I think the scammers just rely on people being so frightened by "we're the IRS, pay us or the police are coming for you" that they don't bother thinking critically about the phone call. Also, a lot of these scammers use robocalling programs. It costs them next to nothing to call a hundred people claiming to be the IRS. If only one of those people is fooled and pays them, they have a profit.
I can't remember offhand whether I went through the entire process that the IRS would take if you really owed them money, but I did specify that they would NEVER just call you out of the blue. If I get the approval to do this more, I would flesh out more of my information.
They likely think they won't get caught so they mentally reduce "risk of arrest" to zero and raise "chance of making money" to 100. An unhealthy lack of morals and basic human empathy help also. I've often said that I could have been very rich had it not been for my pesky morals.
I recently held a cyber-security discussion at a local retirement community. We went over a lot of ways to stay safe online (e.g. don't open file attachments, don't download programs from random sites, if the deal sounds too good to be true then it probably is). I also covered phone scams. My co-presenter had happened to get an IRS phone scam recently and still had it on her voicemail so we played it for them. The caller claimed to be from the IRS, said she owed money, and threatened my co-host with arrest if she didn't pay up. My co-host never paid and is still "evading the cops" (translation: living normally because no police are after her). We might have scared the residents a bit with the threats we revealed, but we reiterated that using the Internet was like going through a big city. There's lots of great stuff to see, but you just need to be careful.
I told my manager that I'd like to do this panel for other retirement communities in the area. Every person I inform about these scams is one less target for these scammers. I know it's just a drop in the bucket, but it felt great to use my knowledge to help someone avoid harm.
Copyright should go back to 14 years plus an additional optional 14 year extension. Let's use the original Legend of Zelda as a reference. It was originally released in 1986, so the first copyright period would have elapsed in 2000. Nintendo would have obviously renewed it so it would then have been copyrighted until 2014. This doesn't mean that all future Zelda games would be fair game, but it would mean that people could distribute the original Legend of Zelda ROM freely. Nintendo would have had 28 years to make money off of the game. Plenty of time.
In addition, this would help with orphaned works. Suppose there was a great game for the NES that you loved playing. You want to play it in an emulator but want to stay on the completely legal side of the law. Unfortunately, in the time since its release and today, the company was sold, split up, bankrupted, bought again, etc. Now nobody seems to know WHO owns the rights to the game. The original code might even have been deleted at some point so even the proper rights holder might not have it.
With current copyright laws in place (and using 1985 as the release date), it could fall into Public Domain somewhere between 2080 and 2105. This would be a death sentence for any orphaned work. They'll vanish before then. With 14+14, you'd be able to freely copy the game in 2013 (even assuming the copyright was renewed). Orphaned works could be saved.
Of course, this would "hurt" businesses who rely on locking things up under copyright essentially forever. They'd use all of their legal muscle to oppose any return to 14+14.
My older son loves video games and will sometimes use "Let's Play" videos as a "replacement" for some video games, but these aren't lost sales because I had no intention of buying him the console (>$300) and game (>$60 usually) anyway. For example, Super Mario Odyssey. We don't have a Nintendo Switch and have no plans on buying one. So he viewed these videos as a "replacement" for a game he wasn't going to get.
However, he'll also use Let's Play videos to figure out difficult sections of a game or to find hidden areas that he would have missed on his own. He also uses them to spot online content (Minecraft maps/skins) that he'd like using. Finally, streams these videos to listen to the people commenting on the game as well as the game itself (even in the case of games he's not buying).
Your comment is modded as Funny, but this was what I saw growing up with my father. He would work a 10 hour day, come home with a stack of work, eat dinner, and then disappear into his office to do more work. On the weekends, he had an even bigger stack to work through. I once asked him why he did this and he replied that his boss expected this level of output from him. I told him that his boss only expected this because that's what he GAVE his boss by working nights and weekends. (He wasn't paid for the extra time worked.) All that extra work only really got him fired from his job for no good reason and health problems from years of sitting around doing nothing but work.
When I first got my current job, I told them that I was willing to come in if there was an emergency, but I wouldn't be bringing work home with me. Once the day ended, I was done with work and it was "family time." They pushed back here and there. I was told that I *NEEDED* to check an "info@" e-mail box because a medical emergency e-mail might come through on a Saturday. I told them that anyone having a medical emergency who didn't call 911 and instead sent an e-mail to our "info@" mailbox deserved to have their request wait until Monday. I've completed 17 years at my job and I believe they're very happy with my work. The fact that I don't continue working on stuff after getting home doesn't negatively impact my work output but it definitely positively impacts my home life. (One could even argue that it positively affects me work output by keeping me from burning out.)
