What you are describing are anarchists. Not really affiliated with Ayn Rand.
It is a robust and well thought out political philosophy. There are many branches, like anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-communism, etc. They are distinct from mainstream libertarianism which is also distinct from objectivism (Rand).
But yes, there are many people who believe that police and fire services should be provided by private contractors. And roads. Don't forget roads. Strangely, toll roads don't always lead to Somalia. But statist rants generally do.
Also, the "fire in a crowded theater" argument was made in a landmark case that allowed the suppression of purely political, anti-war speech.
It was ultimately on the losing side, but for a while the official position was that opposing the US entering WWI was akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater and therefore not protected speech.
Or maybe, just maybe, the people behind the law want the tools in place to suppress ideas that they don't like.
When someone asks for a sledgehammer to drive nails with, you have to wonder if they don't really have something else in mind for the sledgehammer - particularly if they already have a perfectly good hammer in their toolbox.
If you look at the actual product, it doesn't move freely in space, it is on a track. There is a rotating section of track like a railroad turntable that allows it to switch tracks.
That is where all of the hyperbole about "any direction, even diagonally" comes from. The thing moves on a track. Having the ability to switch tracks means you can have multiple cars in each elevator shaft, and cars can potentially pass one another.
Since they are installing one of these things in an actual commercial building under construction in Germany, I'm sure they have an emergency braking system. Looking at the track, it doesn't appear as if it is a "contactless" maglev system. It looks like it is running on some sort of track and using a linear electric motor for propulsion. This means that they could simply use an inertial braking system like regular elevators - if the car goes too fast, braking weights fly out and stop the car.
That would actually clear up a lot of the strange distinctions. Except for the gambling sites that got shut down by the US government because US citizens were gambling there. In that case, online gambling was not illegal in the host nation. But they still issued indictments and shut down the websites and seized assets held in foreign bank accounts. If I recall, the lever they used was a law making it illegal to send money to those companies from the US. But once again, not illegal in Ireland or wherever for them to receive the money.
So the US certainly didn't hang their hat on "also violates the law where you are located". But maybe getting extradition is harder on that point?
Yeah, but that link here is pretty tenuous. Isn't "kickass torrents" a site that provides a place for 3rd parties to post links to files that are hosted by 3rd parties via torrents?
In the case of gambling sites the link was "people from the US visit the site for the purpose of gambling", which seems pretty thin. I mean, if you travel to a country where gambling is legal then you can gamble there legally, even if you are a US citizen. But travelling there via electronic communication somehow not only fails to make your activities in the foreign country subject to foreign law, it makes the people in the foreign country subject to US law.
In the torrent case, it is US companies that are worried about copyright violations, but it is a couple of steps removed to get to the person who owns a website in another country that hosts links posted by other people to files hosted by yet other people. I get that they set up the site entirely for the purpose of having people post those links, but beyond that they are functionally no different than the Huffington Post's comments section. In fact, a clever bunch of copyright violating folks could use a combination of Slashdot comments and Google searches to effectively recreate much of the functionality of a site like kickass torrents.
Is it simply intent that we are hanging our hat on here? The torrent sites are clearly intending to violate US and EU copyright law - even as they skirt around direct hosting of any violating content. Google hosts exactly the same content - links to copyright violating content - but it isn't their primary function or direct intent. Similarly the gambling sites intended that US citizens would use their foreign sites to gamble online since US companies are not allowed to provide online gambling.
I dunno. The whole thing still seems odd to me.
If I post a link to a company that sells authentic replica WWII German SS uniforms on Slashdot, is Slashdot liable for violations of German laws banning Nazi paraphernalia? I'm no German, the company selling the stuff isn't German, and Slashdot isn't German. I'm not selling anything, I just posted the link. Slashdot isn't selling anything, they just host the link. Seems roughly equivalent to me. The only thing missing is intent on the part of Slashdot.
I still don't understand the legal theory that says that foreign citizens operating entirely outside of the US can be held accountable to US law.
