You were saying that "the system of journalists checking on each other works fairly well". That is what I disagree with: history shows that that system fails badly, and it is still failing badly. In the US, for example, journalists overwhelmingly lean Democratic and those biases come through in shared errors in reporting.
There seems to be a big push for backdoors into CPUs and other chips, anything from hardware backdoors to instruction set backdoors that allow you to circumvent OS protections. Open hardware designs provide at least some protection against these kinds of abuses.
Another kind of approach towards the same goal is to use an FPGA together with a soft core CPU. While the FPGA may not be entirely trustworthy, it would be hard for any kind of FPGA hack to be smart enough to interfere with the operations of a soft core CPU.
I disagree that that system works fairly well. Before the Internet, journalists had turned into a powerful little oligarchy with way too much power, power they wielded primarily for their own benefit.
People do FOREX trades based on flows of government fiscal policy, interest rates and taxation flows often. Presumably these are linked to real 'investment' eg: when any arm of the US government spends USD to buy literally anything it wants in the currency it issues
As I was saying, you can certainly profit from currency speculation, and you may even provide a value through arbitrage, but that is a miniscule part of the overall economy and requires very specialized knowledge. Furthermore, you are at constant risk from arbitrary and self-destructive political decisions. Therefore, currency speculation isn't a reasonable thing to do for most people.
Hence, the sensible thing to do with money is to spend it on stuff that produces more stuff, i.e., invest it in hardware, people, or shares in hardware or people.
You have an idea in your head of what you think governments should and shouldn't do. [...] I distrust all views based on personal philosophy, because it's completely subjective.
Actually, my normative assumption is simply that I want to live in a peaceful, prosperous society in which everybody has equal rights and that doesn't degenerate into tyranny. Hopefully you share those normative assumptions.
Everything else derives from that: that kind of society is threatened when the government keeps track of people's race or sexual orientation, it is threatened when government tries to accomplish equality of outcome based on race, etc. The connection between the normative assumptions we (hopefully) share and the political actions where we disagree is based on economics, history, and psychology. It's not a matter of personal belief but a matter of objective reality which of us is right there.
This is a democracy. You get your say, but in the end decisions get made by democratic means. And the people who disagree with you won on this point,
There is a wide range of forms of government that can be called "democracy". In some democracies, majorities can deprive whoever they like of property, liberty, or even life; in others they can't. In most democracies, citizens have an enumerated list of rights and governments are constrained in their powers only by that list of rights, while in a few democracies, government has a limited, enumerated set of powers, and all other rights and powers are reserved to the people.
What happens if you have anti-discrimination laws? What happens if you don't? Taking all the consequence into account, both good and bad, which one produces better results overall? Until you've done that analysis, you have no business (imo) taking a side.
You're absolutely right. And lots of people have done that analysis, and the conclusion, supported by actual historical data as well as economic and social theory, is that (1) anti-discrimination laws don't work and are often harmful, (2) both the laws and the data collected for those laws is massively abused by governments. Hence my point.
You got any data to support that claim? Seems to me that discrimination based on sex and race is way down from the 1960s.
Yes, society has changed, and social change predated legal change, rather than the other way around. Observe how Hillary conveniently changed to supporting gay marriage once it was popular in the polls. Many other minorities in the US that used to face terrible discrimination became part of mainstream society without government action.
Since you want to change the government that both you and I vote for and live under, you really do need to convince a lot of us, assuming you want action on this.
Actually, I was merely pointing out that you were misrepresenting my reasoning, not trying to convince you.
In any case, it seems like the tide is turning on this, given the numerous electoral defeats Democrats and their social justice agenda have suffered. Seems like I'm not the only one who came to his senses and left the party.
Anything that might be an opening to blackmail is highly relevant. If you're a closet homosexual, and will face consequences if you're found out, you're a security risk.
Yes, that was the justification for government-based discrimination for many decades. Repeating this homophobic justification is offensive.
That is an opinion. Enough people have a different opinion to provide a political motivation for it no matter what your reservations are.
Enough people have had political motivations to institute fascist and communist dictatorships; that doesn't make fascism or communism either moral or effective.
While there are currency speculators, "investing" in a currency is generally not a sensible thing to do. You don't keep wealth in cash, which produces nothing, you invest it in something productive that yields a return.
Bitcoin, like money, is a short term means for conducting business transactions, nothing more.
It's not working for you. You're just so misinformed that you don't know how badly it's serving you.
You have no idea what sources I use to stay informed or how "misinformed" I am. So, don't you worry your pretty little head about how the media are failing me.
