I don't think he necessarily has to have an actual overt economic policy to be an old school mercantilist. But clearly his views on trade, whatever their source, are deeply rooted in very 19th century protectionist views, and the flip side to that was the general tendency of Gilded Age Administrations (and Congresses as well) to protect entrenched interests. I can only imagine traditional brick and mortar retailers feel much the same as Donald Trump does about Amazon, even if his criticism has more to do with his perception that Bezos must be driving the WP's reporting. I think Trump is just instinctively a Gilded Age-style president.
It Trump was a mercantilism he wouldn't be putting tariffs on raw materials (steel and aluminum).
I think the best way to describe Trump's policies, economic and otherwise, is as a simplist, which isn't a real term AFAIK but I think it applies.
He finds the simplest coherent explanation and goes with it.
With trade the true costs and benefits are hard to measure, but a trade deficit isn't. Therefore the trade deficit is the number you try to optimize.
With law enforcement the job of police is to catch criminals, therefore police brutality is just cops doing their job.
The purpose of jail is to deter criminals, so executing drug dealers is just more effective punishment.
And politics is one team versus the other, so as President Trump feels perfectly entitled to go after an enemy on the other team.
Mining cryptocurrency isn't like mining gold, double the number of gold miners in the world and you double* the amount of gold, but if you double the number of crypto miners the amount of cryptocurrency is exactly the same.
If you make bitcoin mining twice as energy efficient, people will buy twice as many** mining rigs, and the total energy usage will be about the same.
* Not really double, but you get the point. ** Again not quite, equipment cost factors into it.
I'm a classic night owl, I stay up late and struggle to get enough sleep. A lot of my co-workers get into work at 8-8:30 while I show up 9-9:30.
During grad school when I had no courses and could go on my own schedule I didn't show up at 9-9:30, I showed up at 11-11:30, or even 1pm. It doesn't matter when the first course is, it was "early" for me.
I'm not a night owl because I'm somehow synced to my clock or even the sun, I'm a night owl because I feel really productive about 14 hours after I wake up, so it's really tough to get back to bed 2 hours later so I can get 8 hours sleep and wake up well rested.
Make my morning class 7am or 11am, as long as it's consistent I'm going to show up in roughly the same state. Put my easy class first on the other hand, now I'll have been up a few hours and alert when I get to the hard class.
I really wish we could stop with foods being either "good" or "bad" for you. My guess is even if you actually get the science to say if something is good or bad, the chances are that it's really only very marginally good or bad for you at reasonable/non-OCD intake levels, not so good or bad that it will swing the health of a normal person.
It's actually more complicated than that since a food will have effects that are both good and bad. Coffee being a good example, as people mentioned coffee has a lot health benefits, but it also has health issues and risks, one of which may be a very slight increase in your probability of cancer.
The same thing happens with drugs, only moreso. Any useful drug is having an effect on your body, anytime you have an effect you're probably going to have a side effect as well. That's why drug warnings are so common, that's also why I'm so skeptical if natural health remedies. If the natural drug is effective enough to do something good then it's also effective enough to do something bad.
The point is: lawyer up and dont settle. if someone is at fault for what happened the worst thing you can do is settle because nothing will get fixed. The company gets to claim no-fault, and can easily pay to have their story killed in the local news. My accident didnt even make the newspaper, but the company had to admit fault and disclose the event to shareholders. I was also successful in getting the rides full safety history disclosed, with more than 40 violations, which resulted in it being shut down. this triggered a full OSHA inspection, which shut down two more rides and ended up in documented fines and violations for the company.
Depends on your objective.
If you want to expose and fix the underlying issue then by all means drag out the process.
If you just want the maximum settlement then your question becomes what has most value to the company. And the most valuable thing to the company is a quick and quiet settlement that kills the story. They should, in theory, be willing to pay a big premium to make the problem go away and avoiding another ugly news cycle.
This of course assumes you have a competent legal team who didn't let you get steamrolled.
I can't believe anybody on the planet could read "Initial Coin Offering" and not think "Bunch of guys who want to get rich by selling made-up-shit to idiots".
Who's to say they didn't think that?
You can make a lot of money investing in a scam as long as you get out before it collapses.
Trump is good at misdirection and baiting the media and the public-at-large. When he says "look over here at this naughty Amazon", he's not serious; he's really trying to divert attention from some fjnork-up someplace else.
Partially, it's also been the case that a lot of his tantrums have gone nowhere because his advisors and cabinet talked sense into him. That's why the stock market stopped reacting to the Trump tweets.
But in the last month or so he's apparently decided he's learned enough about Presidenting so he's started ignoring and firing all the people who were holding him in check and carrying through with his crazy ideas.
So the chances of this tweet turning into a dumbass executive action designed to harm Amazon are actually not that small.
The U.S. has been in Iraq and Afghanistan for over 15 years, and other countries almost as long. How many U.S. generals has Al Queda/ISIS/Taliban been able to magically target with mortars.
You either don't understand the word "literal" or you read waaaaay too much Russian propaganda.
