I don't own a gun and have never fired one (let's just say I'm too aware of my penchant for being a klutz and I know that DOESN'T mix with firearms), but I definitely think that the idea of mandatory gun safety classes are a good thing. The people who treat guns like some fun toy to play with slant some people's perception of gun owners. They overshadow the many responsible gun owners because "man unloads gun, puts it away securely, nobody injured" doesn't make for as good a headline as "man leaves loaded gun on coffee table, toddler shoots man."
I think we can definitely have gun control in this country that states that you have a right to own a gun but that said right also comes with the responsibility to be safe using it. Doing something stupid like leaving your loaded gun in the back seat with a child should be grounds for being denied ownership of any firearm - at the very least until the person takes a refresher safety course.
I know people are going to cry "Second Amendment" and everything, but if you're so stupid as to leave a weapon where a 2 year old can get to it (especially if it's in the back seat of a car with the child in the back), you should lose your right to own a gun. I have nothing against responsible gun owners - which are likely the vast majority of gun owners - but there's a very visible minority who seem to act like guns are a fun toy to play with or just leave lying around instead of the dangerous weapons that they really are.
However, early detection can also lead to early treatment which can greatly reduce costs. For example, we spent years going from doctor to doctor to figure out what was happening with our son. After years, we got a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism. He's now getting help to learn social skills that come naturally to other kids. Research has shown that the earlier the detection and the earlier intervention starts, the more effective it is. If this was able to be diagnosed from a genetic scan back when we first saw something wrong, we could have started years sooner and would have been much further along. (He has progressed a lot, but there are always those moments when you realize that he might be intellectually ahead of his peers, but he is four years behind them socially/emotionally.)
And how do you define "faulty?" If the baby has a terminal condition that will result in his death in 2-4 years? If the baby has genes that predispose him to have childhood cancer when he is 9? If the baby has autism? If the baby might develop epilepsy? If the baby will develop Alzheimer's when he is and old man? If the baby has brown eyes because blue eyes are so much better? If the baby is too short? If the baby is too fat?
Defining people as being "faulty" and declaring that you won't keep those people around is a slippery slope. (And without meaning to Godwin the thread, yes this slippery slope has been gone down many times in many different cultures and it's never had a happy result.)
I had the same conversation with my father when I was explaining the Internet to him decades ago. He couldn't wrap his mind around the fact that there wasn't some President/CEO Of The Internet who controlled it all.
Then again, this is the same guy who told me that my lending a friend a tape drive so he could back up his data during a virus infection would result in the virus infecting the tape drive and then infecting my computer when I hooked the drive up to my system (using a different tape entirely).
This article says we'd need 20% efficient solar panels covering 191,817 square miles (496,803 square km) to supply the world's energy needs. Of course, these panels could be spread out across continents. Previously oil producing nations could easily become solar energy giants by placing tons of solar panels in their deserts. Houses could cut "from the grid" energy needs by placing solar panels on their roofs. The US could use desert lands in the south west to become energy independent.
With the cost of solar panels dropping and efficiency rising, the cost of this venture and the area needed is sure to shrink as time goes on.
The poster meant "need" as in "need to convert to electricity." Only a tiny fraction of sunlight reaches our planet. If we put an object in orbit around the sun such that it was always ahead of or behind us in orbit, it could collect solar radiation that would otherwise never touch Earth and could beam that power back to us. We could also put something in place above or below our orbital plane to collect the solar radiation that goes up or down (or what constitutes up and down in space relative to our orbital plane). In either case, if we could intercept the equivalent of 1-2% of the Earth's daily solar radiation (from radiation that would otherwise not hit the Earth), we could completely solve our energy needs. (Well, at least for the next few billion years. We'll leave that energy crisis to far-flung future generations to solve.)
By "keep going straight", I meant more "stay on the road in the current lane" than "generally go straight ahead." The latter we have today (assuming your car is properly aligned and you don't veer onto the sidewalk). The former would be a step towards self-driving cars.
