate the planet - humans.
That creature - human - is as surely a product of the natural world as the other lifeforms on the planet. It has important differences certainly. However, our language limits our thinking on this matter, like the heliocentric view of the earth limited early human thinking. The difference between animal and human is a language based shackle, not a reality-based one.
There's a youtube video out there of a grizzly killing a moose and eating its heart, in some guy's driveway. There's another image of a badly burned buffalo fleeing from a grizzly (buffalo fell into a geyser apparently - was put down by park rangers). Another of a grizzly attacking musk oxen calves. Pretty sure that species is heavily carnivorous.
Bullshitters might be attracted to bullshitters - they might be betting on Elizabeth Holmes. She was able to fleece so many people once before, making a lot of people a lot of money, they might be betting on her abilities again. I mean look back at the year 2000 stock bubble and the 2008 housing bubble. There were many pundits screaming buy! buy! buy! (Jim Cramer, Abby Joseph Cohen, and others) and they suffered no significant negative consequence.
Of course, it's not hard to create an updraft in a stock ("Surely these big money types know something we don't! Get in before it's too late!") that is awash in liquidity injected by central banks around the world operating from the same playbook. There may even be a formula for it (in the context of a high liquidity market, $takeoff_velocity = $amount_injected/$market_cap).
All the money my cousin got went up his nose and for lawyers to get him out of trouble.
He's broke now.
He's not an outlier. I see this time and time again, children of financially successful people get fucked up. Look at all the entertainment stars' kids who end up in rehab.
"THE Chinese have a saying, “Fu bu guo san dai,” or “Wealth never survives three generations.” America has its own version of this saying: “From shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” As with most old proverbs, there is a grain of truth to this—and the new rich are searching for ways to avoid history's curse." -- The Economist (likely paywalled)
3) Dawning realization: If these magic sites could be taken down like that, and then later discovered by a teenager, could they really be worth the 10s of billions at which they were valued?
With crypto's: 1) Watershed event: Litecoin founder cashes out.
2) Dawning realization: If one of you gentle readers buys something, it's got to be recorded on the crypto database/ledger on my computer. And every other crypto holder's computer. Not so efficient. Plus a host of other shortcomings vis a vis other physical or financial assets.
So, there's something more going on here. I think it has a lot to do with concurrently surging global central bank balance sheets. Finding a chart of "central bank balance sheets" (including the Fed, PBOC, ECB, and BOJ) should be informative.
Slashdot Mirror
This fellow used social engineering to create a context for the cops: that they had an active shooter/imminent mass murder situation, and that he'd tied up his victims in preparation to murder them. The cops accepted this context. I mean who would call in a "prank active shooter" situation?
This guy comes to the door, and the cops think he's the person about to carry out a massacre. Split second decision - he goes back in, kills everyone, maybe a member of the SWAT team and himself. Or take him out now. Split second life and death decision.
Because who the f*ck calls in a prank active shooter/imminent massacre situation?
The "prankster"-cum-murderer created a context for the cops, which they accepted. Just like when a social engineer creates a context for IT support employee, and gets that person to change/give out passwords. The prankster successfully fooled the cops, had them accept a false context, and they responded, in a split-second life and death decision, based on that false context.
The prankster-cum-murderer just "locked the guy in a cage with a lion", the analogy to this situation being the prankster-cum-murderer "made the cops think this guy was about to commit a massacre."
Simple, effective regulations like Glass-Steagall, instituted during the Great Depression, worked for generations. But they were slowly weakened, then eliminated.
Simple, clear regulations, which don't require massive regulatory departments in companies in order to comply, are the most effective. Wall Street companies today, the ones whose heads have lunch with Federal Reserve heads, and to whom central bankers and Treasury officials go to work after their term expires, don't want simple, clear regulations.
The regulations don't deal with the core destructive and problem-causing issues which are also massively profitable. All regulations which have any teeth are walked back by politicians. See "How Wall Street defanged Dodd Frank". Now, Dodd-Frank was a joke for a lot of reasons, but the big reason was its intentional complexity and incompleteness and its unwillingness to deal with core issues. But even the pieces of Dodd-Frank that had small teeth were defanged.