We have seen this with gambling sites, file sharing sites, etc. I get applying US law if a foreign national defrauds a US citizen from their hideout in another country. Or going after the leadership of criminal conspiracies that operate inside the US but have their top people overseas - a buddy of mine investigates medical fraud cases that are run by an organized crime ring in Cuba of all places.
But this is different. A web site that hosts links to files hosted elsewhere and is itself hosted in another country by people who are subject to the laws of other nations? Can China come after the editors and owners of Slashdot for its users violating Chinese speech laws? They seem to take those more seriously than the US takes copyright law.
This whole thing is nuts. Or maybe I'm missing something.
But only for certain users. Most people would be content with Apple branded currency if it meant they could go to any store and purchase goods with their phone, saving the 2% that would have gone to the credit card company. Given enough market penetration, the only people worrying about such things would be the same people who are using bitcoin now.
Except depending on how they set it up, it could be plausible that the privacy and anonymity features of bitcoin were replicated or even improved in this MegaCorp Coin.
All of this is possible. Perhaps even trivial to do at this point if you were Google et. al. Except there's no chance the world's governments would allow it. Heck, they can't even let Google decide what kind of results to return in response to a search request without meddling.
So rest easy bitcoin speculators. Amazon and Ebay aren't coming to break your bank any time soon.
I don't think you can make a large network based only on early adopters.
What might happen if a big player got involved. Or multiple big players? What if Ebay (Paypal), Amazon, Google and Apple teamed up to create a new cryptocurrency designed entirely as a means of final purchase? You could do a transaction end-to-end with their currency, hypothetically. Because of their massive reach, you could start paying in stores and restaurants around the world immediately. Let's say the only transaction fees were when you moved from their digital currency to national currencies and back. The consortium's aim would be to make purchasing their products globally easier, and obtaining additional buy-in and tracking data to enhance their core business. So you could bank globally without any cost, moving money anywhere to anyone. (OK, this part would definitely cause them regulatory difficulty).
Bitcoin could be rendered effectively worthless overnight by such a juggernaut, as demand fell precipitously toward zero. (this hypothetical product could also effectively put the credit card industry out of business, along with the wire transfer business and have a major impact on the banks.... so I suppose there is a pretty powerful set of reasons that such a thing could never happen)
Bitcoin is a fiat currency, based entirely on the trust relationship and the limited amount of bitcoin available. The only true worth it has is as a method of exchange between people. Seeing financial statements and assets makes no sense with regard to valuing a bitcoin. It is strictly "what can I get in exchange for it", nothing more.
Folks speculating in bitcoin can cause temporary bubbles and other market distortions. But as the market for bitcoins (or other cryptocurrency) gets wider it becomes less susceptible to these problems. Less, but never immune. Even the US dollar and the Euro are tossed about by these forces from time to time.
Yes, the government admitted that they had two corrupt officers on the investigation. They were being investigated at the time and the government actively covered it up. They admit this freely - in fact they have made the charges in court. The appeals court judge cites their reasoning in the denial, saying that it was proper to keep the proceedings of the grand jury secret, despite the defendant's right to a fair trial.
The "alleged" part would be Ulbricht's assertion that they were blackmailing him an threatening to frame him.
Some of the behavior of the legal system in this case is scary. It seems to me that they are really worried about this internet thing being used to sell drugs, so they are going to collect a few scalps as a deterrent, come hell or high water.
Here's a write-up of the appeal from the point of view of "holy crap, this is bad for freedom". The scariest point the writer makes is that the appeals judge hints that the justification for the overly harsh sentence of "life without parole" is that the defense team made the argument that the war on drugs was a bad thing with negative consequences.
Here's a bit from the decision:
In this case, a reminder of the consequences of facilitating such transactions was perhaps more necessary, particularly because Ulbricht claimed that his site actually made the drug trade safer, and he appeared to contest the legitimacy of the laws he violated.