I overstated a bit, but the existence of neo-Nazi movements in Ukraine doesn't mean they're in power, I'd say Russia has a far better claim to being a state where the fascists are in power. Also recall the history, the Soviets did some horrific things to Ukraine, and the Nazis were enemies of the Soviets. A lot of those Ukrainian neo-Nazis are likely there for the anti-Russian aspect more than the racism aspect.
This is hilarious. Russia literally invades and annexes part of another country and a fig leaf of a referendum is all you need to give them the thumbs up.
Insert Luke picture here because everything you just said is false. Russia had an existing base in Crimea - if moving troops through there is an invasion then the United States invades 30 or so locations in Germany alone every year. And repeating myself since you skipped it the first time:
How is is totally legit for the U.S. to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine, yet totally illegitimate for Russia to accept Crimea's vote to be annexed.
That doesn't matter. None of the flat earth stuff matters. Columbus thought he was sailing to India.
Columbus was a bit loopy thinking he could reach India, this dude is completely bonkers, there's no comparison.
"Mad" Mike Hughes embodies the real American spirit. He had a dream and he put his life on the line for it and shot himself into the air on a homemade goddamn rocket. It's the unifying concept of Westward, Ho! except he was already in California and couldn't go West any more, so he turned a goddamn mobile home into a goddamn launch pad.
Jesus, if you guys can't see how magnificent that is, your souls have been hollowed out.
I'll give him full props for going through with it, I thought the whole rocket thing was a scam. The fact he actually built a rocket and launched himself into the sky is an awesome example of determination and ingenuity.
"While the pedestrian was legally at fault our vehicle should have avoided the accident, and barring that, the safety driver should have been more attentive and avoided the situation. We are suspending all tests until we have determined the nature of the failure and taken steps to make sure it won't be repeated."
But that was their narrative, almost word for word. They immediately suspended all tests and put out a press release saying the above. Uber is a horrible company, but in this case they've done exactly what you suggested. The problem is that they could've easily foreseen this accident if they hadn't been cutting corners and trying to pretend their tech was better than it was for the sake of the next round of funding.
I can accept Uber got a bit unlucky with how the PR played out. You don't want to say a lot during the investigation, and if the cops are being nice it doesn't really occur that you need to speak up to lower expectations.
Plus, for whatever reason the video is so crappy, it makes it look like Uber is trying to pull a fast one.
In some counties (NSW Australia e.g.) the driver would be totally at fault in this particular case. Pedestrians have right of way - period. The only case where it's not a cause for very still penalties is that the person walks out from the kerb in front of the vehicle. Even if the pedestrian is not supposed to be there.
This is something I'm not completely clear on.
It's one thing to say the vehicle has right of way. But realistically, if someone is in the middle of the road with high visibility and I just plough through them without even slowing down then I'm pretty sure I'm getting charged.
If not I feel like we would have heard of a few more cases of sociopaths trolling the streets after the bars close so they can mow down pedestrians.
is how good the damage control from Uber was. They got videos out fast with pitch black cameras that made it look like she came out of nowhere. Several days later videos popped up from locals showing the stretch of road was actually well lit. Even now I'm having a trough time finding those videos. There are stories now saying Uber's cars are behind Waymo, but I'm only just now seeing stories that say Uber should have avoided the crash. The first several/. posts about this story were riddled with comments from folks saying the crash was unavoidable and the pedestrian was completely at fault.
I'm not sure it was that good. The point of damage control is to find the least damning narrative and make that the one that sticks. Here Uber's first narrative was:
"Not our fault! The pedestrian came from the next lane and appeared out of nowhere! Totally unavoidable!!"
The moment they put out the crappy video a bunch of us could tell Uber was lying. Now their corporate credibility has taken another hit and they don't control the narrative anymore.
Now imagine Uber's narrative was more like:
"While the pedestrian was legally at fault our vehicle should have avoided the accident, and barring that, the safety driver should have been more attentive and avoided the situation. We are suspending all tests until we have determined the nature of the failure and taken steps to make sure it won't be repeated."
The beauty of that narrative is it's consistent with an accident that's almost impossible to avoid, it just sounds like Uber is being really accepting of blame. And then when it comes out they really should have avoided the accident... well the statement is still true, so it doesn't really trigger another news cycle or destroy their credibility.
I think Some of this is the media at large siding with corporations to our detriment. The big outlets (CNN, Fox, MSNBC) have long since stopped covering the story on their front page websites, even as a single link. There's a little bit of left wing press, but I heard about those videos showing how well lit the road was from a post on Ars Technical that was on my feed.
It's more to do with the news cycle, news outlets only do investigative reporting when their viewers really care, otherwise they just do events. Self-driving Uber killing a pedestrian is an event, and they covered with the sources that were available, Uber and the PD, and they both backed Uber's narrative. Now for the investigative portion only the technical press really cares (Ars Technical, Slashdot). But if that investigation turns into another event, ie the Police making another announcement or a lawsuit on behalf of the victim, well that's an event again and Uber's BS gets called out by the mainstream headlines.
Under Trump, our moderate headchopping friends in ISIS just magically got targeting information precise enough to kill Russian generals in Syria with mortar fire.
So you're saying that Trump gave ISIS the location of Russian generals? That's a novel conspiracy theory.
I suppose you actually meant the remnants of the modern rebels, in that case I honestly don't know the legitimacy of your theory though would point out that Trump is still subject to constraints.
