If Russia wants to blow up the US even more than they already have, a good troll would be to give Zuckerberg the current equivalent of "Hero of the Soviet Union" for furthering Russia's goals in the 2016 election.
I'm not sure how you think that would work. Espionage is a lot more subtle and smarter than that.
All of those socialist countries which are "doing better than the USA" have smaller, relatively homogeneous populations.
Why does size matter? 1000 people is just 100 people times 10. If it was a size thing, why not just apply whatever technique works with smaller groups and multiply it? (which is how China manages it's size)
Canada and Australia both have higher rates of immigrants including 'non-homogeneous' whatever that is supposed to mean) than the US so this argument is bunk.
Additionally, before Obamacare (I have not seen the numbers recently), the five year prognosis for someone diagnosed with a life threatening illness was significantly better than in any of them.
Yeah you'll need a citation for that. It's common knowledge that while the US does have high quality medicine, it's only available for the minority of wealthy people. The 47% of which Mitt Romney spoke simply cannot afford the treatment.
So people all over the USA who comment on domestic politics are really Russian accounts?
Nope. Interference doesn't have to be complete and total, most propaganda techniques involve a slow drip feed over time. When you're in for the long game, a 1% swing in opinion is enough to make a difference (for example the 2016 election was decided by less than 100000 votes ( 0.1%), the 2000 election was less than 1000 votes). Manipulation is thing, and the Internet is the perfect tool for allowing foreign powers to interfere in domestic politics, so it would be foolish to just pretend it isn't possible.
FB know that they are the primary propaganda method for Russia to influence American politics. Posting some aggressive Alt-right ads while also posting some pro SJW/BLM message is genius. The Russian continue to divide Americans for their own gain and FB gets rich while America and it's western Allies lose.
And we all sit by and let it happen...
People still come to America to get educated and get cured.
We have the best facilities on the planet and we lead the world in research including medical research.
Yep, for the few percent that can afford it. For those that survive a school shooting they are truly blessed. For the majority however, they are living in developing world conditions and it's getting worse.
We do have pockets of 3rd world poverty. Those won't be solved by making everyone poor Stalin style. You seem to want the government to control everything...
Interesting jump of logic. Does this normally work out well for you?
That only works if a State found the money to back an upgrade mandate so that 100% of local police and sheriff departments have them.
My state is not American so we don't have that archaic county/sheriff/local/state multiple level police system you have. We have one set of cops (state based - we have feds but they only deal with big stuff like border control and terrorism), so traffic mgmt is easy. Infringement penalties cover the traffic budget so funding is never an issue.
Does your webbrowser not automatically fill out forms for you?
It tries but fails miserably most of the time. I also trust my government more than I trust my Browser Developer/Global advertising conglomerate, since the government already has this info.
The are also other features other than just form filling.
Also, I'm not sure I've ever found filling out a form difficult.
Good for you. Independent customer feedback was overwhelming positive (95%+ over millions of customers) for the new electronic process, so you'll excuse me if I take that over one guy on the Internet
I assume while your state has 800 licenses, most people have one or two, and it probably maxes at three or four.
Correct, but why have 800 separate forms when one app does it all? Or do you support your tax dollars being spent on highly inefficient paper based bureaucracy?
I just doubt it is in real life.
95%+ positive feedback from millions of customers. You know sometimes, just sometimes you don't need to guess at this.
Or at least, I tend to assume whatever features I work on are super-real problems to most people.
What info does your project gather from the phone hosting it? Device IDs? Location? Contacts?
Ok I'm sensing some sort of tinfoil hat paranoia here. The app grabs the Device ID for auditing and that's it. It gives you the option of giving access to the camera so you can submit photos for some applications but that is a choice.
>We obviously disagree on the easiest/best kind of license. I prefer paper airplane tickets too, but how comfortable are you letting an officer take your (unlocked) phone out of sight back to his car?
You don't need to because he also has an app that validates it on the spot without him touching your phone. There is no legal obligation to hand over your device, unlike your license. Electronic checking also adds to the audit trail because every license check is captured and logged which minimises misuse.
I get that you are cynical, that is a good trait, but sometimes other people have thought of all these things and technology actually improves things
Yes, isn't it interesting that Obamacare resulted in healthy life expectancy in the U.S. going down?
