As opposed to Fox News which doesn't even need to mix in any truth at all for whatever reason. At least the manipulated CNN viewers are still getting a healthy dose of truth. Mixing in truth is the best way to sell a lie if your average viewer is more intelligent than a Fox viewer, otherwise you can just do regular lying.
It's like a math equation. You can refactor it into:
"If you pursue success bound with constant unrest, you can buy this note about a quiet modest joyful life that you don't have."
I'm sure there are old programmers that are good, but for whatever reason we keep hiring bad old programmers. We get new people who suck too, but they seem much more willing to learn new ways of doing things.
ATI released their proprietary catalyst/fglrx driver in 2002.
AMD acquired ATI in 2006.
AMD releases open source AMDGPU driver in 2015.
There is aslo a FOSS radeon driver
According to wikipedia: The free and open-source "Radeon" graphics device drivers are not reverse engineered, but based on documentation released by AMD without the requirement to sign any non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Documentation has been released gradually beginning in 2007
It appears to me that if anything AMD/ATI has been getting better about supporting open source drivers since the acquisition of ATI by AMD.
The standards are there *for* consistency. They seem to only care that their own code is consistent with itself, but not with the rest of the codebase. I'm not even talking about just small things.
I'm talking about what languages and frameworks we are using. Our codebase uses Qt and python. We get some people that decide they don't like Qt and python, so they decide to add in some STL and ruby, adding yet more dependencies.
Our standard says we need to account for memory ownership through use of various types of smart pointers (i.e. so we can eventually pass a safety certification), and we get people saying "Any programmer than can;t manage his own memory shouldn't be programming anyway, I'm just going to use regular pointers and manage them myself anyway".
Our standard says that we do asynchronous I/O to reduce the minimize the number of threads we create. And I've got people creating threads and doing synchronous I/O anyway. I ask them why they don't follow the standard, and they tell me it's because you *need* to create threads to do I/O properly, but it turns out that they are just not familiar with asynchronous I/O or just don't trust it.
The standards we have were not written by me. They were written by the previous architect, but I think they are perfectly reasonable given the requirements, challenges, and goals we have. I would have probably made some a few decisions differently, but I think consistency is the most important thing, and I don't want to put in the effort to change everything, unless there is a significant tangible benefit.
I guess one could. But you never see 2nd Amendment advocates make that argument, because contrary to popular belief, we're not a bunch of crazy rednecks that want to overthrow the government. Most of us are your friends and neighbors, responsible people who firmly believe that everyone has a right to defend themselves, with a weapon if necessary.
That's right, you never see 2nd amendment advocates making this argument, because it as arguing for something they generally don't want. What I am saying is that their interpretation of the 2nd amendment (and mine as well), leads to this conclusion naturally, whether you find this conclusion desirable or not.
Technically, yes - and technically, there is no such thing as a "banned weapon," outside of nukes (which, IMO, nobody should have) - there are a lot of NFA restricted armaments, true, but they aren't completely banned, just cost-prohibitive. But I am aware of no law that would stop you from creating a biological pathogen in your garage.
I'm not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure biological weapons are illegal for an individual to to possess. I did a quick google search and found the biological weapons anti-terrorism act of 1989. I expect there is some kind of similar law preventing random citizens from possessing VX gas and Sarin gas, etc, but I did not find it yet.
Besides the fact I already pointed out how most "WMDs" aren't necessarily illegal to own, the "extreme cases of gun ownership" example you provide is a complete myth - military assault rifles and machine guns are considered NFA items, which requires a person to acquire a Class III FFL license (no easy or cheap task, I assure you), a VERY extensive FBI background check (if you think NICS takes forever...), and pay for an additional tax stamp ($200/each) for each weapon. Also, it is a major felony to transfer an NFA destructive device or firearm to someone who does not hold a Class II license.
I am not talking about our current laws when I referred to "the most extreme cases of gun ownership" . Clearly we already do prohibit many people from owning many kinds of firearms. What I am saying is that the rationale for banning individuals from owning WMDs (i.e. the trading of freedom for safety) would also make sense for those extreme cases of gun ownership (and clearly most people agree which is why we have those laws). It is my belief that these laws, while most people find them reasonable are actually unconstitutional.
I think a good first step would be to form an alliance to amend the 2nd amendment to restrict WMDs. You'd think it would have overwhelming support from both sides of the aisle. But I feel like many on the left would be opposed, as it would be seen as an admission that the 2nd amendment is and was always an individual right to all weapons (rather than a right of a militia). Maybe some on the right would be opposed because they would see any encroachment on the 2nd amendment as a slippery slope to further gun control.
The ability to pay lower taxes by owning a home is something that's valuable. Adding this value to every house makes them more desirable. If we took away the mortgage interest deduction, it makes less financial sense to own a home (at current prices), which will lower demand and cause house prices to fall to a new equilibrium point.
I'm open to debate on this topic. I don't have an economics degree or anything.
Two points:
1) Busing kids around is expensive, and impractical on a large scale. Schools need to be local for a lot of other reasons too, such as integration into the community and to facilitate interactions with parents.
I'm not saying we should bus kids around. All I am claiming is that the current system of only allowing students to go to their local schools *AND* having the resources of every school be based on local property taxes is causing unequal access to quality education based on income level.
I would prefer everyone to be able to go to their closest school and have every school be of adequate quality. In the past busing was an attempt at a limited solution as improving the quality of all schools was not seen as a realistic possibility.
2) If you had said "ensure every public school is of comparable caliber", I would agree, but you are assuming money is the only issue. It isn't.
I didn't actually assume or say money is the only issue, but I do think it *is* by far the most important factor at this point. Schools with more money to spend on teacher salaries get to have the best teachers, in addition to teachers generally preferring to work in more affluent areas already. You might even need to pay teachers working in low income areas more to get the same quality of teachers everywhere.
