If you save 10% of income, you're buying a year of spending every 9 years (assuming 0% inflation and 0% rate of return).
When is there 0% inflation or rate of return, ever? Do you know of a way to predict that over the say next 40 years that millennials have to work, because I sure don't. The problem with all this economics stuff is that we like to pretend that it follows scientific laws but there isn't a Newton's Laws of Economic Motion. It depends greatly on unpredictable technological and social factors. You can do everything "right" and bust, or you can do everything "wrong" and get lucky and be a millionaire. While I think this advice is a good starting point and encourage others to do it if possible, I strongly disagree that everything will be fine just because you do so. It's a crap shoot.
Percentages don't care if you're bringing in $100k or $50k.
Do percentages care if your income is minimum wage (about $15k annually)? Because when your rent, food, transportation (bus fare if not car), clothing, take up all of your salary and you live paycheck to paycheck (some relying on insanely expensive "payday loans" just to try to not default on payments), where is one supposed to get the 10-25% of one's salary to save? And even if that somehow happens, are you really suggesting that $15k/year will be a livable wage 30-40 years from now? It's not even a livable wage *now* in many cities.
These sorts of discussions leave out the fact that large amounts of Americans will never be able to retire with even a bit dignity. (I'm not talking about luxurious life, just a roof, food, and healthcare as they get older without the need to continue working with illness). Many will need some level of assistance: food stamps, Medicare, Social Security, etc. Either business needs to start paying livable wages so that all can retire without government assistance, or they need to pay higher taxes so that assistance programs continue to exist -- either way, this problem comes largely from corporate greed, and none of us have a safe retirement until that is dealt with.
It's not that people hate something that's mainstream. The problem is that mainstream is often a polished turd which companies or alternatively gifted individuals try to sell you as something which is better and novel, while being in an order of magnitude less usable and having tons of bugs.
I think this is exactly the kind of comment that Shuttleworth was talking about.
Let me put it this way: if this software is such an obvious 'polished turd', why haven't *you* coded up a replacement? If it's that easy to enumerate the things they did wrong, why isn't it easy for you to just do it the right way without bugs? (Please don't take this personally, I'm using the universal 'you' for all people reading this)
PulseAudio is not perfect, but it is improving, and is itself a big improvement on older sounds systems that often didn't work at all for many setups. Systemd is not perfect but it is a huge improvement on the old script init that couldn't handle modern features like hotplugging devices and sleep mode. The desktops are not perfect but are trying different design philosophies out, because honestly, user design is not a 100% solved known problem, but the latest GNOME 3 and KDE/Plasma 5 releases are very nice and polished (your comment including KDE4 suggests you haven't tried KDE in a while; I encourage you to do so). Were those things buggy at first? Sure. But I suspect many distros rushed (possibly a bit too fast) to switch to them precisely because the older systems were not working, and they were ready to get them fixed. Even Windows 8/10 have parts that I dislike (mostly the telemetry, and 8's inconsistent mix of metro with the old GUI) but they deserve kudos for massively improving their default security posture and modularizing the system (I have way less crashes than XP/7!).
The answer is that modern software engineering is a VERY hard problem. And like many things in computer science, there are lots of trade-offs -- you often must sacrifice one thing to win at another. Many of the issues people complain about are design decisions that are not necessarily the result of bad programming practice, but rather the trade-off, and the developers are showing they might have a different priority than you. And that's ok. No one has to agree 100% of the time on anything. But that said, you can respect someone's work and decisions while still holding your own differing opinion, and that often gets lost in the arguments. Shuttleworth had a not-invented-here problem on some issues, but the community's response was sometimes just as bad. Both sides had merit to their arguments, and both sides have made mistakes. It happens. Let's not demonize anyone for trying to see their vision through.
I'm in no way condoning laziness of course -- I expect all projects and developers to quickly address security issues and release but and security patches promptly, for example. The privacy issues that Ubuntu and especially Windows brought up are worth a very critical eye. But let's remember that software is hard for anyone, no matter how much experience you have, and stop tearing each other down. In fact, in true open source spirit, contribute bug fixes... or start your own fork!
We're in this situation where the government controls the issuance and devaluation of money, the government regulates the markets, the government fakes the inflation data to make it look like we're not in a depression, and then people say, "obviously we need a government to be successful!"
Have you read about eras such as the Gilded Age in the US? Unregulated markets, brought on mostly by quickly changing technology that simply didn't have rules on it, lead to the concentration of wealth into monopolies. Businessmen ruthlessly cut their competition out of the market, then performed hostile takeovers and shut them down to keep the prices/profits high once there was no competition. Once there was no competition, there was no incentive to do right for workers, so they shut down factories, laid off workers, and paid low wages with no benefits in hazardous conditions. This kept this going because they were able to pay off politicians and bribe government to stop regulations that would have kept the market open (they used their money to bribe politicians, and spread propaganda against unions and third parties like the Populist Party that were beginning to form to oppose monopolies; politicians then used local police forces as private armies to quell union protests for higher wages, and blamed the loss of jobs on European immigrants when in reality corporations were transitioning jobs overseas for huge profit margins -- any of this sound familiar?). It took sometimes violent union strikes and the era of "trust busting" politicians that stood up to corruption to break up industrial monopolies and restore the balance by putting reasonable regulations on business and the markets to prevent monopolies from controlling the economy and the government. Good regulations actually keep the market open to competition; without it, we'd go back to monopolistic behavior (and in fact we see the resurgence of mergers and effective monopolies lately as we continue a path of deregulation, particularly in banking.)
Unfortunately, we seem to have lost that lesson. Are you so afraid of government tyranny that you will settle for corporate tyranny? Don't get me wrong, government tyranny is a real concern and we should limit government power as needed to head that off. However, my concern is that government is not the *only* way tyranny can arise, and we are missing this important point. With government and publicly-run organizations, we at least have the ability to vote and try to influence our representatives (of course, money as speech inhibits this, which is why it's such a problem), the power is spread out among many people that should in generally rotate in and out of office regularly; with private organizations, we have no legal authority to do anything other than hope the CEO does the right thing, and the CEO can own the company his whole life. Which structure seems more democratic and free to you? I choose democracy, despite its imperfections, for anything important.
Let me also address your points more directly:
Government issues paper money and controls inflation because it turns out during the 1800s when we insisted on the gold standard as business preferred, our economy was *way* too variable. Our money would drastically change in value quickly depending on local and international production of gold, leading to someone with a "good" job suddenly unable to pay for basic necessities or even their home. There was fierce debate, and we eventually settled on paper money as a way to stabilize the economy and allow workers to plan for the future. Big business of course likes gold, because they have enough money to withstand the volatility long enough to capitalize on the next bubble, but again, that's not in the average American's best interests. I know the refrain is that it's bad for the government to "print free money", but that is not a fair characterization, and there are very specific historical and economic reasons we do so.
The inescapable fact, however, is that what you conceive of as "work", going to a building someone else owns and laboring for them, is going to decline as automation, AI and robots improve,,
When? When is the magic decline in jobs going to start happening? Because unemployment rates are really low right now.
For me, it's not necessarily a matter of declining jobs, but declining wages. Unemployment can be really low, but if most of the employment is in low-paying service jobs, we have trouble. Robots have ALREADY taken over most manufacturing jobs, Amazon's warehouses are now almost entirely automated, and soon Uber will be driving our trucks. You can bet that as service workers demand livable wages, the calculation for when to introduce robots tips toward "soon". When that happens, with other sectors automated, where will they go?
I don't think it's ethical to let people starve, and honestly, letting them waste their lives as fry cook or paper pusher in an office isn't much healthier or better. If we can all have robots to meet our basic needs, why not? Let the robots do the work, and let humans compete over creative works, creating their own businesses and styles to compete with each other for fame or other society acknowledgements of worth. I think the age of arbitrary numbers written on scraps of crushed dead wood pulp is coming to an end, we need to adjust for a new concept of "money" based on cultural contributions to society rather than simply your required 40 hours a day wasting your life away because "that's how we always did it".
Institutions like the Electoral College were meant to be a check against the stupidity of the masses that might elect a Trump.
That's not entirely accurate. This history of it is a bit more nuanced. Effectively, the larger northern colonies that opposed slavery would have always won the presidency against the smaller southern states that wanted to maintain slavery. Southern states were afraid that in a pure democracy (one person, one vote), the north would always win elections and therefore set the agenda and force them to do things against their will: in particular, force them to give up slavery. Several states refused to sign on to the new Constitution if it was set up this way. So the compromise was to allow an electoral college, House by population by an equal vote for each state in Senate, to make it more "fair" toward the south so they would agree to it.
