Yeah, that's what I'm talking about with "confirmation bias".
They all worked at CNN, ABC, CBS, PBS etc. They went to form their own network because they perceived a bias around them (and a business opportunity because of an unmet need). They said this is what they were doing and why they were doing it. And there had long been calls that the TV press corps was left-biased.
But you chose to ignore all of that and say nah, nothing was really biased until after Fox.
That's just straight confirmation bias. Back when Fox came out the press was voting 90+% Democrat. You aren't going to get much more of an objective proxy than that for what their personal biases are.
Now, I don't think anyone can argue with a straight face that the media hasn't become even more biased in the last 20 years. And it would be hard to argue that Fox isn't in the center of that change, along with characters like Limbaugh, Air America, Huffington Post, Drudge..... and yes, MSNBC and CNN. But that doesn't change the reality that was 3.5 network channels of news coverage.
I blame Rupert Murdoch for that. CNN's bias was a direct response to Fox News bias. Prior to that, they were neutral. At some point, somebody wrongly concluded that the only way to fight bias was with opposite bias, rather than with accuracy.
Ever heard of confirmation bias?
When Fox News launched, they explicitly stated that they were creating their news operation to counter the bias of CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC and PBS. That was their entire schtick. That's where the whole "Fair and Balanced" tag came from. And they knew of what they spoke, as they all came from those networks.
What Fox news really is, or what it evolved into might be open for discussion, but it would be hard to peg CNN's biased coverage on a network that sprang forth in an attempt to exploit the bias of CNN et. al.
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
So they can levy an income tax. And they don't have to give any of it to the states. And they don't have to worry about any head counts. But there's nothing in there about exemptions from 4th amendment protections.
So let's take a look at that 4th amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.[2]"
So if you wanna demand access to someone's person, house, papers or effects, you gotta show probable cause which is supported by Oath or affirmation and describing a particular place to be searched and the particular person or thing to be seized. And no, shoving "income tax enforcement" in front of the request doesn't seem to be a reasonable substitute.
But you are right in that the government has repeatedly exempted itself from having to follow the constitution - on this particular issue and many others. And by that I mean in all likelihood they'll be turning over the info the government wants.
Sorry to get back to you so late, but I thought you might be interested in the further backstory you are referencing.
The "obscure paper" isn't Newsweek, it is the Russian rag "Sputnik". Their writer (a dude from Arizona) made the initial mistake confusing Bloomenthal and Eichenwald. You see, Bloomenthal quoted an Eichenwald article in his email.
Probably some staffer had an alert set for wikileaks news and grabbed the article off of google or yahoo news.
So Newsweek's article is part of the spin. Manufacturing conspiracies instead of crediting incompetence.
The discussion in this sub-thread is "don't read political spin, it makes you stupid".
You seem to believe "my team's spin isn't stupid". It is. Everyone's team's spin is stupid. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy for a political candidate to pick up a negative story about his opponent and run with it, even if it is wrong. If you think that is evidence that Trump is a puppet of Russia, you are drinking the cool-aid. He might be a Russian mole.... but picking up a story from some obscure paper that fits your narrative so you can criticize an opponent.... not exactly evidence.
As to the connection to political violence... the narrative from the Clinton campaign was that Trump was fomenting violence from his supporters at his rallies. We now know that the disruptions at his campaign events were at least in part from paid operatives in coordination with the Clinton campaign. So don't believe the political spin. It makes you stupid.
Besides, I don't see how anyone can credit Trump with being smart enough to pull off some grand conspiracy to coordinate with the Russians. From what I can tell he's too dumb to make toast.
Russia said that it talked with the teams of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during the U.S. presidential election as part of routine outreach during a campaign. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the Russian embassy in the U.S. held talks with the Trump camp that “were on a sufficient, responsible level.” Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Trump, said in an e-mail that she was “not aware” of any meetings by campaign representatives with Russian diplomats. Ryabkov said the talks were “part of routine everyday work.” There was also “sporadic” contact with the Clinton team, though it was “not always productive,” he said. Calls to members of Clinton’s former campaign team for comment weren’t immediately returned.
Actually, for most crimes and for most of our history, intent, or mens rea has been a vital component of criminal convictions. Only regulatory infractions don't require mens rea, or at least that was the case until recently. Congress has been creating "strict liability" crimes for some time now. This has been a big issue with civil libertarian types. I think it started with things like statutory rape and kiddie porn... but it has spread pretty far afield.
The irony is that in this particular case... in the case of the law that Comey was citing, mens rea is not a factor. It specifically excludes intent in the statute. A fact that has been pointed out repeatedly by partisans and legal pedants.
