Just because Bill Gates repeats what's been said for years, it's more relevant?
Trying to finger crypto-currency as "more evil than cash" because it's "easier to use" seems to be cherry-picking scenarios.
How many times is cash used for illicit transactions because it's so straightforward? You can't do a thing with a crypto-currency unless you're tech savvy enough to set up some kind of wallet to receive the funds, and then you have to deal with a buyer who is equally savvy to pay you with them. And right now, you have long waits for most transactions to complete if you're using a well established e-currency like bitcoin. So that's another obstacle in some situations.
I mean, technically, he's not wrong. I'm sure people have died because of drugs that were bought and sold using cryptocoins. I just don't think the tech itself is ever anything but neutral. Again, the problem lies in the motivations of the sellers and buyers - not the payment method.
Cash requires a physical transfer to exchange the asset, that makes it really tough to use for criminal online transactions.
Cryptocurrency is different, if offers the ability to transfer of value to another party with complete anonymity (if you conceal your wallet ownership) and trust (ie, I don't have to worry that the bitcoin you sent me will be reversed by the credit card company).
That makes it uniquely suitable for crime, drug transactions, hits, extortion, money laundering, etc.
We did just have the Texas guy grab a fellow stranger in a truck and chase down the church shooter. I love how these things are impossible to happen and all the true examples need to be eliminated to justify that we must rely on the police to take their 15-20 minutes to establish a perimeter of hundreds of officers while waiting for the shooter to off themselves and then come in and count the bodies. That just does not sound like a good plan. Where are the examples of police getting there quickly and storming the school and saving kids. It just does not happen. The police use the tactic of letting them shoot their ammo out and then pick up the corpse when the finally commit suicide.
If I recall that also happened after the shooter was done shooting, in fact I almost mentioned it in my previous post as yet another example of how even in the best scenarios the good guys with guns only become a factor once the killing is already done.
The fact that police can't respond effectively to an active shooter doesn't mean we need more useless civilians packing, it means we need to reduce the number of active shooters.
People working for "US Intelligence" shouldn't be leaking such things.
If the information is correct they are leaking their detection capabilities. If the information is incorrect they are revealing their weaknesses.
I hope they find the leakers and lock them up.
Not every leak is done against the wishes of the organization in question.
An official accusation puts a lot of other groups in an awkward position. How is the IOC supposed to respond to the accusation? South Korea? When Russia denies that they're responsible does the US produce evidence or just ignore the denial? One way they expose capabilities, the other way they lose face. And once you have official accusations flying back and forth you now have yet another conflict that can escalate.
A leak by a senior official still exposes and embarrasses Russia, but it also causes way less trouble than an official statement.
They have nothing to gain from it, and throwing a wrench of this kind is not something they are interested in.
I can think of several motives: 1) The IOC banned Russia from competing as a nation (and banned a bunch of Russian athletes) and Russians are pissed. Don't discount simple animosity. 2) Making the IOC seem inept hurts their credibility, and the less credibility they have the harder it is for them to justify the continued ban. 3) Riling the NK crisis back up means that US political focus moves there and away from Russia. The less focus on Russia the easier it is for Trump to avoid/weaken sanctions and harder it is for the GOP to scuttle the investigation.
America however is frequently throwing wrenches, literally invented the false-flag concept and modus operandi, and have been proven time and again to work like this.
Most likely nothing like this happened, and America is lying as usual, but if a false-flag like this was conducted, it was most likely done my America as well.
If it comes out of the mouth of American agencies, and is targeted against the Middle East and Asia, then it is by default a lie.
Russia has spent the last few years performing false-flag cyber-attacks, it's their M.O. at this point. While US intelligence has pulled fast ones in the past they seem to have been playing it straight when it comes to exposing Russia. The claims they've made based on secret evidence have so far turned out to be legit.
and do more actual policy. The right wing corporate Dems seem to be trying to use this to try and win voters back without actually implementing populist policy (Medicare for All, universal college, a New New Deal, $15 min wage, ending the 8 wars, etc, etc). It's not going to work. Maybe if they were as good a fearmongering as the Republicans are, but they're not. Instead we're gonna get another 4 years of Trump + Republican Congress. Probably another big market crash out of all the deregulation that's going on right now.
The problem is ignoring the Russia stuff meant that Russia was able to wage a largely unopposed disinformation and propaganda campaign during the US election. And they potentially even colluded with and compromised members of the current administration.
The Dems need to expose and confront the Russian activities, especially since the GOP is more likely to cover it up than risk losing an election.
Trump won for two reasons. First, Hilary took victory for granted and didn't campaign in the swing states (she always was an arrogant bitch).
No argument that Clinton was a terrible campaigner but the two major email hacks (not to mention all the astroturfing) almost certainly had a large effect relative to the margin of victory.
But moreoever Trump ran as a left wing populist. He promised Health Care for all, Jobs for all, good pay for all. He promised the government wouldn't just stand idle while the working class got slapped around by the Invisible Hand. Sure, he lied through his teeth.
And if it weren't for the massive Russian smear campaign voters might have cared about the fact he was obviously lying.
If they acknowledge that the school guard's reaction was anything besides extraordinary (and extraordinarily unusual) cowardice then it exposes the ridiculousness or arming teachers.
The one thing has nothing to do with the other,
They are related because in both cases you're expecting ordinary people to transform into action heroes.
Nonsense. Look up any of the plethora of news stories about ordinary citizens carrying concealed weapons who successfully defended themselves or others.
A different debate, and defending yourself from a mugger is different from defending a classroom during a killing spree.
There have even been some cases where this happened at schools (Pearl High School, Appalachian School of Law, etc.).
The school's assistant principal, Joel Myrick, retrieved a.45 caliber semi-automatic pistol from his truck and, spotting Woodham attempting to flee the parking lot after the shooting
So this isn't stopping a killer during a spree, it's detaining the killer after he's done killing and is leaving the scene.
As for the Appalachian School of Law again the shooter was detained after he was done killing people and was leaving the scene. And the only report that claims the armed bystanders were responsible for the capture came from one of those armed bystanders. Everyone else claims the killer willingly surrendered to unarmed bystanders (who also subdued him).
And his gun was empty.
It's not bad luck that you couldn't find any good examples, mass shootings are extremely confusing and fast moving. And if you ever do manage to get out your gun and come face-to-face with an active shooter you're now facing someone who is willing to kill you in an instant. Unless you're showing the same disregard for life in that instant you're probably getting shot, and if you do have enough of a hair trigger to outshoot a guy on a killing spree then you better hope you didn't just shoot another hero.
