Your Smartphone reports where you are. If there is a matching pattern with a physical credit card at locations where it is used for transactions, it will be trivially obvious that you are the one using it.
Plus you need to swap with someone who has the same balance left - this doesn't seem feasible. So you either need to maintain a ledger of how much your friends "owe" you for cards which you have swapped with differing balances, which is an added cost and risk to an ordinary person, or you need to balance transfer. The balance transfer, combined with other factors will make your swap trivial.
Plus, if enough people start doing it, they will introduce biometrics in addition to Chip n PIN or whatever authentication method is being used.
I don't know how you stoop to levels that cynical.
I feel empathy with these guys. My net worth is close to zero due to some bad decisions I made, but I earn more than double my national average. I still favour increasing tax on the wealthy, including myself in that. I do *not* think I have "spare money" to "give" to the government, far from it - but if COLLECTIVELY as a group the people as wealthy as me were all to agree to give a little more, I would be happy to do my part.
I strongly suspect wealthy people who make these kind of remarks are more likely to be charitable - paying extra taxes seems silly as you cannot influence the good it does directly, but donating those millions to charity gives you a level of control. They probably *are* giving more than the average wealthy person who is trying to drive DOWN taxes, social spending etc.
That sounds great at first. But then you think about the one-man and two-man shops starting up their own companies - with no way to offset the massively increased risks (most new companies go bump) by paying themselves in a more tax-efficient way than straight-up income tax, you will probably kill entrepreneurship in your jurisdiction.
perhaps Mozilla should try and find its way back to core concerns. All four of the projects need significant AI expertise and a powerful cloud computing resource
What?
1] An standardised app interface
2] Data monitoring, logging and possibly analysis
3] Software converters / adapters to assist people who want to customise their home network with products from various vendors.
4] Voice recognition to create simple, limited commands to a set of devices.
Seriously? There's a slim chance that AI may benefit products in categories 2 and 4 but it's not "required" or even "expected". Crap submission
Kinda.
Ad-Blocking was awesome when a tiny percentage of us used it to have a much better internet experience.
Now, as usage and awareness expands, I am see warnings, popups and outright refusal to serve me content if my ad blocking software is enabled.
This is the next frontier... sites will (legitimately, it's perfectly OK) stop serving you content, if you're not seeing their ads. Other sites will choose to make their money in more nefarious ways - and this one worries me - by using product placement / paid reviews / sponsored content, and blurring the lines between content and advertising. At least when I see an advert I *know* they paid for the ad. When Jonny Reviewer says "The new film, Badderass is awesome" is he really saying it's awesome, or is he saying "I can put bread on the family table now that the Badderass producers have paid me to shill for them"?
Personally, I think I'd rather have the ads back.
If I want my packets sending to other hosts on the internet, I connect to wifi to do it. Or my ISP. Or my friends ISP. Or my works network.
They're just packets being routed - if people are sending *sensitive* packets IN THE CLEAR on anybody's network - including their own internet connection at home or at work - then that is the problem. Not the network, which you shouldn't trust anyway.
If you are afraid that your child will see something on the internet that you don't like, don't allow your child on the internet
So let's go with....
If you are afraid that your child will see something on the Television, don't allow your child to watch TV (but we have ratings and watersheds for a reason)
If you are afraid that your child will see something at kids club, don't allow your child to go to kids club (but we pay professionals to look after our children and prevent them from experiencing bad situations.
etc.
I too think it's a terrible idea, but not all of these arguments hold water.
Porn website companies based outside of the UK don't have to bother complying with this law.
Actually, the UK government will bring pressure to bear on these sites by preventing them from accepting payment - possibly from UK customers only (small, but reasonable incentive) or altogether (the nuclear option, particularly likely if the site has "objectionable" content, which under UK law is anything from spanking upwards)
Sites will likely use IP geofencing to only ask UK visitors for verification. A VPN or proxy would get around this
So some people would get around the restrictions, but the vast majority would not. Despite the fact that significant numbers of people travel over 30mph on residential roads every day and don't get caught, we don't stop ATTEMPTING to catch/stop them.