Then you have not been paying attention for the last 60 years.
Every single election, the democrats trot out their army of race-baiters to gin up energy in their base. Every single election they allege "voter suppression" efforts are keeping minorities from the polls. Every election year any traffic accident or road construction in a minority neighborhood is touted as a Republican conspiracy to suppress the minority vote.
So no, there is no partisan ownership of "rigged election" or "voter fraud". Both parties are fully willing to use this sort of rhetoric to gin up their base. Both parties are perfectly willing to use whatever tool they can grab to gain an upper hand. If that means getting people all riled up about stolen elections, then so be it. If that means falsely accusing people of racism, well, this ain't softball, kid.
And no, talking about rigging elections isn't exclusively tinfoil hat conspiracy theory nuttery. Many serious historians will opine that the election of JFK over Nixon was due to a few fraudulent precincts. Here's a sample from the Wiki, just to appease those who like to ask for citations
Kennedy won Illinois by less than 9,000 votes out of 4.75 million cast, or a margin of 0.2%.[43] However, Nixon carried 92 of the state's 101 counties, and Kennedy's victory in Illinois came from the city of Chicago, where Mayor Richard J. Daley held back much of Chicago's vote until the late morning hours of November 9. The efforts of Daley and the powerful Chicago Democratic organization gave Kennedy an extraordinary Cook County victory margin of 450,000 votes—more than 10% of Chicago's 1960 population of 3.55 million,[49] although Cook County also includes many suburbs outside of Chicago's borders—thus barely overcoming the heavy Republican vote in the rest of Illinois. Earl Mazo, a reporter for the pro-Nixon New York Herald Tribune, investigated the voting in Chicago and "claimed to have discovered sufficient evidence of vote fraud to prove that the state was stolen for Kennedy."[43]
So allegations of rigged elections and voter fraud go back as far as democracy, I'd suppose. And no, it isn't just people on the other team who claim such things.
The Telegraph article got the details wrong. Check out the RT version instead.
It is a 100+ ton missile that can carry about 10 tons of payload. They are also designing a new warhead that is maneuverable in order to avoid anti-missile defenses. They are claiming that it can hold 10 heavy warheads or 16 light warheads and/or a combination of warheads and decoys/countermeasures.
The whole "destroy an area the size of France or Texas isn't clear, but this is a missile announcement, not a warhead announcement, so they are probably talking about the area which could be covered in a single launch. I.E. one spread of warheads from a single launch could theoretically hit Paris, Barcelona and Milan. That would be pretty hard for anti-missile defenses to deal with.
Backpage removed an ad suspected of offering prostitution when it was reported and then blocked it from being re-posted.
and
Backpage uses automated filtering to try and prevent people from posting about illegal activity.
Nolan-Brown writes about prosecutors using Backpage's cooperation with law enforcement to prevent illegal activity as proof that Backpage is a criminal organization:
"Backpage acknowledges that pimps routinely pay Backpage for ads trafficking children for sex," Fichtner states. And how does he back up this outrageous claim? By stating that Backpage has cooperated with law-enforcement and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in sex trafficking investigations—which does not really sound like an "acknowledgment" of wrongdoing from Backpage at all. Still, Fichtner offers no further evidence to support either the claim that "pimps routinely pay Backpage for ads trafficking children for sex" or that Backpage acknowledges any such thing.
I've been affected by stingray deployments before..... they were investigating someone near my kid's preschool. It only impacted a small area, but at the edges of the stingray coverage it caused weird disruptions of cell service, hopping back and forth between full bars and one or two bars while sitting still, dropped calls, other oddities. And the data connection was crap - which kept frustrating me while I was sitting in the car line waiting for pickup.
I think it was probably mostly a multipath interference problem at the edge of the coverage that was forcing the phone back and forth between the real and fake tower. Still, it was quite annoying and went on for a few weeks. 15 or 20 years ago you never would have noticed it, but cell service has gotten so good that this sort of thing really stands out.
All the way back in the original Quake there was a really nice learning AI written in quake C. One version allowed you to add practice bots to work on your deathmatch strategy.
Similar to the AI described in this article, the AI in this mod was ignorant of the map and had no preset patterns. It learned by doing. So as you began playing against them they were easy kills in the early rounds. They'd often just stand there and get shot. And they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.
But they learned the map. And they learned your moves. And within a few rounds you'd be lucky to stay alive long. And finally they would learn enough to get you every time. They'd know which direction you were going to dodge before you did. And they kept track of every resource in the game and all of the respawn times, so they'd deny you any ammo or health by timing their movements perfectly to collect all spawns instantly.