Also, there's a deterrent effect to consider. Mass murderers don't choose their venues at random, and part of the thing that makes schools so attractive is that there is generally no one present capable of fighting back.
No, they choose a school because they have a personal connection to that school.
Note that that is not the case in Utah, where I live, and where teachers have had the legal right to carry on the job for nearly 20 years. Since that law was passed there has been no case of a school shooter in the state (there have been a couple of kids who were caught with guns at school, and one who accidentally shot and injured another), and it's possible that the fact that there are concealed guns in every school may have contributed to that.
Utah has only 3 million people and Mormon's tend to be well adjusted. The lack of a school shooting isn't deterrence it's statistics.
Everyone knows that the schools are not soft targets. There's no way to know for sure, of course. What we can say with certainty is that the horror stories about kids "finding" their teachers' guns has not happened at all.
I'm sorry.... but this is BS. Deterrence doesn't work because people generally know that teachers are allowed to have guns, for deterrence you actually need to regularly wave guns in the kids faces... which is not going to happen.
If a kid is in a screwed up enough state that they're going to shoo
If they acknowledge that the school guard's reaction was anything besides extraordinary (and extraordinarily unusual) cowardice then it exposes the ridiculousness or arming teachers.
The one thing has nothing to do with the other,
They are related because in both cases you're expecting ordinary people to transform into action heroes.
unless you believe that the argument for arming teachers is that you expect them to transform into an impromptu SWAT team. That would be ridiculous.
The multiple armed officers who were on-site during the shooting didn't enter the building while the shooter was active. So yes the idea of the "good guy with a gun" helping in these situations is ridiculous.
If, on the other hand, you expect them to hunker down with their students, but now with the ability to respond effectively if the shooter comes to them, then it makes a lot more sense.
Lets think about that for more than a sentence. Respond how?
The people are hunkered in the class, thinking it's probably not a drill, and the shooter is probably killing people, and that person coming in the door is probably the shooter... But they haven't watched tomorrow's news yet, they don't actually know exactly what is happening, and even if they do they haven't had an hour to hype themselves up to be ready to kill someone.
Now put a gun in the hand of a teacher, who does not have a lot of firearm training, who has absolutely no interest in killing people, who might be looking at a former student, that teacher is absolutely not going to fire the first shot with the intent to kill.
If they're really brave they'll point the gun at the shooter and yell at them, if they're really awesome badass teacher they'll fire some warning shots into the wall. But that fight will be won by the person who is willing to kill, that that will be the school shooter.
Getting people to kill is a lot harder than you think it is, we are deeply conditioned by society to not be killers and turning people into killers is something even militaries struggle with that. Imagining the teacher is suddenly going to double tap someone is a fantasy.
Oh, and lets not forget this fantasy only works if the killer goes into the classroom of a teacher whose packing, as opposed to another class, or a hallway, or the cafeteria, or the gym, etc, etc. Anywhere else you now need your armed teacher to out-swat those armed cops who did squat.
Of course the killer can't start with that classroom otherwise that armed teacher won't actually have any warning (certainly no time to get out their gun and load it). This naturally means you'll have lost a few kids before your teacher can play the hero.
And if your armed teacher is only protecting their individual physical classroom you might do better with just having a locked door... but I guess that makes a less exciting movie.
They condemn the school guard who waited 4 minutes (sic) with his pistol outside.
Same thing for arming teachers, what are they going to do?
They will sit in a wardrobe with their.38 in hand shitting their pants and then accidentally kill the student who wants to seek refuge in the same wardrobe.
As you probably realized you answered your own question.
If they acknowledge that the school guard's reaction was anything besides extraordinary (and extraordinarily unusual) cowardice then it exposes the ridiculousness or arming teachers.
He probably just had a meeting with Pence or some other social conservative who wants government censorship of immoral content in games.
Sooner or later he'll get another meeting with an alt-righter concerned that the alt-right will be vulnerable to censorship and the idea will be forgotten.
The only policies that Trump follows through on are things that enrich him personally (pass through tax rate) and anti-immigrant measures. Everywhere else he does what the party wants, the best model is an establishment conservative without accountability.
It is interesting watching them put out a cryptocurrency, which is in the planning stages later in two months. Like Germany's currency reform, it has possibilities in becoming the replacement of the petrodollar, because it is essentially hackproof and immune to things like QA.
My understanding is that the petrodollar is the practise of pricing Oil in USD in order to keep it the price stable (and simplify the actual calculation of the exchange rate).
As a national currency it's problematic since even a huge oil exporter doesn't have an economy that scales directly with the price of oil, not that they're much better managing a real currency.
And do you really trust the Venezuelan government to honour the promise of 1 Petro for 1 barrel? The true exchange rate is likely to be lower, which leads to a fun scam of buying some cheap Petros and exchanging them for more expensive barrels of Oil until the government bails on the promise.
Though I suspect lack of trust in this promise means no one will buy Petros to being with (unless they think Oil will go up before Venezuela bails).
Venezuela is bashed by right for "socialism", but they have done some things well.
Venezuela's problem isn't "socialism", it's utterly corrupt and incompetent governance, socialism is just the form in which the politicians choose to express themselves.
They enacted a complete gun ban on civilian ownership, and gun violence went down by a factor of 1000. In fact, their country isn't even on the map anymore when it comes to firearms deaths in South America because of this. Maybe the US could use a death toll count reduction...?
I'd trust Venezuelan government statistics about as far as I can throw them. And since statistics are not a tangible object throwing them is an ill-defined concept.
I don't think SDE availability is a big issue, Linux usually has gcc installed by default, XCode is fairly easy to install on Macs, and I'm sure Windows has lots of easily installed stuff.
I think the issue is GUIs, but not for the reason he thinks. To the current kid a program isn't a real program without a GUI, and GUIs tend to be a lot tougher and more annoying to write. It just makes the gap between what a new programmer can accomplish and "real programs" that much bigger.
I suspect the best approach for a new programmer is scripting. Just yesterday a friend expressed a desire for some bizarre set of image transformations and within an hour I learned enough ImageMagick to fire off a python script. This is partly a consequence of being a command line user, but you can automate a lot of tasks with scripts and are you are honing your programming skills at the same time. OpenSCAD is a good way to pseudo-program if you have a 3d printer. I suspect there are a bunch of games with scripting interfaces as well.