Attempting to DNS block sites that don't comply with the UK law is doomed to fail. Attempting to get Google et al, and Chillingeffects, to redact mention of these sites, is futile as they will miss other search engines.
Again, just because a subset of the sites are available and can be visited, does not mean that everyone seeking the material can obtain it. For those who cannot obtain it, the law will be seem to have successfully reduced harm to them (if your idea of harm reduction is preventing lads and girls from seeing tits and dicks).
How is compliance judged? The vague "would receive an R-18 classification if it were reviewed" allows the simple excuse: "PROVE that it would receive an R-18 classification" for an accused
The law will likely be worded to give all the power to the enforcers. It will contain phrases like "reasonable person" and "could be lead to believe". You won't HAVE to have R-18 content to be "covered", instead just one prude in a room whose job it is to evaluate pornography has to say "I say chaps, that's a bit risque" in order for your site to be blacklisted.
You can bet an HFT farm makes a bitcoin miner look like a blinking LED.
I doubt it. The processes involved in HFT do involve a lot of network traffic, some small amount of processing and database lookups, but are computationally fairly simplistic.
Bitcoin mining is, by *design*, computationally difficult - and it's the CPU/GPU that is doing all the work to do it, which is the big power hog in modern computers.
> And amongst all this... you want to dramatically expand government expenses and raise taxes?
No, the proposal was that a minimum income is created for citizens. This *reduces* governement, as hundreds of thousands of jobs which were previously needed to administer benefit systems are no longer needed.
Why did you talk about raising taxes? This money is already being given to citizens in the form of benefits, there will be some turmoil for a year or two while wages reduce somewhat to compensate (and tax RATES, but not total taxes, increase to compensate for that), so it doesn't require significant additional funding.
If your country has made the decision that the state will provide shelter, clothing, food and warmth to its' citizens if they are unable to do so for themselves, then achieving this via a Mincome scheme is simply a more efficient way of doing so, and requires no "further government" nor "raising taxes"
Why do you believe this?
Universal Basic Income is essentially "benefits" packaged under a different name - just fairer, and with significantly lower overheads. It also removes other barriers to a productive and healthy economy (such as the minimum wage, and the negative impacts that has on low-skilled employment levels) - but it's not inherently *better* than benefits for the recipient, just better for society as a whole.
For example, in the UK at the moment a family of four might receive benefits totally £25,000 from various sources. If, instead, that family received a minimum income of £24,000, would that make it more attractive to live in the UK?
(Mincome is likely to be lower than benefits, because of the ability of recipients to work part time low-skilled jobs for very low wage to top up their income if they desire, without tax/benefit reduction impact)
Which point(s) specifically are you addressing? I'll number them to help.
1] Uber is playing by the rules in London
2] All or most of Ubers drivers are licensed minicab operators
3] Drivers make more money driving for Uber than they do driving for traditional minicab firms
4] Uber charge 20-30% less than minicabs (at normal operating times)
5] Ubers are cheaper than Black Cabs
6] Ubers provide better customer service than Black Cabs
7] Ubers Surge Pricing scheme means more cabs are available at peak times for people who really need them.
Some are facts, some are claims which I can only back from personal experience (and that of many other Londoners I've discussed this with), and others are obvious with a little thought.
I don't relish Uber's surge pricing if a ton of taxi companies go out of business.
There'll be a lot of out of work taxi drivers too - who will be desperate to drive, reducing the times / locations that surge pricing occurs in.
Plus, if it's so important, someone can launch a competitor to Uber that doesn't have surge pricing, and anyone who wants to can use them.
Finally, if it's a real issue, book one in advance (it's what you had to do before, the presence of Uber hasn't made anything worse in that regard...)