It was very cool.
Then the guy who wrote it used his AI to replace the original game AI for all of the enemies. Wow. It made the game into an entirely different experience.
After about a half-level, the enemies would learn to avoid you, go out and recruit all the bad guys from the level and return in force. After a couple of more levels they'd learn to ambush, flank and surround you. They'd team up their fire, so you'd dodge a fireball to the left and strafe right into another fireball.
It was really interesting, but ultimately unplayable. It really gave me an appreciation of the level of "balancing" that goes into creating a proper game AI. It certainly isn't about the same thing as making a chess AI that can beat Kasparov. It requires a great deal of work to make the enemy realistic and interesting and difficult but ultimately beatable.
Remember that the Hubble exists because US spy satellites existed. They looked suspiciously like a hubble telescope, except pointed in the other direction.
Why weren't they any bigger? Because they wouldn't fit on the launcher.
This launcher might be able to put a Keck-class scope in outer space. Think the CIA might find a use for something in that class? I know astronomers would.
If launch cost was a couple-hundred million, I'd say we could find the money to build the thing. The Hubble cost a lot more than that to launch.
But what happens if they build a reusable booster that can lift this sort of weight? If Spacex could lift 200mT to LEO for costs that are comparable to today's heavy launches, would new uses arise?
NASA is also building a heavy lift rocket - the SLS. So Spacex is not alone in thinking a big rocket is a good idea. Of course, NASA is responsible to Congress, not the owners of a private company, so that part is different.
The recent Falcon 9 accident has been traced to a Helium COPV tank in the oxygen tank. It runs at more like 5,500 PSI, not 300 PSI. Delamination of COPV in cryogenic applications is a longstanding problem which they must have thought they'd conquered, having used them successfully so many times.
And this article is about an engine, not a composite helium tank. The engine runs on cryogenic methane, which is a new fuel for Spacex, replacing kerosene. They are running scaled tests during the design phase of their new engine - so not exactly building it faster now and hoping to get lucky that it doesn't blow up. The new engine is supposed to be much more efficient than current incarnations and is specifically tuned for use in a vacuum. Plus it has the advantage of using a fuel that can be harvested or manufactured from several locations around the solar system.
Do we know anything about what was "lax" at yahoo? I certainly doubt that the lawyers involved in this have the slightest clue if there was any negligence at all involved. Their calculus is "wow, millions of accounts compromised. Let's go class action!
And then I read through the comments here, and there is indignation at such weak security and lax procedures and they shouldn't just be sued they should all be taken out and shot and big corporations are teh evil!!
What we do know is that the hackers targeting the company were "state sponsored". That means that the equivalent of the NSA targeted Yahoo for penetration.
Does Slashdot really think that China's Ministry of State Security doesn't have the resources to hack into your server? Or the Russian FSB? You really don't think they have the resources to penetrate competently implemented security, particularly when an enterprise comprises tens of thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of devices?
For all I know, Yahoo had an intern drive a box of backup tapes with all of the account info unencrypted to the dump and that's how they got hacked. But somehow I think it was a little more sophisticated than that. And my first thought certainly wouldn't be gross negligence.
And I'm pretty sure the lawyers don't have the slightest bit of evidence that it was gross negligence at this point. They just see the size of the whale, and they'll seek to prove their case later. Or just make enough noise to get a big pile of cash to go away.
If they really had something, I'd feel differently. But somehow I doubt they have anything at all at this point
I'll add that the Clinton campaign has been proudly touting its Twitter and social media strategy ahead of the debate. They are happy to tell you that they have their affiliated PACs and supporters coordinated in a campaign to influence debate moderators to "fact check" Trump during the debate, producing an advantage for Clinton.
They also proudly tout their strategy to have an army of supporters and astroturfers alike live-tweet the debate to create the impression that Hillary is winning the debate. They are specifically targetting the reporters and pundits who cover the event to ensure that they get the early buzz as winning the debate and have a quick declaration that "the election is over" following the debate.
This story, with labels like "Shitposting" would appear to be cover for this strategy, designed to neuter any criticism of the Clinton strategy, which has been fairly openly discussed at least since the Matt Lauer national security forum.
So we have moved into a new era of political ground game - where social media is used in increasingly sophisticated ways by the campaigns to influence the election. They both seem relatively hamfisted about it at this point, but that doesn't mean it isn't having an effect.
That described Amazon for quite some time as well.