Did it? Or maybe the ship was already turning and Obamacare was an attempt to reduce the impact? Without more data we can't know for sure, but what we do know is that all those 'socialist' countries with 'socialist' medicine are doing better than the USA.
Those are by and large choices we make and contribute to our risks for early onset death. It's all so meaningless on it's face value.
Life expectancy is a good measure of success, since if you can't stop people from dying you will likely fail at other things too. If your nation's life expectancy is going down while every other Western nation is going up you should be asking why.
And as you point out, the automated licence plate readers could easily do the same.
A LOT more easily. These things can scan 6 plates a second while driving down the street at 60km/h. A quick lap up and down the regular main roads and you've scanned thousands of vehicles. As long as the Big Brother element is taken care of (which it isn't) it is extremely effective at cleaning up the streets of bad drivers/cars.
Maybe, maybe if they would have said I could pay for it with "an app" I'd be sold
Why would you want to run special purpose software just to fill out a form?
Because the app has many, many forms, and you can link it to an account with all your details so the form fills itself in for most things. It also serves as a digital license so no more plastic. I worked on a project that built exactly this and it works great. Our state has over 800 licenses with dozens of different agencies, and most of your interactions with them can now be done with one app and previously multi-page forms are now a couple of drop-down lists and check-boxes. It really is a major improvement.
Owners accustomed to normal steel license tags will appreciate not having to pay $7/month for a digital tag. I mean really, get a notice in the mail once a year, mail in some money and a few weeks later put a sticker on my license tag. Once a year.
You still have stickers? We got rid of those a few years ago. Cops have number plate recognition cameras on their cars so can scan every single vehicle for registration/stolen/owner with loss of license/other as they drive down the road. I heard the latest patch now does facial recognition too which is under testing.
Big Brother is already here...
"The United States came 40th in the global rankings"
How does this sit with the USA #1 crowd? I like to read those OECD comparison charts and it seems the US has been continually falling over the last few decades across every type of political leadership. Can this be fixed?
China is also very well known for lying about things and faking stats to appear better than everyone else. It goes all the way from the local level with fake recycling bins that go straight to trash pickup to faking national statistics.
"The United States was one of only five countries, along with Somalia, Afghanistan, Georgia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where healthy life expectancy at birth fell in 2016"
They must be really good at it to manipulate the US official figures....
When EV owners say stuff like this it concerns me, because I like to warm the cabin and have heated seats. Where I live it is colder as well.
To put this in perspective, and average engine might consume hundreds of kw of energy to run, but to heat (or cool) a space the size of a car cabin is only a few hundred watts. It reduces range just like an ICE, but it's negligible.
It makes tons of sense if you have a place to charge your car at home. Many do not, causing EVs to be more inconvenience than their benefits are worth.
You know that when the car was invented there weren't many petrol stations? Or when planes were invented there were actual no airports anywhere? How do you think this will play out?
Any publication that doesn't allow comments these days has probably reached the conclusion that the trolls just aren't worth the page views. I disagree that availability of comments correlates in any way to the quality or veracity of the articles presented.
Want proof? Look no further than Slashdot.
You shouldn't feed the trolls. The Guardian has a very vibrant comments section, the linked article even has comments at the bottom of the page (some script blockers might prevent it from displaying). They are one of the few that ranks comments so you can filter by most liked.
I sure any competent person could come up with a just as complicated logical path to support the claim that your porn habit is subsidized by taxpayers.
BTW, the Guardian doesn't provide for comments..
So what are those comments at the bottom of the linked page?
Nielson only selects people who watch enough TV to survey.
Same goes for so called 'focus-groups'. I signed up because of my job and income they pay a decent cash gift for participating in groups and I wanted some extra pocket money.
I went to a couple and they ask for honest feedback which I gave them, but it became obvious that they didn't want people like me. I'm a cynic and as a former engineer I always look for faults, so when they show a new commercial or new product I'd always pick it to bits with some honest analysis. I noted early on that I started to get ignored int he group discussion, and the people that loved the product got all the attention. Then I stopped getting invites to attend.
The entire industry is corrupt and use pseudo-science to generate income. I wouldn't trust anything they say.
Is news like this story a sign that we've reached Peak Internet at some point, and we're on the downhill side of it now?
Good. That means that in a few years, only nerds will use it, ads will become useless, news will be based on facts and stupid users like me won't post crap anymore.