I don't think we'll have self-driving cars right away. Instead, we'll have cars with "Enhanced Cruise Control." You get into a lane on a highway, hit Enhanced Cruise Control, and your car will stay in that lane (turning left or right as needed) keeping to the speed you set but slowing down if needed (e.g. if the car in front of you brakes). For long car trips, this would mean that a bulk of your trip would be automated. You'd still need a driver there to take control once you wanted to leave the highway and you might not be able to use this during bad weather (just like you wouldn't put cruise control on during a snowstorm), but it would be one step towards autonomous cars.
As the software gets more refined and the edge cases are dealt with better, the car will be able to handle more driving situations. For example, "automatically stop at red lights" or "keep going straight unless the driver indicates otherwise." Eventually, cars driving themselves will be the norm and human drivers will be the exception.
The only way it would be even remotely safe for Snowden to return would be if he received a presidential pardon for any "crimes" he committed while revealing the NSA spying activities. However, do President will do this for fear of being branded a "in league with a traitor." Even if a President were to pardon Snowden, you can bet he'd be under constant surveillance and the first time he stepped out of line (say, drove 5mph over the speed limit), he'd wind up getting the maximum penalty. This could be used to harass him and make his life miserable. He could also wind up the victim of a "horrible freak accident." He's angered a lot of people who have a lot of power and his actions have made it slightly harder for those people to get even more power. This isn't the kind of thing that just vanishes because one person says he's pardoned.
The attack surface isn't a small one, but that doesn't mean that law enforcement will be dedicating tons of resources to catch anyone who utilizes the attack. If the compromised sites are small, law enforcement might not care enough to do anything other than fill out a police report. If the attackers are based outside the US, local law enforcement will do nothing and Federal law enforcement might not be able to touch them.
Just because a lot of sites might be compromised doesn't mean law enforcement can clamp down on anyone who uses the attack vector.
Considering that I work with WordPress on a daily basis - both on a surface level (installing plugins/themes) and on a deeper level (coding plugins and themes) - yes I do know what it is. If you hacked someone's WordPress installation, you could alter their theme to include ads or you could change content to link to sites of yours. You could also install plugins to perform actions such as e-mailing people (i.e. sending spam) or adding forms for users to fill out that collect personal information (i.e. phishing). All of these could wind up giving you (as the hypothetical WordPress hacker) money.
I think that the militarization also amplifies the bad eggs in police departments. Years ago, a potential bad cop who gets off by enforcing his power over others might get a gun to play with. That was good for them, but had limited impact. Now, he can essentially be part of a paramilitary organization with all the equipment a group like that would have. This attracts more people who want to be cops not to enforce the law or help people, but to wield power over others which leads to peaceful protests being met with military-style responses.
In defense of the honest cops who don't rat out the dirty cops, there seems to be a "protect your own" atmosphere in police stations. What happens there is immense pressure not to finger a fellow officer no matter what they did. Breaking this code can result in your life being made a living hell - and considering the powers most police get, they are well equipped to make someone's life a living hell.
This isn't meant to excuse the honest cops' silence, but to explain why it'll take more than a couple of honest officers speaking up to change the situation. There needs to be a change in the culture of law enforcement organizations to value honesty and following the law over "standing with your fellow officer no matter what."
There are definitely the "person should have done X differently" scenarios, but there are also scenarios where the officers enter the encounter already expecting it to go south and itching to use whatever they have available to them against their alleged perpetrator (e.g. taser guns, regular guns, choke holds, etc.). In this case, there should also be mandatory training for officers on how to deal with people who don't immediately comply. Sometimes, the people might not be able to for some reason and responding by pulling out the taser or the gun might not be the best method to resolve the conflict. Furthermore, officers who do use inappropriate levels of force should be tossed out and not simply "given a desk job" or "transferred to another department."
Even if the attacker was stupid enough to use their own home connection (as opposed to using a bot net, VPN, or some other method of obscuring his IP address), that doesn't mean he'll be caught.
