A few months ago, having watched video of another (successful) F9 landing on "Of Course I Still Love You", I wrote to SpaceX, suggesting that they might consider stabilizing out-riggers for their recovery barges.
Specifically, I had something like this in mind:-
[ the first image shows an outrigger canoe, the second a mobile crane].
I think the crane example is a good one, because it shows that OCISLY you could modified with hydraulic rams that are set in a horizontal configuration, with flotation units attached to the extensible end. By carefully tuning the size of the flotation unit, it would be possible to set them up to act as a "dampening" effect on the waves experienced by the barge.
Obviously, I didn't get a reply - but then I honestly didn't expect one. Now, the linked article doesn't really go in to detail as to why the first stage was lost. It isn't clear if the first stage is left upright for transit or whether there is a folding crane aboard that can be used to lower it to the deck... If the preference is to keep it upright, surely it is possible to have a set of extending metal braces, again, powered by hydraulics, that can fold up from horizontal storage to a vertical brace position, then maybe simply wrap a loop around the circumference of the first stage, attach that to lines up to the top of the upright braces, and raise the support loop until it is just beneath the fold-out fins... That would stop the stage from toppling over, even in rough seas.
Who knows, maybe they will look at something like this...
The OP includes the disclaimer that the C++ programming language "tops the list" because it has been in use for the longest and therefore includes the most lines of sample code from which to draw a conclusion...
But a better measure would be defect density, or the number of vulnerabilities found per thousand executable lines of code. An even better measure would then take that data and factor it using an independent vulnerability severity assessment, such as CVSS2.0 (for example).
Even this approach will leave us with concerns. The results could be massively skewed, for example, if the C++ dataset comprised deeply complex code, whilst the PHP sample (for example) were largely comprised of trivial read-only presentation formatting statements. In order to attempt to make such analysis comparable, it would be necessary to compare equivalent functions written in different languages. In this context, by "function", I am referring to code objects that deliver either identical or similar functionality, such as input validation.
Unfortunately, the variables don't end there... The OP suggests that code was drawn from a variety of sources, including GitHub, public issues trackers and public development projects... Even the most cursory glance at GitHub projects will easily demonstrate the huge variance in ability of project contributors. This means that it is entirely conceivable for the test results to be distorted by nothing other than the relative ability of contributing programmers.
This is a really nice idea and we should encourage more and better attempts at helping us to understand what it takes to write defect-free code. However, I'm not entirely convinced that this analysis considers all pertinent factors and therefore am not likely to be completely persuaded by the results.
I would also like to better understand the impact of things like good project discipline on the outcome of this analysis. For example, what are the differences between a project which has really strict internal rules for things like variable, object and function naming? How about something as innocuous as code formatting - things like indentation, line wrapping and so on? What about the toolset and platform? The IDE used? The project discipline with regard to code re-use? All of these are "tells" - indicators as to the sort of defect density we should expect. They will not be uniform across randomly sampled software projects.
In my experience [maybe 10 years developing in a 30-year career] I would say that adherence to these sorts of "programming disciplines" is actually [much] more important than the language you use. Unless you pick a turkey of a language, you should be choosing it because it's philosophy and structure, it's approach to solving problems, most closely aligns to what you are trying to achieve.
And as a mentor once told me: "Just remember, the fastest, leanest, most efficient and compact piece of code can be replaced by something which is 5% slower, takes up 5% more memory and is 5% less efficient - but which is easy to understand, debug and maintain."
Quite possibly one of the most useful pieces of advice I've ever received...
If you look beyond the obvious partisan memes that continue to be spouted here, there are a couple of much more significant, underlying concerns.
1. Why have officially mandated guidelines for all those serving in government - including post-holders, employees and advisors - not been tightened? If the concerns raised by the "Clinton Email Server" were as serious as the talking heads would have us believe, then when the Republicans came to power in 2016, why was the first new legislation on the slate not a comprehensive review of "conduct in public office", with permissible and impermissible activities more clearly defined?
3. Why is it acceptable for "dark money" to be given to aid political campaigns, with voters having no visibility of sources and therefore no way of knowing if decisions and votes being cast by elected representatives are given based on representing their electorate or based on the requirements of those special interests?
One way to look at this is as a customer - you a buying a service from the federal government by virtue of the taxes you pay.
In order to be able to look at this objectively, we need to cast aside the specifics of Hilary's email server or Kushner's use of Whatsapp, or Jrvanka's access to Top Secret information through clearances that raised strenuous objections from every agency involved... Instead we have to look at this from th eperspective of imagining a worst-case scenario: that the republic is under direct attack from hostile foreign actors, corrupt insiders and mendacious corporations and make sure that the framework in which government operates is designed from the get-go to safeguard *us* from abuses of that system.
Many/. readers have a technical background and are familiar with the concept of designing systems with redundancy, reliability and independent controls [to ensure effectiveness]. None of these concepts are beyond us - certainly not beyond an institution with the budget of the federal government.
In shore, there are no excuses for the public to accept these failures of their government.
You did the right thing - and credit to you for that... But I sometimes wonder if something like this isn't worth reporting to the FBI. Unless - as someone else has suggested in comments - the device was stolen, then you have to wonder if that tax accounting firm have lax security controls that means they are leaking data all over the place.
It's the sort of thing that the FBI should want to investigate, given the amount of harm that identity theft can cause - and given the data elements you comment were on the device when you bought it.
Whilst I do think you did the right thing, were I a customer of that company, I would actually want to know how careless they are, because I would want to take my business elsewhere. That's why I think that a safe way of alerting them [which surely the FBI would have done] might have been worth while.
Yesterday, BeauHD posted an article related to the fact that California is re-introducing right-to-repair legislation, which, believe it or not, is related to this topic.
If I can open a slot on the bottom of my laptop and easily replace the internal storage drive (on my PS/3 and PS/4 doing this requires removal of one screw), then I can be 100% certain that I am not leaking data if I sell on my old device. Yes, OK, I still have to buy a new drive and maybe re-install the OS on it, but these are simple enough tasks these days.
With the advent of devices with integrated storage, often soldered on to motherboards, this becomes impossible. What this now means is that the original manufacturer would have to come up with a way to *guarantee* you that all data on embedded storage had been securely wiped. Otherwise, their failure to do that, coupled with negligent design or negligent security implementations, could result in the loss of your personal data.
I wonder how many smartphone/tablet/similar device manufacturers would be willing to step up and own that liability in return for being able to prevent you from upgrading or repairing your device. I'm betting not that many.
There are a couple of arguments I have personally heard.
1. Personal Electronic Manufacturers
The most common argument put forward is the "Degraded User Experience" fable, which goes something like this: If you take our pristine product, and give it to an inexperienced third party to repair, you have no assurance that the repairer is trained or qualified to maintain our beloved technology. If a sub-standard repair is performed and you then elect to sell or give away the product without disclosing the 3rd party repair, the new owner could form the mistaken impression that our pristine product is somehow unreliable or of poor quality. It is only by controlling the entire end-to-end process, including repairs, that we can provide that assurance of life-long quality.
To which my response is often, Well, OK, but how come you stop supporting your products after just a couple of years? If you are the sole source of repairs, should I not be given some guarantee that your products have a useful lifespan?
2. The Technology is Too Dangerous for Mere Mortals
The most common argument put forward by companies like John Deere (and car companies using electronic servicing tools, like BMW) is to argue that: Our technology is extremely complex. It is also used for purposes and in ways that, if a problem were to develop, may result in the injury or loss of life of the operator. Because of this - and without accepting any liability for any loss of life or injury through the use of our products - we cannot in good conscience allow untrained, unqualified third parties to service our products.
To which my response is often, Hang on, the only difference - the *only* difference between your ability to service this product and a third party is that you've got that fancy box of electronics to plug in to the dashboard to reset the "service interval" clock. Unless or until you can demonstrate to me that your possession of and use of that reset device preserves my safety in a way that a third party cannot, you're talking nonsense...