We may one day come to the point where the biggest issue is not money, but that seems to be the case right now. I think we could certainly eliminate some waste, and maybe a low income school if they were very efficient with their money could afford to pay teachers as much or more than affluent schools do, but placing this burden on lower income schools to be much more efficient to be equally successful is not fair or realistic.
Every policy benefits only a fraction of people. You need to consider each policy individually, not just the fraction of people it benefits. The progressive income tax benefits the bottom tax brackets who definitely need that extra income, so I don't have a problem with that.
That's my point. In general, we shouldn't have policies that benefit tiny fractions of people. And if we do, it should be for people that really need it (i.e. poor people). And yes the progressive income tax does benefit those at the bottom at the expense of those higher up. If we imagine a graph showing how much people benefit from the tax code based on income, what I am saying is that there shouldn't be a bunch of bumps in this curve that reward and protecting people for achieving specific levels of wealth and hindering/punishing people just below those thresholds.
The problem is correlation, but not causation. The mortgage interest deduction benefits everybody who owns a house, who are more than just the top 20%.....
I did nto mean to specifically endorse the 20% figure. I think there is probably a large variation in what this number would be, and how stark the actual disparity is in different parts of the country. I just used this number, because that's what the author cites as being the average in his research. I don't think the actual number matters as much as the concept of these glass floors/ceilings at whatever levels they happen at (20% 40% 1% or 0.1%).
Having more wealth is already a huge benefit in achieving more wealth even without having extra laws that reinforce it.
A private jet is a very different thing from a house, un
Well, I do agree that it is not a typical partisan talking point, which is good. But I disagree with the characterization of people seeking good communities for their families as being "hoarders".
This is getting into a different debate, which I am happy to get into. I don't think people in the 20% are hoarders for trying to be more successful for themselves and their families, and I don't think the Richard Reeves is saying that either. I think what makes them "hoarders" is supporting policies which disproportionately benefit them. People in the top 20% are reliable voters. They have a lot of power to decide tax laws, etc.
It's easy to bin people into groups like "the 20%" without recognizing that they have their own struggles.
It is easy to do that, but I think he actually did specifically recognize that they have their own struggles. I think everyone has struggles. But the struggles you experience are different depending on your wealth.
I live in a community with very good schools. I know quite a few families who are only just able to afford to live here.
I do as well, and the price of my house is largely a result of the schools in this neighborhood.
They (and we) do it for the schools.
Yep. I didn't do it for the schools, but my parents bought a house in an affluent neighborhood just to be able to get my siblings and I into a very good school district with 1 high school in it, rather than going to the L.A. unified school system. I am very fortunate.
Making housing even more unaffordable for us, just because we happen to be in the top 20% income bracket nationally, is not social justice.
I don't think he wants housing to be more expensive. I know I certainly don't. The policy of having a mortgage interest deduction is actually artificially raising housing prices.
Here is the real solution as far as I can see it. Eliminate the mortgage interest deduction. Either eliminate the restrictions that force kids to only be able to attend their local public schools, or ensure that every public school has equal resources. This will severely reduce house values, so I think the people who scrimped and saved to get those houses should be reimbursed for that loss of value. But once this happens, it will hopefully be possible to send your kids to a good school without being required to purchase a very expensive house.
I really don't see a good reason to support a policy that only benefits the top 20%. I think many people in the top 20% do this because they worked so hard to get there, that they want to protect what they've worked so hard to get. But this is not fair to everyone. Top 0.1%ers managed to get a tax break on private jets. This is not in the interest of anyone but the ultra wealthy. They used their power (i.e. campaign contributions) to buy political power to get this law passed. The mortgage interest deduction is the top 20% version of this exact same thing.
Many wealthy people do not even care about politics. Those people still benefit. That's fine. That doesn't make you a hoarder. If you are actively working to keep the system the way it is rather than being open to making it more fair, simply because it benefits you, then you are a hoarder.
I certainly welcome people from other less well-off communities sending their kids to school here, even if it means I have to pay more in property taxes for that. But the more broad-reaching and sustainable solution is to work toward improving all schools, so you don't have to live in a top 5% or 10% neighborhood to be able to send your kids to good schools. Unfortunately, while the pattern is that good schools correlate with property values, the underlying causes are more systemic. The easy policy decision is to just infuse cash, but real social justice requires much more than that.
A little background for me: I have been arguing the point that the guest was making for years (especially about the mortgage interest deduction and school districts being unfair and keeping people poor), and I did read an article about this book already and found myself basically agreeing with it.
I think both forms of presentation (i.e. a debate between "equal" sides, vs. a host interviewing a proponent of something, and offering some challenges) have their merits. I feel like debates often get bogged down in tangents, and in these sorts of interviews sometimes dubious claims can go unchallenged. So I think it's important to have both.
I do like this format better than shows where guests are just given a platform to speak with no push-back at all. I feel like even when a guest is completely right about everything, having some challenges helps to strengthen their case, and it also weeds out some guests with very poor arguments.
I didn't really notice a bias. It sounds like you are describing a pattern of bias which may not be easy to see by listening to only one interview.
But I'm kind of curious if there are any notable people with specific thoughtful counterarguments to this authors claims (e.g. an author that has challenged him). If there is, I'm not aware of them.
Also I think this claim is sort of unique in that it doesn't really seem like a typical left or right wing position. It's advocating for social justice which seems sort of lefty, but it is also kind of undermining the whole 99% vs. 1% paradigm pushed by the left. I personally find these sorts of claims that aren't clearly partisan to be more interesting, but I think it makes it harder to determine what *the* counterpoint is.
I've actually never heard this show. I don't actually get this show on my local NPR affiliate station (KPBS in San Diego). I'm honestly not sure if NPR affiliates are (or should be) considered "official NPR media" or not. I know I considered some of the "local" shows to be representative of NPR (e.g. "To the point" (KCRW), "Here and Now" (WBUR)), but I honestly don't know how widespread these shows are on other NPR affiliates across the country. We may be judging the merits of "NPR" based on completely different subject matter.