When my identity was stolen, I had to prompt the police to track down the online form that was used. We finally got the IP address used to submit the form as well as the exact date and time that it was submitted. This means we caught the criminal, right? Wrong. This IP address was in another jurisdiction and the police weren't motivated to devote a lot of resources to something that would wind up out of their jurisdiction. The investigation fizzled and nobody was ever charged for anything. Again, it doesn't mean we had the criminal's IP address, but it was a solid lead and the electronic nature of the evidence plus the different jurisdiction worked against me getting any resolution.
The same would be true of a WordPress hacker. You might have an IP address, but will the police listen to "my website - SomeSmallTimeWebSite.com - was hacked, here's an IP address in another state/country"? Would they actually put in the time and effort to pursue this criminal? Or would they have you fill out a police report and then file it under "don't care enough/not enough resources to pursue"? Unless you could prove that your hacking was part of some larger criminal organization, my guess is it would be the latter.
Do you seriously think that a hacker that broke into a site to place ads on it is going to rely on their money being delivered physically to some location that's likely to have police around it? Their money will be electronically transferred to an account in a country that looks the other way (or, at least, will look the other way for a "reasonable fee"). If the hacker is in the US, the money will transfer through a few different accounts so that the trail is difficult to follow. If the hacker is actually in one of these countries, he might be all but untouchable. The hacker might also be working with a criminal organization that has political pull in their area. (Read: If you oppose them, you and your family wind up dead.)
People hack websites and make money from it every day. If hacking sites wasn't profitable, security would be less of a concern. (NOTE: It would still be a concern as people hacking "for the fun of it" would still exist, but those people are outweighed by the "hacking for profit" folks.)
Agreed. I use a plugin called Apocalypse Meow to do this, but there are a dozen others that can do the same. It's not a perfect solution (attackers can come at you from thousands of compromised computers under their control), but the more speed bumps you place in a potential hacker's way, the more likely he is to decide to skip your site and focus on an easier target. (It's the security equivalent of not needing to run faster than a bear, just faster than other people who are running away from the bear.)
One of the first things you should do with any WordPress installation is make sure that the admin username isn't "admin", your site's name, "administrator", or simmering else that is easily guessable.
I have a login limiting plugin on my sites that keeps track of bad logins. Over 90% of bad login attempts use admin, the site name, or administrator. Making the admin username difficult to guess greatly decreases the chances that someone will brute force their way into your system.
The VW boss recently said "It's the decision of a couple of software engineers, not the board members." It looks like those two software engineers snuck into all these other car companies and altered their systems also! How nefarious!
My guess is that self-driving cars will, in the case of accidents, have a "black box" that will be able to tell investigators just what was going on with the car including whether self-driving mode was engaged or not. So if the accident investigators determine that your car was at fault, but your car was in self-driving mode at the time, you'd be off the hook for liability.
The thing is most government security agencies aren't saying "ban all encryption" but are saying "just give us 'law enforcement only' backdoors into all encryption." They try to present this as some kind of reasonable compromise, but they ignore the giant, gaping hole they'd create. No backdoor can be totally secured as "law enforcement only." At some point, someone will figure out how to spoof their way in. And then that "wonderful-encryption-with-government-backdoors" will be worthless. Except the politicians prefer to ignore this problem and just shout "TERRORISTS COULD USE ENCRYPTION" louder and louder as if that's an argument against it. (Terrorists also breathe air. We should ban all air!)
Don't worry, when a big company transmits your name/address/SSN/DOB in the clear with no encryption, some new credit cards will be opened in your name.
As the parent of two kids in public school in New York, I can personally attest that John King was horrible. He pushed a high stakes testing regime whose only purpose seemed to be funneling money to Pearson. When parents complained at a public forum he hosted, he responded by refusing to hold any more public forums until he could change them around so nobody could complain at them. In short, the parents were responding to his changes with valid concerns (e.g. kids stressing out with tests so much they were vomiting on their papers) and he "addressed" these concerns by refusing to listen to feedback and doubling down on his failing strategy.
Sadly, once he left, Governor Cuomo has not only continued down the path John King was headed, but has made matters much worse. Cuomo's made it clear that he won't be happy until all public schools are closed and are replaced by business run charter schools (whose businesses contribute to his campaigns).