You really must go out and also live in the middle of nowhere if there are no night buses that can't get you closer than seven miles!;)
How often do you travel from one "not very populous" area of the world to another...? Once a day? Once a week?
Your pooled car can be sat 20 miles from you, when you want it you press a button in the app, it arrives 30 minutes later and takes you where you need to go.
Unless you are literally HUNDREDs of miles from your nearest car pooling point, it's a non issue.
The thing I see is that when they follow the rules, they are NOT cheaper than the traditonal taxi companies.
Uber is playing by the rules In London which, depending on who you ask, is part of Europe. That said, the city is considering bringing in new rules to prevent Uber from fairly competing with other types of taxi drivers.
I take about 30 or 40 Ubers a year, and every SINGLE Uber driver I have had has been a licensed minicab operator - in other words the same driver I would be getting if I called a phone number and asked for a cab. These guys are experienced and licensed, and prefer Uber because they earn 5-10% more per hour with Uber than they do with their traditional employer.Did I mention that Uber charge 20-30% less than the traditional minicab firms saving me a bunch of money?
So magically, Uber has chopped around 35% off the cost of private road transport in London that was previously going straight into the pockets of some already very wealthy people. Now the worker and the customer get that 35%. So I win, the driver wins, the only people who lose are the cab firm owners who have traditionally been raking the money in at our expense.
If you compare Uber to the Black Cabs in London, things look even better - Uber are around half the price and offer better service, routes and accountability.
Finally, people will moan about "Surge Pricing" - but that with Uber when surge pricing kicks in I can still GET an Uber, I just have to pay a bit more money for it. At the busier times of night, the times when Uber surge pricing kicks in, if I try ordering a regular cab I'm usually told I can't have one or that there is a wait of an hour or more. So Surge pricing gives me MORE options, even though I may decide not to use that option. With traditional providers, I'm walking the 7 miles home at 3am...
Lyft thinks the future of self-driving cars is in a network of vehicles people share, rather than individual ownership.
This is so totally and utterly obvious to anyone with half a brain who cares to sit down and think it through for a few minutes - at least for the mass market.
In fact, it seems so obvious to me, that I'm worried I've got tunnel vision for it, does anyone know any viable arguments for private ownership in a world where cars drive themselves?
How much of a work can be included for the purposes of critique
IANA(copyright)L but everything I've heard about this seems to indicate that in the UK and US points to the interpretation of the word "fair" as being up to the judge when it goes to court.
On one hand the idea that something that belongs to you handing you over to the authorities is distasteful
I cannot possibly start to comprehend this logic.
Should a picture taken on a paedophiles camera not be admissible as evidence because he owned the camera?
Should the police not be allowed to arrest you because, as a taxpayer, you pay their wages...?
"only 20 of these were revealed in the report to avoid potential harm to the real estate market in these areas"
To avoid harm to a market, they are willing to withhold the truth, which potentially harms everyone who is considering purchasing (or even renting) a property in that market.
Forgive me if I have misunderstood, but how does your proposed model differ from hiring consultants through an agency/consulting firm. This is an already-entrenched and very common model.
Modern cars use a system to stabilise the car in the event that one or more wheels starts to lose adhesion - commonly called things like ESP/DSP/ESC
The car wants to know when it's on a dyno or other testing device where only one set of wheels move, and the others do not - if this were NOT the case, it would assume that the rear wheels have lost adhesion with the road, and will serious interfere with the power provided to the front wheels.
So "the defeat device required data from a range of sensors -- sensors that a noncheating car might not need" is totally and utterly rubbish, it likely needs a single line of code like this:
> if(EngineMode.Test){... do something to improve emissions... }
Furthermore, many cars may already have a "very low emissions" mode or similar - there may not be a "special" mode specifically for EPA tests which a different profile for timing, fuel injection etc. - the cars computer essentially changes the "configuration" of the engine on the fly, based on driving conditions, driver input, gear, fuel quality, engine feedback etc - and it does all this during NORMAL operation.