The government argued that he deserved a harsher sentence because they alleged that they could trace 6 deaths to drug overdoses from Silk Road purchases. His lawyers countered that by providing a community rated marketplace he made the drug trade safer for users, mitigating this harm and providing a net benefit. The judge is saying that this claim makes it important that the court administer a harsher sentence.
Truth isn't the only way to avoid a slander/defamation charge. You also can have a reasonable belief. I'd say "that guy posted it" is at least a piece of a "reasonable belief" defense.
But beyond that, does anyone really think "like" on facebook is the same as making the statement yourself? If I "like" a selfie, am I somehow posting a selfie? This is modestly incoherent.
I normally would leave this alone, but this is so egregious I just can't help myself.
First, we have a moderation system to handle this situation. A spam army of anonymous cowards doesn't garner many eyeballs around here, as AC starts with a disadvantage, and most people read at +1.
But more to the point on this specific case: There's only roughly 60 total posts on this article (as I begin typing). If every single post was some Russian-paid advocate, it would barely rate "spammed hard". I realize this community has dwindled over the years, but anything less than 300 posts for a thread is hardly a discussion 'round these parts. Your 3rd grader's lunch bunch could spam this tiny discussion from their smart phones and do a better job of dominating a discussion this size.
And lastly - what absurd connection can there possibly be between Putin's Russian government and Net Neutrality regulations? Why the heck would they give a rat's butt about internet regulations in the US?
The entire discussion is just silly. Pretending for a moment there are paid advocates rummaging from discussion to discussion pimping the Trump position on Net Neutrality, why in the world would we think that it is Russia that is paying the freight? Or even Trump for that matter. He was a notorious spendthrift during the campaign, utilizing free media attention rather than anything paid. So now he's gonna go with a paid army to push some position that doesn't require much in the way of public opinion for him to accomplish?
No, if there are paid advocates shilling against net neutrality regulations, it is going to be the internet carrier companies that are paying the freight. They are the only ones who care enough about this issue. Just like the other side is going to be funded by folks like Google and Netflix, because they have a dog in the fight. Putin? He doesn't gain anything either way.
I switched to T-Mobile a couple of years back to take advantage of their promotions at the time. We have 3 phone lines and they gave us two tablet lines for free (with free tablets. Jeez T-mobile.. run that promo again!). All unlimited.
Tethering is included. So far I haven't seen any significant issues with throttling with my kids using their Kindles and old android phones tethered. Netflix, Amazon Video and Youtube seem to run fine tethered under their plans - and on a cell phone or 7 inch tablet you can't notice their recompression artifacts. I've had 3 tablets streaming simultaneously on one hotspot and it worked just fine. The kids were watching youtube videos, so it might not be as friendly with 3 high-def Netflix movies.
I checked the instagram that comes up at the top on the google search too - not having the slightest clue who she was. With 86 posts of mostly nothing, I was surprised they'd say she was a social media star. So I googled again, and found a bunch of articles - including in the NYT - that say she is a snapchat superstar.
I don't do the whole snapchat thing, so I didn't know you could be a snapchat superstar. In fact, I thought the point of snapchat was to keep things from getting out to the public. Shows what I know.
Anyway, a google image search shows that she's a model/party girl with a big booty who does promotions and hangs with the cool crowd, including pro athletes, rap stars and DJs. She has a company that does social media PR stuff.
She also seems to be very good with photoshop, judging by the contrast between paparazzi photos and her own self-posted photos.
So I'm not sure if that instagram account has anything to do with her or not. But it is clearly not what she is known for.
I think the courts have already ruled on this in the case of combinations to safes. If I recall correctly, they have ruled that you cannot be compelled to provide the combination. Random googling returns this blog post about exactly this topic, complete with references.
The "it is a simulation" idea is more of a "there is an analog universe that doesn't have approximations like quantum physics and planc length minimum distances. In that fully analog (and perhaps multidimensional) universe, a simulated universe run on those analog computers would have to make shortcuts that look like our physics. And in that simulated universe there might be tiny hints as to the simulated nature of the universe.