Though for the windows user for whom the Command Line is still a foreign land I think phone apps are the easiest gateway. There's a lot of tutorials where you can get a "real program" with a graphical interface with very little effort. The main downside is that kind of coding tends to be a lot of interfaces and API calls which aren't as much fun.
Should the Mayans and Aztecs have feared the Spanish conquistadors, or welcomed them? Should the Aborigines have welcomed the colonizers from England, or feared them? Should the American Indians have feared the colonizers from Europe, or welcomed them? Should the North American beavers have welcomed the colonizers from Europe, or feared them?
When people fantasize about intelligent alien visitors, they usually place their intelligence level and physical characteristics close to our own. I am certain that would not be the case. Most likely they would mash us like potatoes. On the off chance they come in peace, the level of disruption they would cause to our worldwide community and economy would be immense.
European colonization was undertaken by a culture primitive by our standards, not to mention the standards of technologically advanced aliens.
Using European colonization as a template for alien contact will serve us about as well as using local conflicts as a template for European colonization served aboriginal populations.
Aliens are unlikely to mash us like potatoes if for no other reason than they don't need to, they'll come at us with an extremely complex civilizations and deal with us without the bounds of the rules of that civilization.
I think an "extinguish all other intelligent life" rule is unlikely if for no other reason than they really don't want that rule to be in effect if they encounter a superior civilization. More likely we'll be pulled into some kind of interstellar bureaucracy, the objectives of which change on whether one species or multiple species is actually in change.
...both through homicide and suicide and we want to do something about this.
Take suicides out of the numbers...if someone wants to 'off' themselves, they'll find a way.
Have you ever seen someone stumble, stay upright, and then heard them say "oops, I attempted to fall down but failed"?
If you're 100% committed suicide is incredibly easy to do, but unsuccessful suicide attempts are a thing because even people who really want to die find it really hard to take the act of killing themselves.
Guns make suicide terrifyingly easy, and that's the reason that every study that seriously looks at the question finds guns make suicide way more likely.
Here's the problem: "Mass shootings" account for only about 0.1% of gun deaths, and are NOTHING like the normal quotidian killings that account for the other 99.9%:
I mostly agree, just trying to prevent mass shootings is kind of missing the point. But I think mass shootings do spark a legitimate conversation because they're a sign that something is very wrong, I think the gun culture also contributes to both.
Another problem with discussing gun control in the aftermath of a mass shooting, is that gun control advocates tend to let their emotions get away from them, and say a lot of silly things that are factually incorrect about "machine guns" and "automatic rifles" (both of which are illegal in America). This just exacerbates the feeling among gun owners that they belong to a different culture, and that there is no room for compromise or moderation.
I'm guilty of this but it's not emotion that causes the technical errors, it's just inexperience. I'm not a fan of guns, that I'm less knowledgeable about guns is pretty much a given.
Someone who favours gun rights should always know more about guns than someone who favours gun control, it doesn't mean you're right, it just means you like guns.
When we talk about factually incorrect things what we're trying to express is something more basic.
The US has a ridiculous amount of guns, and it's glaringly obvious that a lot of people are dying because of these guns, both through homicide and suicide and we want to do something about this.
We'd love to drastically reduce the number of guns and gun owners but we understand that you'd never go along with that. So we're hoping that there's some kind of compromise that can be found. Something so you can still hunt, so you still feel like you can defend yourself, but we can get rid of some of the excess deaths. Somehow make them less useful for mass shootings, less lethal during drive-bys, harder to get into the hangs of gangs, something to cut down on the suicides.
Yes we're going to come up with dumb suggestions, we don't know guns, but surely there's some way to alleviate the damage.
Ahh. A sophist. "Militia" doesn't mean what you think it means, and a prefatory clause isn't binding.
As a self professed liberal, do you also support other laws which would restrict civil liberties? How about the 1st A? It starts with "Congress shall make no law...". So, that means that the States (which definitely aren't "Congress") can make laws establishing religion, restricting speech and press, etc. Right?
Living in a system with the fundamental principles of freedom and liberty means you accept more risk. Fortunately for you, you can move to almost anywhere else and trade that freedom and liberty for less risk and more security. Your choice.
Except you're not actually accepting of more risk in exchange for more freedom, at least not if you're like most people who oppose gun control.
People generally try to maintain a certain level of risk. If your car gets a seat belt you speed up, if you hit wet pavement you slow down. Guns and gun control are no different.
Ever notice the other things people who favour gun rights tend to believe? They think law enforcement should have a much freer hand to enforce order. They want to get rid of Mexicans, Muslims, and other outsiders who seem dangerous. They try to repress LGBTQ and people who live alternative lifestyles. This isn't a coincidence, they correctly realize that guns are dangerous, so at the same time they're trying to make guns more available they're trying to reduce the number of people whom they find threatening (particularly if they have a gun).
It's the same thing that's happening now, neither side wants school shootings. So one side wants gun control to reduce the number of shootings, the other wants guns in the classroom so the teachers can enforce greater order and they want those weird loner kids made normal so they're less likely to become a shooter.
Gun rights people don't have a greater belief in freedom, they're just willing to live with a higher perceived risk from firearms by accepting a lower perceived risk from other sources.
I don't want any gun control legislation. I don't care what tragedy occurred. It's unconstitutional. All of it. If you want to restrict guns do it legally - amend the constitution first, then create laws that don't violate the constitution.
As it is, every single law, regulation, etc. that interferes with US citizens keeping and bearing firearms is unconstitutional. If you disagree you're incorrect. If you don't like that right guaranteed by the constitution, you're free to work to change the constitution. Any restriction at any other level is illegal.
Fine, you have the right to bare arms (lets forget about the militia qualifier since the courts have).
It doesn't follow that you the right to bare any arm you wish. You don't have the right to own assault weapons, semi-automatic weapons, bump stocks, high capacity magazines, etc, etc.
A low capacity, low power, handgun is perfectly sufficient for self-defence. A single shot rifle is perfectly adequate for hunting. Fancier guns locked up at a shooting range are good for recreational shooting. Mandatory background checks for any purchase cut down on some of the illegal weapons. Maybe even mandatory training would pass muster.
You'd still have the right to bear arms, but you'd cut out a lot of the mass shootings, and maybe you put a dent in the gun culture that kills so many people.
Saying KDE Plasma is the most popular app is like saying that Explorer is the most popular app on Windows. While technically true, it's also the default, and you can't really use the OS without it. Could you use other window managers? Sure, but I'm not sure a window manager counts as an app.
It actually is a bit of a surprise, the major distros tend to offer Gnome as the default.
