Facebook admitted to promoting pro-Hillary and suppressing pro-Trump stories/outlets. Where is the investigation and media attention for that?
Comey admits to leaking classified information, gets a sweet book deal. Reality winner leaks classified information, sits in jail denied bond.
The DNC siphoned $60 million from down-ballot elections into Hillary's campaign to fight Sanders, which would appear to be a violation of FEC rules on its face(*).
Susan Rice unmasked wiretaps of Trump and advisors without a warrant, which was then leaked to the press.
Bill Clinton had an "on the tarmac" meeting with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch while Lynch was investigating the E-mail scandal.
Consider how much time and effort and taxpayer money has been spent on investigation Trump's Russia connection - and they're now looking at $50,000 of *ads* taken out by people from Russia. Compared to the amount Hillary spent? Or Trump spent?
I live in hope that some day our administration will grow some balls and start prosecuting people for blatant corruption - even though it may look on the surface like political reprisals against the losers.
(*) FEC puts a limit on the amount any individual can donate to a candidate. Many donors gave the maximum to Hillary, and donated more to down-ballot candidates. Moving down-ballot money to Hillary's campaign is likely violating the "maximum donation" rule.
Can someone explain to me why missing predicted goals - by even as much as 50% - is such a big issue with investors?
Any time Tesla comes out slightly lower than "predicted results" the market analysts go haywire, it's all "doom and gloom! We warned you about Tesla! It's a baaaaaad investment!".
There are people who, with a straight face, talk about Tesla being fraudulent, being 3-months away from insolvent, or being super hyper over inflated in some way. "Look at Tesla's capitalization, and compare it to Ford's!!! There's *no way* Tesla will ever be as big as Ford!"
And Musk is a con man, Tesla only survives because of federal grants and will go under once those grants are revoked, Tesla sells cars at a loss, chewing through investor money...
WTF?
Is there a *rational* explanation for all this bugaboo reporting?
There is no viability to Pro or Con studies for this. We simply would not be capable of knowing if we're simulated as our own thought processes would in fact be governed by the same rules of the system we're attempting to prove or disprove.
What you're proposing is a philosophical proof, and it's not rigorous.
It turns out that we *can* prove or disprove certain statements about our universe. The fundamental fact (to prove, or disprove) is whether the universe is computable.
Computability has a couple of slightly different meanings in the literature depending on certain assumptions, but in general terms it means that the results of a computation can be done with a) a computer, b) using finite memory, and c) in a finite amount of time(*).
The Church-Turing thesis implies that all computers are equivalent, so the type of computer doesn't matter.
What *does* matter is the finite limits on time and memory. You can't use real (in the mathematical sense) numbers, because they take an infinite amount of memory to store, and would take an infinite amount of processing just to load one into a register. This implies that position, if your universe has this as a feature, must be quantized in some way. The amount of information in a particle's position must be finite. Time also has to be quantized.
If time and position are quantized, you might need some sort of "fuzzing" algorithm to avoid jaggies and other artifacts in your universe. Something like Bresenham's algorithm, or some other anti-aliasing method. Maybe use sines and cosines to represent the probability of a position between two quantized locations or something similar.
If we can identify an effect that the universe has that is non-computable, then we could (at that time) definitely state that the universe is not some sort of simulation.
That being said, I don't think this paper rules out computability per-se. The fact that complexity is exponential does not specifically rule out being computable, the thing about exponentiality comes from the post and not the abstract of the paper, the paper abstract itself states that the question is still open, and the paper is speculative and might be subject to re-interpretation or dispute by subsequent papers.
It's also really, really dense.
Whether the universe is computable is a really interesting question. Consider the resolution of the probability values of QM experiments; ie - is there a limit to the resolution one can have on a probability measurement? If it's a finite amount of information, it's kept in a finite number of bits, which means that it has a fundamental fractional resolution.