If that didn't happen, the US would have remained under the Articles of Confederation, which was too weak to really hold the nation together. The Confederation did not give Congress authority to do many things that were discovered required during the Revolutionary War. To some degree, Congress acted out of the bounds of law (their mandate from the states) to continue the war and draft the Constitution in the first place; they were initially only to make some minor changes to the Confederation, but majority of delegates decided that wouldn't be enough on their own.
To be fair, there was certainly fear from some early leaders about pure democracy, equating it to effectively mob rule. There were also concerns that foreign entities (particularly British spies at the time) would attempt to influence our elections. But the anti-federalists were very strongly pro-democracy. The federalists won the battle of words in the constitution at first, but the Federalist party quickly died out and was replaced by the anti-federalists under Jefferson. The anti-federalists splintered into today's Republican and Democratic parties. So effectively, most of our history has been very democratic and states' rights, even if some (not all) of founders thought closer to what you think.
But idiots clamored for more power by virtue of their numbers. So state governments neutered their own congressional delegations by requiring that they vote for the popular choice.
The result? Trump. And people clamoring for more democracy.
The history of the the 17th amendment is also complex. In a nutshell, the people clamored for direct election to stop corruption. Prior to this, the state legislators chose Senators, which as you can guess meant they were very prone to bribery and intimidation to get certain people selected for the Senate. Also, it was easy for state legislatures to get stuck without choosing anyone because of political infighting, meaning that some states would often not be represented in the Senate for lengths of time while state legislatures argued.
It was an interesting idea, but didn't appear to work out that great in practice, so we changed it. As the Constitution was specifically written to do, via amendments.
I think we need to continue the fight against corruption by opening our system up to even more democratic measures. Much corruption comes today from our laws effectively requiring a two-party political system (so many committees require equal numbers of GOP and Dems, for example, as if those parties were written into the constitution; they weren't, and in fact a good chunk of the Federalist Papers goes on about how corruption and political parties are the worst things that could happen to our country). I think changing to a different voting method (Approval, Score, or Ranked Choice Voting) would eliminate the "spoiler" effect and allow citizens to vote for who they actually think is the best for the job, and not just to "stop" the "other" candidate.
I've seen several people say that Windows 10 is full of spyware, and stay on Windows 7 or even XP (though the XP proponents seem to finally be falling off).
This sort of argument bothers me, because it is very short-term thinking. Will you continue to use Windows 7 for the next 30 years, as it does not receive security updates, cannot run the latest software including latest browsers, and generally won't include drivers for the latest devices and protocols?
Do you think Microsoft cares about your complaints when they know you will eventually cave in within 5 years because you can't leave Windows for various reasons? Every version of Windows adds more spyware of some kind, started in the browser and has worked its way elsewhere.
The only solution is to reject Windows and proprietary software that does this kind of spying. Switch to your favorite flavor of Linux or BSD. Doesn't matter which, just that its free software. Otherwise, what are you doing? Are you going to continue complaining yet taking it every release of Windows?
I crunched the numbers (before the Carrie Fisher news hit) using http://fiftiesweb.com/dead/dea... as my guide. 2016 has killed the most celebrities (140 when you add in Ricky Harris, Carrie Fisher, and Richard Adams) than any year since 2000 (the earliest year that site had listings for). It was 40% more than the next closest year, 2005.
The baby boomers are now in their 60s and 70s. The thing that gets me is the overwhelming emotion seems to be surprise, as if never in history before have actors ever died of old age and natural causes.
There's going to be a big uptick in deaths the next decade or so, then quiets down until maybe the 2050s or 2060s. Then that generation will be upset that all of the great people of the millennial generation (which is another boom, bigger than that baby boomers actually) died in the same year of 2056 or whatever. It's actuary work. Probability and statistics.
Certainly, it is sad to lose people, especially those that have inspired others. But unless the death rate percentage of population has changed significantly, there's nothing to worry about. Everyone needs to relax. 2016 isn't cursed or anything. It's just statistics.
No, we need to save the Internet from the Internet Of insecure Things. Manufacturers of crap like this should be fined until they take security seriously.
I see comments flipping out already about "how can government fix things?". Well, thru stuff like fines. I've heard the FCC is investigating IoT type vendors. If the FCC can fine companies, or even ban them from selling products in the US until they meet a minimum standard, that will have a huge effect on these companies' behavior.
So far, they make cheap crappy things with crappy firmware, and users/customers aren't tech savvy enough to know how to pick a device with better security features. In fact, there's no way for even a professional to tell from the box or specs. So the company has made their money from you before you know its bad. We need regulations and perhaps some gov/non-profit testing labs for these devices. Between regulations/fines, and some rating system to allow users to make best decisions, we can change how the market behaves.
That's 29% interest. Who out there is actually offering student loans at 29% interest?
The interest rates any bank advertises always have asterisks next to them. The 3% or 5% you see marketed is only for people making certain incomes, with perfect (800+) credit scores, etc.
Someone with lower credit (~600 or under) easily gets a "penalty" of >10%. When they apply, they don't get 3% for a loan, they get 12-15%. Yes, they get sometimes maybe 20% interest. And what are they going to do about it? They have low credit, and no one will do better. Hell, finding the bank that even gives them the 20% loan is amazing. Most people with low credit scores don't have any ability to get credit; everywhere they go, they are told they are losers because their credit score is low and no one helps them. This is why pay day loans have become a thing: banks have stopped serving an entire portion of the population that still needs loans for emergencies (the heater goes out, etc.) just like the rest of us. Except because of credit scores -- which are calculated by a proprietary formula we're not allowed to know, and are crazy hard and expensive to appeal even when the company makes a mistake -- they have to pay higher rates than the rest of us, contributing to a further debt spiral. It's really obscene and needs to end yesterday, but many elected officials such as Debbie Wasserman-Shultz prop up the industry and profit from it.
Keep in mind that low credit DOES NOT necessarily mean someone made mistakes or defaulted on debt. If you are a young then your score relies heavily on your parents, and while the young person may have done nothing wrong personally, they immediately start life with a lower credit score because of the parents' mistakes. Even if both the child and parents did all the right things, there may still trouble for them: the exact formula is proprietary and secret, but we know that things such as yearly income and how often you change jobs impact your score. In fact, NOT taking out debt and paying everything cash actually HURTS your score! If you are a waiter without debt, you still will have low credit simply because you don't make enough money. Likely because banks don't like you if you don't usually take out debt or have lots of free money to take out the debt; the credit score is NOT a measure of how trustworthy you are, but rather a measure of how likely the bank will profit off of you. Credit scores should not be used to judge people for rental properties (becoming more common) or jobs, and probably not even most loans honestly. It's a false measure.
Also, the key word is compounding interest. The on-paper rate might be 15-20% or even lower, but since the interest is then added to the balance when calculating the next interest payment, you're paying interest on interest, making the effective rate numbers like 30% or higher. So even if you pay all of your minimums, the interest can still go up! To my knowledge, there are laws protecting mortgages from this sort of behavior (and other things like balloon payments...), but student loans do not have those legal protections. (In fact, student loans are the only type of loan you can't discharge in bankruptcy. Some jerk that bought a half million dollar house he couldn't afford can get that discharged, but someone with $50k in student debt can't.) My wife had a private loan that compounded daily. This wasn't from a loan shark either but a major bank, and she and her family had excellent credit. When she made a payment, the next day she already had interest rack up, and it was compounding. She was not told that up front. No other loan does that! Not a mortgage or anything. Again, it's a disgusting industry of middle men bankers taking advantage of people with the least money and least options.
tl;dr: compounding interest means the real rate is much higher than what is advertised, and poorer people (ITT's clientelle) tend to get terrible interest rates to begin with. It's a p
Python 2 is still maintained because developers aren't porting their code to Python 3.
It's 9 years later, at some point Python is going to have to give up on Python 3 and move on to a Python 4 that is backwards compatible with Python 2.
It's been quite some time since I've seen a python package that doesn't work with Python 3. What packages do you use that aren't Python 3 compatible, at least through six or some layer?
At this point, any libraries that haven't been updated for 9 years to handle Python 3 are likely dead projects and you should consider migrating to newer packages with appropriate bugfix and security updates, rather than delaying Python 3. Python 3 is stable and great. It's handling of strings and binary data is much more consistent. And Python3 has cool features like async io. Many large Python-based projects such as Django are phasing out Python2 support completely over the next year or two, and I believe distros like Fedora are planning on replacing the system python with Python 3 in the next couple releases. It was a slow but stable transition. I'd say it was successful, not a failure.