Trump has maintained high troop levels in eastern Europe, wants to arm our literal neo-Nazi pals
You either don't understand the word "literal" or you read waaaaay too much Russian propaganda.
Yes, there exist neo-Nazis in Ukraine, but they have less influence on Ukrainian than American neo-Nazis have on the GOP.
that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine, and is sending Navy ships to the Black Sea. That's like Russia sending a fleet to the Gulf of Mexico. Most of the sanctions have been maintained, and the reason for not pushing new ones is that it's going to punish allies who have little choice to trade with Russia.
Sanctions that are complete bullshit to begin with. How is it that the U.S. gets to level sanctions against Russia in response to...the aforementioned American overthrow of Ukraine's government. How is it totally legitimate for the U.S. to spend $5 billion to "bring Ukraine the future it deserves" and then say the Crimean vote to secede was illegitimate - before whining about $5,000 in Facebook ads swinging an American election.
This is hilarious. Russia literally invades and annexes part of another country and a fig leaf of a referendum is all you need to give them the thumbs up.
Flynn was fired because he got caught secretly phoning the Russian ambassador to say that Trump would drop the election sanctions
In return for Russian support on a UN vote on illegal Israeli settlements. But this fact is never mentioned in the Russiagate storyline...almost as if the people pushing it were lying propagandists. That and the fact that no one is accusing Trump of treason for colluding with Apartheid Israel.
I actually thought you might be on to something for a moment.
The call about dropping the sanctions was on Dec 29th.
But I wouldn't get too worked up about it, causality really is a PITA sometimes.
The Steele dossier being used toilet paper
Also fixed. And still, how can Democrats talk about collusion with a straight face when it's a fact (as opposed to an unproven conspiracy theory) that Hillary not only worked with foreign agents to swing an election, but paid them to do so.
Because hiring an investigator who happens to be a retired intelligence operative for an ally is very different from getting an unfriendly nation to do your dirty work.
But if Trump was being groomed beforehand it doesn't mean they wanted him to be President
Still the plot hole of Putin being a master chess player setting the board years in advance, except for anticipating the totally predictable response from Democrats, from the media, and from the military-industrial complex.
It's like you didn't even read my response, or more likely, you're applying the same reasoning skills you used to conclude the Crimean "referendum" was legit.
Russiagate plothole #2,567: why would Russia try to swing the election to either the Democrats or the Republicans when both parties have been virulently anti-Russian for over a century.
Are you playing dumb or have you just not been paying attention?
One of the most notable aspects of Trump is how pro-Russian he's been, and how much he wants to drop the various sanctions against Russia. Heck, Flynn was fired because he got caught secretly phoning the Russian ambassador to say that Trump would drop the election sanctions, and after a massive bi-partisan bill instructing Trump to implement more sanctions (and not drop the existing one) Trump basically ignored it.
Russiagate plothole #3,789: why is it that Putin was so diabolically clever that he knew years in advance that a bankrupt professional wresting character could be president, yet at the same time be so stupid as to not predict any blowback.
The Steele dossier being largely correct is not a pre-requesite for Trump colluding with Russia. But if Trump was being groomed beforehand it doesn't mean they wanted him to be President, Russia grooms lots of people. Most likely Trump was being used by Putin cronies so they could launder their money through Trump properties and businesses. If Putin or the intelligence agencies took a personal interest it was because he was prominent enough to destabilize things by doing things like going on Fox News and becoming a Birther.
The US's status as a democracy is in way more danger than you realize.
Too bad the focus is on the Russian boogyman instead of voter disenfranchisement, easily hackable electronic voting machines, bogus voter ID laws, the corporate media giving Donald $6 billion in free coverage, gerrymandering, the Electoral College...shit that actually impacts actual elections.
Those are worries. But I'm not talking about Russia in this context, I'm talking about Trump. One of the main ideas of Democracy is the job is bigger than the person, the President's first duty is to the country, the Attorney General to the law, director of the EPA to the environment, etc, etc. No administration gets this perfectly, but Trump doesn't even seem to understand this basic concept. He sees his job as doing good for Trump, whether that's boosting his poll numbers, helping out his family, helping his own businesses, or giving himself a tax cut. And he sees the first duty of any appointee as serving his interests rather than the country.
That's when a country is in danger of sliding towards authoritarianism, when the government starts putting the party or the individual before the country.
Assuming we are discussing the same DNC hacking instance.... The evidence shows that this was an inside job. At least the file copies where done locally based on the files creation times because the time offsets between the files wouldn't allow them to be transferred over standard speed internet links.
Source? I feel like you're climbing out on a very narrow technical limb, I can think of a lot of ways for creation times to end up close together. Hell, if I was the GRU hacker I'd keep my hacking machine on a different network than my other machines. And how would I then move the emails from one box to another? I'd copy them to a USB.
It's hard to know for sure though until we find out how the intruder was getting in and data out. But... We won't really ever find out for sure.
We never know anything for sure, but the evidence seems to be pretty overwhelming unless you're really desperate to believe something else.
So.. I'm wondering.. Why do we care about the DNC getting hacked at this point? What difference at this point does it make?