Oh wait.
The downhill side is the nature of the content which will continue reducing in standard ad infintum. Like TV and Radio it is degenerating to lowest common denominator stuff. Reddit and FB is the new standard until something even stupider comes along.
The good news is that unlike TV and Radio which have heavily restricted broadcast licenses, the Internet is a free for all, so there's still a place for intelligent interaction, you just have to look harder to find it.
If you are in asia and ask for some ones eMail address, the chance is over 50% that they give you their FB name.
I'm still waiting for a citation for this assumption. As I said I used to live in Asia and my experience was different. So you're going to need more than just your opinion to convince me.
'Messenger is a separate product from FB', it would really help if you used FB instead of writing bullshit.
How old is FB? Since when do smart phones exist? Since when does FB messenger exist? FB â" the web site â" has an integrated "messenger" since long before the messenger app existed.
I'm not even sure what this is? Is English your first language?
'Email is still quite popular in Asia, if your statement is true, who is using it?'
People is Asia of course (I'm getting the impression that English is a challenge for you)
(what do you mean with 'still'?)
They used it before, they still use it now. Do you not now what this word means?
That is a pretty stupid question. Obviously the people and companies that have an email address are using it. What has that to do with my statement?
So a lot of people in Asia use email, but your statement was that they don't. Yet now you say they do.
I don't really care this much. You keep loving FB and all the Asians on FB that apparently can't survive without it if it makes you feel better....
It's about efficient information uptake. When the Internet was mostly text you could skim read to the relevant bits, but with this fascination of video it makes it harder to scan through a lot of information quickly.
"Lab grown are not special, they're not real,"
They're as special and real as any other diamond (ie not special but equally real). The diamond business is a scam and they know it. There's a reason this product is deliberately targeted at women...
A 30 second limit encourages content providers to be creative. So much youtube content is too long and too slow to the point where it's a thing now to set youtube to 1.5 speed to make it bearable.
Youtube already has competitors such as Vimeo, so there's nothing to be done by crowding out that space.
Slashdot Mirror
If Russia wants to blow up the US even more than they already have, a good troll would be to give Zuckerberg the current equivalent of "Hero of the Soviet Union" for furthering Russia's goals in the 2016 election.
I'm not sure how you think that would work. Espionage is a lot more subtle and smarter than that.
All of those socialist countries which are "doing better than the USA" have smaller, relatively homogeneous populations.
Why does size matter? 1000 people is just 100 people times 10. If it was a size thing, why not just apply whatever technique works with smaller groups and multiply it? (which is how China manages it's size)
Canada and Australia both have higher rates of immigrants including 'non-homogeneous' whatever that is supposed to mean) than the US so this argument is bunk.
Additionally, before Obamacare (I have not seen the numbers recently), the five year prognosis for someone diagnosed with a life threatening illness was significantly better than in any of them.
Yeah you'll need a citation for that. It's common knowledge that while the US does have high quality medicine, it's only available for the minority of wealthy people. The 47% of which Mitt Romney spoke simply cannot afford the treatment.
So people all over the USA who comment on domestic politics are really Russian accounts?
Nope. Interference doesn't have to be complete and total, most propaganda techniques involve a slow drip feed over time. When you're in for the long game, a 1% swing in opinion is enough to make a difference (for example the 2016 election was decided by less than 100000 votes ( 0.1%), the 2000 election was less than 1000 votes). Manipulation is thing, and the Internet is the perfect tool for allowing foreign powers to interfere in domestic politics, so it would be foolish to just pretend it isn't possible.
FB know that they are the primary propaganda method for Russia to influence American politics. Posting some aggressive Alt-right ads while also posting some pro SJW/BLM message is genius. The Russian continue to divide Americans for their own gain and FB gets rich while America and it's western Allies lose.
And we all sit by and let it happen...
A better measure is something like life expectancy after cancer diagnosis when medicine and healthcare have a direct correlation to how long you live.
Depends on your thoughts on Euthanasia doesn't it? Keeping someone alive and in pain is not a measure of success I would use.
People still come to America to get educated and get cured.
We have the best facilities on the planet and we lead the world in research including medical research.
Yep, for the few percent that can afford it. For those that survive a school shooting they are truly blessed. For the majority however, they are living in developing world conditions and it's getting worse.