The ability to raise what seems to be effectively unlimited amounts of capital for business expansion has really changed the world. I'm no economist-historian, but I'd wager that as recently as the 1970's there wouldn't have been the ability to grow businesses this fast, this globally while losing money. In fact, I suspect that simply losing money for a couple of years would have killed off any startup. People had a different performance metric until recently. The late 90's introduced the exponential growth potential of internet based businesses and changed people's risk/reward calculations.
Only if we are talking about a one-off transaction with an isolated hermit.
Around my area it is common knowledge that Uber is cheaper, faster and more reliable than the taxi companies. This may not be true in your market, but it certainly is here. People talk. When everyone meets up after work and has a couple of extra drinks, they discuss how they are getting home. They share stories about how that cab company never showed up. Or about how they used to take a taxi, but Uber was half the cost so now they always Uber it.
And they also share stories about how that Uber driver was creepy. Or how they couldn't get the app to work right. Or how they had trouble getting their car last time so they are going to drink less so they can drive home.
Knowledge is a big part of the market, this is true. And we've all made bad decisions based on incomplete information. But Uber and Lyft are more transparent than other similar services at the moment of sale, even if they are not guaranteed to be transparent or egalitarian. Like Amazon, they could offer you a better price than me. But at the moment of purchase, I know how much my ride is going to cost. If I hire a taxi on a meter, this isn't the case. I can make a guess based on posted rates, but it will be just a guess. And people talk about their Uber rides. If Janet is paying less than I am, there's a good chance I'll figure it out when we call Uber at the same time as we head home. And maybe I'll be annoyed enough that I jump to Lyft.
Further, the modems should report appropriate usage for the same billing period in a way that customers can verify (e.g measuring data going to the modem using a tool like OpenWRT's bandwidth measurements).
I ran into this problem when Comcast introduced data caps in my area. After about 9 months I started getting overages. But the data at my router showed we were not over.
Because Comcast takes over the modem with their own locked-down configuration even if you own the modem, I couldn't figure out what was going on. Neither could their tech - he didn't have access either. After some digging and a couple of different techs, they decided that my modem was an older model and probably throwing off lots of bad packets. I was worried that the thing was being hacked. So after some reboots and resets and another month of trying it out, I settled in to a just-below-the-cap rhythm.
But I couldn't find a way to measure the actual usage, or find out where the data loss was coming from. No access. Eventually I changed my service and bought a new modem. And the TB cap came in. So I still don't have access to what is happening at the modem level, and neither do most of the line employees (call Motorola, I was told when I asked about enabling SNMP. This despite the fact that Motorola didn't lock down my modem).
The whole thing is quite frustrating. But at least with the new caps it isn't hitting the wallet.
This is why businesses are being pushed to start purging all of their employee's email on a regular basis. They want to preserve that plausible deniability and ensure some former employee didn't say something in a company email you weren't aware of that winds up costing you $'s in a lawsuit.
Any company with half a brain will now have in place a document retention policy that destroys most communications within a year or two. But then you have to have an archiving system that allows the team of lawyers you have to go in and flag certain things for preservation, pursuant to pending or active litigation.
The whole thing is a mess, really, with class action trolls combing through decades of internal documents looking for any embarrassing email that they can hold up in a tobacco-industry like moment to earn themselves billions. All it takes is one employee saying something stupid... maybe even at odds with corporate policy.
So if you are a corporate type who isn't in IT and for some weird reason you read slashdot, if you don't have competent IT leadership, go out and hire it today. It isn't just about making sure the email server has good uptime anymore. IT can be the key to good corporate governance for a hundred reasons.
Though, I understand that many people, possibly even a majority, read by mentally vocalizing the words at a pace not much faster than speaking them out loud, so they can't actually read substantially faster than they could listen.
I wonder if this is true. I'm a pretty fast reader, so I have to recognize that my experience may not be typical. But I have voice mail with voice to text. The text arrives as an SMS style message. I almost never listen to the voicemail, because it is so very much faster to read. Probably 5x or 10x. It isn't remotely close, but I've never measured it.
Maybe that's why other people aren't so excited to turn on Google Voice for their voicemail with transcription service. If there's no time advantage, the tradeoffs of losing the original voice might not be worth it.
Anyway, to your point about mentally vocalizing: I find that I do this with good fiction books. I read substantially slower when faced with passages containing lots of dialog. But I don't find this happening with most voicemail, email, text messages and the like, even though it is conversational content.
Several women in my life manage to blow through more than 6 gigs per month. And that's while trying to keep a limit on their data use.
They love to watch those videos of cats, babies and random celebrities I've never heard of. Immediately. So in the car, at the restaurant, everywhere. And checking to see if they are on wi-fi is insulting and humiliating. So don't bring it up. And if they are trying to watch Netflix in full 1080p on a smartphone, don't bring that up either. 'Cause if you do, you are a jerk. I have empirical evidence on this, so just go with my recommendation here.