There's also variations within each job. I'm a web developer. There are weeks when I could work three days of 8 hours each and finish all of my projects. Then there are weeks when I could work five 10 hour days and STILL not keep up.
My guess is that it's more like with a 5 day week, employees are working at 70%, with the remaining 30% lost to stress/low morale/worries about home life. After the 4 day week shift, employees worked at 90% with the increase coming from less stress/higher morale/less worries about home life. (Confession: Numbers pulled out of thin air. Use them as examples, not hard and fast figures.) This increase might not be able to be replicated if you shifted to a 3 or 2 day work week because then you'd get higher stress as projects faltered or you'd need to compensate with extremely long work days, tiring employees out. It'll also be interesting to see if this holds up over time or if employees get used to the 4 day work week/3 day weekend and start wishing for 4 day weekends.
Why should your value to society be judged on whether or not you're someone else's employee? If I had a whole day to do anything I wanted, I'd write more, releasing more stories for people to read. I'd do more freelance, still making web sites/applications, but as my own employee. I'd do more with my kids, raising them to be even better members of society. I'd spend more time with my wife, perhaps "consuming" more during days out together. I might even try making my own little company if I had a good enough idea for one. My value to society shouldn't be judged on whether I'm currently at work or in a store buying something.
And the problem is always that, as the Democrats clean up the messes the Republicans left behind, they sometimes have to make some unpopular moves to tidy things up. Then the Republicans come in blaming the Democrats for the mess and claiming that they aren't fixing it right. People - who tend to have short memories - then blame the Democrats and vote Republican. The Republicans take office and mess things up again. And thus the pattern repeats. The Political Circle of Life.
Fine. Random people can't edit it, but could drug companies? Could a company looking to push Drug X as a treatment for Condition Y give a big donation and have the Condition Y page edited to say that Drug X should be used? Alternatively, could a group of page editors, set in their ways, keep control over Condition Y's page and keep any new treatments from being listed because they think Drug X is the best and that's how they always treated it? (Much like Wikipedia has some editors that control pages and will refuse to change those pages even when confronted with actual experts.)
Have you heard of the issues Wikipedia has? Do you really want a drug company rapidly changing an entry all the time to say "Drug X is the best treatment for Illness Y"? Do you want an editor or group of editors who are so locked into one procedure that they refuse to alter the page to reflect different findings?
The value wasn't in the database per se, but in the filtering out of influence and only posting the best articles. Shutting this down and turning it into a "Wikipedia" project would be giving it a massive dose of influence to cure a non-existent disease.
Hillary and Trump really represented two opposite types of people. Hillary loved getting into the details on policy and learning everything about it. Her problem here, though, was that she wasn't really good at boiling that policy knowledge down to catchy statements and energizing speeches. "Read my twenty page policy proposal on Immigration on my website" doesn't exactly draw crowds to the voting booth.
Trump, on the other hand, has zero knowledge of policy and no desire to learn. He seems to go based on whatever pops into his head at that moment or whatever someone told him last. However, much as I hate him I've got to admit that he seems to know how to fire up a crowd. He might not know how to deal with the complex immigration issues, but he can shout "Build that wall" and get people cheering for him.
This election was between no flash/all substance and no substance/all flash. Flash won and substance lost. Yes, this is a huge simplification, but I think this was a big part of it. Trump actually won by about 77,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Had just over half of those votes gone to Hillary instead of Trump, she would be President now. Had Hillary been able to resonate more with those people, she might have won the election. Sadly, this isn't the only instance. All too often, Americans seem to go for a flashy option even if the "more boring" option is better in other ways.
The Republicans have been building a hatred for Hillary Clinton since 1993 when he took office. The 2016 elections were over two decades of hatred erupting. You can see it how they still go on about Hillary even after she hasn't been in or running for public office for 20 months. They will STILL go on about her supposed crimes and how horrible she is. They turned her into a boogeyman (boogeywoman?) representing all evil in the world. Now that she's gone from public life, they need someone else to focus their hate on. Yes, they can direct hatred at Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, or Elizabeth Warren, but it's not the same as the hatred they've had for over 20 years.
I really wish we'd move towards ranked voting. Not only would it give a better idea of voter preference over "pick column A or B:, but it would also allow third party candidates to run.