I was also unconsciously lumping in PBS programming (Frontline, Newshour, etc) without realizing I did not make this explicit, because these are aired on my local KPBS television station, which I associate with NPR. But I think those shows are really good too.
But, in any case, I will certainly listen to this, and see if I notice any bias or not. Thanks for the link.
A lot of media orgs do but normal lying isn't as effective these days.
It seems to be much more effective than what I would have imagined looking at polling data. When I saw the data of percentages of Fox News viewers that actually believe various false claims they make (many of which are already widely debunked and quietly redacted on Fox News e.g. pizza gate, etc), my takeaway is that most of those viewers just believe whatever they are told by Fox News.
I listen to them most days to and from work. NPR does a better job than some and they don't always do a bad job. TBH, I am too lazy to find you specifics for something I don't care enough about to try and convince someone on/.. You can disregard my opinion if you like.
I'm open to being convinced. I don't need a comprehensive list or anything. How about just the most egregious example of propaganda you can recall?
You can tell lies with the truth. Propaganda, manipulation, and deception are more effective with the truth.
I'm not disagreeing with this.
It reminds me of conspiracy theories; there is always a grain of truth to them which makes them powerful and long lasting.
I'm not disagreeing with this either. But with most conspiracy theories, you can point to a grain of truth and an avalanche of unsubstantiated or provable false claims. I can't even recall a single bit of misinformation disseminated by NPR (intentional or otherwise), though I'm sure they must make mistakes occasionally.
Knowing the fact that "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" doesn't help you understand why that fact is irrelevant or why the towers fell. Someone doesn't have to be malicious to spread that lie built entirely of facts.
Sure, but when someone repeats this, it's easy to point out that the omitted fact that steal beams don't have to melt to become structurally unstable.
To me this is like saying "Many people don't realize, but the Beatles have some really bad songs too. Musicians are all the same, they all have bad songs. I can't remember any of their bad songs, but trust me they are there. I remember not liking some of their songs, but I can't remember which ones." Even if this is all true, the fact that you can't even remember *any* of the bad examples would imply that the quality of beatles music (albeit imperfect) is much better than Nickleback, where I would struggle to even name a single song I could maybe argue is not so bad. I realize music is subjective, but this is just an analogy.
This seems like a textbook case of false equivalence. Even if it were true that NPR was intentionally trying to shape its consumers views to a particular ideology through selective truth reporting and truth omission, at least what they are saying is true. I don't recommend anybody to treat any news source as unbiased (even NPR). But at minimum we should expect and demand that any news source reliably present facts correctly to even be worthy of consideration, and *then* have the conversation of what their bias might be. Presenting falsehoods more than occasionally should disqualify any news source from being trusted by anyone.
I am not saying that guns don't have legitimate uses, nor am I saying we should outlaw them. What I am saying is that regardless of the legality of either of these things, I don't think encryption in the hands of a psychotic person is dangerous, or if it is, I can't think of how it is, and so this doesn't worry me the way that having guns or a hammer, or anything that can be used to hurt someone in the hands of a psychotic person does.
I am just pointing out that guns are a very direct way to cause a lot of harm, whereas things like encryption, or mathematics, or compelling writing are much more indirect ways of potentially causing harm to people.
And BTW anthrax has a legitimate use as well. One of the reasons we have anthrax is labs is to test antibiotics effective against anthrax. There are many amateur scientists out there who might discover a better anthrax cure. But I think most people would agree that the benefit of a possible better anthrax treatment is not worth the risk of having every crazy person having easy access to an incredibly dangerous biological weapon.
In the case of anthrax, the argument for controlling it's access is exactly "Someone might abuse it to harm others".
So I don't think this is a bad argument to appeal to the danger of an item to advocate for controlling it, but what you need to do is to show that the benefit of it's unrestricted access outweighs the risk.
For example:
Yes cars are extremely dangerous, but they are so useful that all the deaths caused by cars are worth it.
Yes guns are extremely dangerous, but they are so useful that all the deaths caused by guns are worth it.
Yes anthrax is extremely dangerous, but the potential of a finding a better cure by eliminating anthrax-control is so beneficial that all the potential deaths caused by uncontrolled anthrax are worth it.
Or conversely
Cars are so dangerous that their usefulness is not worth all the deaths caused.
Guns are so dangerous that their usefulness is not worth all the deaths caused.
Anthrax is so dangerous that the usefulness of it's unrestricted access is not worth all the potential deaths it could cause.
These aren't inherently good or bad arguments. They are just dependent on the specifics of whether the danger actually is outweighed by the benefit or not.
I don't think this is a bad point to make. I've made this point a lot myself. I think to the extent that if a person is determined to kill a lot of other people, by any means necessary, laws against guns, or even the successful elimination of guns from our society is not going to stop that person.
You can extend that argument to advocate for the legalization of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. A determined person will be able to get a hold of weapons of mass destruction anyway, so why bother prohibiting these items? Afterall, the 2nd amendment guarantees the right of an individual to bear arms (not just small arms). Any form of weapons control on individual Americans is a violation of the constitution.
I think the same argument that one could make against allowing individual rights to WMD (e.g. something like: It's just too dangerous, and this seems like a good area to restrict freedom in the name of public safety), could also be effectively made for extreme cases of gun ownership (e.g. extremely mentally ill people being legally allowed to buy and own military assault rifles and machine guns without any background checks, waiting periods, or reporting)
And like I said, I'm not advocating for any specific amount of gun control. What I am saying is that I don't think the argument "If a law isn't going to be 100% effective it's useless" is a good one. The argument on the other side of "If a law saves even 1 life, then it was worth it" is also bad. What I would like to see is people on both sides trading in their ideological positions on guns for reasonable ones.