Back in 2008, the big issue was lenders not having 'skin in the game' - they could make loans and shed all repayment risk when they sold off the loan to investors or the government. It's a license to print money and a perverse incentive to create bad debt. If you google "QRM safe harbor and risk retention", you'll get some history (QRM = qualified residential mortgage). There was an attempt to make lenders retain some small portion of repayment risk, instead of the government taking all of it, but that was walked back, as the above search will tell you.
The current Wall Street economic model is "privatize the profits and socialize the losses." Not a thing was done to address that. "Too big to fail" was never addressed - the biggest banks are even bigger today than in 2008 ("In the US, since the crisis, the six largest US banks now control nearly 70 per cent of all the assets in the US financial system, having increased around 40 per cent (against overall asset growth of only 8 per cent). JP Morgan, the largest US bank, has over $2.4 trillion in assets, larger than most countries." -- The Independent)
So. Instead the regulations are along these lines: Instead of just outlawing robbing people, they outlaw robbing people at 12 Noon. The rest of the day is fine. But then they add, 'well you can't rob people at 3 PM either'. And so on. They refuse to deal with the core issues (i.e. "you can't rob people"), instead nibbling ineffectually around the edges.
"Complexity breeds loopholes." That's the point of complex regulations - to breed loopholes. It's fantastic because it keeps competitors out of the business, because you need vast legal and accounting departments to stay abreast of the regulations. And it does little to stop the destructive behavior.
* If I lock someone in a cage with a hungry lion - it's not I who killed them.
* I release a cobra into someone's bed and it bites them - it's not I who killed them.
* I chain someone to a pole in hyena country - it's not I who killed them.
This is all true - but it ignores the context, which is that I put them into an extremely dangerous situation which led to their deaths.
Supernova explodes, blowing gas and dust across the galaxy. A chunk of it starts swirling, eventually forming the solar system and earth. Let earth spin for a few billion years and life as we know it starts. Let life run for a few billion years and consciousness as we know it, forms.
So there's some property of the universe that tends towards life and consciousness, given certain conditions. How basic and pervasive are these properties? What is the nature of them? I guess that's the question. The universe organized into us. Why and how? What does it imply? How does the inanimate organize into life and consciousness?
Smallest unit of time required for video. A quantum of video. A video quantum. A viq.
Won't we still have second strike capability though? The vast network of nuclear missiles in the American West and the nuclear missile submarines. Sure, it would not be instantaneous, but eventually systems would come back online, the population would be clamoring for vengeance on those who carried this out, and we'd have massive targeted strikes on wherever Russian political and military leaders were thought to be.
The world would sink into WWIII.
Interesting angle.
Trans-national efforts (wars, colonization) are done for few reasons (this isn't an exhaustive list but I think the most weighted issues):
1) Glorification of the leader
2) Improvement of the country's economic status, which ancillarily benefits the population
3) Turning young men's aggressive tendencies and tribalism outwards instead of inwards to the country
Economic conquest satisfies 1) and 2). I think 3) has been solved for Europe and Asia with the slaughter of nearly a 100 million people in WWI and WWII - the most aggressive were killed off, along with their genetic lines. Today, we have small conflicts around the world, generally contained, and fought by special operations and mercenaries. Latin America and Africa have not yet conflicts resulting in megadeaths, though they have had constant lower-level warfare, much like the Europeans had for hundreds of years. That might actually result in honing of aggressive tendencies rather than wiping it out.
I read a quote by a Euro-sceptic: "What Germany couldn't achieve with tanks and bullets, they will achieve with lawyers and accountants."
I remember several years ago, the book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" came out. I haven't read it but it was recommended to me by normal people. I heard the summary from them and thought, "Wow, I didn't know you had kooky thoughts." After the 2008 financial crisis and the response to it, and more of an understanding of how finance and economics actually works, it seems much more plausible.
He probably doesn't understand anything more than very simple cause and effect. Deducing indirect effects is beyond this fellow's ken.
Truculent ignorance is often self-resolving, especially when high energies and risks are involved.