I don't understand it. But I do recognize that it exists. I know at least two women who would easily use up 10-15 gigs per month, and they wouldn't have the slightest idea what they used the data for. They would complain that "this phone sucks, I need a new phone" long before they'd look at the possibility that the way they are using it might have something to do with it. And I won't be mentioning it to them again. I'll just be moving us to T-mobile's all you can eat 4G plan.
Ok, so apparently there's this site that caters to people who want to commit suicide. I guess, I didn't read much. But google pulled it up when I put in "suicide by gunshot to the back of the head" to help with your question.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about with "confirmation bias".
They all worked at CNN, ABC, CBS, PBS etc. They went to form their own network because they perceived a bias around them (and a business opportunity because of an unmet need). They said this is what they were doing and why they were doing it. And there had long been calls that the TV press corps was left-biased.
But you chose to ignore all of that and say nah, nothing was really biased until after Fox.
That's just straight confirmation bias. Back when Fox came out the press was voting 90+% Democrat. You aren't going to get much more of an objective proxy than that for what their personal biases are.
Now, I don't think anyone can argue with a straight face that the media hasn't become even more biased in the last 20 years. And it would be hard to argue that Fox isn't in the center of that change, along with characters like Limbaugh, Air America, Huffington Post, Drudge..... and yes, MSNBC and CNN. But that doesn't change the reality that was 3.5 network channels of news coverage.
I blame Rupert Murdoch for that. CNN's bias was a direct response to Fox News bias. Prior to that, they were neutral. At some point, somebody wrongly concluded that the only way to fight bias was with opposite bias, rather than with accuracy.
Ever heard of confirmation bias?
When Fox News launched, they explicitly stated that they were creating their news operation to counter the bias of CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC and PBS. That was their entire schtick. That's where the whole "Fair and Balanced" tag came from. And they knew of what they spoke, as they all came from those networks.
What Fox news really is, or what it evolved into might be open for discussion, but it would be hard to peg CNN's biased coverage on a network that sprang forth in an attempt to exploit the bias of CNN et. al.
US Constitution, Fourth Amendment.
Keep reading. Let us know when you get to #16.
So, let's see what it says.
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
So they can levy an income tax. And they don't have to give any of it to the states. And they don't have to worry about any head counts. But there's nothing in there about exemptions from 4th amendment protections.
So let's take a look at that 4th amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.[2]"
So if you wanna demand access to someone's person, house, papers or effects, you gotta show probable cause which is supported by Oath or affirmation and describing a particular place to be searched and the particular person or thing to be seized. And no, shoving "income tax enforcement" in front of the request doesn't seem to be a reasonable substitute.
But you are right in that the government has repeatedly exempted itself from having to follow the constitution - on this particular issue and many others. And by that I mean in all likelihood they'll be turning over the info the government wants.
Sorry to get back to you so late, but I thought you might be interested in the further backstory you are referencing.
The "obscure paper" isn't Newsweek, it is the Russian rag "Sputnik". Their writer (a dude from Arizona) made the initial mistake confusing Bloomenthal and Eichenwald. You see, Bloomenthal quoted an Eichenwald article in his email.
Probably some staffer had an alert set for wikileaks news and grabbed the article off of google or yahoo news.
So Newsweek's article is part of the spin. Manufacturing conspiracies instead of crediting incompetence.
Here's a decent breakdown of the various players and events that led to the dually incorrect spin narratives. (It is a fair demonstration of the power of confirmation bias and "team" thinking that one simple misunderstanding of an email lead to two erroneous and conflicting spin machines)
The discussion in this sub-thread is "don't read political spin, it makes you stupid".
You seem to believe "my team's spin isn't stupid". It is. Everyone's team's spin is stupid. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy for a political candidate to pick up a negative story about his opponent and run with it, even if it is wrong. If you think that is evidence that Trump is a puppet of Russia, you are drinking the cool-aid. He might be a Russian mole.... but picking up a story from some obscure paper that fits your narrative so you can criticize an opponent.... not exactly evidence.
As to the connection to political violence... the narrative from the Clinton campaign was that Trump was fomenting violence from his supporters at his rallies. We now know that the disruptions at his campaign events were at least in part from paid operatives in coordination with the Clinton campaign. So don't believe the political spin. It makes you stupid.
Besides, I don't see how anyone can credit Trump with being smart enough to pull off some grand conspiracy to coordinate with the Russians. From what I can tell he's too dumb to make toast.