I guess I would maybe more scared of that if it happened every couple months. And even then, it's not clear that the addition of encryption to the situation makes it worse. What would this psycho do without the ability to incorporate encryption into his psychotic fantasies? Would he just blow the bomb up with a timer? If the encryption is actually strong, then there is no difference, because you aren't going to crack it.
I mean, we could invent an example where a psycho straps a bomb to you and won't release you unless you can paint an undetectable forgery of a van gogh painting. If this becomes a common occurrence, maybe we can talk about making paint brushes illegal for even (currently) law abiding citizens. But I would argue that maybe we should try to tackle making bomb parts harder to acquire as a more direct first step, since that seems like a bigger part of the problem.
You can tell lies by telling nothing but the truth.
I don't think Fox News can... If they can, they aren't. They seem to resort to normal lying quite regularly.
NPR is only slightly better but not much. It's nauseating to listen to them. What they report on and how they report on it is very one sided. Too much emotional manipulation. Too many loaded questions. Too many attempts for "gotcha moments" instead of understanding any position. Too many one sided arguments and token opponents. Too many fallacious arguments; strawmen and appeals are the norm.
It doesn't seem like you are defending Fox, so I won't bother pointing out all the BS on their side. But I honestly don't see any of what you are talking about with NPR. Can you cite any of the stuff you are describing from NPR?
If you think they are fair and balanced then perhaps you are already in an echo chamber. When I listen to them I don't feel like I am becoming better informed but rather learning talking points from a emotionally manipulative propagandist with an agenda.
It's possible. But I think I would have to only consume NPR and sources like it to be really be in an echo chamber. And honestly I think the term "fair and balanced" is basically meaningless after Fox News claiming this as their slogan for so long. It means different things to different people. To some people, being fair and balanced means being equally critical of "both" sides of an argument regardless of merit or how many sides there even are.
What I will say about NPR is that it is not often (I can't even remember the last time) when they reported something as fact that turned out to be false. Yes, the media can be deceptive with which facts they decide to report and which to omit. But omitting facts does not prevent those facts from being reported by other media outlets. What relevant facts did NPR omit? I haven't seen any.
No, but laws are not only useful when people voluntarily follow them. If it is illegal to have anthrax, then we can arrest people who are found in possession of anthrax (i.e. assume they were going to do something bad with it) rather than being forced to wait until they cross the line from law abiding anthrax enthusiast to bio-terrorist before taking action.
I'm not even making a claim about how much gun control there should be. What I am claiming is that I am not worried about encryption in the hands of psychotic people, but I am worried about guns in the hands of psychotic people. I am not even saying that your analogy is a bad one. I am just pointing out an area where this analogy breaks down for me.
It's true that watching only news that conforms to your ideology makes you susceptible to being misinformed.
What is also plain as day to anyone who is not in an echo chamber is that not all news sources are equally ideological/fake.
It's not impossible for NPR to become a propaganda network in the future, and I would hope as many NPR consumers as possible would notice such a shift and repudiate it, a blind NPR consumer is probably going to be pretty well informed compared to a blind Fox News consumer at the moment.
This doesn't make the blind NPR consumer epistemologically superior to the blind Fox consumer, or any other blind consumer, but it does make them very lucky to have blindly consumed something that for the moment is good for them rather than toxic.
Fox news/Breitbart is fucking poison, and the people consuming it without knowing what it is are seriously harming themselves.
Maybe CNN / MSNBC are McDonalds, but NPR is vegetables.
If the FCC hadn't regulated AOL and AIM, AOL would still be running a closed ecosystem that we'd all be suffering under today. Thank God, the FCCs attempt to make AOL better actually just hastened their demise. I don't know that the world would be a better place without Facebook, but it might be. Go for it FCC!
So you just assumed Google provided no disable switch for having the microphone always on on the official android build, because Amazon and Motorola did not provide a disable switch for a totally different feature on Google's open platform that anyone can modify?
It's not a good thing -- security is a constant arms race. That's like saying "getting mugged more often is a good thing because it will make you a better fighter".
No it's more like saying, playing a lot of chess will make you a better chess player. The *only* way to become a good chess player is to play lot's of chess. Just like the *only* way to have good security is to have lots of people trying to break it. Other things can help you have better security (e.g. good design, etc). But you cannot have good security without lots of people trying to break it. You can not become a good chess player without playing lots of chess.
Trying to have good security by having less people targetting your OS, is like trying to be a good chess player by playing as few good opponents as possible to minimize your losses. Then you say "I'm not trying to be a good chess player, I'm trying to minimize my chess losses". Then I say "That may be true, but you *should* want to be a good chess player (i.e. you *shouldn't* just be trying to minimize losses)".
And why do you think there's such a wide variety? If Linux became a mass-market item, then everybody would start chasing the market, which means that there would be less variety as all the distros converged while competing for those sweet mass-market dollars.
There is a large variety because it's easy to make a custom linux distribution and share it with others. If linux became mass market, then sure a few versions will dominate the market, that won't necessarily reduce the variety. Ubuntu became very popular, and then someone made mint which is based off of ubuntu (which is based of off debian).
And I don't think anyone is going to get "mass-market dollars" even if it reaches the mass market. Linux is open source. Ubuntu is spending not making money. It is run like a money spending charity, not a money making business. The only company making money of of linux is redhat, and they aren't making money selling software, they are selling support to business users of RHEL. If you just want RHEL softwarre (without the support) you can use centos (which we do at my work)
The reason there is no variety with windows is not because it's popular. It's because it's proprietary. Proprietary != popular. Proprietary is not necessarily bad, but linux is not proprietary.
Slashdot Mirror
Who's running the scam?