Fully agree with potential problems of requiring a cell phone: not all people that use the system will have access to cell phones or text messages, for example. There's also the question of how to update your cell phone number in the system if it changes. Krebs seems to be focused on the creation of accounts, which allows you to register a phone number and lock others out (which gets back to that updating your number thing); that seems to be a potentially big problem, considering how many security breaches have leaked our SSNs and what not. If all I need is a name and SSN to initially register and get benefits, then the system needs a better way of verifying identity before allowing to apply.
But I don't understand the text message security complaint that is "more important". Two factor auth means I need *two* things. Even if someone were to intercept the text message (which I believe is difficult, requiring special equipment and proximity to the victim, but feel free to correct me), the point of the system is that nothing can be done with that text without also knowing the password. And if someone knows your password and text messages, then no system is going to prevent an intruder. I understand that NIST is working to update the recommendation (which is a good idea), but I feel like its more safe than not using 2FA (it at least requires attackers to do much more work!), and I'm sure when the NIST guidelines are finalized, other agencies will begin the move to the new recommendation too. It seems a mountain out of a molehill. Am I missing something?
But string theory is different. Although it has not been a success phenomenologically, it has led to many beautiful results in mathematics and field theory, such as Mirror Symmetry and AdS/CFT. Further research in string theory is definitely worthwhile, and Lee Smolin is unreasonably biased against it.
Yes, string theory is a bit different in that it hasn't been able to make any testable predictions, which makes it non-science. Science is based on the idea of experimental evidence, and falsifiability. It isn't science, it isn't physics.
Now it very well may have some beautiful results in mathematics. Maybe it will have applications and effects on topology, cryptography, who knows. But those things are mathematics, not science.
I tend to agree with Smolin that string theory, as currently presented (and I understand it), is not a scientific theory, even though it is interested and deserves its own mathematical research. The problem is, string theory gets the ratings, so we have more cosmologists and string theorists as professors physics, taking the few positions (and associated funding!) away from people that want to be true experimental physicists. That's where the semi-outrage is.
Except Windows 10 is not a security update: the computer in question had Windows 7, which is still in extended support and will still get "proper" security updates until 2020.
Yes, Windows 7 will get security updates in the form of patches that correct already known defects. Bandaids, in some sense.
Windows 10 has a list of actual security improvements, not just bandaids. Better ASLR and DEP, better support of harddrive encryption, more secure default browser, and other goodies. Microsoft maintains a page of Windows 10 security improvements over Windows 7/8. In theory, Windows 10's features mean a reduced attack surface. Maybe it still has issues but it is certainly more hardened than Windows 7 in general.
I'm sympathetic to both sides. I don't like things being pushed on people; it's their right to decide what to do with their own property, and maybe they have special needs that require an older version of Windows (some mission-critical software is known to have bugs on 10 for example).
But I also know that Microsoft is trying to improve the security of its products and the Internet as a whole by trying to get everyone updated. They don't want Windows 7 to be a repeat of people clinging to Windows XP, clinging to old technologies that are broken when new tech/implementations are available to prevent security problems. Not just security, but also think features: new protocols might be developed that weren't supported in the old OS, and so until majority of the Internet moves on, that protocol can't be rolled out. Many computer users are pretty clueless and need automatic updates for that reason, or they'll never do it themselves, and bring down the security of the Internet as a whole. Of course, it doesn't help that Microsoft's marketing team wants to take advantage of the security updates by also collecting info and all that stuff.
I hope we can find a good balance between the competing interests soon.
Loser pays would also make it basically impossible to sue any entity that has more money than you. The risk would be far too great, even if you had a legitimate dispute.
Let the judge award "loser pays" only after meeting a high threshold. Such as in situations where no rational person would consider it a legitimate dispute.
I agree. In the state Pennsylvania, state cases have a loser pays provision. You pay a filing fee but will get it awarded back to you if you win your case, as well as reasonable legal fees, etc. Without going into the whole crazy story, I found myself suing an old landlord for damages. While I won the initial case, the landlord was able to appeal... and appeal again after that. I couldn't keep paying the attorney fees to keep going further and so ended up settling, which cost me something like net $1500, rather than winning the $1500 in damages I was hoping for. While that may seem small to some of you, at the time I basically was making minimum wage and used my savings to do it. It wasn't sustainable. Based on that experience, I'd only go to court if I knew I was able to fight all the way to the top state courts, because that's pretty much what you're in for if your opponent has money.
If you're on minimum wage and can't pay the up front filing fees and attorney fees, you're screwed. In principle, you'd get it back -- but how are you going to get the money to initiate it in the first place? And what happens if you do end up losing? The poor in our country get no justice.
This is exactly why free software (in the vein of what Richard Stallman calls for) needs to be supported. *YOU*, the user, must own complete control over your computer and the software it runs, not developers (much of the more liberal open source licenses are about developer rights, not user rights -- big difference!) or corporations.
I know many of you would object, "But I bought this computer, it's not Microsoft's!". Well I wholeheartedly agree, but the thing is, Windows being proprietary closed source means that Microsoft has a claim to intellectual property rights. Microsoft believes that you license Windows, not own it. Essentially, they still own the software on your computer. Again, I know that *you* disagree, but it kinda doesn't matter what you think -- Microsoft has money and lawyers and they push for the outcome they want. Which is to own your computer. And if they own it, they're technically allowed to do whatever they want with it, including force upgrades. That is the nature of licensing agreements -- you agree to their licensing rules, which means they can do whatever they want.
If this bothers you, switch to a free software OS. Some flavor of Linux or even BSD. Get involved in the free software community, both the technical community (making more/better free software) and the political community (that lobbies for changes to copyright law, tries to get government to adopt open standards, etc.). We have to fight back, or you can expect more behavior like this from Microsoft, Apple, etc., in the future.
There is absolutely no law banning communism, just like there is no law saying you can't put a white sheet over your head and march down the street with the KKK.
How in the fuck is this scored Insightful?
It's Insightful because it's unfortunately true. Check out this gem of American history: the Communist Control Act of 1954. You can also download the text from the Government Publishing Office. It very explicitly states that, according to law, anyone in the Communist Party is considered to be attempting to overthrow the government, and shall be punished according to the law of Internal Security Act of 1950.
Now you might be able to make the claim that if you generally believe communist principles but aren't part of the established Party, this won't apply to you. But I think that effectively takes away your rights to organize, does it not? Still effectively a ban on the idea, if nothing else.
They probably shut down because the MITRE's CVE database is pretty much regarded as the canonical database for all vulnerabilities, open and proprietary. I've not see a security advisory that didn't have a CVE number for a long time. I don't remember ever seeing one with a reference to OSVDB.
The takeaway is that lots of products have vulnerabilities but never receive CVEs or are included in the CVE dictionary. This is why alternates like OSVDB popped up, and why alternate vulnerability ID systems popped up recently (see DWF as a primary example).
It's a shame to lose something like OSVDB, as there really isn't a good canonical source of ALL vulnerabilities. MITRE's CVE works for vulnerabilities in big name products, but it is nowhere near inclusive of all vulnerabilities reported. Of course, OSVDB hasn't been updated recently either, so there's a big gap in even knowing what's out there. Maybe projects like DWF will help us move in that direction.
They absolutely were. "the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." That's the limit on government. They're ignoring the limit. It couldn't be any more obvious. You right to carry was infringed by coercive action of the federal government. How hard is that to figure out, really?
The full text of the 2nd Amendment is as follows:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
So many people always forget the first half. The amendment specifically states "well-regulated", meaning it is within the powers of the federal government to regulate militias and arms. Taken in context in the 18th century, "well regulated" probably means something closer to "well trained", but still, it is obvious that arms are meant to be regulated and dispersed through trained militias, and not just any random jerk has a gun. Especially because today's guns can do substantially more damage than the guns did when the amendment was written.
I'm all for a conversation on what the appropriate level of regulation and training is. I don't think anyone really argues that guns should entirely disappear. But we need reasonable limits, not a free-for-all on weaponry, and the amendment supports that as a federal power. Please stop spreading misunderstanding.
Quality education requires a chalk, a blackboard, and some notebooks (the paper kind). You don't need researchers for education — you need professors. Researchers you get for free — they are called "grad students". And as soon as they can find gainful employment, you replace them with new ones.
The purpose of a university is to teach — any research done is coincidental to that primary purpose.
I once thought as you did. Mind you, not that I'm disagreeing with you, but rather the reality of the situation.