Because arable regions may shift faster than the plants can evolve to grow in them.
Right... that's why there aren't any European plants growing in the Americas. Because we can't just go ahead and plant them; no, they have to evolve first.
Just because some plants do well in a non-native habitat it doesn't not follow that most plants (particularly crops) can effectively adapt to a very different climate, or equivalent farmland can be found in another region.
Because mass migration will cause significant upheaval and displacement of human society....and so on... and finally:
Because when the human race is confronted with a lack of something, it goes to war over it.
So... basically a repeat of 2017?
Quelle horreur.
Americans experienced a mild increase in Muslim migration and a drug epidemic and elected a demagogue Trump, one of the major riots leading up to the French Revolution was caused by a flour shortage, German's experienced massive reparations after WWI and elected Hitler, Russians got hammered in WWI and had the October Revolution, etc, etc.
In fact, high food prices were one of the causes of the Arab Spring, and the Arab Spring combined with the Iraq War caused the migrant crisis in Europe which is another factor that elected Trump and scared Britain out of the EU. And the Arab Spring looks a lot like the mass migrations you'll see when Climate Change starts to kick in (and the equivalent South American migration into the US).
It's not a complex formula. When populations are stressed they lash out, they either riot and or elect leaders who raise a ruckus on their behalf. And climate change causes a lot of stress.
Donald Trump claims global warming is a myth... and yet he's building sea walls for his golf resort in Ireland to protect it against the sea level rising!
He agrees that the climate is changing, but believes that it's not due to man-made changes in the environment.
Trump never said climate is changing, Kellyanne Conway claimed he believed that, which is completely in line with their standard practice of spinning Trump's outrageous statements into orthodox GOP doctrine.
Conway tells us nothing about what Trump believes, Trump is absolutely notorious for contradicting his administration's official positions, his spokespeople, and even himself.
Trump only ever has two kinds of comments about climate change, either some variation of "it's a hoax" or "it's cold, therefore no global warming!". The position you give Trump is something far more nuanced than he's ever expressed himself.
For progressively darker skin, progressively higher light on that skin is required to reveal its contours. The fundamental problem is that white and light-skinned brown people have their normal skin color shades in the midtones when a scene is properly exposed while darker-skinned brown and black people are closer to shadows. To expose properly for facial recognition of dark brown or black skin, you have to overexpose the midtones to bring up the shadows. Since people rarely take photos on purpose that are exposed for the shadows while blowing everything else out, it should be fairly obvious that facial recognition (and early ISO 32 color film and small-sensor cameras like webcams and phone cameras) will have a very hard time with dark skin. Sure, it could be a lack of data in some instances, but it's far more likely to be the fact that the skin absorbs more light and photographs are generally exposed too low to reveal enough detail for the machines to analyze.
If you think this is "racist" you're saying that the nature of light itself is racist. I don't feel like I should have to explain why that position is really stupid.
No one is saying it's "racist" in the form of deliberate racial bias, they're saying it doesn't work for dark skinned people because of how the technology was developed.
Now you're claiming that it's a fundamental property of physics, that it's fundamentally difficult to highlight black people's features without overexposing the rest of the picture. That might be true, but I don't think the question is as easy to answer as you imply.
Imagine photography and film were developed primarily by black people and white people were an underclass that no one really cared about. At every stage of the technological development those black people would be asking the same question, "how do we get our features to show up really clearly?"
If it's just a fundamental property of the physics as you suggest then maybe they would have done a lot more nighttime films so they could shoot in low light, and the engineers would then talk about how surprisingly easy it was to get clear images of white faces.
However, the development of film and photography involves well over a century of decision points. I suspect if they spent much of that time optimizing how to show dark-skinned faces they might have come up with some very different technology and this would not be the problem we're dealing with.
Shouldn't there be numerous success stories, even anecdotal, if it's really all that favorable?
For the successes it's going to mostly show up because you have a wider range of technical aptitudes, perspectives, and problem solving techniques.
But even if you have an example of a gay black woman coming up with a really original idea you can't really attribute the idea to the race or sexuality. It's just something that particular person did. So I'm not even sure what a success story would actually look like other than cultural industries like Hollywood where the personal background is the part of the person's professional expertise.
But I do know what failures from a lack of diversity look like, because there's a lot of them. You aren't able to properly supply your customers if you don't understand your customers, and if you don't match the gender and backgrounds of your customers you can end up with some glaring blind spots. The medical field has had the same issue with more dire consequences, and psychology suffers from the relative homogeneity of lab ra^H^H^H^H undergrads.
You also get problems with office culture, the more homogeneous you are the less pushback you get when you say something sexist or racist and you can end up developing a real dysfunctional internal culture. I can think of instances where particular lines of male thinking were starting to go off the rails and female co-workers were able to push back and prevent a screwup.
The Uber office is one great example of this. It was disproportionately male and was infamous for generating scandal after scandal as a result of their corporate culture. I suspect they would have avoided some needless scandals if they were a bit more diverse.
NSA and CIA agents traveling to Germany in an effort to recover cyberweapons that had been stolen from U.S. intelligence agencies. A Russian spy allegedly offered up the stolen cyber tools to the Americans in exchange for $10 million, eventually lowering his price to just $1 million. The Russian spy allegedly claimed to even have dirt on President Trump.
Why would you pay anything for a copy of "stolen cyber tools"?!?!?! The Russians aren't about to give the CIA their last copy no matter how they're paid, and the NSA and the CIA already have them and don't need another copy.
Even if you think the NSA should offer patches for every bug they found the NSA doesn't agree.
If the NSA knows exactly what was stolen that does 3 things for them. 1) They know which tools are now useless (or if they work you might have hacked a honeypot). 2) The more you know about what was stolen the easier to figure out who stole it and how they did it. 3) You know which vulnerabilities you need to patch.
This was the CIA trying to get dirt on Trump - no more, no less.
According to the article the CIA was against the investigation because the head of the CIA is a Trump loyalist who didn't want dirt on the President. I wouldn't be surprised if the CIA was the source of the leak for this story.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because Bill Gates repeats what's been said for years, it's more relevant?
Trying to finger crypto-currency as "more evil than cash" because it's "easier to use" seems to be cherry-picking scenarios.
How many times is cash used for illicit transactions because it's so straightforward? You can't do a thing with a crypto-currency unless you're tech savvy enough to set up some kind of wallet to receive the funds, and then you have to deal with a buyer who is equally savvy to pay you with them. And right now, you have long waits for most transactions to complete if you're using a well established e-currency like bitcoin. So that's another obstacle in some situations.