To be clear, neither of these arguments are valid; neither of them should be accepted as legitimate justification. The simple truth is that these practices allow companies to charge whatever they want for maintenance and spares. This is all about controlling the market to control profits - to keep a captive market.
You make a good observation. Not only is this a good idea, but it is also available to the pilots in the 737 Max. You may have come across the term "breakers" used by pilots when conducting pre-flight inspections of aircraft... You might have seen a movie in which one of two pilots reads a checklist and the other inspects the various dials and controls.
You will hear terminology such as breakers set to "open" [which is switch open, or the circuit switched off], or "closed", which is switch closed, or the circuit switched on. for example, this image shows a board of circuit breakers on an aircraft.
In most cases, what the pilot is supposed to do, if they identify a fault with a system or component, is to disable it by "opening the (circuit) breaker". That basically means pulling the little black button out of the dashboard, which cuts power to the component, thereby forcibly disabling it.
It's possible that you might ask a follow-up question at this point, along the lines of, "Well, if that's what they were supposed to do, why didn't the pilots do that in these cases?" Another very good question.
I will have to speculate as to the answer, but there are at least two possible options. One is that the pilots of the lost aircraft lacked either the training or experience to be able to handle a failure of this type. Much as we would like to hope it is otherwise, the quality of pilot training is not the same the world over. It's also worth pointing out that the flight characteristics of the aircraft at the point of failure was to put the aircraft in to a very high speed, steep dive. It doesn't matter how good you are, if that happens unexpectedly - a true emergency - you are going to go in to "panic/response" mode. Your ability to rationalize coherently *will* be impaired. This is why pilots have to undergo so much training and take so many readiness checks. This is why pilots have to use checklists even when they have been flying the same aircraft for years. The other is to point out that, of course, the documentation for the MAX variant of the 737 didn't actually document anything about the MCAS - to the best of my knowledge it isn't even mentioned in the Ops Manual - because Boeing argued [and their in-house safety inspectors agreed] that the aircraft "flew the same" as earlier 737 variants which didn't have the MCAS.
This is a bit of a long-winded answer and a way of saying that, based on anecdotal and unsubstantiated claims mentioned on the internet in the wake of these two tragic accidents, it has been alleged that there was no mention of the MCAS system in either the aircraft documentation or any differences training. The argument for this seems to have been: "The MCAS unit gives the MAX the exact same flight characteristics as earlier models, so MCAS training is redundant."
I'm going to emphasize this again: I'm repeating unsubstantiated claims gleaned from reading various web articles, not informed by knowledge of the actual aircraft manuals. But it does fit the pattern of data that has been made public to date.
Friend of mine is a commercial pilot. When he still had spare time, he also used to own and fly an ultralight - I couldn't tell you the make, but it was a pretty good little 3-axis machine with robust performance and thoughtful design. He also had to go through routine inspections... and on one occasion this review happened to coincide with another pilot, at the same airfield, who was having an original (as opposed to replica) WW1- or WW2-era biplane check out.
The inspector made a visit to look at these and other aircraft in one go.
At one point one of the owners asked the inspector if they flew themselves (they did) and whether they had a preference as to which of the two aircraft they would like to fly. A preference was expressed for the biplane, augmented [and forgive me, this is anecdotal from ~20 years ago] by the observation that it was a "proper" aircraft, "properly" built.
My friend, a little indignant at the imagined slight, offered a counter argument, pointing out that his ultralight was formed from 6061, employed state-of-the-art, UV-resistant fabric, while the original had wooden spars, sketchy steel for bolts and wing cloth treated with (many) coats of butyrate dope (which, for non-aviators, is some seriously flammable stuff). The inspector just shrugged, as if to say that they would disregard the maybe 50 or more years of advances in materials science and computer-aided design because my friend's ultra-light "wasn't a real aircraft".
And yes, he had to pay for the privilege of this imagined slight, too.
On June 29th, 2011, the Department of Transport's Office of Inspector General issued a detailed (23 page) audit report that examined the Federal Aviation Authority's approach to Risk Management.
This report, published in June 2011, documents in stark detail that the approach taken by the FAA - to significantly scale back oversight of aircraft manufacturers - represented significant risk, even if that activity were performed adequately.
In more detail, the report explains how the FAA took the decision to delegate responsibility for the hiring of individuals to serve as "FAA engineers" - essentially the supposedly independent inspectors who are intended to be able to objectively assess the effectiveness of the design and modification procedures conducted by the company that hired them.
If that wasn't bad enough, the report goes on to say that once the FAA had conducted initial inspections [the document quotes a 2 year time window of monitoring] it then stepped back from even an oversight role. In other words, there was no way that the FAA could have had any confidence that the modifications introduced with the 737 MAX aircraft were actually functional as claimed.
If you read around this news story in search of more details, you might find a couple of other relevant pieces of information. Staggering pieces of information...
One is that Boeing's design/development process broke down, so that when the "final" aircraft was reviewed / safety inspected by their in-house "FAA engineer", all the presented paperwork showed that the force imparted on the contol column by MCAS was set at relatively low, original design levels. In truth the design had changed, to the extent that one of the pilots in Lion Air flight incident had been attempting to fight the controls with over 100lbs of force - and had failed to overcome the aircraft's systems.
Another is that the sensor input to the MCAS system that turned out to be closely related to the problem may have been basing decisions on a single, faulty attitude sensor.
Whatever the causes of the two recent failures in terms of the operational characteristics of the two aircraft involved, I think the 2011 Inspector General's report clearly shows that both of these events were clearly avoidable and could have been prevented had the FAA leadership performed their duties responsibly.
The international handshaking agreements between the telecoms companies of various nations means that the country receiving the call gets paid a small amount of the fees being charged by the originating telco.
This is why the overseas robocall problem doesn't go away easily. However, there is no technical reason why it should not be possible for you to set up some simple rules, such as:-
1. Block all international calls...
2.... except for this country where relatives live...
I also like the idea of telco's offering a "request white-listing" service... Have the telco check the calling number and, if it is on your white-list, let the call through. If it is not on your white-list, allow the caller to leave a message with the telco [which captures their number]. When you listen to the message, you get a push-button option to white-list or block the number, at that point.
To cope with scenarios where someone is trying to reach you from an unrecognized number in a hurry, have the system offer, "Press 1 to return the call to this number" as an option.
Telco's don't want to do anything because of the cost. But it's worth pointing out that if they fail to act, they are becoming actual accomplices in whatever fraud you might fall victim to. You might not be able to file suit against the originator, but there's no reason you can't go after their accomplices, is there?
That's got to be worth a class-action attempt. To put this into perspective, remember the movie, "The Firm"... Each time the law firm mailed out invoices to their clients with over-stated claims for hours worked, that constituted mail fraud. With multiple companies receiving the invoices from multiple partners, that became racketeering, a RICO crime. As Tom Cruise mentions in the film, "That's more than you had on Capone".
These robocallers are parasites, and they get away with what they're doing because they're not *enough* of a pest to get stomped on. But if we put pressure on the telcos to the point where it starts to *cost* them money rather than *make* them money, this crime will be stopped quick enough.
I'm pretty sure (but happy to be corrected) that individual states are responsible for administering the rules that govern whether a self-drive vehicle can be permitted on public roads. I'n not sure where that leaves access to Federally-maintained interstates, however.
But the real question here concerns "fitness to drive". Today, if you want to drive a vehicle on the road, unsupervised, you have to pass a driving test. You have to be able to demonstrate to an examiner that you can control the vehicle safely, navigate, follow road directions, conduct emergency stops, etc.