As opposed to Fox News which doesn't even need to mix in any truth at all for whatever reason. At least the manipulated CNN viewers are still getting a healthy dose of truth. Mixing in truth is the best way to sell a lie if your average viewer is more intelligent than a Fox viewer, otherwise you can just do regular lying.
It's like a math equation. You can refactor it into:
"If you pursue success bound with constant unrest, you can buy this note about a quiet modest joyful life that you don't have."
I'm sure there are old programmers that are good, but for whatever reason we keep hiring bad old programmers. We get new people who suck too, but they seem much more willing to learn new ways of doing things.
AMD acquired ATI in 2006.
AMD releases open source AMDGPU driver in 2015.
There is aslo a FOSS radeon driver
According to wikipedia: The free and open-source "Radeon" graphics device drivers are not reverse engineered, but based on documentation released by AMD without the requirement to sign any non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Documentation has been released gradually beginning in 2007
It appears to me that if anything AMD/ATI has been getting better about supporting open source drivers since the acquisition of ATI by AMD.
The standards are there *for* consistency. They seem to only care that their own code is consistent with itself, but not with the rest of the codebase. I'm not even talking about just small things.
I'm talking about what languages and frameworks we are using. Our codebase uses Qt and python. We get some people that decide they don't like Qt and python, so they decide to add in some STL and ruby, adding yet more dependencies.
Our standard says we need to account for memory ownership through use of various types of smart pointers (i.e. so we can eventually pass a safety certification), and we get people saying "Any programmer than can;t manage his own memory shouldn't be programming anyway, I'm just going to use regular pointers and manage them myself anyway".
Our standard says that we do asynchronous I/O to reduce the minimize the number of threads we create. And I've got people creating threads and doing synchronous I/O anyway. I ask them why they don't follow the standard, and they tell me it's because you *need* to create threads to do I/O properly, but it turns out that they are just not familiar with asynchronous I/O or just don't trust it.
The standards we have were not written by me. They were written by the previous architect, but I think they are perfectly reasonable given the requirements, challenges, and goals we have. I would have probably made some a few decisions differently, but I think consistency is the most important thing, and I don't want to put in the effort to change everything, unless there is a significant tangible benefit.
And torment me by stubbornly refusing to follow software design standards.
I guess one could. But you never see 2nd Amendment advocates make that argument, because contrary to popular belief, we're not a bunch of crazy rednecks that want to overthrow the government. Most of us are your friends and neighbors, responsible people who firmly believe that everyone has a right to defend themselves, with a weapon if necessary.
That's right, you never see 2nd amendment advocates making this argument, because it as arguing for something they generally don't want. What I am saying is that their interpretation of the 2nd amendment (and mine as well), leads to this conclusion naturally, whether you find this conclusion desirable or not.
Technically, yes - and technically, there is no such thing as a "banned weapon," outside of nukes (which, IMO, nobody should have) - there are a lot of NFA restricted armaments, true, but they aren't completely banned, just cost-prohibitive. But I am aware of no law that would stop you from creating a biological pathogen in your garage.
I'm not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure biological weapons are illegal for an individual to to possess. I did a quick google search and found the biological weapons anti-terrorism act of 1989. I expect there is some kind of similar law preventing random citizens from possessing VX gas and Sarin gas, etc, but I did not find it yet.
Besides the fact I already pointed out how most "WMDs" aren't necessarily illegal to own, the "extreme cases of gun ownership" example you provide is a complete myth - military assault rifles and machine guns are considered NFA items, which requires a person to acquire a Class III FFL license (no easy or cheap task, I assure you), a VERY extensive FBI background check (if you think NICS takes forever...), and pay for an additional tax stamp ($200/each) for each weapon. Also, it is a major felony to transfer an NFA destructive device or firearm to someone who does not hold a Class II license.
I am not talking about our current laws when I referred to "the most extreme cases of gun ownership" . Clearly we already do prohibit many people from owning many kinds of firearms. What I am saying is that the rationale for banning individuals from owning WMDs (i.e. the trading of freedom for safety) would also make sense for those extreme cases of gun ownership (and clearly most people agree which is why we have those laws). It is my belief that these laws, while most people find them reasonable are actually unconstitutional.
I think a good first step would be to form an alliance to amend the 2nd amendment to restrict WMDs. You'd think it would have overwhelming support from both sides of the aisle. But I feel like many on the left would be opposed, as it would be seen as an admission that the 2nd amendment is and was always an individual right to all weapons (rather than a right of a militia). Maybe some on the right would be opposed because they would see any encroachment on the 2nd amendment as a slippery slope to further gun control.
That is very debatable.
The ability to pay lower taxes by owning a home is something that's valuable. Adding this value to every house makes them more desirable. If we took away the mortgage interest deduction, it makes less financial sense to own a home (at current prices), which will lower demand and cause house prices to fall to a new equilibrium point.
I'm open to debate on this topic. I don't have an economics degree or anything.
Two points: 1) Busing kids around is expensive, and impractical on a large scale. Schools need to be local for a lot of other reasons too, such as integration into the community and to facilitate interactions with parents.
I'm not saying we should bus kids around. All I am claiming is that the current system of only allowing students to go to their local schools *AND* having the resources of every school be based on local property taxes is causing unequal access to quality education based on income level.
I would prefer everyone to be able to go to their closest school and have every school be of adequate quality. In the past busing was an attempt at a limited solution as improving the quality of all schools was not seen as a realistic possibility.
2) If you had said "ensure every public school is of comparable caliber", I would agree, but you are assuming money is the only issue. It isn't.
I didn't actually assume or say money is the only issue, but I do think it *is* by far the most important factor at this point. Schools with more money to spend on teacher salaries get to have the best teachers, in addition to teachers generally preferring to work in more affluent areas already. You might even need to pay teachers working in low income areas more to get the same quality of teachers everywhere.