Is there an experiment that would show this fundamental resolution limit? (Do photons from distant galaxies arrive in tiny quantized angles, for instance?)
(*) With one possible exception, which is the overall program of the universe. The universe itself can run for infinite time, so long as each interaction can be computed in a finite amount of time. Basically, you can have exactly one while(1) in the main() of your universe, and all subroutines must return in a finite amount of time.
With the huge volumes of data that Google handles, it's probably hard to do any better.
GMail may be "hard to do any better", but dealing with spam is complex and labyrinthine.
My client began having conversations with a vendor last week, and as a result GMail put *all* subsequent E-mails into my spam folder, including ones from my (whitelisted) client addressed to the vendor CC'ing me. I only found out by accident.
One might *expect* a quick, easily identified control that says "whitelist this person" or "whitelist this company", but there isn't. You have to go to "Settings->Settings->Filters and blocked addresses", none of which terms are "spam", so the casual user can't just scan headings for the term.
You can't, apparently, just refer to the spam and say "whitelist that person", you need to create a new filter. You can't, apparently, say "@example.com" as a wildcard for the business, you have to identify an actual sender by complete address.
And of course, you have to discover that you need to do this, because GMail doesn't give any warning. (Surprising, since every time I use GMail from a different location it sends me a warning E-mail. Every. Single. Time.)
I'm not even sure why everything went to spam in the first place - I had sent E-mails to both the vendor and the client, so they should have been in my "recently used" list.
GMail has a pretty cryptic interface, compared to some of the other mail readers I've used.
Well then, Trump and his apologists like yourself, will have nothing to worry about now, won't they...
I agree with this sentiment entirely.
I would *love* to have our two parties compete for leadership in this country, but by now I'm convinced that it's never gonna' happen.
I'm dismayed that we (the government, through our taxes) are paying for an investigation with negligible chances of finding anything, but at the same time I realize it keeps "them" busy and out of trouble.
I'm also dismayed that there's an apparent double standard in legal consequences, where James Comey can admit to leaking and gets to write a book about it, while Reality Winner (a commoner) sits in prison denied bond.
I think we may be seeing the death of the Democratic party, to be quickly followed by the death of the Republican party.
It used to be that "money buys votes", through advertising and endorsements, but the internet has managed to break through that barrier. Looking at the recent Alabama special election (to replace Jeff Sessions' vacant Senate seat), the "establishment" candidate spent about $137 per vote on the election, and still lost. Hillary Clinton spent about $1.4B against Trump's $1B and still lost.
No longer can people get away with outright lies - it's too easy to look up the primary source. No longer can people get away with puffery or exaggeration - it's too easy to look up the primary source. News sources who have previously survived on making exactly those sorts of techniques are becoming irrelevant.
We seem to be transitioning from "Republican vs Democrat" to "Populist vs Globalist".
Let them have their investigation, it doesn't really matter. They're not taking responsibility for their actions, they're not making any change to *themselves* to compensate.
They're not going to evolve, and we all know how that works out.
Remember when Obama tried to alter the result of the Brexit vote? What retaliation should Britain be pursuing for that blatant foreign meddling?
Q1: How does Facebook know with any certainty that these are Russian *government* actors. The implication being that the Russian government acted with intent to sow dissent during our elections.
How does Facebook know that these are not separate, individual Russian citizens without ties to the Russian government?
If one actor took out ads highlighting both sides of an issue, then yes... that would be intent to sow dissent.
But if the different sides were taken by different actors, a simpler explanation is that people in Russia are also divided on an issue, of American politics.
Almost as if people in Russia have, I don't know, relatives in America or something.
Q2: How does Facebook know that ads highlighting both sides of an issue were taken by the *same* actor, and not different actors with legitimate different opinions?
I'd be really interested to know how Facebook determines both of these bits of meta-information.
Seriously, what's the point of Government jobs if they're not going to employ Americans? This is what my tax dollars go to? Sending money overseas? And yes, it's my tax dollars too. State School systems get federal money.