I'm not aware of any state that actually conducts driving examinations of autonomous vehicles. So how, exactly, can the public be given any assurance that the manufacturers of autonomous vehicles are safe? The answer is that states have produced their own set of requirements for autonomous vehicles. I've only read those requirements from California, but they are pretty complex - and, more importantly, there doesn't appear to be much energy or interest in rigorous enforcement.
This really feels like a loophole in regulatory oversight that is being, if not exploited, then certainly used, by manufacturers of autonomous vehicles. The whole point about having laws and regulations is to stop this sort of accountability from "vanishing down the cracks" between two or more other pieces of regulation. If the prosecutor finds that the authors of the self-drive software are not liable, then safeguards need to be put in place to limit functionality in such a way that it forces the person at the wheel of the vehicle to remain attentive and ready to intercede at a moment's notice.
The data quoted by the OP, which comes from bgr.com, suggests that download sales fell precipitously in 2018, whilst physical CD and vinyl sales were less impacted, even though they, too, fell.
The linked article doesn't break down their headline numbers in to demographics, but when this topic is covered elsewhere, there is a stated generalization that download sales are driven more by milennials, whilst legacy formats are driven mainly by older consumers. [It's tempting to take this one step further and observe that there may be a direct correlation between the age of the buyer and the format purchased, but I'm less convinced by that].
So perhaps the data quoted is telling us something else, which is that maybe milennials cut back significantly on their music purchases last year? That, if substantiated, would be a much more interesting angle to cover, because that one element marks a significant change in trend. Then the question becomes: is that a one-off, or is that something deeper?
In a way it's a shame that formats like SACD and DVD-A didn't catch on in the same way that the video industry has managed a more successful transition from tape to DVD to BluRay to 4K. Perhaps this says more about our lifestyles [you actually have to sit still and watch a movie, whilst music can now be enjoyed "on the move" far more easily than ever before] than it does about our desire for higher quality music.
Last point - on the slip of CD sales... I still purchase physical CDs and will continue to do so for as long as they are available. However, if I can obtain it, I now prefer to purchase high definition audio (say 192-bit, 96kHz) if the mastered copies are being offered for sale. It would be interesting to know whether the data underpinning the bgr.com article includes these "hi-def" sales in their download numbers (given they are almost exclusively offered by specialist retailers). I know several music-enthusiast friends who are making the same switch when they can.
The OP compares one physical activity and one digital activity and suggests one might be illegal whilst the other is perfectly legal.
It might be worth taking a brief detour here and considering the way that society determines whether or not a particular activity is legal or illegal. This is a significant simplification, but in general terms we could summarize the core principle of illegality as being a range of activities which cause harm or damage to those disadvantaged by it.
If I steal from you, you are harmed. If I injure you, you are harmed. If I kill you; well, you get the point.
A big part of the apparent disparity between physically stalking someone [or, to simplify again, actions in meatspace] from the digital equivalent stems entirely from the fact that it is very difficult to evidence the harm being caused by digital stalking. That is not to say that digital stalking is harmless.
There are no end of ways that the unregulated actions of private companies such as Facebook and Google can harm you as a private citizen.
With no regulation of what data is collected, how it is analyzed, or who it is sold to, the opportunities for that data to harm you are diverse and significant. You may be unsuccessful in securing your next job if you are blacklisted by recruitment agencies. You may have to pay more for credit, or you may be refused loans, if you cross invisible lines with your digital life. You may be denied health insurance. You may be subject to even more surveillance if data collected on you by a private company is caught up in a government data request dragnet. You may be significantly defrauded if a company with whom you have shared data knowingly and willingly then fails to protect it, allowing you to become a victim of identity theft and associated fraud.
Governments the world over have failed to take steps to address these harms - even though that is the principle on which the concept of law was founded - for two broad reasons. The first is ignorance. As elected leaders demonstrate almost every time they speak, very few of them have a reasonable grasp of just how much harm this data harvesting can cause. The second is self-serving: the agencies charged with protecting citizens rights would much rather be able to issue a subpoena or NSL and get access to all that juicy data for themselves.
The only reason that the activities of companies like Facebook and Google are not illegal is because neither the people nor the government[s] truly understand what they can do. To get even the narrowest of ideas, look at what Christopher Wylie (of Cambridge Analytica) told Congress.
This might not work for all developers in all situations, but one of the best ways to establish credibility as a developer is to find an Open Source project you like and contribute.
When it comes to the technical aspects of an interview, any technical interviewer worth their salt should be able to go to Github and verify that you are the person who committed the code you claim to own. Take along hard-copy, annotated if necessary, and be prepared to talk to it, to explain why it is something special, elegant, efficient, and flexible.
If you can get testimonials from project leads or other contributors, to demonstrate that you're a good team player, so much the better.
There are several advantages to this approach:-
1. The body of work that you build up stays yours and can be taken from job to job
2. You can share this well in advance of an interview, giving your interviewer time to review it and thus lead to a good discussion
Yes, someone is going to argue that this approach could result in cheating and could allow you to claim ownership of code that isn't yours. This is not a new problem for the interview process to factor - and a good technical interviewer should be able to ask piercing questions able to determine if you really did write what you claim is yours.
It's a completely [utterly] different example of credibility, but I am for some reason reminded of that scene in the original, Black-and-White movie version of the "Dam Busters" raid from the Second World War. Barnes Wallace, the inventor of the bouncing bomb, needed the use of an RAF aircraft from which to test drop his prototypes. It quickly became apparent that he needed an actual Avro Lancaster bomber, but of course, in the middle of a war, these were in short supply. His response?
"Do you suppose that if we explained to your man in the Ministry that I designed the Lancaster that he might be willing to lend me one?"
The whole reason we hold interviews in the recruitment process is to try and establish whether the candidate has the chops to actually do the job. Nothing says that better than hard, real-world evidence.
I sincerely wish it were true that politicians properly understood technology and the threats to privacy, civil liberties, and democracy that the mis-use of technology can bring about. The sad truth of it is that they just don't.
If politicians (and I include Washington, D.C. as well as London or Brussels in that collective noun) truly understood what Facebook was up to or could do, the company would have been shut down by now.
The Cambridge Analytica "scandal" gave only the briefest glimpse of what Facebook can do - go take a moment and watch Christopher Wylie explaining just how powerful their narrow data set was - and you will begin to understand.
The only reason that most of what Facebook does isn't illegal today is because politicians simply don't understand what it can do.
This could be a moment similar to one all successful companies hit sooner or later - the point where they have saturated their market.
Netflix has seen incredible growth, likely a lot of it from signing on new clients. But the problem is, they have allowed the stock market to believe that this sort of growth is sustainable, when everything we know about markets tells us that this isn't possible. So it's possible that this is Netflix floating the idea to see how people react, for example by analyzing trending social media comments.
For existing NetFlix subscribers, I suspect the best thing to do is be very vocal that this would be a deal-breaker for you. If enough people make that view clear, I'm pretty sure they will reconsider, primarily because a flattening of the revenue curve is better than a precipitous drop. Remember folks: actions speak louder than words.
Mr Zuckerberg has been repeatedly ask to attend meetings in the UK and Brussels to explain the practices undertaken by his company and the way that those practices impact the citizens of the UK and the broader EU.
Now that Mr Zuckerberg has made this fresh commitment to going and meeting with people, I'm sure that his administration staff are already in the process of reaching out to make his appointments on the other side of the Atlantic.
What's that you say? No? Well, this is just more drivel then.
One of the most outrageous parts of Apple's pricing strategy can be found in the way that they differentiate between models in the same range that differ only based on storage capacity.
For example, consider the new (no Home button) iPad. In the UK, there are 4 models offered in the range:-
Yes, that's £1,519 or approximately £1950 for the *starting point* in price for a 1Tb iPad. Now, on the one hand, if you really want a terabyte tablet, expect to pay for that. On the other hand, look at the difference in price between the 512Gb and 1Tb versions - no less than £400.