Because our worry isn't that Trump gets caught for conspiring with a foreign power to win an election, our worry is he gets away with it and then he pulls the same thing again in 2020.
The US's status as a democracy is in way more danger than you realize.
Based on the video I saw, she was practically invisible until she entered the car's headlight beams. The road was poorly lit, and she had dark clothing, no reflectors on the bike and no lights.
I don't see how I could have stopped or swerved in time to avoid her in that brief window.
Believe me, I don't care for self-driving cars at all, but I have to remain unbiased here because I know I would have hit her in the same situation.
Be safe out there, people. Put lights on your bike or yourself when you're out there on the road at night.
Then you should drive slower because I would have avoided her.
When I drive at night I drive at an appropriate speed so I can stop in time if my headlights detect something on the road ahead of me. And if my headlights and eyes were as terrible as the crappy video we've been shown I would have been driving very slowly indeed.
Agreed! We are in a trade war, however everyone wants the US to lay down and accept their raping of us. Trump realised the Trade war has started and is not going to lose without a fight (in fact obviously the US can and will win, if we fight.)
Obama was fighting for the other side, meaning he is a globalist and not a nationalist. Trump understands that it is no use being a globalist as you will just be abused by nationalists, until you are 3rd world country with no influence.
People even on here seemed to have embraced the hate Trump crap so much that they cannot see straight. Comments about Trump dying in jail or being executed with his family, and then they call Trump a fascist. There was a song by Michael Jackson "I'm starting with the man in the mirror." might be good for some of the teenagers posting this stuff to listen to and contemplate.
You really think Trump has the expertise to win a trade war? Trade deals are decided on the fine print and you've got a guy who can't even read the all-caps. He still thinks the US has a trade deficit with Canada!
He's just obsessed with trade deficits because it's an easy to understand number, but trade deficits aren't necessarily a bad thing, it just means you're selling them more than you're selling them. But if you can actually use the things you're buying then it's actually a good thing.
True she comes out of nowhere on the video, but that's a really crappy video. She was walking slowing and already in the car's lane when the headlights hit her, even if she had been stationary the result would have been the same.
Of course a human driver could have hit her as well, but I suspect that most often a human driver would have seen her far enough ahead to stop or at least swerve enough to avoid her (of course most Ubers might have as well).
I'm curious if that's the only video available since decent cameras are not that expensive, and I'd expect the car to have several cameras at different contrast levels.
Why is it a scandal when a company is working for a conservative/GOP candidate but not even a story when it isn't. This type of data collection has been going on for years.
For the same reason that anytime the word "email" came up in conjunction with Clinton it became a major news story but historically stories related to record retention or classified information barely made a blip.
It feeds into the narrative. Right now voter manipulation by Russia, particularly over the Internet, is a big story. And Cambridge Analytica is actually under suspicion as a possible link between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.
Any story involving voter manipulation, the Internet, and Cambrige Analytica is going to be big news.
If you don't appear . . . and don't answer questions . . . you don't commit perjury.
Hey, even a US government IRS employee refused to testify in front of Congress. Of course, Zuck just sent his lawyer.
He's not going to say anything in public or on the record until his legal team has sorted their strategy out.
There's also a big PR aspect.
Zuckerberg, as the founder and CEO, is a very big part of Facebook's brand. And keeping him as a likeable trustworthy figure means that people are more likely to trust the company as a whole.
Zuckerberg on camera talking about FB related scandals leaves an impression that Zuckerberg personally knew and approved of the scandal causing behaviour, and that leaves a much bigger mark on FB's reputation.
It's much better to have some non-identifiable lawyer or PR person speak on behalf of FB, then it seems like this was just some rogue group or misguided executive. Zuckerberg might have to step in eventually, but they're probably better off protecting his reputation.
I think this is a variation of Dunning-Kruger. Lower-paid workers cannot understand what value the higher paid workers actually provide. Sometimes the higher pay is valid, sometimes not. But unless you are already an expert, you won't know. So while you help with race/gender pay inequality, you're also making a hostile work environment for managers and subordinates.
I don't think you need even Dunning-Kruger.
Everyone overestimates their abilities. Yes there benefits to the information being public, but on average people are going to feel underpaid and a little less satisfied.
“This was unequivocally not a data breach,” tweeted Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook executive. “No systems were infiltrated, no passwords or information were stolen or hacked.”
So, what really happened is that a bunch of people installed a bunch of Facebook apps, and the users authorized their personal data to be used by the app. What happened after that was standard Facebook Business Model stuff, they sell your eyeballs to advertisers and take a 30% share of sales. It's how all social media stays in business, by passively collecting data about you, where you eat, your income levels, what you buy, etc. All in the name of "targeted advertising", which we as users frankly embrace. We love seeing ads for things that may interest us, companies like the opportunity of us buying stuff, FB loves collecting data and giving it to the govern.... I mean collecting data.
The difference here is that even with that authorization there were things that Kogan (who collected that data) and CA were not allowed to do with that data. And even after Kogan and CA claimed to have destroyed the data they were still misusing that data.