The ideal would be for journalism to be purely about presenting factual information in a digestible, engaging way that helped people understand the world and participate in democracy. It should also offer longer, deep investigations that are in the public interest.
And who determines what is "factual" and "in the public interest"?
Tell that to the people who think a good government should proactively try to prevent illegal discrimination
I am telling it to those people: while you may have good intentions, you are dangerously wrong. Government cannot prevent discrimination, but it can massively abuse this kind of data.
The government doesn't force anyone to do this. What they do is make it part of any government contract, if you want to work for the government you must agree to these regulations
Yes, and I am saying that it is wrong for government to collect this data on anybody. It simply isn't the government's business who I like to sleep with or what "race" I am. And storing that information in government databases is creepy and dangerous.
(that were put in place by congress long before Obama took office)
Did I mention Obama anywhere? The American obsession with categorizing people by race obviously goes back to the founding of the US. People have always found rationalizations for it, how it is good for everybody, how it is necessary for justice and the correct functioning of society. But in the end, these categorizations are, have always been, and will always be racist, discriminatory, and harmful to everybody.
If the government doesn't require companies to track on report on these, then how can the government prevent discrimination based on those attributes?
How can the government prove discrimination with this data? What percentage of African Americans at Google, or what gender pay gap, actually proves discrimination?
(Of course, it isn't the job of the government to prevent private discrimination in the first place, and attempts to do so often ends up harming the very people it is supposed to help.)
So what exactly is your problem here? Is your problem that the government was party to the contract? Does that somehow make the contract void in the name of your personal view of "liberty"?
I made no comment on the validity of the contract or whether Google should or should not comply with it.
What I am saying is that it is morally and politically wrong for governments to enquire about, or keep track of, the race, religion, or sexual orientation of citizens. Fascist and racist countries do that, free countries should not.
Google is obligated to let the government access records that show its hiring doesn't discriminate based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender and more
I think it is utterly ridiculous for the government to force companies to keep track of race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. That is personal information that is neither the employer's business nor the federal government's.
People should either refuse to answer such questions or simply make up answers.
Evan Williams blames a "broken system" of financing media through advertising.
I think a more likely problem with Medium is entering the crowded commodity market of blogging platforms with a bad business model and a staff of 150 for something that should take no more than a handful of people.
Of course, he is worth $1.7 billion, so what does he care.
Those numbers are garbage, like statistics they can be manipulated by deciding how it's counted and what's counted.
Those numbers are from Terry M. Dinan, senior advisor at the Congressional Budget Office testifying before Congress in 2013. If you want to use arguments about subsidies to talk about government energy policy, you ought to use the government's numbers to do it.
Even if you take numbers from the Environmental Law Institute, a rather biased analysis, fossil fuels are still subsidized at a much lower rate: they claim $72 billion for fossil fuels and $29 billion for renewables, but for that money we still get nearly 10x as much energy from fossil fuels.
Slashdot Mirror
You were saying that "the system of journalists checking on each other works fairly well". That is what I disagree with: history shows that that system fails badly, and it is still failing badly. In the US, for example, journalists overwhelmingly lean Democratic and those biases come through in shared errors in reporting.
There seems to be a big push for backdoors into CPUs and other chips, anything from hardware backdoors to instruction set backdoors that allow you to circumvent OS protections. Open hardware designs provide at least some protection against these kinds of abuses.
Another kind of approach towards the same goal is to use an FPGA together with a soft core CPU. While the FPGA may not be entirely trustworthy, it would be hard for any kind of FPGA hack to be smart enough to interfere with the operations of a soft core CPU.
So you are saying that if you say "F = m/a" and I say "F = ma", I'm advocating dictatorship?
Facts are just facts, and if you disagree with them, you're merely a fool, not an oppressed freedom fighter.
I disagree that that system works fairly well. Before the Internet, journalists had turned into a powerful little oligarchy with way too much power, power they wielded primarily for their own benefit.
As I was saying, you can certainly profit from currency speculation, and you may even provide a value through arbitrage, but that is a miniscule part of the overall economy and requires very specialized knowledge. Furthermore, you are at constant risk from arbitrary and self-destructive political decisions. Therefore, currency speculation isn't a reasonable thing to do for most people.
Hence, the sensible thing to do with money is to spend it on stuff that produces more stuff, i.e., invest it in hardware, people, or shares in hardware or people.
Actually, my normative assumption is simply that I want to live in a peaceful, prosperous society in which everybody has equal rights and that doesn't degenerate into tyranny. Hopefully you share those normative assumptions.