I find this a fun topic to explore when talking with atheists and creationists. By bringing it up you can get atheists all exited - and then drop the rhetorical bomb on them that if this universe is indeed a computer simulation then they are completely wrong. There is a God, and he is some grad student in a higher-dimensional university lab running the computer simulation. And the Jew/Christian/Muslims were right that He created the universe by speaking the words...
It is an interesting and fun diversion. The Descartes version you allude to is the progenitor of this line, but the analog universe simulator version is more interesting today.
But that isn't at all what the state is talking about. They are not talking about DUI convictions, or even arrests. They are talking about complaints.
Meaning, some customer reported that they thought their driver was drunk or on drugs.
What does zero tolerance mean in this context?
A taxi company doesn't have an app for rating every ride. So you have to really, really want to complain. And how well is that tracked?
So now does it make more sense to question what "zero tolerance" means? Surely they don't mean "zero complaints" That would be stupid at every level. And because they are talking about complaints, we know they don't only mean DUI convictions. So the line is somewhere in between.
But we also know that their competition is not going to have nearly the robust and easily accessible complaint system that Uber (and Lyft) have. And they won't have nearly the system for tracking complaints. So how can the state compare a company that tracks every comment with a company that probably says "thank you for your input. We will investigate this immediately." when the customer calls, and then promptly ignores it with no paper trail at all in many, maybe even most cases.
It is a complicated situation to properly adjudicate. And there are lots of incentives to manipulate the system from lots of sources.
Theoretically they are operating in the black at the lowest level - the cost of a ride is less than the company pays their drivers.
App development and hosting is in the millions, not billions.
So that leaves advertising and legal fees, right? $2.8 Billion Dollars.... in legal fees and advertising. Wow. Just.... Wow.
So if each high-profile case runs around $10 million in legal fees.... that's, what?.... a couple hundred cases? Hmm... Ok. Worldwide.... I suppose that is plausible.
But with that they'd still have to be operating at only break-even on the rest of their operations. How is that possible? They don't have any employees to speak of. They only get a cut of orders for other people. They claim to have netted $6.5 billion on bookings of $20 billion. And still they lost almost $3 billion.
That is simply a stunning number. How can their costs possibly be $10 billion per year - above what drivers make? That's just a colossal amount of money for a middle-man..........So I google.... and find that there are some leaked financial documents running around. Apparently they are paying drivers in places like China 50% more than they are charging the customer, as a "driver incentive". So they lost a billion a year in the china market, because driver incentives were 154% of revenues.
Well... that would explain it then. Next question.... why exactly are they paying drivers more than they charge the customer?
The US has been actively involved in the fighting in Syria since 2011, providing aid, arms, drone strikes and intelligence reports to groups opposed to ISIS(L) and to the Assad regime. Amnesty International's website tallying drone strikes in Syria isn't responding right now, but it did list thousands of US drone strikes in Syria the last I looked.
This may be a dumb policy. Or maybe taking military action in response to use of nerve gas on civilians is the moral high ground. But it isn't new (remember Obama drawing a line in the sand? Remember Hillary Clinton calling for the enforcement of a no-fly zone over Syria - which would put the US in direct military confrontation with Russia since we are talking about the Russian air force?). And Russian involvement with Syria isn't new.
you can't produce bomb grade nuclear fuel in a basement or a small cave.
Yes you can. You simply get the fissile material by scraping the radioactive dials of 12k glow-in-the-dark watch faces. Some kid back in the 80's did it..... what was his name..... ?? Oliver W. Jones.
it was totally covered in the Bloom County Register by that reporter, Berkeley Breathed.
Slashdot Mirror
What you are describing are anarchists. Not really affiliated with Ayn Rand.
It is a robust and well thought out political philosophy. There are many branches, like anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-communism, etc. They are distinct from mainstream libertarianism which is also distinct from objectivism (Rand).
But yes, there are many people who believe that police and fire services should be provided by private contractors. And roads. Don't forget roads. Strangely, toll roads don't always lead to Somalia. But statist rants generally do.