We do have pockets of 3rd world poverty. Those won't be solved by making everyone poor Stalin style. You seem to want the government to control everything...
Interesting jump of logic. Does this normally work out well for you?
That only works if a State found the money to back an upgrade mandate so that 100% of local police and sheriff departments have them.
My state is not American so we don't have that archaic county/sheriff/local/state multiple level police system you have. We have one set of cops (state based - we have feds but they only deal with big stuff like border control and terrorism), so traffic mgmt is easy. Infringement penalties cover the traffic budget so funding is never an issue.
Does your webbrowser not automatically fill out forms for you?
It tries but fails miserably most of the time. I also trust my government more than I trust my Browser Developer/Global advertising conglomerate, since the government already has this info.
The are also other features other than just form filling.
Also, I'm not sure I've ever found filling out a form difficult.
Good for you. Independent customer feedback was overwhelming positive (95%+ over millions of customers) for the new electronic process, so you'll excuse me if I take that over one guy on the Internet
I assume while your state has 800 licenses, most people have one or two, and it probably maxes at three or four.
Correct, but why have 800 separate forms when one app does it all? Or do you support your tax dollars being spent on highly inefficient paper based bureaucracy?
I just doubt it is in real life.
95%+ positive feedback from millions of customers. You know sometimes, just sometimes you don't need to guess at this.
Or at least, I tend to assume whatever features I work on are super-real problems to most people.
What info does your project gather from the phone hosting it? Device IDs? Location? Contacts?
Ok I'm sensing some sort of tinfoil hat paranoia here. The app grabs the Device ID for auditing and that's it. It gives you the option of giving access to the camera so you can submit photos for some applications but that is a choice.
>We obviously disagree on the easiest/best kind of license. I prefer paper airplane tickets too, but how comfortable are you letting an officer take your (unlocked) phone out of sight back to his car?
You don't need to because he also has an app that validates it on the spot without him touching your phone. There is no legal obligation to hand over your device, unlike your license. Electronic checking also adds to the audit trail because every license check is captured and logged which minimises misuse.
I get that you are cynical, that is a good trait, but sometimes other people have thought of all these things and technology actually improves things
Yes, isn't it interesting that Obamacare resulted in healthy life expectancy in the U.S. going down?
Did it? Or maybe the ship was already turning and Obamacare was an attempt to reduce the impact? Without more data we can't know for sure, but what we do know is that all those 'socialist' countries with 'socialist' medicine are doing better than the USA.
Those are by and large choices we make and contribute to our risks for early onset death. It's all so meaningless on it's face value.
Life expectancy is a good measure of success, since if you can't stop people from dying you will likely fail at other things too. If your nation's life expectancy is going down while every other Western nation is going up you should be asking why.
And as you point out, the automated licence plate readers could easily do the same.
A LOT more easily. These things can scan 6 plates a second while driving down the street at 60km/h. A quick lap up and down the regular main roads and you've scanned thousands of vehicles. As long as the Big Brother element is taken care of (which it isn't) it is extremely effective at cleaning up the streets of bad drivers/cars.
Why would you want to run special purpose software just to fill out a form?
Because the app has many, many forms, and you can link it to an account with all your details so the form fills itself in for most things. It also serves as a digital license so no more plastic. I worked on a project that built exactly this and it works great. Our state has over 800 licenses with dozens of different agencies, and most of your interactions with them can now be done with one app and previously multi-page forms are now a couple of drop-down lists and check-boxes. It really is a major improvement.
Owners accustomed to normal steel license tags will appreciate not having to pay $7/month for a digital tag. I mean really, get a notice in the mail once a year, mail in some money and a few weeks later put a sticker on my license tag. Once a year.
You still have stickers? We got rid of those a few years ago. Cops have number plate recognition cameras on their cars so can scan every single vehicle for registration/stolen/owner with loss of license/other as they drive down the road. I heard the latest patch now does facial recognition too which is under testing.
Big Brother is already here...
"The United States came 40th in the global rankings"
How does this sit with the USA #1 crowd? I like to read those OECD comparison charts and it seems the US has been continually falling over the last few decades across every type of political leadership. Can this be fixed?
China is also very well known for lying about things and faking stats to appear better than everyone else. It goes all the way from the local level with fake recycling bins that go straight to trash pickup to faking national statistics.