This is why you're seeing the resurgence of neo-nazis and white supremacists. We're abandoning the working class. Same Bloody thing happened in Germany in 1944 and we ignored it then too because nobody wanted their taxes to go up. How's that quote go? Something about business getting out of hand and us being lucky to live through it...
I've never found a liberal who could state a position without resorting to insults.
The inevitable result is that people simply stop, keep quiet, and get on with their lives. Then, in the privacy of the voting booth, they vote for the candidate promising reform, and against the candidate with insults and no real position.
Isn't that a better and simpler explanation than "nazis and supremacists"?
I guess he's getting tired of living in his Ecuadorian mom's basement and his 15 minutes of fame are over about an hour ago. Let that co-opted weasel dangle.
Does this actually matter?
I've often wondered why people keep trotting out these sorts of attacks. It's saying, literally, "this is not a good thing, because the person is somehow bad".
Firstly, it's only your opinion.
Secondly, Julian does not seem to have a lot of conceit, pompousness, or self-importance in other matters - including interviews. He's certainly confident and well-informed, but I haven't seen anything particularly negative about his demeanour.
Attention whore is an explanation of this one action, but with no other corroborating evidence do you think the explanation is likely? Are other explanations more likely than this one?
Thirdly, and most importantly, is this in any way relevant? Is there some reason we can't say "good job, Julian!" and think that maybe his actions are doing some good for the world?
Must we discount this achievement because he's not your model of perfection?
Unless we're talking H1-Bs I don't see that in the slightest. What I do see is several of my buddies in dead end jobs (and a few acquaintances rocking recent CS degrees stuck in crap IT jobs) while workers here on cheap visas and outsourcing dominate the industry.
Okay, now turn that around.
How do you feel about DACA, total amnesty, and unrestricted immigration?
Lots and lots of people are screaming for DACA and giving citizenship to just about anyone who can evade the border guards and get here.
DACA and other immigration issues speak to the same problems you are complaining about. The argument is that the country cannot absorb the illegal immigrants(*), doing so would wreck the future outlook and way of life for US citizens.
So, based on your post, how do you feel about DACA and amnesty?
(*) Legal immigration is a separate issue. Related, but it can compensate for negative population growth, so it isn't actually a problem.
>Yes, people can be retrained. Really depending on age and openmindedness though. But robots can also retrained and in less time for certain things.
Sure. More options for business. They will choose whatever is cheaper option.
The only answer to technological progress vis-a-vis employment problem is 2000 years old: "bread and circuses". Free bread and free circuses for fired. In our days this must include shelter.
>Yes, people can be retrained. Really depending on age and openmindedness though. But robots can also retrained and in less time for certain things.
Sure. More options for business. They will choose whatever is cheaper option.
The only answer to technological progress vis-a-vis employment problem is 2000 years old: "bread and circuses". Free bread and free circuses for fired. In our days this must include shelter.
I'd like to think that we're (the world) smarter than that, and that we (the readers of this forum) are the smart people in the room.
This is an impending problem, and one of the definitions of intelligence is that it is proportional to your planning horizon. We can see this as an impending problem, so let's anticipate the problem and fix it.
Current theories of economics are flawed, being based on assumptions of "infinite" that are no longer true. Consumption isn't infinite, population growth isn't infinite (thankfully, for the sake of our resources), and as a corollary jobs aren't infinite. (Minor other corollaries too; for example, the market for your product isn't infinite.) Productivity rises at an exponential rate (3% growth compounded over time), and has doubled in about the last 40-ish years.
Current theories of economics that extrapolate the past to the future are invalid. Referring to Luddites, sabotaging the looms, throwing your wooden shoes into the looms, or anything that says "it's been OK before, it'll be OK this time" are flawed because they rely on nothing but past performance to predict future behaviour, while future predictions rely on math and assumptions. It's the turkey believing that the farmer will continue to protect and feed it, because that's what the farmer has done for the turkey's entire life.