If a "high efficiency / low emissions mode" already existed, then the code could be further reduced to > if (EngineMode.Test ){ Engine.PerformanceProfile = LowEmissionsProfile }
Of course, it's unlikely that there would be a high level language available to engineers to make it quite so readable as above - but hopefully the code illustrates the point.
FWIW I strongly suspect that the "low emission profile" in place here in VW *IS* a "special" doctored one to fool emissions tests, but the detection of actually being in a test? Probably already existed.
Slashdot Mirror
Your Smartphone reports where you are. If there is a matching pattern with a physical credit card at locations where it is used for transactions, it will be trivially obvious that you are the one using it. Plus you need to swap with someone who has the same balance left - this doesn't seem feasible. So you either need to maintain a ledger of how much your friends "owe" you for cards which you have swapped with differing balances, which is an added cost and risk to an ordinary person, or you need to balance transfer. The balance transfer, combined with other factors will make your swap trivial. Plus, if enough people start doing it, they will introduce biometrics in addition to Chip n PIN or whatever authentication method is being used.
I don't know how you stoop to levels that cynical.
I feel empathy with these guys. My net worth is close to zero due to some bad decisions I made, but I earn more than double my national average. I still favour increasing tax on the wealthy, including myself in that. I do *not* think I have "spare money" to "give" to the government, far from it - but if COLLECTIVELY as a group the people as wealthy as me were all to agree to give a little more, I would be happy to do my part.
I strongly suspect wealthy people who make these kind of remarks are more likely to be charitable - paying extra taxes seems silly as you cannot influence the good it does directly, but donating those millions to charity gives you a level of control. They probably *are* giving more than the average wealthy person who is trying to drive DOWN taxes, social spending etc.
That sounds great at first. But then you think about the one-man and two-man shops starting up their own companies - with no way to offset the massively increased risks (most new companies go bump) by paying themselves in a more tax-efficient way than straight-up income tax, you will probably kill entrepreneurship in your jurisdiction.
What?
1] An standardised app interface
2] Data monitoring, logging and possibly analysis
3] Software converters / adapters to assist people who want to customise their home network with products from various vendors.
4] Voice recognition to create simple, limited commands to a set of devices.
Seriously? There's a slim chance that AI may benefit products in categories 2 and 4 but it's not "required" or even "expected". Crap submission
Kinda. Ad-Blocking was awesome when a tiny percentage of us used it to have a much better internet experience.
Now, as usage and awareness expands, I am see warnings, popups and outright refusal to serve me content if my ad blocking software is enabled.
This is the next frontier... sites will (legitimately, it's perfectly OK) stop serving you content, if you're not seeing their ads. Other sites will choose to make their money in more nefarious ways - and this one worries me - by using product placement / paid reviews / sponsored content, and blurring the lines between content and advertising. At least when I see an advert I *know* they paid for the ad. When Jonny Reviewer says "The new film, Badderass is awesome" is he really saying it's awesome, or is he saying "I can put bread on the family table now that the Badderass producers have paid me to shill for them"?
Personally, I think I'd rather have the ads back.
If I want my packets sending to other hosts on the internet, I connect to wifi to do it. Or my ISP. Or my friends ISP. Or my works network. They're just packets being routed - if people are sending *sensitive* packets IN THE CLEAR on anybody's network - including their own internet connection at home or at work - then that is the problem. Not the network, which you shouldn't trust anyway.
I really hope Netflix doesn't copy this model - it could be fatal for their business!
So let's go with....
If you are afraid that your child will see something on the Television, don't allow your child to watch TV (but we have ratings and watersheds for a reason)
If you are afraid that your child will see something at kids club, don't allow your child to go to kids club (but we pay professionals to look after our children and prevent them from experiencing bad situations.
etc.