I mean, technically, he's not wrong. I'm sure people have died because of drugs that were bought and sold using cryptocoins. I just don't think the tech itself is ever anything but neutral. Again, the problem lies in the motivations of the sellers and buyers - not the payment method.
Cash requires a physical transfer to exchange the asset, that makes it really tough to use for criminal online transactions.
Cryptocurrency is different, if offers the ability to transfer of value to another party with complete anonymity (if you conceal your wallet ownership) and trust (ie, I don't have to worry that the bitcoin you sent me will be reversed by the credit card company).
That makes it uniquely suitable for crime, drug transactions, hits, extortion, money laundering, etc.
We did just have the Texas guy grab a fellow stranger in a truck and chase down the church shooter. I love how these things are impossible to happen and all the true examples need to be eliminated to justify that we must rely on the police to take their 15-20 minutes to establish a perimeter of hundreds of officers while waiting for the shooter to off themselves and then come in and count the bodies. That just does not sound like a good plan. Where are the examples of police getting there quickly and storming the school and saving kids. It just does not happen. The police use the tactic of letting them shoot their ammo out and then pick up the corpse when the finally commit suicide.
If I recall that also happened after the shooter was done shooting, in fact I almost mentioned it in my previous post as yet another example of how even in the best scenarios the good guys with guns only become a factor once the killing is already done.
The fact that police can't respond effectively to an active shooter doesn't mean we need more useless civilians packing, it means we need to reduce the number of active shooters.
Nothing! Is good idea!
- Not a Russian hacker
People working for "US Intelligence" shouldn't be leaking such things.
If the information is correct they are leaking their detection capabilities.
If the information is incorrect they are revealing their weaknesses.
I hope they find the leakers and lock them up.
Not every leak is done against the wishes of the organization in question.
An official accusation puts a lot of other groups in an awkward position. How is the IOC supposed to respond to the accusation? South Korea? When Russia denies that they're responsible does the US produce evidence or just ignore the denial? One way they expose capabilities, the other way they lose face. And once you have official accusations flying back and forth you now have yet another conflict that can escalate.
A leak by a senior official still exposes and embarrasses Russia, but it also causes way less trouble than an official statement.
re " has spent the last few years performing false-flag cyber-attacks"
Russia is to be so skilled at all things cyber, yet get detected for years? Thats not very good cyber.
Re "made based on secret evidence have so far turned out to be legit."
Bear code?
Ip range?
Time of day?
Code litter?
The Dutch watching them live on their own security cameras.
They have nothing to gain from it, and throwing a wrench of this kind is not something they are interested in.
I can think of several motives:
1) The IOC banned Russia from competing as a nation (and banned a bunch of Russian athletes) and Russians are pissed. Don't discount simple animosity.
2) Making the IOC seem inept hurts their credibility, and the less credibility they have the harder it is for them to justify the continued ban.
3) Riling the NK crisis back up means that US political focus moves there and away from Russia. The less focus on Russia the easier it is for Trump to avoid/weaken sanctions and harder it is for the GOP to scuttle the investigation.
America however is frequently throwing wrenches, literally invented the false-flag concept and modus operandi, and have been proven time and again to work like this.
Most likely nothing like this happened, and America is lying as usual, but if a false-flag like this was conducted, it was most likely done my America as well.
If it comes out of the mouth of American agencies, and is targeted against the Middle East and Asia, then it is by default a lie.
Russia has spent the last few years performing false-flag cyber-attacks, it's their M.O. at this point. While US intelligence has pulled fast ones in the past they seem to have been playing it straight when it comes to exposing Russia. The claims they've made based on secret evidence have so far turned out to be legit.
and do more actual policy. The right wing corporate Dems seem to be trying to use this to try and win voters back without actually implementing populist policy (Medicare for All, universal college, a New New Deal, $15 min wage, ending the 8 wars, etc, etc). It's not going to work. Maybe if they were as good a fearmongering as the Republicans are, but they're not. Instead we're gonna get another 4 years of Trump + Republican Congress. Probably another big market crash out of all the deregulation that's going on right now.
The problem is ignoring the Russia stuff meant that Russia was able to wage a largely unopposed disinformation and propaganda campaign during the US election. And they potentially even colluded with and compromised members of the current administration.
The Dems need to expose and confront the Russian activities, especially since the GOP is more likely to cover it up than risk losing an election.
Trump won for two reasons. First, Hilary took victory for granted and didn't campaign in the swing states (she always was an arrogant bitch).
No argument that Clinton was a terrible campaigner but the two major email hacks (not to mention all the astroturfing) almost certainly had a large effect relative to the margin of victory.
But moreoever Trump ran as a left wing populist. He promised Health Care for all, Jobs for all, good pay for all. He promised the government wouldn't just stand idle while the working class got slapped around by the Invisible Hand. Sure, he lied through his teeth.
And if it weren't for the massive Russian smear campaign voters might have cared about the fact he was obviously lying.
We're well aware that the police are spineless cowards like you. Why do you think we want to keep our guns?!
Yes, I'm sure the AC who is scared to post under their own username is braver than a cop.
If they acknowledge that the school guard's reaction was anything besides extraordinary (and extraordinarily unusual) cowardice then it exposes the ridiculousness or arming teachers.
The one thing has nothing to do with the other,
They are related because in both cases you're expecting ordinary people to transform into action heroes.
Nonsense. Look up any of the plethora of news stories about ordinary citizens carrying concealed weapons who successfully defended themselves or others.
A different debate, and defending yourself from a mugger is different from defending a classroom during a killing spree.
There have even been some cases where this happened at schools (Pearl High School, Appalachian School of Law, etc.).
Sure, lets look at these cases:
Perl High School shooting:
The school's assistant principal, Joel Myrick, retrieved a .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol from his truck and, spotting Woodham attempting to flee the parking lot after the shooting
So this isn't stopping a killer during a spree, it's detaining the killer after he's done killing and is leaving the scene.
As for the Appalachian School of Law again the shooter was detained after he was done killing people and was leaving the scene. And the only report that claims the armed bystanders were responsible for the capture came from one of those armed bystanders. Everyone else claims the killer willingly surrendered to unarmed bystanders (who also subdued him).
And his gun was empty.
It's not bad luck that you couldn't find any good examples, mass shootings are extremely confusing and fast moving. And if you ever do manage to get out your gun and come face-to-face with an active shooter you're now facing someone who is willing to kill you in an instant. Unless you're showing the same disregard for life in that instant you're probably getting shot, and if you do have enough of a hair trigger to outshoot a guy on a killing spree then you better hope you didn't just shoot another hero.