We may one day come to the point where the biggest issue is not money, but that seems to be the case right now. I think we could certainly eliminate some waste, and maybe a low income school if they were very efficient with their money could afford to pay teachers as much or more than affluent schools do, but placing this burden on lower income schools to be much more efficient to be equally successful is not fair or realistic.
Every policy benefits only a fraction of people. You need to consider each policy individually, not just the fraction of people it benefits. The progressive income tax benefits the bottom tax brackets who definitely need that extra income, so I don't have a problem with that.
That's my point. In general, we shouldn't have policies that benefit tiny fractions of people. And if we do, it should be for people that really need it (i.e. poor people). And yes the progressive income tax does benefit those at the bottom at the expense of those higher up. If we imagine a graph showing how much people benefit from the tax code based on income, what I am saying is that there shouldn't be a bunch of bumps in this curve that reward and protecting people for achieving specific levels of wealth and hindering/punishing people just below those thresholds.
The problem is correlation, but not causation. The mortgage interest deduction benefits everybody who owns a house, who are more than just the top 20%.....
I did nto mean to specifically endorse the 20% figure. I think there is probably a large variation in what this number would be, and how stark the actual disparity is in different parts of the country. I just used this number, because that's what the author cites as being the average in his research. I don't think the actual number matters as much as the concept of these glass floors/ceilings at whatever levels they happen at (20% 40% 1% or 0.1%).
Having more wealth is already a huge benefit in achieving more wealth even without having extra laws that reinforce it.
A private jet is a very different thing from a house, un
Well, I do agree that it is not a typical partisan talking point, which is good. But I disagree with the characterization of people seeking good communities for their families as being "hoarders".
This is getting into a different debate, which I am happy to get into. I don't think people in the 20% are hoarders for trying to be more successful for themselves and their families, and I don't think the Richard Reeves is saying that either. I think what makes them "hoarders" is supporting policies which disproportionately benefit them. People in the top 20% are reliable voters. They have a lot of power to decide tax laws, etc.
It's easy to bin people into groups like "the 20%" without recognizing that they have their own struggles.
It is easy to do that, but I think he actually did specifically recognize that they have their own struggles. I think everyone has struggles. But the struggles you experience are different depending on your wealth.
I live in a community with very good schools. I know quite a few families who are only just able to afford to live here.
I do as well, and the price of my house is largely a result of the schools in this neighborhood.
They (and we) do it for the schools.
Yep. I didn't do it for the schools, but my parents bought a house in an affluent neighborhood just to be able to get my siblings and I into a very good school district with 1 high school in it, rather than going to the L.A. unified school system. I am very fortunate.
Making housing even more unaffordable for us, just because we happen to be in the top 20% income bracket nationally, is not social justice.
I don't think he wants housing to be more expensive. I know I certainly don't. The policy of having a mortgage interest deduction is actually artificially raising housing prices.
Here is the real solution as far as I can see it. Eliminate the mortgage interest deduction. Either eliminate the restrictions that force kids to only be able to attend their local public schools, or ensure that every public school has equal resources. This will severely reduce house values, so I think the people who scrimped and saved to get those houses should be reimbursed for that loss of value. But once this happens, it will hopefully be possible to send your kids to a good school without being required to purchase a very expensive house.
I really don't see a good reason to support a policy that only benefits the top 20%. I think many people in the top 20% do this because they worked so hard to get there, that they want to protect what they've worked so hard to get. But this is not fair to everyone. Top 0.1%ers managed to get a tax break on private jets. This is not in the interest of anyone but the ultra wealthy. They used their power (i.e. campaign contributions) to buy political power to get this law passed. The mortgage interest deduction is the top 20% version of this exact same thing.
Many wealthy people do not even care about politics. Those people still benefit. That's fine. That doesn't make you a hoarder. If you are actively working to keep the system the way it is rather than being open to making it more fair, simply because it benefits you, then you are a hoarder.
I certainly welcome people from other less well-off communities sending their kids to school here, even if it means I have to pay more in property taxes for that. But the more broad-reaching and sustainable solution is to work toward improving all schools, so you don't have to live in a top 5% or 10% neighborhood to be able to send your kids to good schools. Unfortunately, while the pattern is that good schools correlate with property values, the underlying causes are more systemic. The easy policy decision is to just infuse cash, but real social justice requires much more than that.
I don't think the Richard
Alright I listened to the show.
A little background for me: I have been arguing the point that the guest was making for years (especially about the mortgage interest deduction and school districts being unfair and keeping people poor), and I did read an article about this book already and found myself basically agreeing with it.
I think both forms of presentation (i.e. a debate between "equal" sides, vs. a host interviewing a proponent of something, and offering some challenges) have their merits. I feel like debates often get bogged down in tangents, and in these sorts of interviews sometimes dubious claims can go unchallenged. So I think it's important to have both.
I do like this format better than shows where guests are just given a platform to speak with no push-back at all. I feel like even when a guest is completely right about everything, having some challenges helps to strengthen their case, and it also weeds out some guests with very poor arguments.
I didn't really notice a bias. It sounds like you are describing a pattern of bias which may not be easy to see by listening to only one interview.
But I'm kind of curious if there are any notable people with specific thoughtful counterarguments to this authors claims (e.g. an author that has challenged him). If there is, I'm not aware of them.
Also I think this claim is sort of unique in that it doesn't really seem like a typical left or right wing position. It's advocating for social justice which seems sort of lefty, but it is also kind of undermining the whole 99% vs. 1% paradigm pushed by the left. I personally find these sorts of claims that aren't clearly partisan to be more interesting, but I think it makes it harder to determine what *the* counterpoint is.
I've actually never heard this show. I don't actually get this show on my local NPR affiliate station (KPBS in San Diego). I'm honestly not sure if NPR affiliates are (or should be) considered "official NPR media" or not. I know I considered some of the "local" shows to be representative of NPR (e.g. "To the point" (KCRW), "Here and Now" (WBUR)), but I honestly don't know how widespread these shows are on other NPR affiliates across the country. We may be judging the merits of "NPR" based on completely different subject matter.