As someone that once tried to become a professor and navigate the academic system, I can say from direct experience that you will not become a professor unless you have a very strong research resume and are involved in research (meaning, you regularly apply for and receive grants from federal government, etc.). When you interview, you come in to meet the department and explain your research interests; its not very focused on your teaching style (you have to fill out a "teaching philosophy" statement, but I think its mostly a formality). The university administration expects to see dollar signs flow in, and so the emphasis is on bringing in dollars. In your more STEM-related fields that don't have as many students (as compared to say, the business school), since you don't have enough students to bring in significant tuition dollars, they expect significant research dollars or threaten to downsize your department (yes, this happened at one university I worked at for a while).
The result of this system is that a very large amount of university professors have little to no interest in teaching (I've had a few in school that were outright hostile to the idea of teaching, and acted like children when the department assigned them classes), and the teaching actually gets shoved off on to the teaching assistants. The TAs are of course also expected to do research and work on a dissertation, so we're talking 80 hour work weeks in some scenarios, which they have to put up with in order to graduate. Big name schools aren't really worth it, particularly at the bachelor's level, because many of your classes will be taught by TAs, or if you're lucky, you will get an upperlevel class taught by a professor that thinks that teaching undergraduate classes is beneath him (again, personal experience).
In some ways, CMU's students might be better off if professors that wanted to be researchers bailed ship. In theory, people focused on teaching could be hired... but then again, I sadly know better than that. I hope it changes in the future, but right now, quality education is really at the end of the priority list for all higher education in the country. I am glad to be away from academics.
Given they're trying to speak on behalf of many others that like as not don't feel as they do, it seems disingenuous. Besides, nothing is stopping them from giving more if they really feel that strongly about it.
Nothing disingenuous with stating your own opinion that you'd be ok with higher taxes. The operating assumption of most politicians, especially in the GOP, is that "TAXES ARE EVIL!", so if you remind them that not everyone feels that way (at least if taxes are going to a good purpose), that's your right as a citizen. Feel free to disagree and write your own letter, but in the case of these millionaires, they wanted to point out that the assumption that all rich people don't want tax increases is wrong.
While you can write a check to the Treasury if you really felt like it, its a bit moot if there isn't an accompanying budget. What is preferable is that a tax rate is set that funds a certain budget with a set of priorities, so you know for sure that the law requires your extra tax money go to pay for education, roads, etc., rather than going into a US Treasury slush fund that is used for who knows what, including probably tax rebates for corporations that don't need them. The letter is not just asking for tax increases, but asking for a budget that prioritizes these services and raises taxes as a way to pay for it.
The CVSS score is a medium of 6.1 for the CVE. So this isn't as bad as Heartbleed
First, Heartbleed was actually a 5.0 base score, so this is more serious if you go strictly by CVSS score (which is not necessarily advisable). Reference.
Second, CVSS scores are based on a certain formula and small set of conditions; in particular, vulnerabilities are scored based on their immediate impact and not necessarily things that occur down the line. In other words, CVSS base scores do not include environmental metrics (There is a CVSS environmental score, but almost no one uses it except for CERT). So looking only at the base score is not always a good indication of severity; possibly its a good first approximation, but it's good to look into the details too. Since glibc is part of pretty much everything out there, this is a pretty serious issue.
why we can't use C++ and C++ style derivatives for compiled code (cross compiled to many platforms), and then for interpreted needs use javascript, python, or whatever floats your boat on top?
There's some interesting languages out there with other features. Haskell comes to mind, as a pure functional language. It's not just pretty syntax, but a different way of thought that provides some features and power that C++/Java style imperative languages can't match. They're so different that you need different compilers really. You can't always write a Haskell program and "translate" it to C++, certainly not without re-architecting. Of course, there may be things an object oriented style is better suited for too, but just pointing out that some languages have different paradigms and therefore contribute new ideas to software development. That sort of exploration and research I think is important. I don't think we should be so quick to assume Java/C++/Python/whatever is the only language that is ever needed (which maybe is not what you meant, so I don't mean to attack you comment, just writing a thought that popped in mind based on yours).
A large amount of the languages these days seem to be more "domain-specific", that is, not very different from some underlying language, just adding some syntactic sugar for some specific problem or complaint while ignoring other drawbacks. I suppose that iteration is good though, as its catching the most important -- and serious? -- errors and making it easier to avoid those problems. 'm partial to investigating totally new concepts to see if we can build more resilient and secure software than to keep iterating what is already known to have drawbacks, but it's probably good that we do research from both ends -- incrementally improve what we have to take away certain known bugs and get it out the door *now*, while researching new ideas that perhaps will do away with whole classes of bugs for good (as well as make more powerful software in general).
I've wondered why services don't allow you to do something like add a PGP public key, and all notifications from that site are sent encrypted to that key. If someone gets ahold of your reset email, well unless they have your private key and passphase, they're still out of luck. Furthermore, legit email notices could be signed by a known public key of the site.
OK, it was a bit rhetorical perhaps, as I know not many are familiar with PGP to use it. Outlook doesn't support it out of the box so that cuts out a lot of users right there. And even people technical enough to know what its doing don't always like it.
And I guess the problem then would be people saying "I forgot my PGP passphase, please help!". So maybe it wouldn't actually solve much and still be prone to social engineering. But still. In 2016 I would have thought we'd have a better handle on privacy and security.
Many people will take their UBI and immediately spend it on drugs, alcohol, gambling, or bling, while ignoring the monthly rent, the electric bill, buying groceries for the children, etc.
[CITATION NEEDED]
Do you have evidence this is true for welfare and other checks, or is it just how you feel? I suspect you've never been in the heartbreaking situation (which I'm glad you haven't experienced it!) of having so little income that you have to decide between food and the electric bill. I'm sure there are some outliers that can't be helped and will spend on drugs but you need to understand this is a small minority compared to all poor people.
So the various government agencies will continue to expand and spend even more money on housing, food, medical care, etc. The UBI won't even make a dent in entitlement budgets. Instead, it will become "free money" to be squandered on a thousand other things besides basic human needs.
Again, citation? Has anyone's plan specifically said "We will grow government larger and larger"? Most of the proposals I've seen have been the opposite; if you make a fair tax system (stop giving tax handouts to the rich) and implement UBI instead of the hodgepodge of programs we have no (SS, medicare, medicaid, etc.), we'd save billions by eliminating duplicate administrative costs.
Now my concern is that many people are employed by the federal government, so the real cost will be all the people worried about losing their jobs and becoming poor. But if there's UBI, they won't lose their home if laid off. And, its possible we could pivot many of these jobs to other agencies -- for example, more workers in the justice dept to reduce the time we wait for hearings/court cases, or to the VA to get caught up on paperwork and get veterans help, or even dept of the interior and let them clean up state and national parks or become EPA inspectors to actually enforce our laws. Random ideas here, but the point is that government will likely be reduced, and worst case, be about the save size but massive amounts of people repurposed to things that need to get done but aren't under the current bureaucracy.
Anyone who doesn't think it won't happen need only look at inner city schools in the U.S. In theory, every child should be getting meals at home thanks to government SNAP benefits to their parents or guardians. In practice, schools give many kids a free breakfast and lunch every school day, and even give them food bags to take home for the weekend, because Mom or Dad can't be bothered to buy food for the kids with the SNAP money. Where does the money go? No one knows or even attempts to find out. They just give the kids free food and cross their fingers.
What do you mean "Where does that money go?". I don't even know where you got this from.
As someone that was personally on SNAP in the past (long story, but basically as a new college instructor, you actually make so little money that I qualified for SNAP for a while. True story.), I can tell you that it is not a check in the mail of free money. You get a debit card that is pre-loaded with a small amount of money (a maximum of $200 per month for an individual; I challenge you to keep your food budget under $200 per month = about $7 a day. You do get more money for each dependent you have, but it's a small increase.). This card can ONLY be used by stores that accept SNAP, and it is restricted to ONLY purchase food items. For example, you cannot swipe your SNAP card to purchase lottery tickets or alcohol. You're not even allowed to buy "prepared food" (meaning like food you'd get from a restaurant; so you have to buy frozen foods or canned foods only, and cook at home).
Anyone on SNAP that can't feed their kids is probably running up against that roughly $7 per day limit. Even if you double it to $15/day for a family, can you spend $15 per day consistently? A pound of chicken is pushing $10. Milk is a f
They aren't changing anything. They are quoting from John Locke, not the Declaration of Independence (which changed Locke's quote from property to pursuit of happiness).