Also, the "fire in a crowded theater" argument was made in a landmark case that allowed the suppression of purely political, anti-war speech.
It was ultimately on the losing side, but for a while the official position was that opposing the US entering WWI was akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater and therefore not protected speech.
Amazing how language and history can be misappropriated and forgotten. Here's a Ken White screed on the topic.
Or maybe, just maybe, the people behind the law want the tools in place to suppress ideas that they don't like.
When someone asks for a sledgehammer to drive nails with, you have to wonder if they don't really have something else in mind for the sledgehammer - particularly if they already have a perfectly good hammer in their toolbox.
If you look at the actual product, it doesn't move freely in space, it is on a track. There is a rotating section of track like a railroad turntable that allows it to switch tracks.
That is where all of the hyperbole about "any direction, even diagonally" comes from. The thing moves on a track. Having the ability to switch tracks means you can have multiple cars in each elevator shaft, and cars can potentially pass one another.
Since they are installing one of these things in an actual commercial building under construction in Germany, I'm sure they have an emergency braking system.
Looking at the track, it doesn't appear as if it is a "contactless" maglev system. It looks like it is running on some sort of track and using a linear electric motor for propulsion. This means that they could simply use an inertial braking system like regular elevators - if the car goes too fast, braking weights fly out and stop the car.
That would actually clear up a lot of the strange distinctions. Except for the gambling sites that got shut down by the US government because US citizens were gambling there. In that case, online gambling was not illegal in the host nation. But they still issued indictments and shut down the websites and seized assets held in foreign bank accounts. If I recall, the lever they used was a law making it illegal to send money to those companies from the US. But once again, not illegal in Ireland or wherever for them to receive the money.
So the US certainly didn't hang their hat on "also violates the law where you are located". But maybe getting extradition is harder on that point?
Yeah, but that link here is pretty tenuous. Isn't "kickass torrents" a site that provides a place for 3rd parties to post links to files that are hosted by 3rd parties via torrents?
In the case of gambling sites the link was "people from the US visit the site for the purpose of gambling", which seems pretty thin. I mean, if you travel to a country where gambling is legal then you can gamble there legally, even if you are a US citizen. But travelling there via electronic communication somehow not only fails to make your activities in the foreign country subject to foreign law, it makes the people in the foreign country subject to US law.
In the torrent case, it is US companies that are worried about copyright violations, but it is a couple of steps removed to get to the person who owns a website in another country that hosts links posted by other people to files hosted by yet other people. I get that they set up the site entirely for the purpose of having people post those links, but beyond that they are functionally no different than the Huffington Post's comments section. In fact, a clever bunch of copyright violating folks could use a combination of Slashdot comments and Google searches to effectively recreate much of the functionality of a site like kickass torrents.
Is it simply intent that we are hanging our hat on here? The torrent sites are clearly intending to violate US and EU copyright law - even as they skirt around direct hosting of any violating content. Google hosts exactly the same content - links to copyright violating content - but it isn't their primary function or direct intent. Similarly the gambling sites intended that US citizens would use their foreign sites to gamble online since US companies are not allowed to provide online gambling.
I dunno. The whole thing still seems odd to me.
If I post a link to a company that sells authentic replica WWII German SS uniforms on Slashdot, is Slashdot liable for violations of German laws banning Nazi paraphernalia? I'm no German, the company selling the stuff isn't German, and Slashdot isn't German. I'm not selling anything, I just posted the link. Slashdot isn't selling anything, they just host the link. Seems roughly equivalent to me. The only thing missing is intent on the part of Slashdot.
I still don't understand the legal theory that says that foreign citizens operating entirely outside of the US can be held accountable to US law.
We have seen this with gambling sites, file sharing sites, etc. I get applying US law if a foreign national defrauds a US citizen from their hideout in another country. Or going after the leadership of criminal conspiracies that operate inside the US but have their top people overseas - a buddy of mine investigates medical fraud cases that are run by an organized crime ring in Cuba of all places.