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I don't own a gun and have never fired one (let's just say I'm too aware of my penchant for being a klutz and I know that DOESN'T mix with firearms), but I definitely think that the idea of mandatory gun safety classes are a good thing. The people who treat guns like some fun toy to play with slant some people's perception of gun owners. They overshadow the many responsible gun owners because "man unloads gun, puts it away securely, nobody injured" doesn't make for as good a headline as "man leaves loaded gun on coffee table, toddler shoots man."
I think we can definitely have gun control in this country that states that you have a right to own a gun but that said right also comes with the responsibility to be safe using it. Doing something stupid like leaving your loaded gun in the back seat with a child should be grounds for being denied ownership of any firearm - at the very least until the person takes a refresher safety course.
I know people are going to cry "Second Amendment" and everything, but if you're so stupid as to leave a weapon where a 2 year old can get to it (especially if it's in the back seat of a car with the child in the back), you should lose your right to own a gun. I have nothing against responsible gun owners - which are likely the vast majority of gun owners - but there's a very visible minority who seem to act like guns are a fun toy to play with or just leave lying around instead of the dangerous weapons that they really are.
However, early detection can also lead to early treatment which can greatly reduce costs. For example, we spent years going from doctor to doctor to figure out what was happening with our son. After years, we got a diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism. He's now getting help to learn social skills that come naturally to other kids. Research has shown that the earlier the detection and the earlier intervention starts, the more effective it is. If this was able to be diagnosed from a genetic scan back when we first saw something wrong, we could have started years sooner and would have been much further along. (He has progressed a lot, but there are always those moments when you realize that he might be intellectually ahead of his peers, but he is four years behind them socially/emotionally.)
And how do you define "faulty?" If the baby has a terminal condition that will result in his death in 2-4 years? If the baby has genes that predispose him to have childhood cancer when he is 9? If the baby has autism? If the baby might develop epilepsy? If the baby will develop Alzheimer's when he is and old man? If the baby has brown eyes because blue eyes are so much better? If the baby is too short? If the baby is too fat?
Defining people as being "faulty" and declaring that you won't keep those people around is a slippery slope. (And without meaning to Godwin the thread, yes this slippery slope has been gone down many times in many different cultures and it's never had a happy result.)
That would explain why the Internet is so decentralized. Have you ever tried to get a group of cats together into an organized structure?
I had the same conversation with my father when I was explaining the Internet to him decades ago. He couldn't wrap his mind around the fact that there wasn't some President/CEO Of The Internet who controlled it all.
Then again, this is the same guy who told me that my lending a friend a tape drive so he could back up his data during a virus infection would result in the virus infecting the tape drive and then infecting my computer when I hooked the drive up to my system (using a different tape entirely).
This article says we'd need 20% efficient solar panels covering 191,817 square miles (496,803 square km) to supply the world's energy needs. Of course, these panels could be spread out across continents. Previously oil producing nations could easily become solar energy giants by placing tons of solar panels in their deserts. Houses could cut "from the grid" energy needs by placing solar panels on their roofs. The US could use desert lands in the south west to become energy independent.
With the cost of solar panels dropping and efficiency rising, the cost of this venture and the area needed is sure to shrink as time goes on.
The poster meant "need" as in "need to convert to electricity." Only a tiny fraction of sunlight reaches our planet. If we put an object in orbit around the sun such that it was always ahead of or behind us in orbit, it could collect solar radiation that would otherwise never touch Earth and could beam that power back to us. We could also put something in place above or below our orbital plane to collect the solar radiation that goes up or down (or what constitutes up and down in space relative to our orbital plane). In either case, if we could intercept the equivalent of 1-2% of the Earth's daily solar radiation (from radiation that would otherwise not hit the Earth), we could completely solve our energy needs. (Well, at least for the next few billion years. We'll leave that energy crisis to far-flung future generations to solve.)
By "keep going straight", I meant more "stay on the road in the current lane" than "generally go straight ahead." The latter we have today (assuming your car is properly aligned and you don't veer onto the sidewalk). The former would be a step towards self-driving cars.