I was also unconsciously lumping in PBS programming (Frontline, Newshour, etc) without realizing I did not make this explicit, because these are aired on my local KPBS television station, which I associate with NPR. But I think those shows are really good too.
But, in any case, I will certainly listen to this, and see if I notice any bias or not. Thanks for the link.
A lot of media orgs do but normal lying isn't as effective these days.
It seems to be much more effective than what I would have imagined looking at polling data. When I saw the data of percentages of Fox News viewers that actually believe various false claims they make (many of which are already widely debunked and quietly redacted on Fox News e.g. pizza gate, etc), my takeaway is that most of those viewers just believe whatever they are told by Fox News.
I listen to them most days to and from work. NPR does a better job than some and they don't always do a bad job. TBH, I am too lazy to find you specifics for something I don't care enough about to try and convince someone on /.. You can disregard my opinion if you like.
I'm open to being convinced. I don't need a comprehensive list or anything. How about just the most egregious example of propaganda you can recall?
You can tell lies with the truth. Propaganda, manipulation, and deception are more effective with the truth.
I'm not disagreeing with this.
It reminds me of conspiracy theories; there is always a grain of truth to them which makes them powerful and long lasting.
I'm not disagreeing with this either. But with most conspiracy theories, you can point to a grain of truth and an avalanche of unsubstantiated or provable false claims. I can't even recall a single bit of misinformation disseminated by NPR (intentional or otherwise), though I'm sure they must make mistakes occasionally.
Knowing the fact that "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" doesn't help you understand why that fact is irrelevant or why the towers fell. Someone doesn't have to be malicious to spread that lie built entirely of facts.
Sure, but when someone repeats this, it's easy to point out that the omitted fact that steal beams don't have to melt to become structurally unstable.
To me this is like saying "Many people don't realize, but the Beatles have some really bad songs too. Musicians are all the same, they all have bad songs. I can't remember any of their bad songs, but trust me they are there. I remember not liking some of their songs, but I can't remember which ones." Even if this is all true, the fact that you can't even remember *any* of the bad examples would imply that the quality of beatles music (albeit imperfect) is much better than Nickleback, where I would struggle to even name a single song I could maybe argue is not so bad. I realize music is subjective, but this is just an analogy.
This seems like a textbook case of false equivalence. Even if it were true that NPR was intentionally trying to shape its consumers views to a particular ideology through selective truth reporting and truth omission, at least what they are saying is true. I don't recommend anybody to treat any news source as unbiased (even NPR). But at minimum we should expect and demand that any news source reliably present facts correctly to even be worthy of consideration, and *then* have the conversation of what their bias might be. Presenting falsehoods more than occasionally should disqualify any news source from being trusted by anyone.
I am not saying that guns don't have legitimate uses, nor am I saying we should outlaw them. What I am saying is that regardless of the legality of either of these things, I don't think encryption in the hands of a psychotic person is dangerous, or if it is, I can't think of how it is, and so this doesn't worry me the way that having guns or a hammer, or anything that can be used to hurt someone in the hands of a psychotic person does.
I am just pointing out that guns are a very direct way to cause a lot of harm, whereas things like encryption, or mathematics, or compelling writing are much more indirect ways of potentially causing harm to people.
And BTW anthrax has a legitimate use as well. One of the reasons we have anthrax is labs is to test antibiotics effective against anthrax. There are many amateur scientists out there who might discover a better anthrax cure. But I think most people would agree that the benefit of a possible better anthrax treatment is not worth the risk of having every crazy person having easy access to an incredibly dangerous biological weapon.
In the case of anthrax, the argument for controlling it's access is exactly "Someone might abuse it to harm others".
So I don't think this is a bad argument to appeal to the danger of an item to advocate for controlling it, but what you need to do is to show that the benefit of it's unrestricted access outweighs the risk.
For example:
Yes cars are extremely dangerous, but they are so useful that all the deaths caused by cars are worth it.
Yes guns are extremely dangerous, but they are so useful that all the deaths caused by guns are worth it.
Yes anthrax is extremely dangerous, but the potential of a finding a better cure by eliminating anthrax-control is so beneficial that all the potential deaths caused by uncontrolled anthrax are worth it.
Or conversely
Cars are so dangerous that their usefulness is not worth all the deaths caused.
Guns are so dangerous that their usefulness is not worth all the deaths caused.
Anthrax is so dangerous that the usefulness of it's unrestricted access is not worth all the potential deaths it could cause.
These aren't inherently good or bad arguments. They are just dependent on the specifics of whether the danger actually is outweighed by the benefit or not.
I don't think this is a bad point to make. I've made this point a lot myself. I think to the extent that if a person is determined to kill a lot of other people, by any means necessary, laws against guns, or even the successful elimination of guns from our society is not going to stop that person.
You can extend that argument to advocate for the legalization of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. A determined person will be able to get a hold of weapons of mass destruction anyway, so why bother prohibiting these items? Afterall, the 2nd amendment guarantees the right of an individual to bear arms (not just small arms). Any form of weapons control on individual Americans is a violation of the constitution.
I think the same argument that one could make against allowing individual rights to WMD (e.g. something like: It's just too dangerous, and this seems like a good area to restrict freedom in the name of public safety), could also be effectively made for extreme cases of gun ownership (e.g. extremely mentally ill people being legally allowed to buy and own military assault rifles and machine guns without any background checks, waiting periods, or reporting)
And like I said, I'm not advocating for any specific amount of gun control. What I am saying is that I don't think the argument "If a law isn't going to be 100% effective it's useless" is a good one. The argument on the other side of "If a law saves even 1 life, then it was worth it" is also bad. What I would like to see is people on both sides trading in their ideological positions on guns for reasonable ones.