Came here to say this. Locke's philosophical ideas likely contributed a lot to how the founding fathers approached rights and freedoms when setting up the country.
Slashdot Mirror
If you save 10% of income, you're buying a year of spending every 9 years (assuming 0% inflation and 0% rate of return).
When is there 0% inflation or rate of return, ever? Do you know of a way to predict that over the say next 40 years that millennials have to work, because I sure don't. The problem with all this economics stuff is that we like to pretend that it follows scientific laws but there isn't a Newton's Laws of Economic Motion. It depends greatly on unpredictable technological and social factors. You can do everything "right" and bust, or you can do everything "wrong" and get lucky and be a millionaire. While I think this advice is a good starting point and encourage others to do it if possible, I strongly disagree that everything will be fine just because you do so. It's a crap shoot.
Percentages don't care if you're bringing in $100k or $50k.
Do percentages care if your income is minimum wage (about $15k annually)? Because when your rent, food, transportation (bus fare if not car), clothing, take up all of your salary and you live paycheck to paycheck (some relying on insanely expensive "payday loans" just to try to not default on payments), where is one supposed to get the 10-25% of one's salary to save? And even if that somehow happens, are you really suggesting that $15k/year will be a livable wage 30-40 years from now? It's not even a livable wage *now* in many cities.
These sorts of discussions leave out the fact that large amounts of Americans will never be able to retire with even a bit dignity. (I'm not talking about luxurious life, just a roof, food, and healthcare as they get older without the need to continue working with illness). Many will need some level of assistance: food stamps, Medicare, Social Security, etc. Either business needs to start paying livable wages so that all can retire without government assistance, or they need to pay higher taxes so that assistance programs continue to exist -- either way, this problem comes largely from corporate greed, and none of us have a safe retirement until that is dealt with.
Which one do you mean?
* Pulse Audio? * Systemd? * Unity/Gnome 3/KDE 4? * Windows 8/10?
It's not that people hate something that's mainstream. The problem is that mainstream is often a polished turd which companies or alternatively gifted individuals try to sell you as something which is better and novel, while being in an order of magnitude less usable and having tons of bugs.
I think this is exactly the kind of comment that Shuttleworth was talking about.
Let me put it this way: if this software is such an obvious 'polished turd', why haven't *you* coded up a replacement? If it's that easy to enumerate the things they did wrong, why isn't it easy for you to just do it the right way without bugs? (Please don't take this personally, I'm using the universal 'you' for all people reading this)
PulseAudio is not perfect, but it is improving, and is itself a big improvement on older sounds systems that often didn't work at all for many setups. Systemd is not perfect but it is a huge improvement on the old script init that couldn't handle modern features like hotplugging devices and sleep mode. The desktops are not perfect but are trying different design philosophies out, because honestly, user design is not a 100% solved known problem, but the latest GNOME 3 and KDE/Plasma 5 releases are very nice and polished (your comment including KDE4 suggests you haven't tried KDE in a while; I encourage you to do so). Were those things buggy at first? Sure. But I suspect many distros rushed (possibly a bit too fast) to switch to them precisely because the older systems were not working, and they were ready to get them fixed. Even Windows 8/10 have parts that I dislike (mostly the telemetry, and 8's inconsistent mix of metro with the old GUI) but they deserve kudos for massively improving their default security posture and modularizing the system (I have way less crashes than XP/7!).
The answer is that modern software engineering is a VERY hard problem. And like many things in computer science, there are lots of trade-offs -- you often must sacrifice one thing to win at another. Many of the issues people complain about are design decisions that are not necessarily the result of bad programming practice, but rather the trade-off, and the developers are showing they might have a different priority than you. And that's ok. No one has to agree 100% of the time on anything. But that said, you can respect someone's work and decisions while still holding your own differing opinion, and that often gets lost in the arguments. Shuttleworth had a not-invented-here problem on some issues, but the community's response was sometimes just as bad. Both sides had merit to their arguments, and both sides have made mistakes. It happens. Let's not demonize anyone for trying to see their vision through.
I'm in no way condoning laziness of course -- I expect all projects and developers to quickly address security issues and release but and security patches promptly, for example. The privacy issues that Ubuntu and especially Windows brought up are worth a very critical eye. But let's remember that software is hard for anyone, no matter how much experience you have, and stop tearing each other down. In fact, in true open source spirit, contribute bug fixes ... or start your own fork!
We're in this situation where the government controls the issuance and devaluation of money, the government regulates the markets, the government fakes the inflation data to make it look like we're not in a depression, and then people say, "obviously we need a government to be successful!"
Have you read about eras such as the Gilded Age in the US? Unregulated markets, brought on mostly by quickly changing technology that simply didn't have rules on it, lead to the concentration of wealth into monopolies. Businessmen ruthlessly cut their competition out of the market, then performed hostile takeovers and shut them down to keep the prices/profits high once there was no competition. Once there was no competition, there was no incentive to do right for workers, so they shut down factories, laid off workers, and paid low wages with no benefits in hazardous conditions. This kept this going because they were able to pay off politicians and bribe government to stop regulations that would have kept the market open (they used their money to bribe politicians, and spread propaganda against unions and third parties like the Populist Party that were beginning to form to oppose monopolies; politicians then used local police forces as private armies to quell union protests for higher wages, and blamed the loss of jobs on European immigrants when in reality corporations were transitioning jobs overseas for huge profit margins -- any of this sound familiar?). It took sometimes violent union strikes and the era of "trust busting" politicians that stood up to corruption to break up industrial monopolies and restore the balance by putting reasonable regulations on business and the markets to prevent monopolies from controlling the economy and the government. Good regulations actually keep the market open to competition; without it, we'd go back to monopolistic behavior (and in fact we see the resurgence of mergers and effective monopolies lately as we continue a path of deregulation, particularly in banking.)
Unfortunately, we seem to have lost that lesson. Are you so afraid of government tyranny that you will settle for corporate tyranny? Don't get me wrong, government tyranny is a real concern and we should limit government power as needed to head that off. However, my concern is that government is not the *only* way tyranny can arise, and we are missing this important point. With government and publicly-run organizations, we at least have the ability to vote and try to influence our representatives (of course, money as speech inhibits this, which is why it's such a problem), the power is spread out among many people that should in generally rotate in and out of office regularly; with private organizations, we have no legal authority to do anything other than hope the CEO does the right thing, and the CEO can own the company his whole life. Which structure seems more democratic and free to you? I choose democracy, despite its imperfections, for anything important.
Let me also address your points more directly:
The inescapable fact, however, is that what you conceive of as "work", going to a building someone else owns and laboring for them, is going to decline as automation, AI and robots improve,,
When? When is the magic decline in jobs going to start happening? Because unemployment rates are really low right now.
For me, it's not necessarily a matter of declining jobs, but declining wages. Unemployment can be really low, but if most of the employment is in low-paying service jobs, we have trouble. Robots have ALREADY taken over most manufacturing jobs, Amazon's warehouses are now almost entirely automated, and soon Uber will be driving our trucks. You can bet that as service workers demand livable wages, the calculation for when to introduce robots tips toward "soon". When that happens, with other sectors automated, where will they go?
I don't think it's ethical to let people starve, and honestly, letting them waste their lives as fry cook or paper pusher in an office isn't much healthier or better. If we can all have robots to meet our basic needs, why not? Let the robots do the work, and let humans compete over creative works, creating their own businesses and styles to compete with each other for fame or other society acknowledgements of worth. I think the age of arbitrary numbers written on scraps of crushed dead wood pulp is coming to an end, we need to adjust for a new concept of "money" based on cultural contributions to society rather than simply your required 40 hours a day wasting your life away because "that's how we always did it".
Institutions like the Electoral College were meant to be a check against the stupidity of the masses that might elect a Trump.
That's not entirely accurate. This history of it is a bit more nuanced. Effectively, the larger northern colonies that opposed slavery would have always won the presidency against the smaller southern states that wanted to maintain slavery. Southern states were afraid that in a pure democracy (one person, one vote), the north would always win elections and therefore set the agenda and force them to do things against their will: in particular, force them to give up slavery. Several states refused to sign on to the new Constitution if it was set up this way. So the compromise was to allow an electoral college, House by population by an equal vote for each state in Senate, to make it more "fair" toward the south so they would agree to it.
If that didn't happen, the US would have remained under the Articles of Confederation, which was too weak to really hold the nation together. The Confederation did not give Congress authority to do many things that were discovered required during the Revolutionary War. To some degree, Congress acted out of the bounds of law (their mandate from the states) to continue the war and draft the Constitution in the first place; they were initially only to make some minor changes to the Confederation, but majority of delegates decided that wouldn't be enough on their own.