However, if you go to say Amazon and check the price of a 512Gb Samsung 970 Pro M2 PCI Express SSD (close to if not the fastest-performing drive at that capacity), you'll pay £176.78 for a boxed, retail part.
In other words, Apple (a company that bought a memory/storage manufacturing business and which manufactures a significant portion of the RAM they use in-house) are charging comfortably more than twice as much for RAM packaged in one of their products (i.e. with the addition of one or two more chips on a standard circuit board) than a company offering a stand-alone, retail part.
The reason they're doing this is because they can. However, there's a slim chance that, as the markets saturate and as Chump's trade practices continue to bite, Apple will be left with a choice between cutting prices or slashing profits.
And/or we can just move to a different vendor or significantly reduce the replacement cycle of existing Apple kit.
Before we get to the detail, I need to caveat this with the acknowledgement that we're not dealing with an extreme case here.
Consider a scenario where a US company were contracted by a foreign government to develop something which could so no other purpose than be used as a means of breaching the human rights of the citizens of that foreign country. In this scenario, the Federal Government would be able to look at the product or offering of a US company and observe that, in this specific case, the only possible purpose for which this product could be used would be to oppress, harm, or otherwise abuse the citizens of that foreign country.
I'm interested to know whether the Federal government has any obligation to monitor the actions of US companies when those businesses are interacting with foreign governments.
Put it at the most extreme: if a US company was participating in a scheme that could only serve the purpose of, say, mass murder in another country, what obligations does the US government have to step in and stop that sort of practice?
Hopefully the reason for the question is obvious. If the US believes in democracy, free speech, basic human freedoms and so on, should the US government allow a US company to offer this sort of service to another government? Is it profits before principles?
Did you read the bit where I wrote, "Unless the findings are both blatant and utterly damning, it seems unlikely that there will be a 2/3 Senate Majority willing to instigate impeachment" ?
There are claims in the press that Trump and/or Trump's Team are already preparing a response to Mueller's report.
The most likely explanation of this (if it is true) is that AG Matt Whitaker demanded a detailed status update from Mueller that provided their key findings to date and that Whitaker simply passed that to Trump. It's the most likely explanation, if we believe that claim that Trump's Team are preparing a response. The only way would be if they have seen a version of the report to start with...
As Rudy Giuliani said when he became the President's mouthpiece, the findings of the Special Investigator are going to be tried in a Court of Public Opinion, not a Court of Law. Unless the findings are both blatant and utterly damning, it seems unlikely that there will be a 2/3 Senate Majority willing to instigate impeachment.
Much more likely is that the Democrats will start a series of detailed, careful investigations over the next two years, likely carefully coordinated so that their findings can be released in concert with the approach to the 2020 Presidential Election.
Perhaps curiously, I wonder if the best approach might be for the Democrats to actually keep their powder dry now and wait for the approach to 2020. If they shoot now and miss, come 2020 anything they share now will be decried and derailed as "old news".
Stallman is absolutely right to draw attention to the privacy-stripping nature of crypto-currency, but this is far from the only challenge that this type of model can experience.
As we saw in Bitcoin trading in early 2018, an even greater threat may be speculation. Earlier this year, investors and speculators all "piled in" to Bitcoin, driving up the value of coins as demand far out-stripped supply. Now, less than a year later, the value of Bitcoins is tumbling to about $3,750, roughly 20% of the value it held at the beginning of the year. That's a shocking rate of loss.
It is worth mentioning the "speculation risk" with respect to crypto-currency, because there is nothing that Mr Stallman has said which gives any indication that his GNU Project Alternative would in any way mitigate the risk of speculative trading. An only slightly smaller annoyance than the speculators would have to be the conversion fees charged by the so-called "Exchanges".
As this MSNBC report from last December shows, some exchanges were charging an average of $28 per transaction. There are examples of people being charged $15 to send $100 in value - which is ridiculous.
This is frustrating for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that Bitcoin briefly had the potential to be something that could bring down the banking hegemony on currency conversions: you convert some of your local currency to Bitcoin for next-to-no overhead... you fly to another country... you convert your Bitcoins to local currency for next-to-no overhead. This, had it come to pass, would have allowed Bitcoin to become quickly established in the world and to also force established financial institutions to offer fairly-priced products instead of creaming fat profits off of travellers.
So even though I'm sure that Mr Stallman and his colleagues will have done some excellent work on enhancing the privacy of their alternative crypto-currency, the simple fact remains that privacy is just one of a multi-faceted problem. In fact, it's entirely possible that different exchanges, working in concert, could price this new offering out of the market by demanding even higher transaction fees (on the basis that they are not getting marketing information out of their users).
The entire "marketplace" looks to be increasingly rigged by "establishment middlemen". Sadly, I don't think that there is any way of circumventing that, at least not within the scope proposed here.
OK, I think the point you make about "in the best interest" is important...
But I was trying to use the example (perhaps unwisely) as an illustration of the fact that we can use digital solutions that provide authentication and non-repudiation with very significant activities (such as paying someone).
Therefore, I would argue that we can apply the same principles that underpin the integrity of our banking system (such as authentication and non-repudiation) to provide a similar degree of assurance to a digital voting system.
In fact, I have multiple issues that I have with the current implementation of things like voting machines, including:-
1. The fact that many models do not have paper audit trails.
2. The fact that many are known to be insecure and are still used.
3. The fact that many seem to operate by being connected to the public internet (to transmit the results data to a central collection point) instead of being on a private network or being physically taken back to a central administration point.
So your challenge is a good one because I think that it's really important that we don't simply blindly adopt the idea that we can rush out and digitize a process to give citizens a more active say in government through what I'll term "micro-referenda". Instead, what I tried to show with my original post was that the current model of government (elected representative) happened for a very robust set of reasons that were applicable 700 years ago and are less relevant now.
What seems to have happened is that our adoption of technology in to the democratic process has simply been to automate the paper-based voting process, with no attempt to rethink the underlying model and ask ourselves, "Is this still the best way?"
Important disclaimer: I am a rather cynical person who believes that there is a hardened core of "elected" officials who believe (after many years in office) that they have an inherent "right" to govern us and that we should just go about our business and leave them to tell us what is best for us. I don't subscribe to that view. Instead, I believe that elected officials are our servants (we pay them via our taxes) and their job is to administer the necessary departments of government in an efficient and cost effective way, in alignment with the wishes of their electorate. I would be the first to concede that we simply don't have anything like that today.
This is an entirely fair and very important point - indeed, there is a very applicable saying:-
"People tend to get the government they deserve..."
Which translates to, "The more seriously you take the topic of government, the more stringent you are in making sure your elected officials actually behave themselves, the better government you will have."
But the problem we face is: how to get there. If we accept your entirely reasonable argument, then we are saying that we are condemned, forever more, to a system of government that is implicitly and explicitly corrupt (and one in which corruption is designed-in as a feature, not a bug). We are saying that because people today can't be trusted with "big decisions" then they will never be given the chance for any. (And, sorry, but I don't believe that an answer of "Letting people vote for their representatives" is a valid response - because such an approach does not obligate successful candidates to actually follow the wishes of their electorate... and whilst the system may *ultimately* contain a check-and-balance in the form of voting such an incumbent out of office, the amount of damage an elected official can do in a single term in office is quite staggering.
So on balance my view is that you have to start somewhere. Maybe you don't immediately give every decision to the general population... maybe you start with small things, give people some practice and work up to the more serious topics. But unless or until you start to encourage people to participate and live up to their responsibilities, we are going to be stuck with the cesspool of corruption that we have today.
Slashdot Mirror
A few months ago, having watched video of another (successful) F9 landing on "Of Course I Still Love You", I wrote to SpaceX, suggesting that they might consider stabilizing out-riggers for their recovery barges.