Actually, the UK government will bring pressure to bear on these sites by preventing them from accepting payment - possibly from UK customers only (small, but reasonable incentive) or altogether (the nuclear option, particularly likely if the site has "objectionable" content, which under UK law is anything from spanking upwards)
So some people would get around the restrictions, but the vast majority would not. Despite the fact that significant numbers of people travel over 30mph on residential roads every day and don't get caught, we don't stop ATTEMPTING to catch/stop them.
Again, just because a subset of the sites are available and can be visited, does not mean that everyone seeking the material can obtain it. For those who cannot obtain it, the law will be seem to have successfully reduced harm to them (if your idea of harm reduction is preventing lads and girls from seeing tits and dicks).
The law will likely be worded to give all the power to the enforcers. It will contain phrases like "reasonable person" and "could be lead to believe". You won't HAVE to have R-18 content to be "covered", instead just one prude in a room whose job it is to evaluate pornography has to say "I say chaps, that's a bit risque" in order for your site to be blacklisted.
Then how does the driver know he has strayed past the centreline into the incorrect lane which may be filled with oncoming traffic...
I doubt it. The processes involved in HFT do involve a lot of network traffic, some small amount of processing and database lookups, but are computationally fairly simplistic. Bitcoin mining is, by *design*, computationally difficult - and it's the CPU/GPU that is doing all the work to do it, which is the big power hog in modern computers.
> And amongst all this... you want to dramatically expand government expenses and raise taxes? No, the proposal was that a minimum income is created for citizens. This *reduces* governement, as hundreds of thousands of jobs which were previously needed to administer benefit systems are no longer needed. Why did you talk about raising taxes? This money is already being given to citizens in the form of benefits, there will be some turmoil for a year or two while wages reduce somewhat to compensate (and tax RATES, but not total taxes, increase to compensate for that), so it doesn't require significant additional funding. If your country has made the decision that the state will provide shelter, clothing, food and warmth to its' citizens if they are unable to do so for themselves, then achieving this via a Mincome scheme is simply a more efficient way of doing so, and requires no "further government" nor "raising taxes"
Why do you believe this? Universal Basic Income is essentially "benefits" packaged under a different name - just fairer, and with significantly lower overheads. It also removes other barriers to a productive and healthy economy (such as the minimum wage, and the negative impacts that has on low-skilled employment levels) - but it's not inherently *better* than benefits for the recipient, just better for society as a whole. For example, in the UK at the moment a family of four might receive benefits totally £25,000 from various sources. If, instead, that family received a minimum income of £24,000, would that make it more attractive to live in the UK? (Mincome is likely to be lower than benefits, because of the ability of recipients to work part time low-skilled jobs for very low wage to top up their income if they desire, without tax/benefit reduction impact)
Which point(s) specifically are you addressing? I'll number them to help.
1] Uber is playing by the rules in London
2] All or most of Ubers drivers are licensed minicab operators
3] Drivers make more money driving for Uber than they do driving for traditional minicab firms
4] Uber charge 20-30% less than minicabs (at normal operating times)
5] Ubers are cheaper than Black Cabs
6] Ubers provide better customer service than Black Cabs
7] Ubers Surge Pricing scheme means more cabs are available at peak times for people who really need them.
Some are facts, some are claims which I can only back from personal experience (and that of many other Londoners I've discussed this with), and others are obvious with a little thought.
There'll be a lot of out of work taxi drivers too - who will be desperate to drive, reducing the times / locations that surge pricing occurs in. Plus, if it's so important, someone can launch a competitor to Uber that doesn't have surge pricing, and anyone who wants to can use them. Finally, if it's a real issue, book one in advance (it's what you had to do before, the presence of Uber hasn't made anything worse in that regard...)
Fair point :)
How often do you travel from one "not very populous" area of the world to another...? Once a day? Once a week? Your pooled car can be sat 20 miles from you, when you want it you press a button in the app, it arrives 30 minutes later and takes you where you need to go. Unless you are literally HUNDREDs of miles from your nearest car pooling point, it's a non issue.