Or these racists beating and robbing a man just because he doesn't look like them? Trump supporters are all intolerant racists....
Here's what they really had to say:
Actually, for most crimes and for most of our history, intent, or mens rea has been a vital component of criminal convictions. Only regulatory infractions don't require mens rea, or at least that was the case until recently. Congress has been creating "strict liability" crimes for some time now. This has been a big issue with civil libertarian types. I think it started with things like statutory rape and kiddie porn... but it has spread pretty far afield.
The irony is that in this particular case... in the case of the law that Comey was citing, mens rea is not a factor. It specifically excludes intent in the statute. A fact that has been pointed out repeatedly by partisans and legal pedants.
Then you have not been paying attention for the last 60 years.
Every single election, the democrats trot out their army of race-baiters to gin up energy in their base. Every single election they allege "voter suppression" efforts are keeping minorities from the polls. Every election year any traffic accident or road construction in a minority neighborhood is touted as a Republican conspiracy to suppress the minority vote.
They just use different language. Instead of "rigged", use the words "voter suppression". Here's Huffpo from the 2012 cycle with a top ten list. Here's the Brennan Center from 2008. Here's the Daily Kos covering 2000-2006.
So no, there is no partisan ownership of "rigged election" or "voter fraud". Both parties are fully willing to use this sort of rhetoric to gin up their base. Both parties are perfectly willing to use whatever tool they can grab to gain an upper hand. If that means getting people all riled up about stolen elections, then so be it. If that means falsely accusing people of racism, well, this ain't softball, kid.
And no, talking about rigging elections isn't exclusively tinfoil hat conspiracy theory nuttery. Many serious historians will opine that the election of JFK over Nixon was due to a few fraudulent precincts. Here's a sample from the Wiki, just to appease those who like to ask for citations
So allegations of rigged elections and voter fraud go back as far as democracy, I'd suppose. And no, it isn't just people on the other team who claim such things.
The Telegraph article got the details wrong. Check out the RT version instead.
It is a 100+ ton missile that can carry about 10 tons of payload. They are also designing a new warhead that is maneuverable in order to avoid anti-missile defenses. They are claiming that it can hold 10 heavy warheads or 16 light warheads and/or a combination of warheads and decoys/countermeasures.
The whole "destroy an area the size of France or Texas isn't clear, but this is a missile announcement, not a warhead announcement, so they are probably talking about the area which could be covered in a single launch. I.E. one spread of warheads from a single launch could theoretically hit Paris, Barcelona and Milan. That would be pretty hard for anti-missile defenses to deal with.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown gives her (derisive) take on the prosecution of the Backpage CEO, filled with links to further details on the case.
Among the allegations:
and
Nolan-Brown writes about prosecutors using Backpage's cooperation with law enforcement to prevent illegal activity as proof that Backpage is a criminal organization:
I've been affected by stingray deployments before..... they were investigating someone near my kid's preschool. It only impacted a small area, but at the edges of the stingray coverage it caused weird disruptions of cell service, hopping back and forth between full bars and one or two bars while sitting still, dropped calls, other oddities. And the data connection was crap - which kept frustrating me while I was sitting in the car line waiting for pickup.
I think it was probably mostly a multipath interference problem at the edge of the coverage that was forcing the phone back and forth between the real and fake tower. Still, it was quite annoying and went on for a few weeks. 15 or 20 years ago you never would have noticed it, but cell service has gotten so good that this sort of thing really stands out.
All the way back in the original Quake there was a really nice learning AI written in quake C. One version allowed you to add practice bots to work on your deathmatch strategy.
Similar to the AI described in this article, the AI in this mod was ignorant of the map and had no preset patterns. It learned by doing. So as you began playing against them they were easy kills in the early rounds. They'd often just stand there and get shot. And they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.
But they learned the map. And they learned your moves. And within a few rounds you'd be lucky to stay alive long. And finally they would learn enough to get you every time. They'd know which direction you were going to dodge before you did. And they kept track of every resource in the game and all of the respawn times, so they'd deny you any ammo or health by timing their movements perfectly to collect all spawns instantly.
It was very cool.
Then the guy who wrote it used his AI to replace the original game AI for all of the enemies. Wow. It made the game into an entirely different experience.
After about a half-level, the enemies would learn to avoid you, go out and recruit all the bad guys from the level and return in force. After a couple of more levels they'd learn to ambush, flank and surround you. They'd team up their fire, so you'd dodge a fireball to the left and strafe right into another fireball.