Also, there's a deterrent effect to consider. Mass murderers don't choose their venues at random, and part of the thing that makes schools so attractive is that there is generally no one present capable of fighting back.
No, they choose a school because they have a personal connection to that school.
Note that that is not the case in Utah, where I live, and where teachers have had the legal right to carry on the job for nearly 20 years. Since that law was passed there has been no case of a school shooter in the state (there have been a couple of kids who were caught with guns at school, and one who accidentally shot and injured another), and it's possible that the fact that there are concealed guns in every school may have contributed to that.
Utah has only 3 million people and Mormon's tend to be well adjusted. The lack of a school shooting isn't deterrence it's statistics.
If you want an impressive lack of school shootings want to see what reasonable gun regulations can do?
Everyone knows that the schools are not soft targets. There's no way to know for sure, of course. What we can say with certainty is that the horror stories about kids "finding" their teachers' guns has not happened at all.
I'm sorry.... but this is BS. Deterrence doesn't work because people generally know that teachers are allowed to have guns, for deterrence you actually need to regularly wave guns in the kids faces... which is not going to happen.
If a kid is in a screwed up enough state that they're going to shoo
If they acknowledge that the school guard's reaction was anything besides extraordinary (and extraordinarily unusual) cowardice then it exposes the ridiculousness or arming teachers.
The one thing has nothing to do with the other,
They are related because in both cases you're expecting ordinary people to transform into action heroes.
unless you believe that the argument for arming teachers is that you expect them to transform into an impromptu SWAT team. That would be ridiculous.
The multiple armed officers who were on-site during the shooting didn't enter the building while the shooter was active. So yes the idea of the "good guy with a gun" helping in these situations is ridiculous.
If, on the other hand, you expect them to hunker down with their students, but now with the ability to respond effectively if the shooter comes to them, then it makes a lot more sense.
Lets think about that for more than a sentence. Respond how?
The people are hunkered in the class, thinking it's probably not a drill, and the shooter is probably killing people, and that person coming in the door is probably the shooter... But they haven't watched tomorrow's news yet, they don't actually know exactly what is happening, and even if they do they haven't had an hour to hype themselves up to be ready to kill someone.
Now put a gun in the hand of a teacher, who does not have a lot of firearm training, who has absolutely no interest in killing people, who might be looking at a former student, that teacher is absolutely not going to fire the first shot with the intent to kill.
If they're really brave they'll point the gun at the shooter and yell at them, if they're really awesome badass teacher they'll fire some warning shots into the wall. But that fight will be won by the person who is willing to kill, that that will be the school shooter.
Getting people to kill is a lot harder than you think it is, we are deeply conditioned by society to not be killers and turning people into killers is something even militaries struggle with that. Imagining the teacher is suddenly going to double tap someone is a fantasy.
Oh, and lets not forget this fantasy only works if the killer goes into the classroom of a teacher whose packing, as opposed to another class, or a hallway, or the cafeteria, or the gym, etc, etc. Anywhere else you now need your armed teacher to out-swat those armed cops who did squat.
Of course the killer can't start with that classroom otherwise that armed teacher won't actually have any warning (certainly no time to get out their gun and load it). This naturally means you'll have lost a few kids before your teacher can play the hero.
And if your armed teacher is only protecting their individual physical classroom you might do better with just having a locked door... but I guess that makes a less exciting movie.
They condemn the school guard who waited 4 minutes (sic) with his pistol outside.
Same thing for arming teachers, what are they going to do?
They will sit in a wardrobe with their .38 in hand shitting their pants and then accidentally kill the student who wants to seek refuge in the same wardrobe.
As you probably realized you answered your own question.
If they acknowledge that the school guard's reaction was anything besides extraordinary (and extraordinarily unusual) cowardice then it exposes the ridiculousness or arming teachers.
He probably just had a meeting with Pence or some other social conservative who wants government censorship of immoral content in games.
Sooner or later he'll get another meeting with an alt-righter concerned that the alt-right will be vulnerable to censorship and the idea will be forgotten.
The only policies that Trump follows through on are things that enrich him personally (pass through tax rate) and anti-immigrant measures. Everywhere else he does what the party wants, the best model is an establishment conservative without accountability.
It is interesting watching them put out a cryptocurrency, which is in the planning stages later in two months. Like Germany's currency reform, it has possibilities in becoming the replacement of the petrodollar, because it is essentially hackproof and immune to things like QA.
My understanding is that the petrodollar is the practise of pricing Oil in USD in order to keep it the price stable (and simplify the actual calculation of the exchange rate).
As a national currency it's problematic since even a huge oil exporter doesn't have an economy that scales directly with the price of oil, not that they're much better managing a real currency.
And do you really trust the Venezuelan government to honour the promise of 1 Petro for 1 barrel? The true exchange rate is likely to be lower, which leads to a fun scam of buying some cheap Petros and exchanging them for more expensive barrels of Oil until the government bails on the promise.
Though I suspect lack of trust in this promise means no one will buy Petros to being with (unless they think Oil will go up before Venezuela bails).
Venezuela is bashed by right for "socialism", but they have done some things well.
Venezuela's problem isn't "socialism", it's utterly corrupt and incompetent governance, socialism is just the form in which the politicians choose to express themselves.
They enacted a complete gun ban on civilian ownership, and gun violence went down by a factor of 1000. In fact, their country isn't even on the map anymore when it comes to firearms deaths in South America because of this. Maybe the US could use a death toll count reduction...?
I'd trust Venezuelan government statistics about as far as I can throw them. And since statistics are not a tangible object throwing them is an ill-defined concept.
I don't think SDE availability is a big issue, Linux usually has gcc installed by default, XCode is fairly easy to install on Macs, and I'm sure Windows has lots of easily installed stuff.
I think the issue is GUIs, but not for the reason he thinks. To the current kid a program isn't a real program without a GUI, and GUIs tend to be a lot tougher and more annoying to write. It just makes the gap between what a new programmer can accomplish and "real programs" that much bigger.
I suspect the best approach for a new programmer is scripting. Just yesterday a friend expressed a desire for some bizarre set of image transformations and within an hour I learned enough ImageMagick to fire off a python script. This is partly a consequence of being a command line user, but you can automate a lot of tasks with scripts and are you are honing your programming skills at the same time. OpenSCAD is a good way to pseudo-program if you have a 3d printer. I suspect there are a bunch of games with scripting interfaces as well.