To be fair, there was certainly fear from some early leaders about pure democracy, equating it to effectively mob rule. There were also concerns that foreign entities (particularly British spies at the time) would attempt to influence our elections. But the anti-federalists were very strongly pro-democracy. The federalists won the battle of words in the constitution at first, but the Federalist party quickly died out and was replaced by the anti-federalists under Jefferson. The anti-federalists splintered into today's Republican and Democratic parties. So effectively, most of our history has been very democratic and states' rights, even if some (not all) of founders thought closer to what you think.
But idiots clamored for more power by virtue of their numbers. So state governments neutered their own congressional delegations by requiring that they vote for the popular choice.
The result? Trump. And people clamoring for more democracy.
The history of the the 17th amendment is also complex. In a nutshell, the people clamored for direct election to stop corruption. Prior to this, the state legislators chose Senators, which as you can guess meant they were very prone to bribery and intimidation to get certain people selected for the Senate. Also, it was easy for state legislatures to get stuck without choosing anyone because of political infighting, meaning that some states would often not be represented in the Senate for lengths of time while state legislatures argued.
It was an interesting idea, but didn't appear to work out that great in practice, so we changed it. As the Constitution was specifically written to do, via amendments.
I think we need to continue the fight against corruption by opening our system up to even more democratic measures. Much corruption comes today from our laws effectively requiring a two-party political system (so many committees require equal numbers of GOP and Dems, for example, as if those parties were written into the constitution; they weren't, and in fact a good chunk of the Federalist Papers goes on about how corruption and political parties are the worst things that could happen to our country). I think changing to a different voting method (Approval, Score, or Ranked Choice Voting) would eliminate the "spoiler" effect and allow citizens to vote for who they actually think is the best for the job, and not just to "stop" the "other" candidate.
I've seen several people say that Windows 10 is full of spyware, and stay on Windows 7 or even XP (though the XP proponents seem to finally be falling off).
This sort of argument bothers me, because it is very short-term thinking. Will you continue to use Windows 7 for the next 30 years, as it does not receive security updates, cannot run the latest software including latest browsers, and generally won't include drivers for the latest devices and protocols?
Do you think Microsoft cares about your complaints when they know you will eventually cave in within 5 years because you can't leave Windows for various reasons? Every version of Windows adds more spyware of some kind, started in the browser and has worked its way elsewhere.
The only solution is to reject Windows and proprietary software that does this kind of spying. Switch to your favorite flavor of Linux or BSD. Doesn't matter which, just that its free software. Otherwise, what are you doing? Are you going to continue complaining yet taking it every release of Windows?
I crunched the numbers (before the Carrie Fisher news hit) using http://fiftiesweb.com/dead/dea... as my guide. 2016 has killed the most celebrities (140 when you add in Ricky Harris, Carrie Fisher, and Richard Adams) than any year since 2000 (the earliest year that site had listings for). It was 40% more than the next closest year, 2005.
The baby boomers are now in their 60s and 70s. The thing that gets me is the overwhelming emotion seems to be surprise, as if never in history before have actors ever died of old age and natural causes.
There's going to be a big uptick in deaths the next decade or so, then quiets down until maybe the 2050s or 2060s. Then that generation will be upset that all of the great people of the millennial generation (which is another boom, bigger than that baby boomers actually) died in the same year of 2056 or whatever. It's actuary work. Probability and statistics.
Certainly, it is sad to lose people, especially those that have inspired others. But unless the death rate percentage of population has changed significantly, there's nothing to worry about. Everyone needs to relax. 2016 isn't cursed or anything. It's just statistics.
No, we need to save the Internet from the Internet Of insecure Things. Manufacturers of crap like this should be fined until they take security seriously.
I see comments flipping out already about "how can government fix things?". Well, thru stuff like fines. I've heard the FCC is investigating IoT type vendors. If the FCC can fine companies, or even ban them from selling products in the US until they meet a minimum standard, that will have a huge effect on these companies' behavior.
So far, they make cheap crappy things with crappy firmware, and users/customers aren't tech savvy enough to know how to pick a device with better security features. In fact, there's no way for even a professional to tell from the box or specs. So the company has made their money from you before you know its bad. We need regulations and perhaps some gov/non-profit testing labs for these devices. Between regulations/fines, and some rating system to allow users to make best decisions, we can change how the market behaves.
That's 29% interest. Who out there is actually offering student loans at 29% interest?
The interest rates any bank advertises always have asterisks next to them. The 3% or 5% you see marketed is only for people making certain incomes, with perfect (800+) credit scores, etc.
Someone with lower credit (~600 or under) easily gets a "penalty" of >10%. When they apply, they don't get 3% for a loan, they get 12-15%. Yes, they get sometimes maybe 20% interest. And what are they going to do about it? They have low credit, and no one will do better. Hell, finding the bank that even gives them the 20% loan is amazing. Most people with low credit scores don't have any ability to get credit; everywhere they go, they are told they are losers because their credit score is low and no one helps them. This is why pay day loans have become a thing: banks have stopped serving an entire portion of the population that still needs loans for emergencies (the heater goes out, etc.) just like the rest of us. Except because of credit scores -- which are calculated by a proprietary formula we're not allowed to know, and are crazy hard and expensive to appeal even when the company makes a mistake -- they have to pay higher rates than the rest of us, contributing to a further debt spiral. It's really obscene and needs to end yesterday, but many elected officials such as Debbie Wasserman-Shultz prop up the industry and profit from it.
Keep in mind that low credit DOES NOT necessarily mean someone made mistakes or defaulted on debt. If you are a young then your score relies heavily on your parents, and while the young person may have done nothing wrong personally, they immediately start life with a lower credit score because of the parents' mistakes. Even if both the child and parents did all the right things, there may still trouble for them: the exact formula is proprietary and secret, but we know that things such as yearly income and how often you change jobs impact your score. In fact, NOT taking out debt and paying everything cash actually HURTS your score! If you are a waiter without debt, you still will have low credit simply because you don't make enough money. Likely because banks don't like you if you don't usually take out debt or have lots of free money to take out the debt; the credit score is NOT a measure of how trustworthy you are, but rather a measure of how likely the bank will profit off of you. Credit scores should not be used to judge people for rental properties (becoming more common) or jobs, and probably not even most loans honestly. It's a false measure.
Also, the key word is compounding interest. The on-paper rate might be 15-20% or even lower, but since the interest is then added to the balance when calculating the next interest payment, you're paying interest on interest, making the effective rate numbers like 30% or higher. So even if you pay all of your minimums, the interest can still go up! To my knowledge, there are laws protecting mortgages from this sort of behavior (and other things like balloon payments...), but student loans do not have those legal protections. (In fact, student loans are the only type of loan you can't discharge in bankruptcy. Some jerk that bought a half million dollar house he couldn't afford can get that discharged, but someone with $50k in student debt can't.) My wife had a private loan that compounded daily. This wasn't from a loan shark either but a major bank, and she and her family had excellent credit. When she made a payment, the next day she already had interest rack up, and it was compounding. She was not told that up front. No other loan does that! Not a mortgage or anything. Again, it's a disgusting industry of middle men bankers taking advantage of people with the least money and least options.
tl;dr: compounding interest means the real rate is much higher than what is advertised, and poorer people (ITT's clientelle) tend to get terrible interest rates to begin with. It's a p
Python 2 is still maintained because developers aren't porting their code to Python 3.
It's 9 years later, at some point Python is going to have to give up on Python 3 and move on to a Python 4 that is backwards compatible with Python 2.
It's been quite some time since I've seen a python package that doesn't work with Python 3. What packages do you use that aren't Python 3 compatible, at least through six or some layer?
At this point, any libraries that haven't been updated for 9 years to handle Python 3 are likely dead projects and you should consider migrating to newer packages with appropriate bugfix and security updates, rather than delaying Python 3. Python 3 is stable and great. It's handling of strings and binary data is much more consistent. And Python3 has cool features like async io. Many large Python-based projects such as Django are phasing out Python2 support completely over the next year or two, and I believe distros like Fedora are planning on replacing the system python with Python 3 in the next couple releases. It was a slow but stable transition. I'd say it was successful, not a failure.