Specifically, I had something like this in mind:-
https://images.app.goo.gl/CyBo...
https://images.app.goo.gl/jiPX...
[ the first image shows an outrigger canoe, the second a mobile crane].
I think the crane example is a good one, because it shows that OCISLY you could modified with hydraulic rams that are set in a horizontal configuration, with flotation units attached to the extensible end. By carefully tuning the size of the flotation unit, it would be possible to set them up to act as a "dampening" effect on the waves experienced by the barge.
Obviously, I didn't get a reply - but then I honestly didn't expect one. Now, the linked article doesn't really go in to detail as to why the first stage was lost. It isn't clear if the first stage is left upright for transit or whether there is a folding crane aboard that can be used to lower it to the deck... If the preference is to keep it upright, surely it is possible to have a set of extending metal braces, again, powered by hydraulics, that can fold up from horizontal storage to a vertical brace position, then maybe simply wrap a loop around the circumference of the first stage, attach that to lines up to the top of the upright braces, and raise the support loop until it is just beneath the fold-out fins... That would stop the stage from toppling over, even in rough seas.
Who knows, maybe they will look at something like this...
The OP includes the disclaimer that the C++ programming language "tops the list" because it has been in use for the longest and therefore includes the most lines of sample code from which to draw a conclusion...
But a better measure would be defect density , or the number of vulnerabilities found per thousand executable lines of code. An even better measure would then take that data and factor it using an independent vulnerability severity assessment, such as CVSS2.0 (for example).
Even this approach will leave us with concerns. The results could be massively skewed, for example, if the C++ dataset comprised deeply complex code, whilst the PHP sample (for example) were largely comprised of trivial read-only presentation formatting statements. In order to attempt to make such analysis comparable, it would be necessary to compare equivalent functions written in different languages. In this context, by "function", I am referring to code objects that deliver either identical or similar functionality, such as input validation.
Unfortunately, the variables don't end there... The OP suggests that code was drawn from a variety of sources, including GitHub, public issues trackers and public development projects... Even the most cursory glance at GitHub projects will easily demonstrate the huge variance in ability of project contributors. This means that it is entirely conceivable for the test results to be distorted by nothing other than the relative ability of contributing programmers.
This is a really nice idea and we should encourage more and better attempts at helping us to understand what it takes to write defect-free code. However, I'm not entirely convinced that this analysis considers all pertinent factors and therefore am not likely to be completely persuaded by the results.
I would also like to better understand the impact of things like good project discipline on the outcome of this analysis. For example, what are the differences between a project which has really strict internal rules for things like variable, object and function naming? How about something as innocuous as code formatting - things like indentation, line wrapping and so on? What about the toolset and platform? The IDE used? The project discipline with regard to code re-use? All of these are "tells" - indicators as to the sort of defect density we should expect. They will not be uniform across randomly sampled software projects.
In my experience [maybe 10 years developing in a 30-year career] I would say that adherence to these sorts of "programming disciplines" is actually [much] more important than the language you use. Unless you pick a turkey of a language, you should be choosing it because it's philosophy and structure, it's approach to solving problems, most closely aligns to what you are trying to achieve.
And as a mentor once told me: "Just remember, the fastest, leanest, most efficient and compact piece of code can be replaced by something which is 5% slower, takes up 5% more memory and is 5% less efficient - but which is easy to understand, debug and maintain."
Quite possibly one of the most useful pieces of advice I've ever received...
If you look beyond the obvious partisan memes that continue to be spouted here, there are a couple of much more significant, underlying concerns.
/. readers have a technical background and are familiar with the concept of designing systems with redundancy, reliability and independent controls [to ensure effectiveness]. None of these concepts are beyond us - certainly not beyond an institution with the budget of the federal government.
1. Why have officially mandated guidelines for all those serving in government - including post-holders, employees and advisors - not been tightened? If the concerns raised by the "Clinton Email Server" were as serious as the talking heads would have us believe, then when the Republicans came to power in 2016, why was the first new legislation on the slate not a comprehensive review of "conduct in public office", with permissible and impermissible activities more clearly defined?
3. Why is it acceptable for "dark money" to be given to aid political campaigns, with voters having no visibility of sources and therefore no way of knowing if decisions and votes being cast by elected representatives are given based on representing their electorate or based on the requirements of those special interests?
One way to look at this is as a customer - you a buying a service from the federal government by virtue of the taxes you pay.
In order to be able to look at this objectively, we need to cast aside the specifics of Hilary's email server or Kushner's use of Whatsapp, or Jrvanka's access to Top Secret information through clearances that raised strenuous objections from every agency involved... Instead we have to look at this from th eperspective of imagining a worst-case scenario: that the republic is under direct attack from hostile foreign actors, corrupt insiders and mendacious corporations and make sure that the framework in which government operates is designed from the get-go to safeguard *us* from abuses of that system.
Many
In shore, there are no excuses for the public to accept these failures of their government.
You did the right thing - and credit to you for that... But I sometimes wonder if something like this isn't worth reporting to the FBI. Unless - as someone else has suggested in comments - the device was stolen, then you have to wonder if that tax accounting firm have lax security controls that means they are leaking data all over the place.
It's the sort of thing that the FBI should want to investigate, given the amount of harm that identity theft can cause - and given the data elements you comment were on the device when you bought it.
Whilst I do think you did the right thing, were I a customer of that company, I would actually want to know how careless they are, because I would want to take my business elsewhere. That's why I think that a safe way of alerting them [which surely the FBI would have done] might have been worth while.
Yesterday, BeauHD posted an article related to the fact that California is re-introducing right-to-repair legislation, which, believe it or not, is related to this topic.
If I can open a slot on the bottom of my laptop and easily replace the internal storage drive (on my PS/3 and PS/4 doing this requires removal of one screw), then I can be 100% certain that I am not leaking data if I sell on my old device. Yes, OK, I still have to buy a new drive and maybe re-install the OS on it, but these are simple enough tasks these days.
With the advent of devices with integrated storage, often soldered on to motherboards, this becomes impossible. What this now means is that the original manufacturer would have to come up with a way to *guarantee* you that all data on embedded storage had been securely wiped. Otherwise, their failure to do that, coupled with negligent design or negligent security implementations, could result in the loss of your personal data.
I wonder how many smartphone/tablet/similar device manufacturers would be willing to step up and own that liability in return for being able to prevent you from upgrading or repairing your device. I'm betting not that many.
There are a couple of arguments I have personally heard.
1. Personal Electronic Manufacturers
The most common argument put forward is the "Degraded User Experience" fable, which goes something like this: If you take our pristine product, and give it to an inexperienced third party to repair, you have no assurance that the repairer is trained or qualified to maintain our beloved technology. If a sub-standard repair is performed and you then elect to sell or give away the product without disclosing the 3rd party repair, the new owner could form the mistaken impression that our pristine product is somehow unreliable or of poor quality. It is only by controlling the entire end-to-end process, including repairs, that we can provide that assurance of life-long quality.
To which my response is often, Well, OK, but how come you stop supporting your products after just a couple of years? If you are the sole source of repairs, should I not be given some guarantee that your products have a useful lifespan?
2. The Technology is Too Dangerous for Mere Mortals
The most common argument put forward by companies like John Deere (and car companies using electronic servicing tools, like BMW) is to argue that: Our technology is extremely complex. It is also used for purposes and in ways that, if a problem were to develop, may result in the injury or loss of life of the operator. Because of this - and without accepting any liability for any loss of life or injury through the use of our products - we cannot in good conscience allow untrained, unqualified third parties to service our products.
To which my response is often, Hang on, the only difference - the *only* difference between your ability to service this product and a third party is that you've got that fancy box of electronics to plug in to the dashboard to reset the "service interval" clock. Unless or until you can demonstrate to me that your possession of and use of that reset device preserves my safety in a way that a third party cannot, you're talking nonsense...