Current measures of the economy are flawed because they don't include the welfare of the workers. Up to recently, measures of economy have been all about the productivity - the sum total of the profits of businesses, without regard to the welfare of the people. The economy is strong when profits go up. It's flawed because economics is clearly a loop: you need citizens with wealth to purchase products, and the math has to change to reflect that.
Given these flaws in our economics, we need a way forward that doesn't predict in the collapse of civilization.
I know there are at least 5 changes that might work, but it all starts with the smart people in the room.
What changes can we come up with, and how do we encourage these changes?
Without using words such as "only way", "doomed to", and "must".
When Facebook was censoring posts, and taking down insane things under the pretext of "hate speech" you never heard a peep from the liberals.
Now there's a chance of a Russia connection so OMFG WE WANT ANSWERS!
Meanwhile, the NH has found that out-of-state voters probably tipped the state to Hillary away from Trump, and almost definitely stole the Senate seat.
(NH allows for same-day voter registration, and you don't need a NH license to vote - only a "promise" that you've moved to NH and that you're in the process of getting your license transferred. Using round numbers, of 6,000 non-resident voters who registered on the day of the election, 5,000 have not actually moved to NH 9 months later. MA and VT are predominately Democratic, but NH is a swing state and the senate race was particularly close: incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte lost to challenger Maggie Hassan (D). Hassan won by a razor-thin margin of 1,017 votes. if 59.2 percent of out-of-state voters voted democratic, then that senate seat was stolen by non-resident voters.)
(Also, the senate currently sits at 52-48 in favor of R, and there have been several razor-thin votes since the election. That one seat stolen illegally has had an amplified effect on federal policy.)
Trump uses Russian dressing on his salad and it's all Russia! Russia! Russia!, but mention voter fraud and it's "nothing to see here, move along".
Because there's a difference between burning books at some points in time (which Christianity certainly did, as did many other religious and ideologies) and burning books being such a complete default that one should be "surprised" by it. In that context, just like some of the other Islam related comments in this thread, it is classic trolling, and if sincere says more about the people making the statements than it does about the groups they are making comments about.
Says more what?
This is a nice example of "innuendo from nothing". It implies that the people in a debate are somehow inferior, while saying exactly nothing about them.
It's a cross between an ad-hominem attack and a stand-alone complex.
Shouldn't we focus on the debate instead of the character of the debater?
Two storms of unusual magnitude, exceptional temperatures in parts of CA, but hey, climate change is worldwide con, right?
Not a con, closer to a religion.
Scientists who want to speak out are threatened in various ways, the arguments are made by insult and bullying, some (read: some) of the methods are sketchy, and some of the data has been manipulated.
I used to be a climate change believer, until about a year ago when it was highlighted as a political issue, and not an issue of science. I had been blinded by everyone saying things like "the science is settled" and "all scientists agree" and so on. It was an epiphany to discover that something I held as "obviously correct" was based on, effectively, nothing.
Well, the science is not settled, the "all scientists agree" is taken out of context and doesn't refer to what you think it does, the data has been manipulated, and most importantly critique and debate are not allowed.
The whole issue also conflates the political decisions with the science. Anyone who disagrees with the political policy, such as carbon credits or reducing US birth rate, is called stupid for not believing in science.
Interpretation by a chosen elite, evidence in either direction supports the conclusion, disbelievers are harassed and threatened, discussion and disagreement are not allowed... that sounds like a religion.
I would rather actually fund education so more people would be qualified for work beyond being a meat-part in a machine, doing the same thing over and over again for days, months, years.
That was a good idea in previous decades.
Currently the number of jobs is shrinking, while the workforce is not(*). it's already causing a lot of stress in our society, and probably one reason for the recent election results.