I agree it's a very difficult policy to enforce, and if you're in the habit of clicking agree some of those 3rd parties are probably violating it, but it doesn't change the fact that Kogan and CA are one of those scummy 3rd parties misusing your data.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think he necessarily has to have an actual overt economic policy to be an old school mercantilist. But clearly his views on trade, whatever their source, are deeply rooted in very 19th century protectionist views, and the flip side to that was the general tendency of Gilded Age Administrations (and Congresses as well) to protect entrenched interests. I can only imagine traditional brick and mortar retailers feel much the same as Donald Trump does about Amazon, even if his criticism has more to do with his perception that Bezos must be driving the WP's reporting. I think Trump is just instinctively a Gilded Age-style president.
It Trump was a mercantilism he wouldn't be putting tariffs on raw materials (steel and aluminum).
I think the best way to describe Trump's policies, economic and otherwise, is as a simplist, which isn't a real term AFAIK but I think it applies.
He finds the simplest coherent explanation and goes with it.
With trade the true costs and benefits are hard to measure, but a trade deficit isn't. Therefore the trade deficit is the number you try to optimize.
With law enforcement the job of police is to catch criminals, therefore police brutality is just cops doing their job.
The purpose of jail is to deter criminals, so executing drug dealers is just more effective punishment.
And politics is one team versus the other, so as President Trump feels perfectly entitled to go after an enemy on the other team.
Mining cryptocurrency isn't like mining gold, double the number of gold miners in the world and you double* the amount of gold, but if you double the number of crypto miners the amount of cryptocurrency is exactly the same.
If you make bitcoin mining twice as energy efficient, people will buy twice as many** mining rigs, and the total energy usage will be about the same.
* Not really double, but you get the point.
** Again not quite, equipment cost factors into it.
I'm a classic night owl, I stay up late and struggle to get enough sleep. A lot of my co-workers get into work at 8-8:30 while I show up 9-9:30.
During grad school when I had no courses and could go on my own schedule I didn't show up at 9-9:30, I showed up at 11-11:30, or even 1pm. It doesn't matter when the first course is, it was "early" for me.
I'm not a night owl because I'm somehow synced to my clock or even the sun, I'm a night owl because I feel really productive about 14 hours after I wake up, so it's really tough to get back to bed 2 hours later so I can get 8 hours sleep and wake up well rested.
Make my morning class 7am or 11am, as long as it's consistent I'm going to show up in roughly the same state. Put my easy class first on the other hand, now I'll have been up a few hours and alert when I get to the hard class.
I really wish we could stop with foods being either "good" or "bad" for you. My guess is even if you actually get the science to say if something is good or bad, the chances are that it's really only very marginally good or bad for you at reasonable/non-OCD intake levels, not so good or bad that it will swing the health of a normal person.
It's actually more complicated than that since a food will have effects that are both good and bad. Coffee being a good example, as people mentioned coffee has a lot health benefits, but it also has health issues and risks, one of which may be a very slight increase in your probability of cancer.
The same thing happens with drugs, only moreso. Any useful drug is having an effect on your body, anytime you have an effect you're probably going to have a side effect as well. That's why drug warnings are so common, that's also why I'm so skeptical if natural health remedies. If the natural drug is effective enough to do something good then it's also effective enough to do something bad.
needs to go to criminal court
Criminal and civil liability are different. The family settling doesn't mean Uber won't face charges.
On the other hand, even if Uber escaped criminal consequences they could still lose a civil trial.
The point is: lawyer up and dont settle. if someone is at fault for what happened the worst thing you can do is settle because nothing will get fixed. The company gets to claim no-fault, and can easily pay to have their story killed in the local news. My accident didnt even make the newspaper, but the company had to admit fault and disclose the event to shareholders. I was also successful in getting the rides full safety history disclosed, with more than 40 violations, which resulted in it being shut down. this triggered a full OSHA inspection, which shut down two more rides and ended up in documented fines and violations for the company.
Depends on your objective.
If you want to expose and fix the underlying issue then by all means drag out the process.
If you just want the maximum settlement then your question becomes what has most value to the company. And the most valuable thing to the company is a quick and quiet settlement that kills the story. They should, in theory, be willing to pay a big premium to make the problem go away and avoiding another ugly news cycle.
This of course assumes you have a competent legal team who didn't let you get steamrolled.
Yep.
I can't believe anybody on the planet could read "Initial Coin Offering" and not think "Bunch of guys who want to get rich by selling made-up-shit to idiots".
Who's to say they didn't think that?
You can make a lot of money investing in a scam as long as you get out before it collapses.
Trump is good at misdirection and baiting the media and the public-at-large. When he says "look over here at this naughty Amazon", he's not serious; he's really trying to divert attention from some fjnork-up someplace else.
Partially, it's also been the case that a lot of his tantrums have gone nowhere because his advisors and cabinet talked sense into him. That's why the stock market stopped reacting to the Trump tweets.
But in the last month or so he's apparently decided he's learned enough about Presidenting so he's started ignoring and firing all the people who were holding him in check and carrying through with his crazy ideas.
So the chances of this tweet turning into a dumbass executive action designed to harm Amazon are actually not that small.
The U.S. has been in Iraq and Afghanistan for over 15 years, and other countries almost as long. How many U.S. generals has Al Queda/ISIS/Taliban been able to magically target with mortars.
You you were saying?