To be clear, neither of these arguments are valid; neither of them should be accepted as legitimate justification. The simple truth is that these practices allow companies to charge whatever they want for maintenance and spares. This is all about controlling the market to control profits - to keep a captive market.
Or, put another way, racketeering.
You make a good observation. Not only is this a good idea, but it is also available to the pilots in the 737 Max. You may have come across the term "breakers" used by pilots when conducting pre-flight inspections of aircraft... You might have seen a movie in which one of two pilots reads a checklist and the other inspects the various dials and controls.
You will hear terminology such as breakers set to "open" [which is switch open, or the circuit switched off], or "closed", which is switch closed, or the circuit switched on. for example, this image shows a board of circuit breakers on an aircraft.
In most cases, what the pilot is supposed to do, if they identify a fault with a system or component, is to disable it by "opening the (circuit) breaker". That basically means pulling the little black button out of the dashboard, which cuts power to the component, thereby forcibly disabling it.
It's possible that you might ask a follow-up question at this point, along the lines of, "Well, if that's what they were supposed to do, why didn't the pilots do that in these cases?" Another very good question.
I will have to speculate as to the answer, but there are at least two possible options. One is that the pilots of the lost aircraft lacked either the training or experience to be able to handle a failure of this type. Much as we would like to hope it is otherwise, the quality of pilot training is not the same the world over. It's also worth pointing out that the flight characteristics of the aircraft at the point of failure was to put the aircraft in to a very high speed, steep dive. It doesn't matter how good you are, if that happens unexpectedly - a true emergency - you are going to go in to "panic/response" mode. Your ability to rationalize coherently *will* be impaired. This is why pilots have to undergo so much training and take so many readiness checks. This is why pilots have to use checklists even when they have been flying the same aircraft for years. The other is to point out that, of course, the documentation for the MAX variant of the 737 didn't actually document anything about the MCAS - to the best of my knowledge it isn't even mentioned in the Ops Manual - because Boeing argued [and their in-house safety inspectors agreed] that the aircraft "flew the same" as earlier 737 variants which didn't have the MCAS.
This is a bit of a long-winded answer and a way of saying that, based on anecdotal and unsubstantiated claims mentioned on the internet in the wake of these two tragic accidents, it has been alleged that there was no mention of the MCAS system in either the aircraft documentation or any differences training. The argument for this seems to have been: "The MCAS unit gives the MAX the exact same flight characteristics as earlier models, so MCAS training is redundant."
I'm going to emphasize this again: I'm repeating unsubstantiated claims gleaned from reading various web articles, not informed by knowledge of the actual aircraft manuals. But it does fit the pattern of data that has been made public to date.
Friend of mine is a commercial pilot. When he still had spare time, he also used to own and fly an ultralight - I couldn't tell you the make, but it was a pretty good little 3-axis machine with robust performance and thoughtful design. He also had to go through routine inspections... and on one occasion this review happened to coincide with another pilot, at the same airfield, who was having an original (as opposed to replica) WW1- or WW2-era biplane check out.
The inspector made a visit to look at these and other aircraft in one go.
At one point one of the owners asked the inspector if they flew themselves (they did) and whether they had a preference as to which of the two aircraft they would like to fly. A preference was expressed for the biplane, augmented [and forgive me, this is anecdotal from ~20 years ago] by the observation that it was a "proper" aircraft, "properly" built.
My friend, a little indignant at the imagined slight, offered a counter argument, pointing out that his ultralight was formed from 6061, employed state-of-the-art, UV-resistant fabric, while the original had wooden spars, sketchy steel for bolts and wing cloth treated with (many) coats of butyrate dope (which, for non-aviators, is some seriously flammable stuff). The inspector just shrugged, as if to say that they would disregard the maybe 50 or more years of advances in materials science and computer-aided design because my friend's ultra-light "wasn't a real aircraft".
And yes, he had to pay for the privilege of this imagined slight, too.
On June 29th, 2011, the Department of Transport's Office of Inspector General issued a detailed (23 page) audit report that examined the Federal Aviation Authority's approach to Risk Management.
You can read the report directly here.
This report, published in June 2011, documents in stark detail that the approach taken by the FAA - to significantly scale back oversight of aircraft manufacturers - represented significant risk, even if that activity were performed adequately.
In more detail, the report explains how the FAA took the decision to delegate responsibility for the hiring of individuals to serve as "FAA engineers" - essentially the supposedly independent inspectors who are intended to be able to objectively assess the effectiveness of the design and modification procedures conducted by the company that hired them.
If that wasn't bad enough, the report goes on to say that once the FAA had conducted initial inspections [the document quotes a 2 year time window of monitoring] it then stepped back from even an oversight role. In other words, there was no way that the FAA could have had any confidence that the modifications introduced with the 737 MAX aircraft were actually functional as claimed.
If you read around this news story in search of more details, you might find a couple of other relevant pieces of information. Staggering pieces of information...
One is that Boeing's design/development process broke down, so that when the "final" aircraft was reviewed / safety inspected by their in-house "FAA engineer", all the presented paperwork showed that the force imparted on the contol column by MCAS was set at relatively low, original design levels. In truth the design had changed, to the extent that one of the pilots in Lion Air flight incident had been attempting to fight the controls with over 100lbs of force - and had failed to overcome the aircraft's systems.
Another is that the sensor input to the MCAS system that turned out to be closely related to the problem may have been basing decisions on a single, faulty attitude sensor.
Whatever the causes of the two recent failures in terms of the operational characteristics of the two aircraft involved, I think the 2011 Inspector General's report clearly shows that both of these events were clearly avoidable and could have been prevented had the FAA leadership performed their duties responsibly.
This.
... except for this country where relatives live...
The international handshaking agreements between the telecoms companies of various nations means that the country receiving the call gets paid a small amount of the fees being charged by the originating telco.
This is why the overseas robocall problem doesn't go away easily. However, there is no technical reason why it should not be possible for you to set up some simple rules, such as:-
1. Block all international calls...
2.
I also like the idea of telco's offering a "request white-listing" service... Have the telco check the calling number and, if it is on your white-list, let the call through. If it is not on your white-list, allow the caller to leave a message with the telco [which captures their number]. When you listen to the message, you get a push-button option to white-list or block the number, at that point.
To cope with scenarios where someone is trying to reach you from an unrecognized number in a hurry, have the system offer, "Press 1 to return the call to this number" as an option.
Telco's don't want to do anything because of the cost. But it's worth pointing out that if they fail to act, they are becoming actual accomplices in whatever fraud you might fall victim to. You might not be able to file suit against the originator, but there's no reason you can't go after their accomplices, is there?
That's got to be worth a class-action attempt. To put this into perspective, remember the movie, "The Firm"... Each time the law firm mailed out invoices to their clients with over-stated claims for hours worked, that constituted mail fraud. With multiple companies receiving the invoices from multiple partners, that became racketeering, a RICO crime. As Tom Cruise mentions in the film, "That's more than you had on Capone".
These robocallers are parasites, and they get away with what they're doing because they're not *enough* of a pest to get stomped on. But if we put pressure on the telcos to the point where it starts to *cost* them money rather than *make* them money, this crime will be stopped quick enough.
LoL, yes. Typo. Doh.
I'm pretty sure (but happy to be corrected) that individual states are responsible for administering the rules that govern whether a self-drive vehicle can be permitted on public roads. I'n not sure where that leaves access to Federally-maintained interstates, however.
But the real question here concerns "fitness to drive". Today, if you want to drive a vehicle on the road, unsupervised, you have to pass a driving test. You have to be able to demonstrate to an examiner that you can control the vehicle safely, navigate, follow road directions, conduct emergency stops, etc.