Imagine a Ranked Voting situation in 2016. Hillary and Trump win their primaries. For the moment, we'll ignore the third party candidates who did run and suppose that Bernie Sanders decided to run third party. Perhaps someone from the GOP (let's say Jeb Bush just to pick one at semi-random) would have ran third party also.
Someone who votes Democrat but didn't like Hillary could vote: 1) Bernie 2) Hillary 3) Jeb. Someone who votes Republican but didn't like Trump could vote 1) Jeb 2) Trump 3) Bernie. This way they say "I'll still vote for my party's candidate, but I prefer this other candidate more." The 2016 election might have turned out with Bernie or Jeb winning instead of Hillary or Trump.
Of course, it's precisely this reason why it won't be done. The Democrats and GOP don't want a strong third party.
The problem with most of the "-isms" is that they deal with ideal worlds. In an ideal world, rich people would be generous, government would always be benevolent and honest, people would be altruistic, and everyone would be smart/honest. Of course, all of these break down when we move from the ideal world to the real world. In the real world, some rich people are generous, but others just accumulate money/power and don't give back. In the real world, government can be benevolent/honest, but is also often corrupt and dishonest. In the real world, people can sometimes be altruistic/smart/honest, but can also be greedy, dumb, and lie. I don't think ideals are necessarily a bad thing. It's important to have a vision of an ideal world you want to work towards. However, at the same time, you need to acknowledge where the real world diverges from the ideal world and build protections in your "-ism" to handle the case of when your ideal breaks down.
Being in the Trump administration is a choice. They could easily decide tomorrow to resign and go work somewhere else. Someone who is LGBTQ can't choose to change who they are. They can't decide tomorrow to be straight any more than a black man can decide that he's really white and have his skin tone change.
Treating people worse because of WHO they are is discrimination. Treating people badly because of what they CHOOSE to do is consequences for their actions.
Here's the difference: You can choose your political affiliation. I happen to vote Democrat, but if I wanted to I could decide tomorrow that I'd only vote straight ticket Republican, Independent, or pick some random party to vote for. My support or opposition to policies that the Trump administration puts in place are my choice just like it's Sarah's choice to work for Trump.
A Gay couple, black person, or transgender person has no choice in who they are. A black person can't just decide to become white and a gay person can "pretend to be" straight, but can't really decide to change their sexual orientation. Religion is a choice do some degree, but if you were born as a Muslim lady, you can't change this fact. The mere fact that you were born into a certain religion is proof enough to some people that you are "defective." For example, I'm Jewish. I could choose tomorrow to join a church and become Christian, but I was born and raised Jewish. That alone would be enough for many anti-Semites to declare me a horrible person. (For example, one GOP politician running for office who has said that Jews are the spawn of Satan.)
So basically anytime you see someone who is Latino or is speaking Spanish, you assume they're an illegal alien and report them to ICE? Because citizens have to look like you and speak English to be citizens?
Also, since when did the Slashdot crowd become fans of big government and surveillance?
Just because a million people uses OpenSSH every day doesn't mean that it's more secure, unless someone sits down and audits it, it could as well be closed source.
This is a great distinction that is often overlooked. A million people using a piece of software doesn't mean a million people hunting for security flaws in the code. A large percentage of the users will be the "download and use it" type. Even if you put the source code on their screen and highlighted the section of code with the security flaw for them, their eyes would glaze over and they wouldn't be able to tell you what was wrong. Then there are the programmers who might be able to go through the code if they spent the time, but are busy with their own stuff and are only using this product to improve their own workflows. (Yes, ideally you should security audit every tool you use, but often time is limited and you need to trust that some things are secure or put security measures in place to deal with the inevitable security flaws.) Out of the million people using the software, very few are likely examining it and looking for security holes. This doesn't mean that OpenSSH and similar open source tools are insecure, just that you can't tout "one million users = one million people checking for security holes = we're secure."
That was the first thing I thought of also, but our knowledge of the brain is a lot better now than it was in the early 1900s. This would be a lot more targeted electricity. (Not saying that I'm convinced that it works, just that it's a possibility.) It would be like saying that you once used a sledgehammer to hang a picture frame and got a hole in it therefore nobody with a small hammer could hang a photo on a wall.
They still allow anonymous browsing. I can go into Incognito Mode (to ensure no login cookies) and browse Reddit forums all I like. Perhaps a few sub-Reddits have login requirements built in, but none that I frequent do.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the scammers just rely on people being so frightened by "we're the IRS, pay us or the police are coming for you" that they don't bother thinking critically about the phone call. Also, a lot of these scammers use robocalling programs. It costs them next to nothing to call a hundred people claiming to be the IRS. If only one of those people is fooled and pays them, they have a profit.