I overstated a bit, but the existence of neo-Nazi movements in Ukraine doesn't mean they're in power, I'd say Russia has a far better claim to being a state where the fascists are in power. Also recall the history, the Soviets did some horrific things to Ukraine, and the Nazis were enemies of the Soviets. A lot of those Ukrainian neo-Nazis are likely there for the anti-Russian aspect more than the racism aspect.
Insert Luke picture here because everything you just said is false. Russia had an existing base in Crimea - if moving troops through there is an invasion then the United States invades 30 or so locations in Germany alone every year. And repeating myself since you skipped it the first time:
How is is totally legit for the U.S. to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine, yet totally illegitimate for Russia to accept Crimea's vote to be annexed.
Yeah... you're not even taking this seriously.
That doesn't matter. None of the flat earth stuff matters. Columbus thought he was sailing to India.
Columbus was a bit loopy thinking he could reach India, this dude is completely bonkers, there's no comparison.
"Mad" Mike Hughes embodies the real American spirit. He had a dream and he put his life on the line for it and shot himself into the air on a homemade goddamn rocket. It's the unifying concept of Westward, Ho! except he was already in California and couldn't go West any more, so he turned a goddamn mobile home into a goddamn launch pad.
Jesus, if you guys can't see how magnificent that is, your souls have been hollowed out.
I'll give him full props for going through with it, I thought the whole rocket thing was a scam. The fact he actually built a rocket and launched himself into the sky is an awesome example of determination and ingenuity.
But he's still loopier than a bag of yarn.
But that was their narrative, almost word for word. They immediately suspended all tests and put out a press release saying the above. Uber is a horrible company, but in this case they've done exactly what you suggested. The problem is that they could've easily foreseen this accident if they hadn't been cutting corners and trying to pretend their tech was better than it was for the sake of the next round of funding.
I think it's a bit of a both. Uber was mostly silent while the police put out a very Uber friendly (or homeless pedestrian hostile) statement about the crash which became the only narrative.
I can accept Uber got a bit unlucky with how the PR played out. You don't want to say a lot during the investigation, and if the cops are being nice it doesn't really occur that you need to speak up to lower expectations.
Plus, for whatever reason the video is so crappy, it makes it look like Uber is trying to pull a fast one.
The thing is:
"While the pedestrian was legally at fault".
In some counties (NSW Australia e.g.) the driver would be totally at fault in this particular case. Pedestrians have right of way - period. The only case where it's not a cause for very still penalties is that the person walks out from the kerb in front of the vehicle. Even if the pedestrian is not supposed to be there.
This is something I'm not completely clear on.
It's one thing to say the vehicle has right of way. But realistically, if someone is in the middle of the road with high visibility and I just plough through them without even slowing down then I'm pretty sure I'm getting charged.
If not I feel like we would have heard of a few more cases of sociopaths trolling the streets after the bars close so they can mow down pedestrians.
is how good the damage control from Uber was. They got videos out fast with pitch black cameras that made it look like she came out of nowhere. Several days later videos popped up from locals showing the stretch of road was actually well lit. Even now I'm having a trough time finding those videos. There are stories now saying Uber's cars are behind Waymo, but I'm only just now seeing stories that say Uber should have avoided the crash. The first several /. posts about this story were riddled with comments from folks saying the crash was unavoidable and the pedestrian was completely at fault.
I'm not sure it was that good. The point of damage control is to find the least damning narrative and make that the one that sticks. Here Uber's first narrative was:
"Not our fault! The pedestrian came from the next lane and appeared out of nowhere! Totally unavoidable!!"
The moment they put out the crappy video a bunch of us could tell Uber was lying. Now their corporate credibility has taken another hit and they don't control the narrative anymore.
Now imagine Uber's narrative was more like:
"While the pedestrian was legally at fault our vehicle should have avoided the accident, and barring that, the safety driver should have been more attentive and avoided the situation. We are suspending all tests until we have determined the nature of the failure and taken steps to make sure it won't be repeated."
The beauty of that narrative is it's consistent with an accident that's almost impossible to avoid, it just sounds like Uber is being really accepting of blame. And then when it comes out they really should have avoided the accident... well the statement is still true, so it doesn't really trigger another news cycle or destroy their credibility.
I think Some of this is the media at large siding with corporations to our detriment. The big outlets (CNN, Fox, MSNBC) have long since stopped covering the story on their front page websites, even as a single link. There's a little bit of left wing press, but I heard about those videos showing how well lit the road was from a post on Ars Technical that was on my feed.
It's more to do with the news cycle, news outlets only do investigative reporting when their viewers really care, otherwise they just do events. Self-driving Uber killing a pedestrian is an event, and they covered with the sources that were available, Uber and the PD, and they both backed Uber's narrative. Now for the investigative portion only the technical press really cares (Ars Technical, Slashdot). But if that investigation turns into another event, ie the Police making another announcement or a lawsuit on behalf of the victim, well that's an event again and Uber's BS gets called out by the mainstream headlines.
Under Trump, our moderate headchopping friends in ISIS just magically got targeting information precise enough to kill Russian generals in Syria with mortar fire.
So you're saying that Trump gave ISIS the location of Russian generals? That's a novel conspiracy theory.