Everything else derives from that: that kind of society is threatened when the government keeps track of people's race or sexual orientation, it is threatened when government tries to accomplish equality of outcome based on race, etc. The connection between the normative assumptions we (hopefully) share and the political actions where we disagree is based on economics, history, and psychology. It's not a matter of personal belief but a matter of objective reality which of us is right there.
There is a wide range of forms of government that can be called "democracy". In some democracies, majorities can deprive whoever they like of property, liberty, or even life; in others they can't. In most democracies, citizens have an enumerated list of rights and governments are constrained in their powers only by that list of rights, while in a few democracies, government has a limited, enumerated set of powers, and all other rights and powers are reserved to the people.
You're absolutely right. And lots of people have done that analysis, and the conclusion, supported by actual historical data as well as economic and social theory, is that (1) anti-discrimination laws don't work and are often harmful, (2) both the laws and the data collected for those laws is massively abused by governments. Hence my point.
Yes, society has changed, and social change predated legal change, rather than the other way around. Observe how Hillary conveniently changed to supporting gay marriage once it was popular in the polls. Many other minorities in the US that used to face terrible discrimination became part of mainstream society without government action.
Actually, I was merely pointing out that you were misrepresenting my reasoning, not trying to convince you.
In any case, it seems like the tide is turning on this, given the numerous electoral defeats Democrats and their social justice agenda have suffered. Seems like I'm not the only one who came to his senses and left the party.
Yes, that was the justification for government-based discrimination for many decades. Repeating this homophobic justification is offensive.
Enough people have had political motivations to institute fascist and communist dictatorships; that doesn't make fascism or communism either moral or effective.
Just listen to the expert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
While there are currency speculators, "investing" in a currency is generally not a sensible thing to do. You don't keep wealth in cash, which produces nothing, you invest it in something productive that yields a return.
Bitcoin, like money, is a short term means for conducting business transactions, nothing more.
Which part of "it is wrong for government to collect this data on anybody" was unclear?
And race or sexual orientation are relevant to security clearances ... how?
I didn't make a comment about Google, I made a comment about the US government.
You have no idea what sources I use to stay informed or how "misinformed" I am. So, don't you worry your pretty little head about how the media are failing me.
Try again: how are the media failing you?
And who determines what is "factual" and "in the public interest"?
My point exactly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Government shouldn't have such policies because they aren't necessary, they are ineffective, and they are frequently abused.
I am telling it to those people: while you may have good intentions, you are dangerously wrong. Government cannot prevent discrimination, but it can massively abuse this kind of data.
Yes, and I am saying that it is wrong for government to collect this data on anybody. It simply isn't the government's business who I like to sleep with or what "race" I am. And storing that information in government databases is creepy and dangerous.
Did I mention Obama anywhere? The American obsession with categorizing people by race obviously goes back to the founding of the US. People have always found rationalizations for it, how it is good for everybody, how it is necessary for justice and the correct functioning of society. But in the end, these categorizations are, have always been, and will always be racist, discriminatory, and harmful to everybody.
Yes, and I am saying that those terms are the kinds of terms a fascist government would impose; they are morally wrong.
How can the government prove discrimination with this data? What percentage of African Americans at Google, or what gender pay gap, actually proves discrimination?
(Of course, it isn't the job of the government to prevent private discrimination in the first place, and attempts to do so often ends up harming the very people it is supposed to help.)
I made no comment on the validity of the contract or whether Google should or should not comply with it.
What I am saying is that it is morally and politically wrong for governments to enquire about, or keep track of, the race, religion, or sexual orientation of citizens. Fascist and racist countries do that, free countries should not.
Not even close. Being British, French, Spanish, or South African tells you little about the US notion of "race" or "ethnicity".
(And the fact that the US government even has official definitions of racial categories is an outrage.)
I think it is utterly ridiculous for the government to force companies to keep track of race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. That is personal information that is neither the employer's business nor the federal government's.
People should either refuse to answer such questions or simply make up answers.
Works fine for me. How is it failing for you?
Evan Williams blames a "broken system" of financing media through advertising.
I think a more likely problem with Medium is entering the crowded commodity market of blogging platforms with a bad business model and a staff of 150 for something that should take no more than a handful of people.
Of course, he is worth $1.7 billion, so what does he care.
Those numbers are from Terry M. Dinan, senior advisor at the Congressional Budget Office testifying before Congress in 2013. If you want to use arguments about subsidies to talk about government energy policy, you ought to use the government's numbers to do it.
Even if you take numbers from the Environmental Law Institute, a rather biased analysis, fossil fuels are still subsidized at a much lower rate: they claim $72 billion for fossil fuels and $29 billion for renewables, but for that money we still get nearly 10x as much energy from fossil fuels.