I can't remember offhand whether I went through the entire process that the IRS would take if you really owed them money, but I did specify that they would NEVER just call you out of the blue. If I get the approval to do this more, I would flesh out more of my information.
Maybe they could put them all on one service. Some place on the InterNET where all the FLIX are available. They could call it FLIXNET!
They likely think they won't get caught so they mentally reduce "risk of arrest" to zero and raise "chance of making money" to 100. An unhealthy lack of morals and basic human empathy help also. I've often said that I could have been very rich had it not been for my pesky morals.
I recently held a cyber-security discussion at a local retirement community. We went over a lot of ways to stay safe online (e.g. don't open file attachments, don't download programs from random sites, if the deal sounds too good to be true then it probably is). I also covered phone scams. My co-presenter had happened to get an IRS phone scam recently and still had it on her voicemail so we played it for them. The caller claimed to be from the IRS, said she owed money, and threatened my co-host with arrest if she didn't pay up. My co-host never paid and is still "evading the cops" (translation: living normally because no police are after her). We might have scared the residents a bit with the threats we revealed, but we reiterated that using the Internet was like going through a big city. There's lots of great stuff to see, but you just need to be careful.
I told my manager that I'd like to do this panel for other retirement communities in the area. Every person I inform about these scams is one less target for these scammers. I know it's just a drop in the bucket, but it felt great to use my knowledge to help someone avoid harm.
Copyright should go back to 14 years plus an additional optional 14 year extension. Let's use the original Legend of Zelda as a reference. It was originally released in 1986, so the first copyright period would have elapsed in 2000. Nintendo would have obviously renewed it so it would then have been copyrighted until 2014. This doesn't mean that all future Zelda games would be fair game, but it would mean that people could distribute the original Legend of Zelda ROM freely. Nintendo would have had 28 years to make money off of the game. Plenty of time.
In addition, this would help with orphaned works. Suppose there was a great game for the NES that you loved playing. You want to play it in an emulator but want to stay on the completely legal side of the law. Unfortunately, in the time since its release and today, the company was sold, split up, bankrupted, bought again, etc. Now nobody seems to know WHO owns the rights to the game. The original code might even have been deleted at some point so even the proper rights holder might not have it.
With current copyright laws in place (and using 1985 as the release date), it could fall into Public Domain somewhere between 2080 and 2105. This would be a death sentence for any orphaned work. They'll vanish before then. With 14+14, you'd be able to freely copy the game in 2013 (even assuming the copyright was renewed). Orphaned works could be saved.
Of course, this would "hurt" businesses who rely on locking things up under copyright essentially forever. They'd use all of their legal muscle to oppose any return to 14+14.
My older son loves video games and will sometimes use "Let's Play" videos as a "replacement" for some video games, but these aren't lost sales because I had no intention of buying him the console (>$300) and game (>$60 usually) anyway. For example, Super Mario Odyssey. We don't have a Nintendo Switch and have no plans on buying one. So he viewed these videos as a "replacement" for a game he wasn't going to get.
However, he'll also use Let's Play videos to figure out difficult sections of a game or to find hidden areas that he would have missed on his own. He also uses them to spot online content (Minecraft maps/skins) that he'd like using. Finally, streams these videos to listen to the people commenting on the game as well as the game itself (even in the case of games he's not buying).
Your comment is modded as Funny, but this was what I saw growing up with my father. He would work a 10 hour day, come home with a stack of work, eat dinner, and then disappear into his office to do more work. On the weekends, he had an even bigger stack to work through. I once asked him why he did this and he replied that his boss expected this level of output from him. I told him that his boss only expected this because that's what he GAVE his boss by working nights and weekends. (He wasn't paid for the extra time worked.) All that extra work only really got him fired from his job for no good reason and health problems from years of sitting around doing nothing but work.
When I first got my current job, I told them that I was willing to come in if there was an emergency, but I wouldn't be bringing work home with me. Once the day ended, I was done with work and it was "family time." They pushed back here and there. I was told that I *NEEDED* to check an "info@" e-mail box because a medical emergency e-mail might come through on a Saturday. I told them that anyone having a medical emergency who didn't call 911 and instead sent an e-mail to our "info@" mailbox deserved to have their request wait until Monday. I've completed 17 years at my job and I believe they're very happy with my work. The fact that I don't continue working on stuff after getting home doesn't negatively impact my work output but it definitely positively impacts my home life. (One could even argue that it positively affects me work output by keeping me from burning out.)