But this is different. A web site that hosts links to files hosted elsewhere and is itself hosted in another country by people who are subject to the laws of other nations? Can China come after the editors and owners of Slashdot for its users violating Chinese speech laws? They seem to take those more seriously than the US takes copyright law.
This whole thing is nuts. Or maybe I'm missing something.
Valid points.
But only for certain users. Most people would be content with Apple branded currency if it meant they could go to any store and purchase goods with their phone, saving the 2% that would have gone to the credit card company. Given enough market penetration, the only people worrying about such things would be the same people who are using bitcoin now.
Except depending on how they set it up, it could be plausible that the privacy and anonymity features of bitcoin were replicated or even improved in this MegaCorp Coin.
All of this is possible. Perhaps even trivial to do at this point if you were Google et. al. Except there's no chance the world's governments would allow it. Heck, they can't even let Google decide what kind of results to return in response to a search request without meddling.
So rest easy bitcoin speculators. Amazon and Ebay aren't coming to break your bank any time soon.
What might happen if a big player got involved. Or multiple big players? What if Ebay (Paypal), Amazon, Google and Apple teamed up to create a new cryptocurrency designed entirely as a means of final purchase? You could do a transaction end-to-end with their currency, hypothetically. Because of their massive reach, you could start paying in stores and restaurants around the world immediately. Let's say the only transaction fees were when you moved from their digital currency to national currencies and back. The consortium's aim would be to make purchasing their products globally easier, and obtaining additional buy-in and tracking data to enhance their core business. So you could bank globally without any cost, moving money anywhere to anyone. (OK, this part would definitely cause them regulatory difficulty).
Bitcoin could be rendered effectively worthless overnight by such a juggernaut, as demand fell precipitously toward zero. (this hypothetical product could also effectively put the credit card industry out of business, along with the wire transfer business and have a major impact on the banks.... so I suppose there is a pretty powerful set of reasons that such a thing could never happen)
I was going to make a similar reply.
Bitcoin is a fiat currency, based entirely on the trust relationship and the limited amount of bitcoin available. The only true worth it has is as a method of exchange between people. Seeing financial statements and assets makes no sense with regard to valuing a bitcoin. It is strictly "what can I get in exchange for it", nothing more.
Folks speculating in bitcoin can cause temporary bubbles and other market distortions. But as the market for bitcoins (or other cryptocurrency) gets wider it becomes less susceptible to these problems. Less, but never immune. Even the US dollar and the Euro are tossed about by these forces from time to time.
Yes, the government admitted that they had two corrupt officers on the investigation. They were being investigated at the time and the government actively covered it up. They admit this freely - in fact they have made the charges in court. The appeals court judge cites their reasoning in the denial, saying that it was proper to keep the proceedings of the grand jury secret, despite the defendant's right to a fair trial.
The "alleged" part would be Ulbricht's assertion that they were blackmailing him an threatening to frame him.
Some of the behavior of the legal system in this case is scary. It seems to me that they are really worried about this internet thing being used to sell drugs, so they are going to collect a few scalps as a deterrent, come hell or high water.
Here's a write-up of the appeal from the point of view of "holy crap, this is bad for freedom". The scariest point the writer makes is that the appeals judge hints that the justification for the overly harsh sentence of "life without parole" is that the defense team made the argument that the war on drugs was a bad thing with negative consequences.
Here's a bit from the decision:
The government argued that he deserved a harsher sentence because they alleged that they could trace 6 deaths to drug overdoses from Silk Road purchases. His lawyers countered that by providing a community rated marketplace he made the drug trade safer for users, mitigating this harm and providing a net benefit. The judge is saying that this claim makes it important that the court administer a harsher sentence.
This is my understanding as well.
Truth isn't the only way to avoid a slander/defamation charge. You also can have a reasonable belief. I'd say "that guy posted it" is at least a piece of a "reasonable belief" defense.