The system was able to soak up some of the excess - the meme of children living with their parents until well into adulthood is one result - but it's starting to show signs of saturation. The burgeoning debt of education versus finding a job, currently being a topic of concern, is one bit of evidence.
Training and education are certainly important, but it doesn't address the problem. It'll only result in educated unemployed. We need a way to support non-workers in our society, and pretty quick.
(*) Roughly speaking, population is remaining steady. Meanwhile, productivity keeps rising.
US production per worker is currently about $58,000, and seems to be going up by $10,000 per decade.
That's per capita, meaning "per person". If the per-capita output were distributed equally to every man, woman, and child everyone would have about $58.000 to spend. Each year. Including kids and babies. And they could do it again next year.
This will only go up as AI and automation take over. A huge number of driving jobs will be taken over by self-driving vehicles in the next decade (already happening with long-haul trucks), and AI and robotics will take over ever more of the production, working 24/7 and making more goods, more cheaply, and faster than humans.
We need to transition away from the current economic system real soon, or suffer massive riots and the downfall of our culture as unemployed people riot and take it down for us.
We need a way to spread the wealth out a little more evenly. UBI is one way, and we're getting really close to the point where UBI will be cheaper than the cost of government assistance plus the lost cost of higher crime and prison for the poor.
Perhaps taxing the robots and using the money to fund the rest of UBI would work.
We could also lower the SS retirement age, or go to a 4-day work week. Lots of options, many would work or could be made to work.
But we have to start transitioning just about now, or risk the downfall of our culture.
If it is Google Fiber specifically or from another company, the project was a total succeeds. In my neighborhood, access speeds went from being around 20-30mbps on the top end to Gigabit through CenturyLink. Countless other ISPs have all started offering gigabit class service due to the pressure that Google Fiber caused. Google brought competition, and the market was forced to react. (almost) everyone wins! Except those smucks still stuck in areas that have government restrictions on what can/cant be made available in their areas.
Uh, no dude. It wasn't.
A small section of the country wins, and every other community in the nation loses, because the incumbents were able to push Google out of the market.
It only goes to show that the carriers could give us all broadband, and would even probably make money from doing that.
We have to vote agaisn't our own self interests as those guys on AM radio and Fox make seem voting for anyone who favors us as pretty scary. If we give them some more free money they will be nice to us.
Our side has been actually doing something about it.
Lots of Republican congress seats are coming up in 2018, and many of them realize that if they don't get off their butts and do something, they're going to be voted out. There's a mood running through the population right now to that specific effect: people are saying "do something or we'll kick your butt to the curb in next year's elections".
Many Republicans are worried that they'll lose to a challenger in the upcoming primary if they don't start doing things.
Some are planning to use the upcoming debt-limit deadline (end of Sept) to force the Democrats to fund building the wall(*).
And Trump is being selective with his support for certain campaigns, with the result that not having POTUS support makes it increasingly difficult to win reelection. Karma for RINOs.
All these things are putting pressure on Republicans to start making decisions that favour the American people.
You might try asking your side to do that as well. I'd *love* to see the two sides compete for the role of "best leadership".
Here's a hint: marketing tag-lines such as "a better deal" without specific policies to back them up simply won't work.
(*) But with Hurricane Harvey in Texas there's talk of putting that off a few months so that the government doesn't shut down and leave Texas in the lurch.
After all, if you declare on your tax return that your annual income is $30,000 and your Facebook page is full of pictures of you taking vacations in Hawaii, Fiji, Bermuda, etc., as well as photos taken from your first class seat in the airplane, then they have good reason to audit you. As long as they're searching public information only (eg. your PUBLIC Facebook profile and Twitter account) and not using special government powers to look at private information which would not be viewable by the general public, then I don't see a problem with this. You have no expectation of privacy when you post your vacation pictures to your public Facebook profile.
I've often wondered whether this sort of data can be used as evidence.
Recently someone live-streamed themselves driving drunk (in Miami, IIRC) and posted it to youtube, and were subsequently arrested and charged. I can suppose that he was also caught on traffic cameras, but what if he wasn't?