So... adding another column in the database is going to make this more secure, how?
If an intruder... already has the value they want to match...ssn, fingerprint, drivers license... giving them another BLOB field helps security how?
Wow.
It's like I noted in the "Using computers for elections" thread - these systems are very easy to conceive of, but very hard to implement. And the devil's in the details.
Also, how much of this focus on autonomy and electrification is for boosting stock price?
Every deeper investigation I've read suggests Level 4 or 5 autonomy is a long ways off.
Also the standard knock on electrification is that if your electricity is majority generated by coal or other dirty or dangerous means, you're actually using coal-fired or nuclear cars.
I most assuredly support clean tech and vehicle autonomy, but I have a suspicion there's a lot of hype here for non-obvious purposes.
This is an important point. Billionaires become billionaires in no small part because of their ability to form social networks with political leaders, who also are highly capable social networkers. This has led to the de facto legalization of bribery for politicians ("if money is speech, corporations and the wealthy have a lot more of it than you"), and selective blindness after the Financial Crisis of 2008, to the crimes of the financial sector (no financial sector executive went to jail for any deceptive and unethical behavior related to the crisis).
It's like that XKCD comic of a crypto-nerd's dream of a secure system. The social engineering aspect of the donor class plus politicians cannot be ignored. They would work, as they do now, to boost each other. And it's no small stretch to consider they would work to undermine any secure voting system, in order to preserve the status quo. That the status quo was preserved after something as cataclysmic as the Financial Crisis, a once in a century event, is a testament to their power.
If I could log into a website securely, I mean as securely as as a bank's business-to-business website with a PGP encryption angle. Like:
* Username
* strong password
* PIN (i.e. second password)
* RSA key-fob token number supplied by the voting office.
* I'm accessing the site from a static IP registered with the voting office.
* I submit a PGP public key to the voting office, and they send me another PIN via email with an attached encrypted text file that I can decrypt with my private key, that I use as part of the login process.
Then I'm in. I'm authenticated. I select the candidates I wish to vote for and click the "submit" button when I'm done.
* The back-end database is physically secured with a police presence. The DBAs have Top Secret clearances with polygraph.
* My vote is stored electronically, but also printed with my name and PGP public key. That is then scanned into a separate database.
* I can, after the election, log in again with the credentials above and see that what's in the database matches my scanned ballot.
* I can easily submit a complaint if they don't match.
THAT kind of a system I'd be comfortable voting online with. If I couldn't log in prior to the election (online voting would only be available prior to election day), then I'd need to do it the old fashioned way, of waiting in line and going to a physical polling place on election day.
BUT: Recall the debacle the federal government had with Healthcare.gov. And then see the OPM hack, where even fingerprints were taken. This database would be under constant, epic, assault by... everyone. So, I have a dim view that even the federal government, much less a state government could implement such a system. And getting staff for this system would be difficult. It would be a relatively mundane job BUT requiring the best people all the time. And those people would be willing to subject themselves to in-depth security clearances, as this is an issue of national security. That kind of staffing is very hit or miss for all but the top tech companies, for multiple reasons. And you add another layer of complexity due to the clearance requirements that even the top tech companies don't have.
So, it comes back to that Gordian Knot of staffing and project management. One can easily conceive of a secure system. The ability to implement it is quite another, different, problem.
Most people are probably okay drivers. They keep their eyes on the road, don't drink or cell phone or text while driving, drive mostly courteously and intelligently. I commute through heavy traffic every day and that's what I see.
HOWEVER: There's that core of imbeciles who can't get insurance because their driving records are so terrible - they're the ones most likely to wind up killing someone. I see a smaller group of people driving like idiots. (for example: during a snow/ice storm in Maryland one night, I was driving on a main highway. It seemed like everyone was leaving following distance, driving cautiously. There was ONE car I saw speeding and weaving in an out of traffic. Probably had a really miserable driving record. Also, the most aggressive drivers I've known have had really awful driving records, again, so bad they could not get private vehicle insurance).
I wonder: Of all the accidents, the fatals in particular - how many of those people could not get private automobile insurance.