But beyond that, does anyone really think "like" on facebook is the same as making the statement yourself? If I "like" a selfie, am I somehow posting a selfie? This is modestly incoherent.
I normally would leave this alone, but this is so egregious I just can't help myself.
First, we have a moderation system to handle this situation. A spam army of anonymous cowards doesn't garner many eyeballs around here, as AC starts with a disadvantage, and most people read at +1.
But more to the point on this specific case: There's only roughly 60 total posts on this article (as I begin typing). If every single post was some Russian-paid advocate, it would barely rate "spammed hard". I realize this community has dwindled over the years, but anything less than 300 posts for a thread is hardly a discussion 'round these parts. Your 3rd grader's lunch bunch could spam this tiny discussion from their smart phones and do a better job of dominating a discussion this size.
And lastly - what absurd connection can there possibly be between Putin's Russian government and Net Neutrality regulations? Why the heck would they give a rat's butt about internet regulations in the US?
The entire discussion is just silly. Pretending for a moment there are paid advocates rummaging from discussion to discussion pimping the Trump position on Net Neutrality, why in the world would we think that it is Russia that is paying the freight? Or even Trump for that matter. He was a notorious spendthrift during the campaign, utilizing free media attention rather than anything paid. So now he's gonna go with a paid army to push some position that doesn't require much in the way of public opinion for him to accomplish?
No, if there are paid advocates shilling against net neutrality regulations, it is going to be the internet carrier companies that are paying the freight. They are the only ones who care enough about this issue. Just like the other side is going to be funded by folks like Google and Netflix, because they have a dog in the fight. Putin? He doesn't gain anything either way.
I switched to T-Mobile a couple of years back to take advantage of their promotions at the time. We have 3 phone lines and they gave us two tablet lines for free (with free tablets. Jeez T-mobile.. run that promo again!). All unlimited.
Tethering is included. So far I haven't seen any significant issues with throttling with my kids using their Kindles and old android phones tethered. Netflix, Amazon Video and Youtube seem to run fine tethered under their plans - and on a cell phone or 7 inch tablet you can't notice their recompression artifacts. I've had 3 tablets streaming simultaneously on one hotspot and it worked just fine. The kids were watching youtube videos, so it might not be as friendly with 3 high-def Netflix movies.
I checked the instagram that comes up at the top on the google search too - not having the slightest clue who she was. With 86 posts of mostly nothing, I was surprised they'd say she was a social media star. So I googled again, and found a bunch of articles - including in the NYT - that say she is a snapchat superstar.
I don't do the whole snapchat thing, so I didn't know you could be a snapchat superstar. In fact, I thought the point of snapchat was to keep things from getting out to the public. Shows what I know.
Anyway, a google image search shows that she's a model/party girl with a big booty who does promotions and hangs with the cool crowd, including pro athletes, rap stars and DJs. She has a company that does social media PR stuff.
She also seems to be very good with photoshop, judging by the contrast between paparazzi photos and her own self-posted photos.
So I'm not sure if that instagram account has anything to do with her or not. But it is clearly not what she is known for.
I think the courts have already ruled on this in the case of combinations to safes. If I recall correctly, they have ruled that you cannot be compelled to provide the combination. Random googling returns this blog post about exactly this topic, complete with references.
The "it is a simulation" idea is more of a "there is an analog universe that doesn't have approximations like quantum physics and planc length minimum distances. In that fully analog (and perhaps multidimensional) universe, a simulated universe run on those analog computers would have to make shortcuts that look like our physics. And in that simulated universe there might be tiny hints as to the simulated nature of the universe.
I find this a fun topic to explore when talking with atheists and creationists. By bringing it up you can get atheists all exited - and then drop the rhetorical bomb on them that if this universe is indeed a computer simulation then they are completely wrong. There is a God, and he is some grad student in a higher-dimensional university lab running the computer simulation. And the Jew/Christian/Muslims were right that He created the universe by speaking the words...