Though for the windows user for whom the Command Line is still a foreign land I think phone apps are the easiest gateway. There's a lot of tutorials where you can get a "real program" with a graphical interface with very little effort. The main downside is that kind of coding tends to be a lot of interfaces and API calls which aren't as much fun.
Should the Mayans and Aztecs have feared the Spanish conquistadors, or welcomed them?
Should the Aborigines have welcomed the colonizers from England, or feared them?
Should the American Indians have feared the colonizers from Europe, or welcomed them?
Should the North American beavers have welcomed the colonizers from Europe, or feared them?
When people fantasize about intelligent alien visitors, they usually place their intelligence level and physical characteristics close to our own. I am certain that would not be the case. Most likely they would mash us like potatoes. On the off chance they come in peace, the level of disruption they would cause to our worldwide community and economy would be immense.
European colonization was undertaken by a culture primitive by our standards, not to mention the standards of technologically advanced aliens.
Using European colonization as a template for alien contact will serve us about as well as using local conflicts as a template for European colonization served aboriginal populations.
Aliens are unlikely to mash us like potatoes if for no other reason than they don't need to, they'll come at us with an extremely complex civilizations and deal with us without the bounds of the rules of that civilization.
I think an "extinguish all other intelligent life" rule is unlikely if for no other reason than they really don't want that rule to be in effect if they encounter a superior civilization. More likely we'll be pulled into some kind of interstellar bureaucracy, the objectives of which change on whether one species or multiple species is actually in change.
Take suicides out of the numbers...if someone wants to 'off' themselves, they'll find a way.
Have you ever seen someone stumble, stay upright, and then heard them say "oops, I attempted to fall down but failed"?
If you're 100% committed suicide is incredibly easy to do, but unsuccessful suicide attempts are a thing because even people who really want to die find it really hard to take the act of killing themselves.
Guns make suicide terrifyingly easy, and that's the reason that every study that seriously looks at the question finds guns make suicide way more likely.
In fact, I just had a hunch, remember how Australia restricted gun ownership after 1996? What do you supposed happened to the suicide rate?
Here's the problem: "Mass shootings" account for only about 0.1% of gun deaths, and are NOTHING like the normal quotidian killings that account for the other 99.9%:
I mostly agree, just trying to prevent mass shootings is kind of missing the point. But I think mass shootings do spark a legitimate conversation because they're a sign that something is very wrong, I think the gun culture also contributes to both.
Another problem with discussing gun control in the aftermath of a mass shooting, is that gun control advocates tend to let their emotions get away from them, and say a lot of silly things that are factually incorrect about "machine guns" and "automatic rifles" (both of which are illegal in America). This just exacerbates the feeling among gun owners that they belong to a different culture, and that there is no room for compromise or moderation.
I'm guilty of this but it's not emotion that causes the technical errors, it's just inexperience. I'm not a fan of guns, that I'm less knowledgeable about guns is pretty much a given.
Someone who favours gun rights should always know more about guns than someone who favours gun control, it doesn't mean you're right, it just means you like guns.
When we talk about factually incorrect things what we're trying to express is something more basic.
The US has a ridiculous amount of guns, and it's glaringly obvious that a lot of people are dying because of these guns, both through homicide and suicide and we want to do something about this.
We'd love to drastically reduce the number of guns and gun owners but we understand that you'd never go along with that. So we're hoping that there's some kind of compromise that can be found. Something so you can still hunt, so you still feel like you can defend yourself, but we can get rid of some of the excess deaths. Somehow make them less useful for mass shootings, less lethal during drive-bys, harder to get into the hangs of gangs, something to cut down on the suicides.
Yes we're going to come up with dumb suggestions, we don't know guns, but surely there's some way to alleviate the damage.
Ahh. A sophist. "Militia" doesn't mean what you think it means, and a prefatory clause isn't binding.
As a self professed liberal, do you also support other laws which would restrict civil liberties? How about the 1st A? It starts with "Congress shall make no law...". So, that means that the States (which definitely aren't "Congress") can make laws establishing religion, restricting speech and press, etc. Right?
Living in a system with the fundamental principles of freedom and liberty means you accept more risk. Fortunately for you, you can move to almost anywhere else and trade that freedom and liberty for less risk and more security. Your choice.
Except you're not actually accepting of more risk in exchange for more freedom, at least not if you're like most people who oppose gun control.
People generally try to maintain a certain level of risk. If your car gets a seat belt you speed up, if you hit wet pavement you slow down. Guns and gun control are no different.
Ever notice the other things people who favour gun rights tend to believe? They think law enforcement should have a much freer hand to enforce order. They want to get rid of Mexicans, Muslims, and other outsiders who seem dangerous. They try to repress LGBTQ and people who live alternative lifestyles. This isn't a coincidence, they correctly realize that guns are dangerous, so at the same time they're trying to make guns more available they're trying to reduce the number of people whom they find threatening (particularly if they have a gun).
It's the same thing that's happening now, neither side wants school shootings. So one side wants gun control to reduce the number of shootings, the other wants guns in the classroom so the teachers can enforce greater order and they want those weird loner kids made normal so they're less likely to become a shooter.
Gun rights people don't have a greater belief in freedom, they're just willing to live with a higher perceived risk from firearms by accepting a lower perceived risk from other sources.
I don't want any gun control legislation. I don't care what tragedy occurred. It's unconstitutional. All of it.
If you want to restrict guns do it legally - amend the constitution first, then create laws that don't violate the constitution.
As it is, every single law, regulation, etc. that interferes with US citizens keeping and bearing firearms is unconstitutional. If you disagree you're incorrect. If you don't like that right guaranteed by the constitution, you're free to work to change the constitution. Any restriction at any other level is illegal.
Fine, you have the right to bare arms (lets forget about the militia qualifier since the courts have).
It doesn't follow that you the right to bare any arm you wish. You don't have the right to own assault weapons, semi-automatic weapons, bump stocks, high capacity magazines, etc, etc.
A low capacity, low power, handgun is perfectly sufficient for self-defence. A single shot rifle is perfectly adequate for hunting. Fancier guns locked up at a shooting range are good for recreational shooting. Mandatory background checks for any purchase cut down on some of the illegal weapons. Maybe even mandatory training would pass muster.
You'd still have the right to bear arms, but you'd cut out a lot of the mass shootings, and maybe you put a dent in the gun culture that kills so many people.