There's no reason why this sort of information can't be faked - I could easily make up a FB account to presents myself as much richer than I actually am, I could fake a live-stream drunk driving video, and I can simply put "PhD" after my name for more status. People fake news events all the time, and some of it gets reported by the press.
Absent any corroborating evidence, could social media data be used to convict?
If someone fakes a drunk-driving video and is arrested, can the police then be sued for false arrest?
How much of a legal responsibility do we have for saying only the truth online?
There is something disappointing that punching someone earns 2 people $175 million dollars. Shame we dont have as much enthusiasm for Nobel laureates as we do for sports and the oscars.
Slashdot Mirror
Facebook admitted to promoting pro-Hillary and suppressing pro-Trump stories/outlets. Where is the investigation and media attention for that?
Comey admits to leaking classified information, gets a sweet book deal. Reality winner leaks classified information, sits in jail denied bond.
The DNC siphoned $60 million from down-ballot elections into Hillary's campaign to fight Sanders, which would appear to be a violation of FEC rules on its face(*).
Susan Rice unmasked wiretaps of Trump and advisors without a warrant, which was then leaked to the press.
Bill Clinton had an "on the tarmac" meeting with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch while Lynch was investigating the E-mail scandal.
Hillary got $11,000,000 from the King of Morocco in return for a special-access meeting with the (then) Secretary of State.
Consider how much time and effort and taxpayer money has been spent on investigation Trump's Russia connection - and they're now looking at $50,000 of *ads* taken out by people from Russia. Compared to the amount Hillary spent? Or Trump spent?
I live in hope that some day our administration will grow some balls and start prosecuting people for blatant corruption - even though it may look on the surface like political reprisals against the losers.
(*) FEC puts a limit on the amount any individual can donate to a candidate. Many donors gave the maximum to Hillary, and donated more to down-ballot candidates. Moving down-ballot money to Hillary's campaign is likely violating the "maximum donation" rule.
Can someone explain to me why missing predicted goals - by even as much as 50% - is such a big issue with investors?
Any time Tesla comes out slightly lower than "predicted results" the market analysts go haywire, it's all "doom and gloom! We warned you about Tesla! It's a baaaaaad investment!".
There are people who, with a straight face, talk about Tesla being fraudulent, being 3-months away from insolvent, or being super hyper over inflated in some way. "Look at Tesla's capitalization, and compare it to Ford's!!! There's *no way* Tesla will ever be as big as Ford!"
And Musk is a con man, Tesla only survives because of federal grants and will go under once those grants are revoked, Tesla sells cars at a loss, chewing through investor money...
WTF?
Is there a *rational* explanation for all this bugaboo reporting?
There is no viability to Pro or Con studies for this. We simply would not be capable of knowing if we're simulated as our own thought processes would in fact be governed by the same rules of the system we're attempting to prove or disprove.
What you're proposing is a philosophical proof, and it's not rigorous.
It turns out that we *can* prove or disprove certain statements about our universe. The fundamental fact (to prove, or disprove) is whether the universe is computable.
Computability has a couple of slightly different meanings in the literature depending on certain assumptions, but in general terms it means that the results of a computation can be done with a) a computer, b) using finite memory, and c) in a finite amount of time(*).
The Church-Turing thesis implies that all computers are equivalent, so the type of computer doesn't matter.
What *does* matter is the finite limits on time and memory. You can't use real (in the mathematical sense) numbers, because they take an infinite amount of memory to store, and would take an infinite amount of processing just to load one into a register. This implies that position, if your universe has this as a feature, must be quantized in some way. The amount of information in a particle's position must be finite. Time also has to be quantized.
If time and position are quantized, you might need some sort of "fuzzing" algorithm to avoid jaggies and other artifacts in your universe. Something like Bresenham's algorithm, or some other anti-aliasing method. Maybe use sines and cosines to represent the probability of a position between two quantized locations or something similar.