Fully agree with potential problems of requiring a cell phone: not all people that use the system will have access to cell phones or text messages, for example. There's also the question of how to update your cell phone number in the system if it changes. Krebs seems to be focused on the creation of accounts, which allows you to register a phone number and lock others out (which gets back to that updating your number thing); that seems to be a potentially big problem, considering how many security breaches have leaked our SSNs and what not. If all I need is a name and SSN to initially register and get benefits, then the system needs a better way of verifying identity before allowing to apply.
But I don't understand the text message security complaint that is "more important". Two factor auth means I need *two* things. Even if someone were to intercept the text message (which I believe is difficult, requiring special equipment and proximity to the victim, but feel free to correct me), the point of the system is that nothing can be done with that text without also knowing the password. And if someone knows your password and text messages, then no system is going to prevent an intruder. I understand that NIST is working to update the recommendation (which is a good idea), but I feel like its more safe than not using 2FA (it at least requires attackers to do much more work!), and I'm sure when the NIST guidelines are finalized, other agencies will begin the move to the new recommendation too. It seems a mountain out of a molehill. Am I missing something?
But string theory is different. Although it has not been a success phenomenologically, it has led to many beautiful results in mathematics and field theory, such as Mirror Symmetry and AdS/CFT. Further research in string theory is definitely worthwhile, and Lee Smolin is unreasonably biased against it.
Yes, string theory is a bit different in that it hasn't been able to make any testable predictions, which makes it non-science. Science is based on the idea of experimental evidence, and falsifiability. It isn't science, it isn't physics.
Now it very well may have some beautiful results in mathematics. Maybe it will have applications and effects on topology, cryptography, who knows. But those things are mathematics, not science.
I tend to agree with Smolin that string theory, as currently presented (and I understand it), is not a scientific theory, even though it is interested and deserves its own mathematical research. The problem is, string theory gets the ratings, so we have more cosmologists and string theorists as professors physics, taking the few positions (and associated funding!) away from people that want to be true experimental physicists. That's where the semi-outrage is.
Except Windows 10 is not a security update: the computer in question had Windows 7, which is still in extended support and will still get "proper" security updates until 2020.
Yes, Windows 7 will get security updates in the form of patches that correct already known defects. Bandaids, in some sense.
Windows 10 has a list of actual security improvements, not just bandaids. Better ASLR and DEP, better support of harddrive encryption, more secure default browser, and other goodies. Microsoft maintains a page of Windows 10 security improvements over Windows 7/8. In theory, Windows 10's features mean a reduced attack surface. Maybe it still has issues but it is certainly more hardened than Windows 7 in general.
I'm sympathetic to both sides. I don't like things being pushed on people; it's their right to decide what to do with their own property, and maybe they have special needs that require an older version of Windows (some mission-critical software is known to have bugs on 10 for example).
But I also know that Microsoft is trying to improve the security of its products and the Internet as a whole by trying to get everyone updated. They don't want Windows 7 to be a repeat of people clinging to Windows XP, clinging to old technologies that are broken when new tech/implementations are available to prevent security problems. Not just security, but also think features: new protocols might be developed that weren't supported in the old OS, and so until majority of the Internet moves on, that protocol can't be rolled out. Many computer users are pretty clueless and need automatic updates for that reason, or they'll never do it themselves, and bring down the security of the Internet as a whole. Of course, it doesn't help that Microsoft's marketing team wants to take advantage of the security updates by also collecting info and all that stuff.
I hope we can find a good balance between the competing interests soon.
Loser pays would also make it basically impossible to sue any entity that has more money than you. The risk would be far too great, even if you had a legitimate dispute.
Let the judge award "loser pays" only after meeting a high threshold. Such as in situations where no rational person would consider it a legitimate dispute.
I agree. In the state Pennsylvania, state cases have a loser pays provision. You pay a filing fee but will get it awarded back to you if you win your case, as well as reasonable legal fees, etc. Without going into the whole crazy story, I found myself suing an old landlord for damages. While I won the initial case, the landlord was able to appeal... and appeal again after that. I couldn't keep paying the attorney fees to keep going further and so ended up settling, which cost me something like net $1500, rather than winning the $1500 in damages I was hoping for. While that may seem small to some of you, at the time I basically was making minimum wage and used my savings to do it. It wasn't sustainable. Based on that experience, I'd only go to court if I knew I was able to fight all the way to the top state courts, because that's pretty much what you're in for if your opponent has money.
If you're on minimum wage and can't pay the up front filing fees and attorney fees, you're screwed. In principle, you'd get it back -- but how are you going to get the money to initiate it in the first place? And what happens if you do end up losing? The poor in our country get no justice.
This is exactly why free software (in the vein of what Richard Stallman calls for) needs to be supported. *YOU*, the user, must own complete control over your computer and the software it runs, not developers (much of the more liberal open source licenses are about developer rights, not user rights -- big difference!) or corporations.
I know many of you would object, "But I bought this computer, it's not Microsoft's!". Well I wholeheartedly agree, but the thing is, Windows being proprietary closed source means that Microsoft has a claim to intellectual property rights. Microsoft believes that you license Windows, not own it. Essentially, they still own the software on your computer. Again, I know that *you* disagree, but it kinda doesn't matter what you think -- Microsoft has money and lawyers and they push for the outcome they want. Which is to own your computer. And if they own it, they're technically allowed to do whatever they want with it, including force upgrades. That is the nature of licensing agreements -- you agree to their licensing rules, which means they can do whatever they want.
If this bothers you, switch to a free software OS. Some flavor of Linux or even BSD. Get involved in the free software community, both the technical community (making more/better free software) and the political community (that lobbies for changes to copyright law, tries to get government to adopt open standards, etc.). We have to fight back, or you can expect more behavior like this from Microsoft, Apple, etc., in the future.
There is absolutely no law banning communism, just like there is no law saying you can't put a white sheet over your head and march down the street with the KKK.
How in the fuck is this scored Insightful?
It's Insightful because it's unfortunately true. Check out this gem of American history: the Communist Control Act of 1954. You can also download the text from the Government Publishing Office. It very explicitly states that, according to law, anyone in the Communist Party is considered to be attempting to overthrow the government, and shall be punished according to the law of Internal Security Act of 1950.
Now you might be able to make the claim that if you generally believe communist principles but aren't part of the established Party, this won't apply to you. But I think that effectively takes away your rights to organize, does it not? Still effectively a ban on the idea, if nothing else.
They probably shut down because the MITRE's CVE database is pretty much regarded as the canonical database for all vulnerabilities, open and proprietary. I've not see a security advisory that didn't have a CVE number for a long time. I don't remember ever seeing one with a reference to OSVDB.
MITRE itself has a list of things it thinks deserve CVE IDs: https://cve.mitre.org/cve/data_sources_product_coverage.html for details. Things outside of this list may not ever receive a CVE ID, even if they are valid vulnerabilities.
The takeaway is that lots of products have vulnerabilities but never receive CVEs or are included in the CVE dictionary. This is why alternates like OSVDB popped up, and why alternate vulnerability ID systems popped up recently (see DWF as a primary example).
It's a shame to lose something like OSVDB, as there really isn't a good canonical source of ALL vulnerabilities. MITRE's CVE works for vulnerabilities in big name products, but it is nowhere near inclusive of all vulnerabilities reported. Of course, OSVDB hasn't been updated recently either, so there's a big gap in even knowing what's out there. Maybe projects like DWF will help us move in that direction.
They absolutely were. "the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." That's the limit on government. They're ignoring the limit. It couldn't be any more obvious. You right to carry was infringed by coercive action of the federal government. How hard is that to figure out, really?
The full text of the 2nd Amendment is as follows:
So many people always forget the first half. The amendment specifically states "well-regulated", meaning it is within the powers of the federal government to regulate militias and arms. Taken in context in the 18th century, "well regulated" probably means something closer to "well trained", but still, it is obvious that arms are meant to be regulated and dispersed through trained militias, and not just any random jerk has a gun. Especially because today's guns can do substantially more damage than the guns did when the amendment was written.
I'm all for a conversation on what the appropriate level of regulation and training is. I don't think anyone really argues that guns should entirely disappear. But we need reasonable limits, not a free-for-all on weaponry, and the amendment supports that as a federal power. Please stop spreading misunderstanding.
Quality education requires a chalk, a blackboard, and some notebooks (the paper kind). You don't need researchers for education — you need professors. Researchers you get for free — they are called "grad students". And as soon as they can find gainful employment, you replace them with new ones.
The purpose of a university is to teach — any research done is coincidental to that primary purpose.
I once thought as you did. Mind you, not that I'm disagreeing with you, but rather the reality of the situation.