I guess I would maybe more scared of that if it happened every couple months. And even then, it's not clear that the addition of encryption to the situation makes it worse. What would this psycho do without the ability to incorporate encryption into his psychotic fantasies? Would he just blow the bomb up with a timer? If the encryption is actually strong, then there is no difference, because you aren't going to crack it.
I mean, we could invent an example where a psycho straps a bomb to you and won't release you unless you can paint an undetectable forgery of a van gogh painting. If this becomes a common occurrence, maybe we can talk about making paint brushes illegal for even (currently) law abiding citizens. But I would argue that maybe we should try to tackle making bomb parts harder to acquire as a more direct first step, since that seems like a bigger part of the problem.
You can tell lies by telling nothing but the truth.
I don't think Fox News can... If they can, they aren't. They seem to resort to normal lying quite regularly.
NPR is only slightly better but not much. It's nauseating to listen to them. What they report on and how they report on it is very one sided. Too much emotional manipulation. Too many loaded questions. Too many attempts for "gotcha moments" instead of understanding any position. Too many one sided arguments and token opponents. Too many fallacious arguments; strawmen and appeals are the norm.
It doesn't seem like you are defending Fox, so I won't bother pointing out all the BS on their side. But I honestly don't see any of what you are talking about with NPR. Can you cite any of the stuff you are describing from NPR?
If you think they are fair and balanced then perhaps you are already in an echo chamber. When I listen to them I don't feel like I am becoming better informed but rather learning talking points from a emotionally manipulative propagandist with an agenda.
It's possible. But I think I would have to only consume NPR and sources like it to be really be in an echo chamber. And honestly I think the term "fair and balanced" is basically meaningless after Fox News claiming this as their slogan for so long. It means different things to different people. To some people, being fair and balanced means being equally critical of "both" sides of an argument regardless of merit or how many sides there even are.
What I will say about NPR is that it is not often (I can't even remember the last time) when they reported something as fact that turned out to be false. Yes, the media can be deceptive with which facts they decide to report and which to omit. But omitting facts does not prevent those facts from being reported by other media outlets. What relevant facts did NPR omit? I haven't seen any.
No, but laws are not only useful when people voluntarily follow them. If it is illegal to have anthrax, then we can arrest people who are found in possession of anthrax (i.e. assume they were going to do something bad with it) rather than being forced to wait until they cross the line from law abiding anthrax enthusiast to bio-terrorist before taking action.
I'm not even making a claim about how much gun control there should be. What I am claiming is that I am not worried about encryption in the hands of psychotic people, but I am worried about guns in the hands of psychotic people. I am not even saying that your analogy is a bad one. I am just pointing out an area where this analogy breaks down for me.
Except that I'm not worried if a psychotic person has 100 encryption algorithms and thousands of private keys.
It's true that watching only news that conforms to your ideology makes you susceptible to being misinformed.
What is also plain as day to anyone who is not in an echo chamber is that not all news sources are equally ideological/fake.
It's not impossible for NPR to become a propaganda network in the future, and I would hope as many NPR consumers as possible would notice such a shift and repudiate it, a blind NPR consumer is probably going to be pretty well informed compared to a blind Fox News consumer at the moment.
This doesn't make the blind NPR consumer epistemologically superior to the blind Fox consumer, or any other blind consumer, but it does make them very lucky to have blindly consumed something that for the moment is good for them rather than toxic.
Fox news/Breitbart is fucking poison, and the people consuming it without knowing what it is are seriously harming themselves.
Maybe CNN / MSNBC are McDonalds, but NPR is vegetables.
If the FCC hadn't regulated AOL and AIM, AOL would still be running a closed ecosystem that we'd all be suffering under today. Thank God, the FCCs attempt to make AOL better actually just hastened their demise. I don't know that the world would be a better place without Facebook, but it might be. Go for it FCC!
So you just assumed Google provided no disable switch for having the microphone always on on the official android build, because Amazon and Motorola did not provide a disable switch for a totally different feature on Google's open platform that anyone can modify?
Can you provide a citation that there is no "disable switch"?
What's this world coming to?
It's not a good thing -- security is a constant arms race. That's like saying "getting mugged more often is a good thing because it will make you a better fighter".
No it's more like saying, playing a lot of chess will make you a better chess player. The *only* way to become a good chess player is to play lot's of chess. Just like the *only* way to have good security is to have lots of people trying to break it. Other things can help you have better security (e.g. good design, etc). But you cannot have good security without lots of people trying to break it. You can not become a good chess player without playing lots of chess.
Trying to have good security by having less people targetting your OS, is like trying to be a good chess player by playing as few good opponents as possible to minimize your losses. Then you say "I'm not trying to be a good chess player, I'm trying to minimize my chess losses". Then I say "That may be true, but you *should* want to be a good chess player (i.e. you *shouldn't* just be trying to minimize losses)".
And why do you think there's such a wide variety? If Linux became a mass-market item, then everybody would start chasing the market, which means that there would be less variety as all the distros converged while competing for those sweet mass-market dollars.
There is a large variety because it's easy to make a custom linux distribution and share it with others. If linux became mass market, then sure a few versions will dominate the market, that won't necessarily reduce the variety. Ubuntu became very popular, and then someone made mint which is based off of ubuntu (which is based of off debian).
And I don't think anyone is going to get "mass-market dollars" even if it reaches the mass market. Linux is open source. Ubuntu is spending not making money. It is run like a money spending charity, not a money making business. The only company making money of of linux is redhat, and they aren't making money selling software, they are selling support to business users of RHEL. If you just want RHEL softwarre (without the support) you can use centos (which we do at my work)
The reason there is no variety with windows is not because it's popular. It's because it's proprietary. Proprietary != popular. Proprietary is not necessarily bad, but linux is not proprietary.