I'm not aware of any state that actually conducts driving examinations of autonomous vehicles. So how, exactly, can the public be given any assurance that the manufacturers of autonomous vehicles are safe? The answer is that states have produced their own set of requirements for autonomous vehicles. I've only read those requirements from California, but they are pretty complex - and, more importantly, there doesn't appear to be much energy or interest in rigorous enforcement.
This really feels like a loophole in regulatory oversight that is being, if not exploited, then certainly used, by manufacturers of autonomous vehicles. The whole point about having laws and regulations is to stop this sort of accountability from "vanishing down the cracks" between two or more other pieces of regulation. If the prosecutor finds that the authors of the self-drive software are not liable, then safeguards need to be put in place to limit functionality in such a way that it forces the person at the wheel of the vehicle to remain attentive and ready to intercede at a moment's notice.
The data quoted by the OP, which comes from bgr.com, suggests that download sales fell precipitously in 2018, whilst physical CD and vinyl sales were less impacted, even though they, too, fell.
The linked article doesn't break down their headline numbers in to demographics, but when this topic is covered elsewhere, there is a stated generalization that download sales are driven more by milennials, whilst legacy formats are driven mainly by older consumers. [It's tempting to take this one step further and observe that there may be a direct correlation between the age of the buyer and the format purchased, but I'm less convinced by that].
So perhaps the data quoted is telling us something else, which is that maybe milennials cut back significantly on their music purchases last year? That, if substantiated, would be a much more interesting angle to cover, because that one element marks a significant change in trend. Then the question becomes: is that a one-off, or is that something deeper?
In a way it's a shame that formats like SACD and DVD-A didn't catch on in the same way that the video industry has managed a more successful transition from tape to DVD to BluRay to 4K. Perhaps this says more about our lifestyles [you actually have to sit still and watch a movie, whilst music can now be enjoyed "on the move" far more easily than ever before] than it does about our desire for higher quality music.
Last point - on the slip of CD sales... I still purchase physical CDs and will continue to do so for as long as they are available. However, if I can obtain it, I now prefer to purchase high definition audio (say 192-bit, 96kHz) if the mastered copies are being offered for sale. It would be interesting to know whether the data underpinning the bgr.com article includes these "hi-def" sales in their download numbers (given they are almost exclusively offered by specialist retailers). I know several music-enthusiast friends who are making the same switch when they can.
The OP compares one physical activity and one digital activity and suggests one might be illegal whilst the other is perfectly legal.
It might be worth taking a brief detour here and considering the way that society determines whether or not a particular activity is legal or illegal. This is a significant simplification, but in general terms we could summarize the core principle of illegality as being a range of activities which cause harm or damage to those disadvantaged by it.
If I steal from you, you are harmed. If I injure you, you are harmed. If I kill you; well, you get the point.
A big part of the apparent disparity between physically stalking someone [or, to simplify again, actions in meatspace] from the digital equivalent stems entirely from the fact that it is very difficult to evidence the harm being caused by digital stalking. That is not to say that digital stalking is harmless.
There are no end of ways that the unregulated actions of private companies such as Facebook and Google can harm you as a private citizen.
With no regulation of what data is collected, how it is analyzed, or who it is sold to, the opportunities for that data to harm you are diverse and significant. You may be unsuccessful in securing your next job if you are blacklisted by recruitment agencies. You may have to pay more for credit, or you may be refused loans, if you cross invisible lines with your digital life. You may be denied health insurance. You may be subject to even more surveillance if data collected on you by a private company is caught up in a government data request dragnet. You may be significantly defrauded if a company with whom you have shared data knowingly and willingly then fails to protect it, allowing you to become a victim of identity theft and associated fraud.
Governments the world over have failed to take steps to address these harms - even though that is the principle on which the concept of law was founded - for two broad reasons. The first is ignorance. As elected leaders demonstrate almost every time they speak, very few of them have a reasonable grasp of just how much harm this data harvesting can cause. The second is self-serving: the agencies charged with protecting citizens rights would much rather be able to issue a subpoena or NSL and get access to all that juicy data for themselves.
The only reason that the activities of companies like Facebook and Google are not illegal is because neither the people nor the government[s] truly understand what they can do. To get even the narrowest of ideas, look at what Christopher Wylie (of Cambridge Analytica) told Congress.
... "Talk is cheap. Show me the code."
This might not work for all developers in all situations, but one of the best ways to establish credibility as a developer is to find an Open Source project you like and contribute.
When it comes to the technical aspects of an interview, any technical interviewer worth their salt should be able to go to Github and verify that you are the person who committed the code you claim to own. Take along hard-copy, annotated if necessary, and be prepared to talk to it, to explain why it is something special, elegant, efficient, and flexible.
If you can get testimonials from project leads or other contributors, to demonstrate that you're a good team player, so much the better.
There are several advantages to this approach:-
1. The body of work that you build up stays yours and can be taken from job to job
2. You can share this well in advance of an interview, giving your interviewer time to review it and thus lead to a good discussion
Yes, someone is going to argue that this approach could result in cheating and could allow you to claim ownership of code that isn't yours. This is not a new problem for the interview process to factor - and a good technical interviewer should be able to ask piercing questions able to determine if you really did write what you claim is yours.
It's a completely [utterly] different example of credibility, but I am for some reason reminded of that scene in the original, Black-and-White movie version of the "Dam Busters" raid from the Second World War. Barnes Wallace, the inventor of the bouncing bomb, needed the use of an RAF aircraft from which to test drop his prototypes. It quickly became apparent that he needed an actual Avro Lancaster bomber, but of course, in the middle of a war, these were in short supply. His response?
"Do you suppose that if we explained to your man in the Ministry that I designed the Lancaster that he might be willing to lend me one?"
The whole reason we hold interviews in the recruitment process is to try and establish whether the candidate has the chops to actually do the job. Nothing says that better than hard, real-world evidence.
I sincerely wish it were true that politicians properly understood technology and the threats to privacy, civil liberties, and democracy that the mis-use of technology can bring about. The sad truth of it is that they just don't.
If politicians (and I include Washington, D.C. as well as London or Brussels in that collective noun) truly understood what Facebook was up to or could do, the company would have been shut down by now.
The Cambridge Analytica "scandal" gave only the briefest glimpse of what Facebook can do - go take a moment and watch Christopher Wylie explaining just how powerful their narrow data set was - and you will begin to understand.
The only reason that most of what Facebook does isn't illegal today is because politicians simply don't understand what it can do.
This could be a moment similar to one all successful companies hit sooner or later - the point where they have saturated their market.
Netflix has seen incredible growth, likely a lot of it from signing on new clients. But the problem is, they have allowed the stock market to believe that this sort of growth is sustainable, when everything we know about markets tells us that this isn't possible. So it's possible that this is Netflix floating the idea to see how people react, for example by analyzing trending social media comments.
For existing NetFlix subscribers, I suspect the best thing to do is be very vocal that this would be a deal-breaker for you. If enough people make that view clear, I'm pretty sure they will reconsider, primarily because a flattening of the revenue curve is better than a precipitous drop. Remember folks: actions speak louder than words.
Mr Zuckerberg has been repeatedly ask to attend meetings in the UK and Brussels to explain the practices undertaken by his company and the way that those practices impact the citizens of the UK and the broader EU.
Now that Mr Zuckerberg has made this fresh commitment to going and meeting with people, I'm sure that his administration staff are already in the process of reaching out to make his appointments on the other side of the Atlantic.
What's that you say? No? Well, this is just more drivel then.
Actions speak louder than words.
One of the most outrageous parts of Apple's pricing strategy can be found in the way that they differentiate between models in the same range that differ only based on storage capacity.