I suppose you actually meant the remnants of the modern rebels, in that case I honestly don't know the legitimacy of your theory though would point out that Trump is still subject to constraints.
Trump has maintained high troop levels in eastern Europe, wants to arm our literal neo-Nazi pals
You either don't understand the word "literal" or you read waaaaay too much Russian propaganda.
Yes, there exist neo-Nazis in Ukraine, but they have less influence on Ukrainian than American neo-Nazis have on the GOP.
that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine, and is sending Navy ships to the Black Sea. That's like Russia sending a fleet to the Gulf of Mexico. Most of the sanctions have been maintained, and the reason for not pushing new ones is that it's going to punish allies who have little choice to trade with Russia.
Sanctions that are complete bullshit to begin with. How is it that the U.S. gets to level sanctions against Russia in response to...the aforementioned American overthrow of Ukraine's government. How is it totally legitimate for the U.S. to spend $5 billion to "bring Ukraine the future it deserves" and then say the Crimean vote to secede was illegitimate - before whining about $5,000 in Facebook ads swinging an American election.
This is hilarious. Russia literally invades and annexes part of another country and a fig leaf of a referendum is all you need to give them the thumbs up.
I actually thought you might be on to something for a moment.
Then I found out that Flynn talked to Russia about the UN vote on Dec 22, the vote was on the 23rd, and Russian ignored Flynn and voted for the resolution.
The call about dropping the sanctions was on Dec 29th.
But I wouldn't get too worked up about it, causality really is a PITA sometimes.
Also fixed. And still, how can Democrats talk about collusion with a straight face when it's a fact (as opposed to an unproven conspiracy theory) that Hillary not only worked with foreign agents to swing an election, but paid them to do so.
Because hiring an investigator who happens to be a retired intelligence operative for an ally is very different from getting an unfriendly nation to do your dirty work.
It's like you didn't even read my response, or more likely, you're applying the same reasoning skills you used to conclude the Crimean "referendum" was legit.
Russiagate plothole #2,567: why would Russia try to swing the election to either the Democrats or the Republicans when both parties have been virulently anti-Russian for over a century.
Are you playing dumb or have you just not been paying attention?
One of the most notable aspects of Trump is how pro-Russian he's been, and how much he wants to drop the various sanctions against Russia. Heck, Flynn was fired because he got caught secretly phoning the Russian ambassador to say that Trump would drop the election sanctions, and after a massive bi-partisan bill instructing Trump to implement more sanctions (and not drop the existing one) Trump basically ignored it.
Russiagate plothole #3,789: why is it that Putin was so diabolically clever that he knew years in advance that a bankrupt professional wresting character could be president, yet at the same time be so stupid as to not predict any blowback.
The Steele dossier being largely correct is not a pre-requesite for Trump colluding with Russia. But if Trump was being groomed beforehand it doesn't mean they wanted him to be President, Russia grooms lots of people. Most likely Trump was being used by Putin cronies so they could launder their money through Trump properties and businesses. If Putin or the intelligence agencies took a personal interest it was because he was prominent enough to destabilize things by doing things like going on Fox News and becoming a Birther.
Too bad the focus is on the Russian boogyman instead of voter disenfranchisement, easily hackable electronic voting machines, bogus voter ID laws, the corporate media giving Donald $6 billion in free coverage, gerrymandering, the Electoral College...shit that actually impacts actual elections.
Those are worries. But I'm not talking about Russia in this context, I'm talking about Trump. One of the main ideas of Democracy is the job is bigger than the person, the President's first duty is to the country, the Attorney General to the law, director of the EPA to the environment, etc, etc. No administration gets this perfectly, but Trump doesn't even seem to understand this basic concept. He sees his job as doing good for Trump, whether that's boosting his poll numbers, helping out his family, helping his own businesses, or giving himself a tax cut. And he sees the first duty of any appointee as serving his interests rather than the country.
That's when a country is in danger of sliding towards authoritarianism, when the government starts putting the party or the individual before the country.
This (slashdot) is social media.
Just read at -1, you'll get enough anti-social media for it to all balance out!
Assuming we are discussing the same DNC hacking instance.... The evidence shows that this was an inside job. At least the file copies where done locally based on the files creation times because the time offsets between the files wouldn't allow them to be transferred over standard speed internet links.
Source? I feel like you're climbing out on a very narrow technical limb, I can think of a lot of ways for creation times to end up close together. Hell, if I was the GRU hacker I'd keep my hacking machine on a different network than my other machines. And how would I then move the emails from one box to another? I'd copy them to a USB.
It's hard to know for sure though until we find out how the intruder was getting in and data out. But... We won't really ever find out for sure.
We never know anything for sure, but the evidence seems to be pretty overwhelming unless you're really desperate to believe something else.
So.. I'm wondering.. Why do we care about the DNC getting hacked at this point? What difference at this point does it make?
Because our worry isn't that Trump gets caught for conspiring with a foreign power to win an election, our worry is he gets away with it and then he pulls the same thing again in 2020.
The US's status as a democracy is in way more danger than you realize.
Based on the video I saw, she was practically invisible until she entered the car's headlight beams. The road was poorly lit, and she had dark clothing, no reflectors on the bike and no lights.