It is an interesting and fun diversion. The Descartes version you allude to is the progenitor of this line, but the analog universe simulator version is more interesting today.
Yeah.... 5 years out for a tech claim means "we have a bit of experimental data that shows something might work. (Please fund me)".
10 years out in the tech world means "this is wild speculation and might never even become a technical demonstration. (Please fund my startup)"
But that isn't at all what the state is talking about. They are not talking about DUI convictions, or even arrests. They are talking about complaints.
Meaning, some customer reported that they thought their driver was drunk or on drugs.
What does zero tolerance mean in this context?
A taxi company doesn't have an app for rating every ride. So you have to really, really want to complain. And how well is that tracked?
So now does it make more sense to question what "zero tolerance" means? Surely they don't mean "zero complaints" That would be stupid at every level. And because they are talking about complaints, we know they don't only mean DUI convictions. So the line is somewhere in between.
But we also know that their competition is not going to have nearly the robust and easily accessible complaint system that Uber (and Lyft) have. And they won't have nearly the system for tracking complaints. So how can the state compare a company that tracks every comment with a company that probably says "thank you for your input. We will investigate this immediately." when the customer calls, and then promptly ignores it with no paper trail at all in many, maybe even most cases.
It is a complicated situation to properly adjudicate. And there are lots of incentives to manipulate the system from lots of sources.
I was wondering the same thing.
Theoretically they are operating in the black at the lowest level - the cost of a ride is less than the company pays their drivers.
App development and hosting is in the millions, not billions.
So that leaves advertising and legal fees, right? $2.8 Billion Dollars.... in legal fees and advertising. Wow. Just.... Wow.
So if each high-profile case runs around $10 million in legal fees.... that's, what? .... a couple hundred cases? Hmm... Ok. Worldwide.... I suppose that is plausible.
But with that they'd still have to be operating at only break-even on the rest of their operations. How is that possible? They don't have any employees to speak of. They only get a cut of orders for other people. They claim to have netted $6.5 billion on bookings of $20 billion. And still they lost almost $3 billion.
That is simply a stunning number. How can their costs possibly be $10 billion per year - above what drivers make? That's just a colossal amount of money for a middle-man. .........So I google.... and find that there are some leaked financial documents running around. Apparently they are paying drivers in places like China 50% more than they are charging the customer, as a "driver incentive". So they lost a billion a year in the china market, because driver incentives were 154% of revenues.
Well... that would explain it then. Next question.... why exactly are they paying drivers more than they charge the customer?
Why it cannot do this? Assad and Russia weren't much of allies before US decided to enter civil war on side of islamists..
This is why political discussions are so difficult. Syria is not only a client state of Russia, they have hosted a Russian naval base at least since 1971 - way back in the Soviet era.
The US has been actively involved in the fighting in Syria since 2011, providing aid, arms, drone strikes and intelligence reports to groups opposed to ISIS(L) and to the Assad regime. Amnesty International's website tallying drone strikes in Syria isn't responding right now, but it did list thousands of US drone strikes in Syria the last I looked.
This may be a dumb policy. Or maybe taking military action in response to use of nerve gas on civilians is the moral high ground. But it isn't new (remember Obama drawing a line in the sand? Remember Hillary Clinton calling for the enforcement of a no-fly zone over Syria - which would put the US in direct military confrontation with Russia since we are talking about the Russian air force?). And Russian involvement with Syria isn't new.
There have been journalists who tried to cover this beat before and been charged with child pornography and sent to jail. Depending on who the prosecutor is, this is the untouchable story. There is no safe harbor when it comes to kids and sex.
The misspelling is a pretty good misdirect.
"See!?! I don't even know how to spell Kubo! Clearly I didn't download that movie!"
He won first prize, too.
Yes you can. You simply get the fissile material by scraping the radioactive dials of 12k glow-in-the-dark watch faces. Some kid back in the 80's did it..... what was his name..... ?? Oliver W. Jones.
it was totally covered in the Bloom County Register by that reporter, Berkeley Breathed.