As someone that once tried to become a professor and navigate the academic system, I can say from direct experience that you will not become a professor unless you have a very strong research resume and are involved in research (meaning, you regularly apply for and receive grants from federal government, etc.). When you interview, you come in to meet the department and explain your research interests; its not very focused on your teaching style (you have to fill out a "teaching philosophy" statement, but I think its mostly a formality). The university administration expects to see dollar signs flow in, and so the emphasis is on bringing in dollars. In your more STEM-related fields that don't have as many students (as compared to say, the business school), since you don't have enough students to bring in significant tuition dollars, they expect significant research dollars or threaten to downsize your department (yes, this happened at one university I worked at for a while).
The result of this system is that a very large amount of university professors have little to no interest in teaching (I've had a few in school that were outright hostile to the idea of teaching, and acted like children when the department assigned them classes), and the teaching actually gets shoved off on to the teaching assistants. The TAs are of course also expected to do research and work on a dissertation, so we're talking 80 hour work weeks in some scenarios, which they have to put up with in order to graduate. Big name schools aren't really worth it, particularly at the bachelor's level, because many of your classes will be taught by TAs, or if you're lucky, you will get an upperlevel class taught by a professor that thinks that teaching undergraduate classes is beneath him (again, personal experience).
In some ways, CMU's students might be better off if professors that wanted to be researchers bailed ship. In theory, people focused on teaching could be hired... but then again, I sadly know better than that. I hope it changes in the future, but right now, quality education is really at the end of the priority list for all higher education in the country. I am glad to be away from academics.
Given they're trying to speak on behalf of many others that like as not don't feel as they do, it seems disingenuous. Besides, nothing is stopping them from giving more if they really feel that strongly about it.
Nothing disingenuous with stating your own opinion that you'd be ok with higher taxes. The operating assumption of most politicians, especially in the GOP, is that "TAXES ARE EVIL!", so if you remind them that not everyone feels that way (at least if taxes are going to a good purpose), that's your right as a citizen. Feel free to disagree and write your own letter, but in the case of these millionaires, they wanted to point out that the assumption that all rich people don't want tax increases is wrong.
While you can write a check to the Treasury if you really felt like it, its a bit moot if there isn't an accompanying budget. What is preferable is that a tax rate is set that funds a certain budget with a set of priorities, so you know for sure that the law requires your extra tax money go to pay for education, roads, etc., rather than going into a US Treasury slush fund that is used for who knows what, including probably tax rebates for corporations that don't need them. The letter is not just asking for tax increases, but asking for a budget that prioritizes these services and raises taxes as a way to pay for it.
The CVSS score is a medium of 6.1 for the CVE. So this isn't as bad as Heartbleed
First, Heartbleed was actually a 5.0 base score, so this is more serious if you go strictly by CVSS score (which is not necessarily advisable). Reference.
Second, CVSS scores are based on a certain formula and small set of conditions; in particular, vulnerabilities are scored based on their immediate impact and not necessarily things that occur down the line. In other words, CVSS base scores do not include environmental metrics (There is a CVSS environmental score, but almost no one uses it except for CERT). So looking only at the base score is not always a good indication of severity; possibly its a good first approximation, but it's good to look into the details too. Since glibc is part of pretty much everything out there, this is a pretty serious issue.
why we can't use C++ and C++ style derivatives for compiled code (cross compiled to many platforms), and then for interpreted needs use javascript, python, or whatever floats your boat on top?
There's some interesting languages out there with other features. Haskell comes to mind, as a pure functional language. It's not just pretty syntax, but a different way of thought that provides some features and power that C++/Java style imperative languages can't match. They're so different that you need different compilers really. You can't always write a Haskell program and "translate" it to C++, certainly not without re-architecting. Of course, there may be things an object oriented style is better suited for too, but just pointing out that some languages have different paradigms and therefore contribute new ideas to software development. That sort of exploration and research I think is important. I don't think we should be so quick to assume Java/C++/Python/whatever is the only language that is ever needed (which maybe is not what you meant, so I don't mean to attack you comment, just writing a thought that popped in mind based on yours).
A large amount of the languages these days seem to be more "domain-specific", that is, not very different from some underlying language, just adding some syntactic sugar for some specific problem or complaint while ignoring other drawbacks. I suppose that iteration is good though, as its catching the most important -- and serious? -- errors and making it easier to avoid those problems. 'm partial to investigating totally new concepts to see if we can build more resilient and secure software than to keep iterating what is already known to have drawbacks, but it's probably good that we do research from both ends -- incrementally improve what we have to take away certain known bugs and get it out the door *now*, while researching new ideas that perhaps will do away with whole classes of bugs for good (as well as make more powerful software in general).
I've wondered why services don't allow you to do something like add a PGP public key, and all notifications from that site are sent encrypted to that key. If someone gets ahold of your reset email, well unless they have your private key and passphase, they're still out of luck. Furthermore, legit email notices could be signed by a known public key of the site.
OK, it was a bit rhetorical perhaps, as I know not many are familiar with PGP to use it. Outlook doesn't support it out of the box so that cuts out a lot of users right there. And even people technical enough to know what its doing don't always like it.
And I guess the problem then would be people saying "I forgot my PGP passphase, please help!". So maybe it wouldn't actually solve much and still be prone to social engineering. But still. In 2016 I would have thought we'd have a better handle on privacy and security.
Many people will take their UBI and immediately spend it on drugs, alcohol, gambling, or bling, while ignoring the monthly rent, the electric bill, buying groceries for the children, etc.
[CITATION NEEDED]
Do you have evidence this is true for welfare and other checks, or is it just how you feel? I suspect you've never been in the heartbreaking situation (which I'm glad you haven't experienced it!) of having so little income that you have to decide between food and the electric bill. I'm sure there are some outliers that can't be helped and will spend on drugs but you need to understand this is a small minority compared to all poor people.
So the various government agencies will continue to expand and spend even more money on housing, food, medical care, etc. The UBI won't even make a dent in entitlement budgets. Instead, it will become "free money" to be squandered on a thousand other things besides basic human needs.
Again, citation? Has anyone's plan specifically said "We will grow government larger and larger"? Most of the proposals I've seen have been the opposite; if you make a fair tax system (stop giving tax handouts to the rich) and implement UBI instead of the hodgepodge of programs we have no (SS, medicare, medicaid, etc.), we'd save billions by eliminating duplicate administrative costs.
Now my concern is that many people are employed by the federal government, so the real cost will be all the people worried about losing their jobs and becoming poor. But if there's UBI, they won't lose their home if laid off. And, its possible we could pivot many of these jobs to other agencies -- for example, more workers in the justice dept to reduce the time we wait for hearings/court cases, or to the VA to get caught up on paperwork and get veterans help, or even dept of the interior and let them clean up state and national parks or become EPA inspectors to actually enforce our laws. Random ideas here, but the point is that government will likely be reduced, and worst case, be about the save size but massive amounts of people repurposed to things that need to get done but aren't under the current bureaucracy.
Anyone who doesn't think it won't happen need only look at inner city schools in the U.S. In theory, every child should be getting meals at home thanks to government SNAP benefits to their parents or guardians. In practice, schools give many kids a free breakfast and lunch every school day, and even give them food bags to take home for the weekend, because Mom or Dad can't be bothered to buy food for the kids with the SNAP money. Where does the money go? No one knows or even attempts to find out. They just give the kids free food and cross their fingers.
What do you mean "Where does that money go?". I don't even know where you got this from.
As someone that was personally on SNAP in the past (long story, but basically as a new college instructor, you actually make so little money that I qualified for SNAP for a while. True story.), I can tell you that it is not a check in the mail of free money. You get a debit card that is pre-loaded with a small amount of money (a maximum of $200 per month for an individual; I challenge you to keep your food budget under $200 per month = about $7 a day. You do get more money for each dependent you have, but it's a small increase.). This card can ONLY be used by stores that accept SNAP, and it is restricted to ONLY purchase food items. For example, you cannot swipe your SNAP card to purchase lottery tickets or alcohol. You're not even allowed to buy "prepared food" (meaning like food you'd get from a restaurant; so you have to buy frozen foods or canned foods only, and cook at home).
Anyone on SNAP that can't feed their kids is probably running up against that roughly $7 per day limit. Even if you double it to $15/day for a family, can you spend $15 per day consistently? A pound of chicken is pushing $10. Milk is a f
They aren't changing anything. They are quoting from John Locke, not the Declaration of Independence (which changed Locke's quote from property to pursuit of happiness).
Came here to say this. Locke's philosophical ideas likely contributed a lot to how the founding fathers approached rights and freedoms when setting up the country.