I don't think we'll have self-driving cars right away. Instead, we'll have cars with "Enhanced Cruise Control." You get into a lane on a highway, hit Enhanced Cruise Control, and your car will stay in that lane (turning left or right as needed) keeping to the speed you set but slowing down if needed (e.g. if the car in front of you brakes). For long car trips, this would mean that a bulk of your trip would be automated. You'd still need a driver there to take control once you wanted to leave the highway and you might not be able to use this during bad weather (just like you wouldn't put cruise control on during a snowstorm), but it would be one step towards autonomous cars.
As the software gets more refined and the edge cases are dealt with better, the car will be able to handle more driving situations. For example, "automatically stop at red lights" or "keep going straight unless the driver indicates otherwise." Eventually, cars driving themselves will be the norm and human drivers will be the exception.
The only way it would be even remotely safe for Snowden to return would be if he received a presidential pardon for any "crimes" he committed while revealing the NSA spying activities. However, do President will do this for fear of being branded a "in league with a traitor." Even if a President were to pardon Snowden, you can bet he'd be under constant surveillance and the first time he stepped out of line (say, drove 5mph over the speed limit), he'd wind up getting the maximum penalty. This could be used to harass him and make his life miserable. He could also wind up the victim of a "horrible freak accident." He's angered a lot of people who have a lot of power and his actions have made it slightly harder for those people to get even more power. This isn't the kind of thing that just vanishes because one person says he's pardoned.
The attack surface isn't a small one, but that doesn't mean that law enforcement will be dedicating tons of resources to catch anyone who utilizes the attack. If the compromised sites are small, law enforcement might not care enough to do anything other than fill out a police report. If the attackers are based outside the US, local law enforcement will do nothing and Federal law enforcement might not be able to touch them.
Just because a lot of sites might be compromised doesn't mean law enforcement can clamp down on anyone who uses the attack vector.
Considering that I work with WordPress on a daily basis - both on a surface level (installing plugins/themes) and on a deeper level (coding plugins and themes) - yes I do know what it is. If you hacked someone's WordPress installation, you could alter their theme to include ads or you could change content to link to sites of yours. You could also install plugins to perform actions such as e-mailing people (i.e. sending spam) or adding forms for users to fill out that collect personal information (i.e. phishing). All of these could wind up giving you (as the hypothetical WordPress hacker) money.
I think that the militarization also amplifies the bad eggs in police departments. Years ago, a potential bad cop who gets off by enforcing his power over others might get a gun to play with. That was good for them, but had limited impact. Now, he can essentially be part of a paramilitary organization with all the equipment a group like that would have. This attracts more people who want to be cops not to enforce the law or help people, but to wield power over others which leads to peaceful protests being met with military-style responses.
In defense of the honest cops who don't rat out the dirty cops, there seems to be a "protect your own" atmosphere in police stations. What happens there is immense pressure not to finger a fellow officer no matter what they did. Breaking this code can result in your life being made a living hell - and considering the powers most police get, they are well equipped to make someone's life a living hell.
This isn't meant to excuse the honest cops' silence, but to explain why it'll take more than a couple of honest officers speaking up to change the situation. There needs to be a change in the culture of law enforcement organizations to value honesty and following the law over "standing with your fellow officer no matter what."
There are definitely the "person should have done X differently" scenarios, but there are also scenarios where the officers enter the encounter already expecting it to go south and itching to use whatever they have available to them against their alleged perpetrator (e.g. taser guns, regular guns, choke holds, etc.). In this case, there should also be mandatory training for officers on how to deal with people who don't immediately comply. Sometimes, the people might not be able to for some reason and responding by pulling out the taser or the gun might not be the best method to resolve the conflict. Furthermore, officers who do use inappropriate levels of force should be tossed out and not simply "given a desk job" or "transferred to another department."
Even if the attacker was stupid enough to use their own home connection (as opposed to using a bot net, VPN, or some other method of obscuring his IP address), that doesn't mean he'll be caught.