There's also variations within each job. I'm a web developer. There are weeks when I could work three days of 8 hours each and finish all of my projects. Then there are weeks when I could work five 10 hour days and STILL not keep up.
My guess is that it's more like with a 5 day week, employees are working at 70%, with the remaining 30% lost to stress/low morale/worries about home life. After the 4 day week shift, employees worked at 90% with the increase coming from less stress/higher morale/less worries about home life. (Confession: Numbers pulled out of thin air. Use them as examples, not hard and fast figures.) This increase might not be able to be replicated if you shifted to a 3 or 2 day work week because then you'd get higher stress as projects faltered or you'd need to compensate with extremely long work days, tiring employees out. It'll also be interesting to see if this holds up over time or if employees get used to the 4 day work week/3 day weekend and start wishing for 4 day weekends.
Why should your value to society be judged on whether or not you're someone else's employee? If I had a whole day to do anything I wanted, I'd write more, releasing more stories for people to read. I'd do more freelance, still making web sites/applications, but as my own employee. I'd do more with my kids, raising them to be even better members of society. I'd spend more time with my wife, perhaps "consuming" more during days out together. I might even try making my own little company if I had a good enough idea for one. My value to society shouldn't be judged on whether I'm currently at work or in a store buying something.
And the problem is always that, as the Democrats clean up the messes the Republicans left behind, they sometimes have to make some unpopular moves to tidy things up. Then the Republicans come in blaming the Democrats for the mess and claiming that they aren't fixing it right. People - who tend to have short memories - then blame the Democrats and vote Republican. The Republicans take office and mess things up again. And thus the pattern repeats. The Political Circle of Life.
Fine. Random people can't edit it, but could drug companies? Could a company looking to push Drug X as a treatment for Condition Y give a big donation and have the Condition Y page edited to say that Drug X should be used? Alternatively, could a group of page editors, set in their ways, keep control over Condition Y's page and keep any new treatments from being listed because they think Drug X is the best and that's how they always treated it? (Much like Wikipedia has some editors that control pages and will refuse to change those pages even when confronted with actual experts.)
Have you heard of the issues Wikipedia has? Do you really want a drug company rapidly changing an entry all the time to say "Drug X is the best treatment for Illness Y"? Do you want an editor or group of editors who are so locked into one procedure that they refuse to alter the page to reflect different findings?
The value wasn't in the database per se, but in the filtering out of influence and only posting the best articles. Shutting this down and turning it into a "Wikipedia" project would be giving it a massive dose of influence to cure a non-existent disease.
Hillary and Trump really represented two opposite types of people. Hillary loved getting into the details on policy and learning everything about it. Her problem here, though, was that she wasn't really good at boiling that policy knowledge down to catchy statements and energizing speeches. "Read my twenty page policy proposal on Immigration on my website" doesn't exactly draw crowds to the voting booth.
Trump, on the other hand, has zero knowledge of policy and no desire to learn. He seems to go based on whatever pops into his head at that moment or whatever someone told him last. However, much as I hate him I've got to admit that he seems to know how to fire up a crowd. He might not know how to deal with the complex immigration issues, but he can shout "Build that wall" and get people cheering for him.
This election was between no flash/all substance and no substance/all flash. Flash won and substance lost. Yes, this is a huge simplification, but I think this was a big part of it. Trump actually won by about 77,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Had just over half of those votes gone to Hillary instead of Trump, she would be President now. Had Hillary been able to resonate more with those people, she might have won the election. Sadly, this isn't the only instance. All too often, Americans seem to go for a flashy option even if the "more boring" option is better in other ways.
The Republicans have been building a hatred for Hillary Clinton since 1993 when he took office. The 2016 elections were over two decades of hatred erupting. You can see it how they still go on about Hillary even after she hasn't been in or running for public office for 20 months. They will STILL go on about her supposed crimes and how horrible she is. They turned her into a boogeyman (boogeywoman?) representing all evil in the world. Now that she's gone from public life, they need someone else to focus their hate on. Yes, they can direct hatred at Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, or Elizabeth Warren, but it's not the same as the hatred they've had for over 20 years.
I really wish we'd move towards ranked voting. Not only would it give a better idea of voter preference over "pick column A or B:, but it would also allow third party candidates to run.