Saying KDE Plasma is the most popular app is like saying that Explorer is the most popular app on Windows. While technically true, it's also the default, and you can't really use the OS without it. Could you use other window managers? Sure, but I'm not sure a window manager counts as an app.
It actually is a bit of a surprise, the major distros tend to offer Gnome as the default.
Because arable regions may shift faster than the plants can evolve to grow in them.
Right ... that's why there aren't any European plants growing in the Americas. Because we can't just go ahead and plant them; no, they have to evolve first.
Just because some plants do well in a non-native habitat it doesn't not follow that most plants (particularly crops) can effectively adapt to a very different climate, or equivalent farmland can be found in another region.
Because mass migration will cause significant upheaval and displacement of human society. ...and so on... and finally:
Because when the human race is confronted with a lack of something, it goes to war over it.
So ... basically a repeat of 2017?
Quelle horreur.
Americans experienced a mild increase in Muslim migration and a drug epidemic and elected a demagogue Trump, one of the major riots leading up to the French Revolution was caused by a flour shortage, German's experienced massive reparations after WWI and elected Hitler, Russians got hammered in WWI and had the October Revolution, etc, etc.
In fact, high food prices were one of the causes of the Arab Spring, and the Arab Spring combined with the Iraq War caused the migrant crisis in Europe which is another factor that elected Trump and scared Britain out of the EU. And the Arab Spring looks a lot like the mass migrations you'll see when Climate Change starts to kick in (and the equivalent South American migration into the US).
It's not a complex formula. When populations are stressed they lash out, they either riot and or elect leaders who raise a ruckus on their behalf. And climate change causes a lot of stress.
Donald Trump claims global warming is a myth... and yet he's building sea walls for his golf resort in Ireland to protect it against the sea level rising!
He doesn't say it's a myth, he says it's a hoax.
He agrees that the climate is changing, but believes that it's not due to man-made changes in the environment.
Trump never said climate is changing, Kellyanne Conway claimed he believed that, which is completely in line with their standard practice of spinning Trump's outrageous statements into orthodox GOP doctrine.
Conway tells us nothing about what Trump believes, Trump is absolutely notorious for contradicting his administration's official positions, his spokespeople, and even himself.
Trump only ever has two kinds of comments about climate change, either some variation of "it's a hoax" or "it's cold, therefore no global warming!". The position you give Trump is something far more nuanced than he's ever expressed himself.
For progressively darker skin, progressively higher light on that skin is required to reveal its contours. The fundamental problem is that white and light-skinned brown people have their normal skin color shades in the midtones when a scene is properly exposed while darker-skinned brown and black people are closer to shadows. To expose properly for facial recognition of dark brown or black skin, you have to overexpose the midtones to bring up the shadows. Since people rarely take photos on purpose that are exposed for the shadows while blowing everything else out, it should be fairly obvious that facial recognition (and early ISO 32 color film and small-sensor cameras like webcams and phone cameras) will have a very hard time with dark skin. Sure, it could be a lack of data in some instances, but it's far more likely to be the fact that the skin absorbs more light and photographs are generally exposed too low to reveal enough detail for the machines to analyze.
If you think this is "racist" you're saying that the nature of light itself is racist. I don't feel like I should have to explain why that position is really stupid.
No one is saying it's "racist" in the form of deliberate racial bias, they're saying it doesn't work for dark skinned people because of how the technology was developed.
Now you're claiming that it's a fundamental property of physics, that it's fundamentally difficult to highlight black people's features without overexposing the rest of the picture. That might be true, but I don't think the question is as easy to answer as you imply.
Imagine photography and film were developed primarily by black people and white people were an underclass that no one really cared about. At every stage of the technological development those black people would be asking the same question, "how do we get our features to show up really clearly?"
If it's just a fundamental property of the physics as you suggest then maybe they would have done a lot more nighttime films so they could shoot in low light, and the engineers would then talk about how surprisingly easy it was to get clear images of white faces.
However, the development of film and photography involves well over a century of decision points. I suspect if they spent much of that time optimizing how to show dark-skinned faces they might have come up with some very different technology and this would not be the problem we're dealing with.
Well, we all want diversity, don't we?
But it seems evidence in favor is lacking.
Shouldn't there be numerous success stories, even anecdotal, if it's really all that favorable?
For the successes it's going to mostly show up because you have a wider range of technical aptitudes, perspectives, and problem solving techniques.
But even if you have an example of a gay black woman coming up with a really original idea you can't really attribute the idea to the race or sexuality. It's just something that particular person did. So I'm not even sure what a success story would actually look like other than cultural industries like Hollywood where the personal background is the part of the person's professional expertise.
But I do know what failures from a lack of diversity look like, because there's a lot of them. You aren't able to properly supply your customers if you don't understand your customers, and if you don't match the gender and backgrounds of your customers you can end up with some glaring blind spots. The medical field has had the same issue with more dire consequences, and psychology suffers from the relative homogeneity of lab ra^H^H^H^H undergrads.
You also get problems with office culture, the more homogeneous you are the less pushback you get when you say something sexist or racist and you can end up developing a real dysfunctional internal culture. I can think of instances where particular lines of male thinking were starting to go off the rails and female co-workers were able to push back and prevent a screwup.
The Uber office is one great example of this. It was disproportionately male and was infamous for generating scandal after scandal as a result of their corporate culture. I suspect they would have avoided some needless scandals if they were a bit more diverse.
The "cyberweapons" is a bullshit cover story.
NSA and CIA agents traveling to Germany in an effort to recover cyberweapons that had been stolen from U.S. intelligence agencies. A Russian spy allegedly offered up the stolen cyber tools to the Americans in exchange for $10 million, eventually lowering his price to just $1 million. The Russian spy allegedly claimed to even have dirt on President Trump.
Why would you pay anything for a copy of "stolen cyber tools"?!?!?! The Russians aren't about to give the CIA their last copy no matter how they're paid, and the NSA and the CIA already have them and don't need another copy.
Even if you think the NSA should offer patches for every bug they found the NSA doesn't agree.
If the NSA knows exactly what was stolen that does 3 things for them.
1) They know which tools are now useless (or if they work you might have hacked a honeypot).
2) The more you know about what was stolen the easier to figure out who stole it and how they did it.
3) You know which vulnerabilities you need to patch.
This was the CIA trying to get dirt on Trump - no more, no less.
According to the article the CIA was against the investigation because the head of the CIA is a Trump loyalist who didn't want dirt on the President. I wouldn't be surprised if the CIA was the source of the leak for this story.