It was really interesting, but ultimately unplayable. It really gave me an appreciation of the level of "balancing" that goes into creating a proper game AI. It certainly isn't about the same thing as making a chess AI that can beat Kasparov. It requires a great deal of work to make the enemy realistic and interesting and difficult but ultimately beatable.
Remember that the Hubble exists because US spy satellites existed. They looked suspiciously like a hubble telescope, except pointed in the other direction.
Why weren't they any bigger? Because they wouldn't fit on the launcher.
This launcher might be able to put a Keck-class scope in outer space. Think the CIA might find a use for something in that class? I know astronomers would.
If launch cost was a couple-hundred million, I'd say we could find the money to build the thing. The Hubble cost a lot more than that to launch.
This is all true if nothing changes.
But what happens if they build a reusable booster that can lift this sort of weight? If Spacex could lift 200mT to LEO for costs that are comparable to today's heavy launches, would new uses arise?
NASA is also building a heavy lift rocket - the SLS. So Spacex is not alone in thinking a big rocket is a good idea. Of course, NASA is responsible to Congress, not the owners of a private company, so that part is different.
The recent Falcon 9 accident has been traced to a Helium COPV tank in the oxygen tank. It runs at more like 5,500 PSI, not 300 PSI. Delamination of COPV in cryogenic applications is a longstanding problem which they must have thought they'd conquered, having used them successfully so many times.
And this article is about an engine, not a composite helium tank. The engine runs on cryogenic methane, which is a new fuel for Spacex, replacing kerosene. They are running scaled tests during the design phase of their new engine - so not exactly building it faster now and hoping to get lucky that it doesn't blow up. The new engine is supposed to be much more efficient than current incarnations and is specifically tuned for use in a vacuum. Plus it has the advantage of using a fuel that can be harvested or manufactured from several locations around the solar system.
Do we know anything about what was "lax" at yahoo? I certainly doubt that the lawyers involved in this have the slightest clue if there was any negligence at all involved. Their calculus is "wow, millions of accounts compromised. Let's go class action!
And then I read through the comments here, and there is indignation at such weak security and lax procedures and they shouldn't just be sued they should all be taken out and shot and big corporations are teh evil!!
What we do know is that the hackers targeting the company were "state sponsored". That means that the equivalent of the NSA targeted Yahoo for penetration.
Does Slashdot really think that China's Ministry of State Security doesn't have the resources to hack into your server? Or the Russian FSB? You really don't think they have the resources to penetrate competently implemented security, particularly when an enterprise comprises tens of thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of devices?
For all I know, Yahoo had an intern drive a box of backup tapes with all of the account info unencrypted to the dump and that's how they got hacked. But somehow I think it was a little more sophisticated than that. And my first thought certainly wouldn't be gross negligence.
And I'm pretty sure the lawyers don't have the slightest bit of evidence that it was gross negligence at this point. They just see the size of the whale, and they'll seek to prove their case later. Or just make enough noise to get a big pile of cash to go away.
If they really had something, I'd feel differently. But somehow I doubt they have anything at all at this point
I'll add that the Clinton campaign has been proudly touting its Twitter and social media strategy ahead of the debate. They are happy to tell you that they have their affiliated PACs and supporters coordinated in a campaign to influence debate moderators to "fact check" Trump during the debate, producing an advantage for Clinton.
They also proudly tout their strategy to have an army of supporters and astroturfers alike live-tweet the debate to create the impression that Hillary is winning the debate. They are specifically targetting the reporters and pundits who cover the event to ensure that they get the early buzz as winning the debate and have a quick declaration that "the election is over" following the debate.
This story, with labels like "Shitposting" would appear to be cover for this strategy, designed to neuter any criticism of the Clinton strategy, which has been fairly openly discussed at least since the Matt Lauer national security forum.
So we have moved into a new era of political ground game - where social media is used in increasingly sophisticated ways by the campaigns to influence the election. They both seem relatively hamfisted about it at this point, but that doesn't mean it isn't having an effect.
That described Amazon for quite some time as well.
The ability to raise what seems to be effectively unlimited amounts of capital for business expansion has really changed the world. I'm no economist-historian, but I'd wager that as recently as the 1970's there wouldn't have been the ability to grow businesses this fast, this globally while losing money. In fact, I suspect that simply losing money for a couple of years would have killed off any startup. People had a different performance metric until recently. The late 90's introduced the exponential growth potential of internet based businesses and changed people's risk/reward calculations.
Only if we are talking about a one-off transaction with an isolated hermit.