For example, consider the new (no Home button) iPad. In the UK, there are 4 models offered in the range:-
64Gb - £769
256Gb - £919
512Gb - £1,119
1Tb - £1,519
Yes, that's £1,519 or approximately £1950 for the *starting point* in price for a 1Tb iPad. Now, on the one hand, if you really want a terabyte tablet, expect to pay for that. On the other hand, look at the difference in price between the 512Gb and 1Tb versions - no less than £400.
However, if you go to say Amazon and check the price of a 512Gb Samsung 970 Pro M2 PCI Express SSD (close to if not the fastest-performing drive at that capacity), you'll pay £176.78 for a boxed, retail part.
In other words, Apple (a company that bought a memory/storage manufacturing business and which manufactures a significant portion of the RAM they use in-house) are charging comfortably more than twice as much for RAM packaged in one of their products (i.e. with the addition of one or two more chips on a standard circuit board) than a company offering a stand-alone, retail part.
The reason they're doing this is because they can. However, there's a slim chance that, as the markets saturate and as Chump's trade practices continue to bite, Apple will be left with a choice between cutting prices or slashing profits.
And/or we can just move to a different vendor or significantly reduce the replacement cycle of existing Apple kit.
Before we get to the detail, I need to caveat this with the acknowledgement that we're not dealing with an extreme case here.
Consider a scenario where a US company were contracted by a foreign government to develop something which could so no other purpose than be used as a means of breaching the human rights of the citizens of that foreign country. In this scenario, the Federal Government would be able to look at the product or offering of a US company and observe that, in this specific case, the only possible purpose for which this product could be used would be to oppress, harm, or otherwise abuse the citizens of that foreign country.
I'm interested to know whether the Federal government has any obligation to monitor the actions of US companies when those businesses are interacting with foreign governments.
Put it at the most extreme: if a US company was participating in a scheme that could only serve the purpose of, say, mass murder in another country, what obligations does the US government have to step in and stop that sort of practice?
Hopefully the reason for the question is obvious. If the US believes in democracy, free speech, basic human freedoms and so on, should the US government allow a US company to offer this sort of service to another government? Is it profits before principles?
Did you read the bit where I wrote, "Unless the findings are both blatant and utterly damning, it seems unlikely that there will be a 2/3 Senate Majority willing to instigate impeachment" ?
I think we're in vehement agreement...
There are claims in the press that Trump and/or Trump's Team are already preparing a response to Mueller's report.
The most likely explanation of this (if it is true) is that AG Matt Whitaker demanded a detailed status update from Mueller that provided their key findings to date and that Whitaker simply passed that to Trump. It's the most likely explanation, if we believe that claim that Trump's Team are preparing a response. The only way would be if they have seen a version of the report to start with...
As Rudy Giuliani said when he became the President's mouthpiece, the findings of the Special Investigator are going to be tried in a Court of Public Opinion, not a Court of Law. Unless the findings are both blatant and utterly damning, it seems unlikely that there will be a 2/3 Senate Majority willing to instigate impeachment.
Much more likely is that the Democrats will start a series of detailed, careful investigations over the next two years, likely carefully coordinated so that their findings can be released in concert with the approach to the 2020 Presidential Election.
Perhaps curiously, I wonder if the best approach might be for the Democrats to actually keep their powder dry now and wait for the approach to 2020. If they shoot now and miss, come 2020 anything they share now will be decried and derailed as "old news".
Stallman is absolutely right to draw attention to the privacy-stripping nature of crypto-currency, but this is far from the only challenge that this type of model can experience.
As we saw in Bitcoin trading in early 2018, an even greater threat may be speculation. Earlier this year, investors and speculators all "piled in" to Bitcoin, driving up the value of coins as demand far out-stripped supply. Now, less than a year later, the value of Bitcoins is tumbling to about $3,750, roughly 20% of the value it held at the beginning of the year. That's a shocking rate of loss.
It is worth mentioning the "speculation risk" with respect to crypto-currency, because there is nothing that Mr Stallman has said which gives any indication that his GNU Project Alternative would in any way mitigate the risk of speculative trading. An only slightly smaller annoyance than the speculators would have to be the conversion fees charged by the so-called "Exchanges".
As this MSNBC report from last December shows, some exchanges were charging an average of $28 per transaction. There are examples of people being charged $15 to send $100 in value - which is ridiculous.
This is frustrating for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that Bitcoin briefly had the potential to be something that could bring down the banking hegemony on currency conversions: you convert some of your local currency to Bitcoin for next-to-no overhead... you fly to another country... you convert your Bitcoins to local currency for next-to-no overhead. This, had it come to pass, would have allowed Bitcoin to become quickly established in the world and to also force established financial institutions to offer fairly-priced products instead of creaming fat profits off of travellers.
So even though I'm sure that Mr Stallman and his colleagues will have done some excellent work on enhancing the privacy of their alternative crypto-currency, the simple fact remains that privacy is just one of a multi-faceted problem. In fact, it's entirely possible that different exchanges, working in concert, could price this new offering out of the market by demanding even higher transaction fees (on the basis that they are not getting marketing information out of their users).
The entire "marketplace" looks to be increasingly rigged by "establishment middlemen". Sadly, I don't think that there is any way of circumventing that, at least not within the scope proposed here.
OK, I think the point you make about "in the best interest" is important...
But I was trying to use the example (perhaps unwisely) as an illustration of the fact that we can use digital solutions that provide authentication and non-repudiation with very significant activities (such as paying someone).
Therefore, I would argue that we can apply the same principles that underpin the integrity of our banking system (such as authentication and non-repudiation) to provide a similar degree of assurance to a digital voting system.
In fact, I have multiple issues that I have with the current implementation of things like voting machines, including:-
1. The fact that many models do not have paper audit trails.
2. The fact that many are known to be insecure and are still used.
3. The fact that many seem to operate by being connected to the public internet (to transmit the results data to a central collection point) instead of being on a private network or being physically taken back to a central administration point.
So your challenge is a good one because I think that it's really important that we don't simply blindly adopt the idea that we can rush out and digitize a process to give citizens a more active say in government through what I'll term "micro-referenda". Instead, what I tried to show with my original post was that the current model of government (elected representative) happened for a very robust set of reasons that were applicable 700 years ago and are less relevant now.
What seems to have happened is that our adoption of technology in to the democratic process has simply been to automate the paper-based voting process, with no attempt to rethink the underlying model and ask ourselves, "Is this still the best way?"
Important disclaimer: I am a rather cynical person who believes that there is a hardened core of "elected" officials who believe (after many years in office) that they have an inherent "right" to govern us and that we should just go about our business and leave them to tell us what is best for us. I don't subscribe to that view. Instead, I believe that elected officials are our servants (we pay them via our taxes) and their job is to administer the necessary departments of government in an efficient and cost effective way, in alignment with the wishes of their electorate. I would be the first to concede that we simply don't have anything like that today.
This is an entirely fair and very important point - indeed, there is a very applicable saying:-
"People tend to get the government they deserve..."
Which translates to, "The more seriously you take the topic of government, the more stringent you are in making sure your elected officials actually behave themselves, the better government you will have."
But the problem we face is: how to get there. If we accept your entirely reasonable argument, then we are saying that we are condemned, forever more, to a system of government that is implicitly and explicitly corrupt (and one in which corruption is designed-in as a feature, not a bug). We are saying that because people today can't be trusted with "big decisions" then they will never be given the chance for any. (And, sorry, but I don't believe that an answer of "Letting people vote for their representatives" is a valid response - because such an approach does not obligate successful candidates to actually follow the wishes of their electorate... and whilst the system may *ultimately* contain a check-and-balance in the form of voting such an incumbent out of office, the amount of damage an elected official can do in a single term in office is quite staggering.
So on balance my view is that you have to start somewhere. Maybe you don't immediately give every decision to the general population... maybe you start with small things, give people some practice and work up to the more serious topics. But unless or until you start to encourage people to participate and live up to their responsibilities, we are going to be stuck with the cesspool of corruption that we have today.