Uber is playing by the rules In London which, depending on who you ask, is part of Europe. That said, the city is considering bringing in new rules to prevent Uber from fairly competing with other types of taxi drivers.
I take about 30 or 40 Ubers a year, and every SINGLE Uber driver I have had has been a licensed minicab operator - in other words the same driver I would be getting if I called a phone number and asked for a cab. These guys are experienced and licensed, and prefer Uber because they earn 5-10% more per hour with Uber than they do with their traditional employer.Did I mention that Uber charge 20-30% less than the traditional minicab firms saving me a bunch of money?
So magically, Uber has chopped around 35% off the cost of private road transport in London that was previously going straight into the pockets of some already very wealthy people. Now the worker and the customer get that 35%. So I win, the driver wins, the only people who lose are the cab firm owners who have traditionally been raking the money in at our expense.
If you compare Uber to the Black Cabs in London, things look even better - Uber are around half the price and offer better service, routes and accountability.
Finally, people will moan about "Surge Pricing" - but that with Uber when surge pricing kicks in I can still GET an Uber, I just have to pay a bit more money for it. At the busier times of night, the times when Uber surge pricing kicks in, if I try ordering a regular cab I'm usually told I can't have one or that there is a wait of an hour or more. So Surge pricing gives me MORE options, even though I may decide not to use that option. With traditional providers, I'm walking the 7 miles home at 3am...
This is so totally and utterly obvious to anyone with half a brain who cares to sit down and think it through for a few minutes - at least for the mass market. In fact, it seems so obvious to me, that I'm worried I've got tunnel vision for it, does anyone know any viable arguments for private ownership in a world where cars drive themselves?
IANA(copyright)L but everything I've heard about this seems to indicate that in the UK and US points to the interpretation of the word "fair" as being up to the judge when it goes to court.
I cannot possibly start to comprehend this logic. Should a picture taken on a paedophiles camera not be admissible as evidence because he owned the camera? Should the police not be allowed to arrest you because, as a taxpayer, you pay their wages...?
"only 20 of these were revealed in the report to avoid potential harm to the real estate market in these areas" To avoid harm to a market, they are willing to withhold the truth, which potentially harms everyone who is considering purchasing (or even renting) a property in that market.
Forgive me if I have misunderstood, but how does your proposed model differ from hiring consultants through an agency/consulting firm. This is an already-entrenched and very common model.
Money. They want more money.
So err... it is then?
Modern cars use a system to stabilise the car in the event that one or more wheels starts to lose adhesion - commonly called things like ESP/DSP/ESC
The car wants to know when it's on a dyno or other testing device where only one set of wheels move, and the others do not - if this were NOT the case, it would assume that the rear wheels have lost adhesion with the road, and will serious interfere with the power provided to the front wheels.
So "the defeat device required data from a range of sensors -- sensors that a noncheating car might not need" is totally and utterly rubbish, it likely needs a single line of code like this:
> if(EngineMode.Test){ ... do something to improve emissions ... }
Furthermore, many cars may already have a "very low emissions" mode or similar - there may not be a "special" mode specifically for EPA tests which a different profile for timing, fuel injection etc. - the cars computer essentially changes the "configuration" of the engine on the fly, based on driving conditions, driver input, gear, fuel quality, engine feedback etc - and it does all this during NORMAL operation.
If a "high efficiency / low emissions mode" already existed, then the code could be further reduced to
> if (EngineMode.Test ){ Engine.PerformanceProfile = LowEmissionsProfile }
Of course, it's unlikely that there would be a high level language available to engineers to make it quite so readable as above - but hopefully the code illustrates the point.
FWIW I strongly suspect that the "low emission profile" in place here in VW *IS* a "special" doctored one to fool emissions tests, but the detection of actually being in a test? Probably already existed.