When my identity was stolen, I had to prompt the police to track down the online form that was used. We finally got the IP address used to submit the form as well as the exact date and time that it was submitted. This means we caught the criminal, right? Wrong. This IP address was in another jurisdiction and the police weren't motivated to devote a lot of resources to something that would wind up out of their jurisdiction. The investigation fizzled and nobody was ever charged for anything. Again, it doesn't mean we had the criminal's IP address, but it was a solid lead and the electronic nature of the evidence plus the different jurisdiction worked against me getting any resolution.
The same would be true of a WordPress hacker. You might have an IP address, but will the police listen to "my website - SomeSmallTimeWebSite.com - was hacked, here's an IP address in another state/country"? Would they actually put in the time and effort to pursue this criminal? Or would they have you fill out a police report and then file it under "don't care enough/not enough resources to pursue"? Unless you could prove that your hacking was part of some larger criminal organization, my guess is it would be the latter.
Do you seriously think that a hacker that broke into a site to place ads on it is going to rely on their money being delivered physically to some location that's likely to have police around it? Their money will be electronically transferred to an account in a country that looks the other way (or, at least, will look the other way for a "reasonable fee"). If the hacker is in the US, the money will transfer through a few different accounts so that the trail is difficult to follow. If the hacker is actually in one of these countries, he might be all but untouchable. The hacker might also be working with a criminal organization that has political pull in their area. (Read: If you oppose them, you and your family wind up dead.)
People hack websites and make money from it every day. If hacking sites wasn't profitable, security would be less of a concern. (NOTE: It would still be a concern as people hacking "for the fun of it" would still exist, but those people are outweighed by the "hacking for profit" folks.)
Agreed. I use a plugin called Apocalypse Meow to do this, but there are a dozen others that can do the same. It's not a perfect solution (attackers can come at you from thousands of compromised computers under their control), but the more speed bumps you place in a potential hacker's way, the more likely he is to decide to skip your site and focus on an easier target. (It's the security equivalent of not needing to run faster than a bear, just faster than other people who are running away from the bear.)
One of the first things you should do with any WordPress installation is make sure that the admin username isn't "admin", your site's name, "administrator", or simmering else that is easily guessable.
I have a login limiting plugin on my sites that keeps track of bad logins. Over 90% of bad login attempts use admin, the site name, or administrator. Making the admin username difficult to guess greatly decreases the chances that someone will brute force their way into your system.
The VW boss recently said "It's the decision of a couple of software engineers, not the board members." It looks like those two software engineers snuck into all these other car companies and altered their systems also! How nefarious!
My guess is that self-driving cars will, in the case of accidents, have a "black box" that will be able to tell investigators just what was going on with the car including whether self-driving mode was engaged or not. So if the accident investigators determine that your car was at fault, but your car was in self-driving mode at the time, you'd be off the hook for liability.
The thing is most government security agencies aren't saying "ban all encryption" but are saying "just give us 'law enforcement only' backdoors into all encryption." They try to present this as some kind of reasonable compromise, but they ignore the giant, gaping hole they'd create. No backdoor can be totally secured as "law enforcement only." At some point, someone will figure out how to spoof their way in. And then that "wonderful-encryption-with-government-backdoors" will be worthless. Except the politicians prefer to ignore this problem and just shout "TERRORISTS COULD USE ENCRYPTION" louder and louder as if that's an argument against it. (Terrorists also breathe air. We should ban all air!)
Don't worry, when a big company transmits your name/address/SSN/DOB in the clear with no encryption, some new credit cards will be opened in your name.
As the parent of two kids in public school in New York, I can personally attest that John King was horrible. He pushed a high stakes testing regime whose only purpose seemed to be funneling money to Pearson. When parents complained at a public forum he hosted, he responded by refusing to hold any more public forums until he could change them around so nobody could complain at them. In short, the parents were responding to his changes with valid concerns (e.g. kids stressing out with tests so much they were vomiting on their papers) and he "addressed" these concerns by refusing to listen to feedback and doubling down on his failing strategy.
Sadly, once he left, Governor Cuomo has not only continued down the path John King was headed, but has made matters much worse. Cuomo's made it clear that he won't be happy until all public schools are closed and are replaced by business run charter schools (whose businesses contribute to his campaigns).