Imagine a Ranked Voting situation in 2016. Hillary and Trump win their primaries. For the moment, we'll ignore the third party candidates who did run and suppose that Bernie Sanders decided to run third party. Perhaps someone from the GOP (let's say Jeb Bush just to pick one at semi-random) would have ran third party also.
Someone who votes Democrat but didn't like Hillary could vote: 1) Bernie 2) Hillary 3) Jeb. Someone who votes Republican but didn't like Trump could vote 1) Jeb 2) Trump 3) Bernie. This way they say "I'll still vote for my party's candidate, but I prefer this other candidate more." The 2016 election might have turned out with Bernie or Jeb winning instead of Hillary or Trump.
Of course, it's precisely this reason why it won't be done. The Democrats and GOP don't want a strong third party.
The problem with most of the "-isms" is that they deal with ideal worlds. In an ideal world, rich people would be generous, government would always be benevolent and honest, people would be altruistic, and everyone would be smart/honest. Of course, all of these break down when we move from the ideal world to the real world. In the real world, some rich people are generous, but others just accumulate money/power and don't give back. In the real world, government can be benevolent/honest, but is also often corrupt and dishonest. In the real world, people can sometimes be altruistic/smart/honest, but can also be greedy, dumb, and lie. I don't think ideals are necessarily a bad thing. It's important to have a vision of an ideal world you want to work towards. However, at the same time, you need to acknowledge where the real world diverges from the ideal world and build protections in your "-ism" to handle the case of when your ideal breaks down.
Being in the Trump administration is a choice. They could easily decide tomorrow to resign and go work somewhere else. Someone who is LGBTQ can't choose to change who they are. They can't decide tomorrow to be straight any more than a black man can decide that he's really white and have his skin tone change.
Treating people worse because of WHO they are is discrimination. Treating people badly because of what they CHOOSE to do is consequences for their actions.
Here's the difference: You can choose your political affiliation. I happen to vote Democrat, but if I wanted to I could decide tomorrow that I'd only vote straight ticket Republican, Independent, or pick some random party to vote for. My support or opposition to policies that the Trump administration puts in place are my choice just like it's Sarah's choice to work for Trump.
A Gay couple, black person, or transgender person has no choice in who they are. A black person can't just decide to become white and a gay person can "pretend to be" straight, but can't really decide to change their sexual orientation. Religion is a choice do some degree, but if you were born as a Muslim lady, you can't change this fact. The mere fact that you were born into a certain religion is proof enough to some people that you are "defective." For example, I'm Jewish. I could choose tomorrow to join a church and become Christian, but I was born and raised Jewish. That alone would be enough for many anti-Semites to declare me a horrible person. (For example, one GOP politician running for office who has said that Jews are the spawn of Satan.)
The lack of a spine on Paul Ryan would help matters.
I wonder how many false positives it would produce if used on developers.
"If we use a union statement here, we can better organize this query. The benefits would be worth the raise in CPU processing in this other section."
So basically anytime you see someone who is Latino or is speaking Spanish, you assume they're an illegal alien and report them to ICE? Because citizens have to look like you and speak English to be citizens?
Also, since when did the Slashdot crowd become fans of big government and surveillance?
This is a great distinction that is often overlooked. A million people using a piece of software doesn't mean a million people hunting for security flaws in the code. A large percentage of the users will be the "download and use it" type. Even if you put the source code on their screen and highlighted the section of code with the security flaw for them, their eyes would glaze over and they wouldn't be able to tell you what was wrong. Then there are the programmers who might be able to go through the code if they spent the time, but are busy with their own stuff and are only using this product to improve their own workflows. (Yes, ideally you should security audit every tool you use, but often time is limited and you need to trust that some things are secure or put security measures in place to deal with the inevitable security flaws.) Out of the million people using the software, very few are likely examining it and looking for security holes. This doesn't mean that OpenSSH and similar open source tools are insecure, just that you can't tout "one million users = one million people checking for security holes = we're secure."
That was the first thing I thought of also, but our knowledge of the brain is a lot better now than it was in the early 1900s. This would be a lot more targeted electricity. (Not saying that I'm convinced that it works, just that it's a possibility.) It would be like saying that you once used a sledgehammer to hang a picture frame and got a hole in it therefore nobody with a small hammer could hang a photo on a wall.
They still allow anonymous browsing. I can go into Incognito Mode (to ensure no login cookies) and browse Reddit forums all I like. Perhaps a few sub-Reddits have login requirements built in, but none that I frequent do.