"The United States was one of only five countries, along with Somalia, Afghanistan, Georgia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where healthy life expectancy at birth fell in 2016" They must be really good at it to manipulate the US official figures....
When EV owners say stuff like this it concerns me, because I like to warm the cabin and have heated seats. Where I live it is colder as well.
To put this in perspective, and average engine might consume hundreds of kw of energy to run, but to heat (or cool) a space the size of a car cabin is only a few hundred watts. It reduces range just like an ICE, but it's negligible.
It makes tons of sense if you have a place to charge your car at home. Many do not, causing EVs to be more inconvenience than their benefits are worth.
You know that when the car was invented there weren't many petrol stations? Or when planes were invented there were actual no airports anywhere? How do you think this will play out?
Any publication that doesn't allow comments these days has probably reached the conclusion that the trolls just aren't worth the page views. I disagree that availability of comments correlates in any way to the quality or veracity of the articles presented.
Want proof? Look no further than Slashdot.
You shouldn't feed the trolls. The Guardian has a very vibrant comments section, the linked article even has comments at the bottom of the page (some script blockers might prevent it from displaying). They are one of the few that ranks comments so you can filter by most liked.
I sure any competent person could come up with a just as complicated logical path to support the claim that your porn habit is subsidized by taxpayers.
BTW, the Guardian doesn't provide for comments..
So what are those comments at the bottom of the linked page?
That's a lie.
Nielson only selects people who watch enough TV to survey.
Same goes for so called 'focus-groups'. I signed up because of my job and income they pay a decent cash gift for participating in groups and I wanted some extra pocket money.
I went to a couple and they ask for honest feedback which I gave them, but it became obvious that they didn't want people like me. I'm a cynic and as a former engineer I always look for faults, so when they show a new commercial or new product I'd always pick it to bits with some honest analysis. I noted early on that I started to get ignored int he group discussion, and the people that loved the product got all the attention. Then I stopped getting invites to attend.
The entire industry is corrupt and use pseudo-science to generate income. I wouldn't trust anything they say.
Good. That means that in a few years, only nerds will use it, ads will become useless, news will be based on facts and stupid users like me won't post crap anymore.
Oh wait.
The downhill side is the nature of the content which will continue reducing in standard ad infintum. Like TV and Radio it is degenerating to lowest common denominator stuff. Reddit and FB is the new standard until something even stupider comes along.
The good news is that unlike TV and Radio which have heavily restricted broadcast licenses, the Internet is a free for all, so there's still a place for intelligent interaction, you just have to look harder to find it.
If you are in asia and ask for some ones eMail address, the chance is over 50% that they give you their FB name.
I'm still waiting for a citation for this assumption. As I said I used to live in Asia and my experience was different. So you're going to need more than just your opinion to convince me.
'Messenger is a separate product from FB', it would really help if you used FB instead of writing bullshit. How old is FB? Since when do smart phones exist? Since when does FB messenger exist? FB â" the web site â" has an integrated "messenger" since long before the messenger app existed.
I'm not even sure what this is? Is English your first language?
'Email is still quite popular in Asia, if your statement is true, who is using it?'
People is Asia of course (I'm getting the impression that English is a challenge for you)
(what do you mean with 'still'?)
They used it before, they still use it now. Do you not now what this word means?
That is a pretty stupid question. Obviously the people and companies that have an email address are using it. What has that to do with my statement?
So a lot of people in Asia use email, but your statement was that they don't. Yet now you say they do.
I don't really care this much. You keep loving FB and all the Asians on FB that apparently can't survive without it if it makes you feel better....
Ahhh, I see you are a millennial as well.
Nope.
More than 30 secs really is too much!
It's about efficient information uptake. When the Internet was mostly text you could skim read to the relevant bits, but with this fascination of video it makes it harder to scan through a lot of information quickly.
"Lab grown are not special, they're not real,"
They're as special and real as any other diamond (ie not special but equally real). The diamond business is a scam and they know it. There's a reason this product is deliberately targeted at women...
A 30 second limit encourages content providers to be creative. So much youtube content is too long and too slow to the point where it's a thing now to set youtube to 1.5 speed to make it bearable.
Youtube already has competitors such as Vimeo, so there's nothing to be done by crowding out that space.