They give anaesthesia to paraplegics even though they can't feel anything below the severed nerve location. That's because paraplegics will go into shock from the pain, even though they can't actually feel the pain. Like if a paraplegic gets a broken leg. So the pain is an actual phenomenon that anaesthesia somehow blocks.
There are multiple attributes that separate us from animals, just as there multiple attributes that separate whales from dogs. Language is not even the biggest, as many animals have vocal communication, though not as complex as human vocal communication.
No, the huge thing that separates man from animals is the ability to record information in a medium outside of one's mind, such as in a book or a stone tablet or a hard drive. That's the thing for which animals have no analogue.
But none of that changes the observation that we are an evolved product of the natural world, just as animals are, and we share vast numbers of similarities to animals as well (origin mythos notwithstanding).
Rejecting observed reality due to speculative or religious implications is a dangerous back-sliding into pre-scientific times.
We are not animals.
Star goes supernova, blowing off gas and dust. Solar system forms. Sun, earth, other planets form. Spins for a few billion years. Life forms on earth. Bacteria, plants, sea creatures, dinosaurs, mammals, then one particular mammalian hominin grew to dominate the planet - humans.
That creature - human - is as surely a product of the natural world as the other lifeforms on the planet. It has important differences certainly. However, our language limits our thinking on this matter, like the heliocentric view of the earth limited early human thinking. The difference between animal and human is a language based shackle, not a reality-based one.
There's a youtube video out there of a grizzly killing a moose and eating its heart, in some guy's driveway. There's another image of a badly burned buffalo fleeing from a grizzly (buffalo fell into a geyser apparently - was put down by park rangers). Another of a grizzly attacking musk oxen calves. Pretty sure that species is heavily carnivorous.
Bullshitters might be attracted to bullshitters - they might be betting on Elizabeth Holmes. She was able to fleece so many people once before, making a lot of people a lot of money, they might be betting on her abilities again. I mean look back at the year 2000 stock bubble and the 2008 housing bubble. There were many pundits screaming buy! buy! buy! (Jim Cramer, Abby Joseph Cohen, and others) and they suffered no significant negative consequence.
Of course, it's not hard to create an updraft in a stock ("Surely these big money types know something we don't! Get in before it's too late!") that is awash in liquidity injected by central banks around the world operating from the same playbook. There may even be a formula for it (in the context of a high liquidity market, $takeoff_velocity = $amount_injected/$market_cap).
It's a well-known phenomenon known as "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations."
"THE Chinese have a saying, “Fu bu guo san dai,” or “Wealth never survives three generations.” America has its own version of this saying: “From shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” As with most old proverbs, there is a grain of truth to this—and the new rich are searching for ways to avoid history's curse." -- The Economist (likely paywalled)
I remember exactly when the tech bubble was popped back in March 2000.
1) Back on March 6, 2000, Nasdaq reached it's high, 5048.
2) Watershed event: MafiaBoy had taken down major sites like Yahoo, Amazon, ETrade, Ebay back on February 6, 2000, a month earlier.
3) Dawning realization: If these magic sites could be taken down like that, and then later discovered by a teenager, could they really be worth the 10s of billions at which they were valued?
With crypto's:
1) Watershed event: Litecoin founder cashes out.
2) Dawning realization: If one of you gentle readers buys something, it's got to be recorded on the crypto database/ledger on my computer. And every other crypto holder's computer. Not so efficient. Plus a host of other shortcomings vis a vis other physical or financial assets.
Actually, you made a common charge, which the responder eloquently demolished. Sounds like an "own" rather than a "troll."
Surging house prices is a world-wide phenomenon, and they move somewhat in concert.
So, there's something more going on here. I think it has a lot to do with concurrently surging global central bank balance sheets. Finding a chart of "central bank balance sheets" (including the Fed, PBOC, ECB, and BOJ) should be informative.
Instead of social media overtly controlling content, Pai would prefer the ISPs covertly do it.
Here's an interesting list of who contributes money to whom. AT&T is predominantly Republican while Comcast is predominantly Democrat.