I don't see how I could have stopped or swerved in time to avoid her in that brief window.
Believe me, I don't care for self-driving cars at all, but I have to remain unbiased here because I know I would have hit her in the same situation.
Be safe out there, people. Put lights on your bike or yourself when you're out there on the road at night.
Then you should drive slower because I would have avoided her.
When I drive at night I drive at an appropriate speed so I can stop in time if my headlights detect something on the road ahead of me. And if my headlights and eyes were as terrible as the crappy video we've been shown I would have been driving very slowly indeed.
Agreed! We are in a trade war, however everyone wants the US to lay down and accept their raping of us. Trump realised the Trade war has started and is not going to lose without a fight (in fact obviously the US can and will win, if we fight.)
Obama was fighting for the other side, meaning he is a globalist and not a nationalist. Trump understands that it is no use being a globalist as you will just be abused by nationalists, until you are 3rd world country with no influence.
People even on here seemed to have embraced the hate Trump crap so much that they cannot see straight. Comments about Trump dying in jail or being executed with his family, and then they call Trump a fascist. There was a song by Michael Jackson "I'm starting with the man in the mirror." might be good for some of the teenagers posting this stuff to listen to and contemplate.
You really think Trump has the expertise to win a trade war? Trade deals are decided on the fine print and you've got a guy who can't even read the all-caps. He still thinks the US has a trade deficit with Canada!
He's just obsessed with trade deficits because it's an easy to understand number, but trade deficits aren't necessarily a bad thing, it just means you're selling them more than you're selling them. But if you can actually use the things you're buying then it's actually a good thing.
Of course if you don't believe me try reading his idiot of an advisor without laughing.
True she comes out of nowhere on the video, but that's a really crappy video. She was walking slowing and already in the car's lane when the headlights hit her, even if she had been stationary the result would have been the same.
Of course a human driver could have hit her as well, but I suspect that most often a human driver would have seen her far enough ahead to stop or at least swerve enough to avoid her (of course most Ubers might have as well).
I'm curious if that's the only video available since decent cameras are not that expensive, and I'd expect the car to have several cameras at different contrast levels.
Why is it a scandal when a company is working for a conservative/GOP candidate but not even a story when it isn't. This type of data collection has been going on for years.
For the same reason that anytime the word "email" came up in conjunction with Clinton it became a major news story but historically stories related to record retention or classified information barely made a blip.
It feeds into the narrative. Right now voter manipulation by Russia, particularly over the Internet, is a big story. And Cambridge Analytica is actually under suspicion as a possible link between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives.
Any story involving voter manipulation, the Internet, and Cambrige Analytica is going to be big news.
If you don't appear . . . and don't answer questions . . . you don't commit perjury.
Hey, even a US government IRS employee refused to testify in front of Congress. Of course, Zuck just sent his lawyer.
He's not going to say anything in public or on the record until his legal team has sorted their strategy out.
There's also a big PR aspect.
Zuckerberg, as the founder and CEO, is a very big part of Facebook's brand. And keeping him as a likeable trustworthy figure means that people are more likely to trust the company as a whole.
Zuckerberg on camera talking about FB related scandals leaves an impression that Zuckerberg personally knew and approved of the scandal causing behaviour, and that leaves a much bigger mark on FB's reputation.
It's much better to have some non-identifiable lawyer or PR person speak on behalf of FB, then it seems like this was just some rogue group or misguided executive. Zuckerberg might have to step in eventually, but they're probably better off protecting his reputation.
or does there seem to be a concerted effort to stop crypto currencies before they become more of a thing
Probably.
But I think an intelligence agency has other legitimate motives for trying to track down users of a pseudo-anonymous money transfer system.
I think this is a variation of Dunning-Kruger. Lower-paid workers cannot understand what value the higher paid workers actually provide. Sometimes the higher pay is valid, sometimes not. But unless you are already an expert, you won't know. So while you help with race/gender pay inequality, you're also making a hostile work environment for managers and subordinates.
I don't think you need even Dunning-Kruger.
Everyone overestimates their abilities. Yes there benefits to the information being public, but on average people are going to feel underpaid and a little less satisfied.
“This was unequivocally not a data breach,” tweeted Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook executive. “No systems were infiltrated, no passwords or information were stolen or hacked.”
So, what really happened is that a bunch of people installed a bunch of Facebook apps, and the users authorized their personal data to be used by the app. What happened after that was standard Facebook Business Model stuff, they sell your eyeballs to advertisers and take a 30% share of sales. It's how all social media stays in business, by passively collecting data about you, where you eat, your income levels, what you buy, etc. All in the name of "targeted advertising", which we as users frankly embrace. We love seeing ads for things that may interest us, companies like the opportunity of us buying stuff, FB loves collecting data and giving it to the govern.... I mean collecting data.
The difference here is that even with that authorization there were things that Kogan (who collected that data) and CA were not allowed to do with that data. And even after Kogan and CA claimed to have destroyed the data they were still misusing that data.
I agree it's a very difficult policy to enforce, and if you're in the habit of clicking agree some of those 3rd parties are probably violating it, but it doesn't change the fact that Kogan and CA are one of those scummy 3rd parties misusing your data.