Around my area it is common knowledge that Uber is cheaper, faster and more reliable than the taxi companies. This may not be true in your market, but it certainly is here. People talk. When everyone meets up after work and has a couple of extra drinks, they discuss how they are getting home. They share stories about how that cab company never showed up. Or about how they used to take a taxi, but Uber was half the cost so now they always Uber it.
And they also share stories about how that Uber driver was creepy. Or how they couldn't get the app to work right. Or how they had trouble getting their car last time so they are going to drink less so they can drive home.
Knowledge is a big part of the market, this is true. And we've all made bad decisions based on incomplete information. But Uber and Lyft are more transparent than other similar services at the moment of sale, even if they are not guaranteed to be transparent or egalitarian. Like Amazon, they could offer you a better price than me. But at the moment of purchase, I know how much my ride is going to cost. If I hire a taxi on a meter, this isn't the case. I can make a guess based on posted rates, but it will be just a guess. And people talk about their Uber rides. If Janet is paying less than I am, there's a good chance I'll figure it out when we call Uber at the same time as we head home. And maybe I'll be annoyed enough that I jump to Lyft.
I ran into this problem when Comcast introduced data caps in my area. After about 9 months I started getting overages. But the data at my router showed we were not over.
Because Comcast takes over the modem with their own locked-down configuration even if you own the modem, I couldn't figure out what was going on. Neither could their tech - he didn't have access either. After some digging and a couple of different techs, they decided that my modem was an older model and probably throwing off lots of bad packets. I was worried that the thing was being hacked. So after some reboots and resets and another month of trying it out, I settled in to a just-below-the-cap rhythm.
But I couldn't find a way to measure the actual usage, or find out where the data loss was coming from. No access. Eventually I changed my service and bought a new modem. And the TB cap came in. So I still don't have access to what is happening at the modem level, and neither do most of the line employees (call Motorola, I was told when I asked about enabling SNMP. This despite the fact that Motorola didn't lock down my modem).
The whole thing is quite frustrating. But at least with the new caps it isn't hitting the wallet.
Any company with half a brain will now have in place a document retention policy that destroys most communications within a year or two. But then you have to have an archiving system that allows the team of lawyers you have to go in and flag certain things for preservation, pursuant to pending or active litigation.
The whole thing is a mess, really, with class action trolls combing through decades of internal documents looking for any embarrassing email that they can hold up in a tobacco-industry like moment to earn themselves billions. All it takes is one employee saying something stupid... maybe even at odds with corporate policy.
So if you are a corporate type who isn't in IT and for some weird reason you read slashdot, if you don't have competent IT leadership, go out and hire it today. It isn't just about making sure the email server has good uptime anymore. IT can be the key to good corporate governance for a hundred reasons.
Though, I understand that many people, possibly even a majority, read by mentally vocalizing the words at a pace not much faster than speaking them out loud, so they can't actually read substantially faster than they could listen.
I wonder if this is true. I'm a pretty fast reader, so I have to recognize that my experience may not be typical. But I have voice mail with voice to text. The text arrives as an SMS style message. I almost never listen to the voicemail, because it is so very much faster to read. Probably 5x or 10x. It isn't remotely close, but I've never measured it.
Maybe that's why other people aren't so excited to turn on Google Voice for their voicemail with transcription service. If there's no time advantage, the tradeoffs of losing the original voice might not be worth it.
Anyway, to your point about mentally vocalizing: I find that I do this with good fiction books. I read substantially slower when faced with passages containing lots of dialog. But I don't find this happening with most voicemail, email, text messages and the like, even though it is conversational content.
Spoken like a tech dude.
Several women in my life manage to blow through more than 6 gigs per month. And that's while trying to keep a limit on their data use.
They love to watch those videos of cats, babies and random celebrities I've never heard of. Immediately. So in the car, at the restaurant, everywhere. And checking to see if they are on wi-fi is insulting and humiliating. So don't bring it up. And if they are trying to watch Netflix in full 1080p on a smartphone, don't bring that up either. 'Cause if you do, you are a jerk. I have empirical evidence on this, so just go with my recommendation here.
I don't understand it. But I do recognize that it exists. I know at least two women who would easily use up 10-15 gigs per month, and they wouldn't have the slightest idea what they used the data for. They would complain that "this phone sucks, I need a new phone" long before they'd look at the possibility that the way they are using it might have something to do with it. And I won't be mentioning it to them again. I'll just be moving us to T-mobile's all you can eat 4G plan.
Ok, so apparently there's this site that caters to people who want to commit suicide. I guess, I didn't read much. But google pulled it up when I put in "suicide by gunshot to the back of the head" to help with your question.
Shooting yourself in the back of the head is one of the recommended methods.
Man, the internet is a weird place.