If we can identify an effect that the universe has that is non-computable, then we could (at that time) definitely state that the universe is not some sort of simulation.
That being said, I don't think this paper rules out computability per-se. The fact that complexity is exponential does not specifically rule out being computable, the thing about exponentiality comes from the post and not the abstract of the paper, the paper abstract itself states that the question is still open, and the paper is speculative and might be subject to re-interpretation or dispute by subsequent papers.
It's also really, really dense.
Whether the universe is computable is a really interesting question. Consider the resolution of the probability values of QM experiments; ie - is there a limit to the resolution one can have on a probability measurement? If it's a finite amount of information, it's kept in a finite number of bits, which means that it has a fundamental fractional resolution.
Is there an experiment that would show this fundamental resolution limit? (Do photons from distant galaxies arrive in tiny quantized angles, for instance?)
(*) With one possible exception, which is the overall program of the universe. The universe itself can run for infinite time, so long as each interaction can be computed in a finite amount of time. Basically, you can have exactly one while(1) in the main() of your universe, and all subroutines must return in a finite amount of time.
With the huge volumes of data that Google handles, it's probably hard to do any better.
GMail may be "hard to do any better", but dealing with spam is complex and labyrinthine.
My client began having conversations with a vendor last week, and as a result GMail put *all* subsequent E-mails into my spam folder, including ones from my (whitelisted) client addressed to the vendor CC'ing me. I only found out by accident.
One might *expect* a quick, easily identified control that says "whitelist this person" or "whitelist this company", but there isn't. You have to go to "Settings->Settings->Filters and blocked addresses", none of which terms are "spam", so the casual user can't just scan headings for the term.
You can't, apparently, just refer to the spam and say "whitelist that person", you need to create a new filter. You can't, apparently, say "@example.com" as a wildcard for the business, you have to identify an actual sender by complete address.
And of course, you have to discover that you need to do this, because GMail doesn't give any warning. (Surprising, since every time I use GMail from a different location it sends me a warning E-mail. Every. Single. Time.)
I'm not even sure why everything went to spam in the first place - I had sent E-mails to both the vendor and the client, so they should have been in my "recently used" list.
GMail has a pretty cryptic interface, compared to some of the other mail readers I've used.
Well then, Trump and his apologists like yourself, will have nothing to worry about now, won't they...
I agree with this sentiment entirely.
I would *love* to have our two parties compete for leadership in this country, but by now I'm convinced that it's never gonna' happen.
I'm dismayed that we (the government, through our taxes) are paying for an investigation with negligible chances of finding anything, but at the same time I realize it keeps "them" busy and out of trouble.
I'm also dismayed that there's an apparent double standard in legal consequences, where James Comey can admit to leaking and gets to write a book about it, while Reality Winner (a commoner) sits in prison denied bond.
I think we may be seeing the death of the Democratic party, to be quickly followed by the death of the Republican party.
It used to be that "money buys votes", through advertising and endorsements, but the internet has managed to break through that barrier. Looking at the recent Alabama special election (to replace Jeff Sessions' vacant Senate seat), the "establishment" candidate spent about $137 per vote on the election, and still lost. Hillary Clinton spent about $1.4B against Trump's $1B and still lost.
No longer can people get away with outright lies - it's too easy to look up the primary source. No longer can people get away with puffery or exaggeration - it's too easy to look up the primary source. News sources who have previously survived on making exactly those sorts of techniques are becoming irrelevant.
We seem to be transitioning from "Republican vs Democrat" to "Populist vs Globalist".
Let them have their investigation, it doesn't really matter. They're not taking responsibility for their actions, they're not making any change to *themselves* to compensate.
They're not going to evolve, and we all know how that works out.
Remember when Obama tried to alter the result of the Brexit vote? What retaliation should Britain be pursuing for that blatant foreign meddling?
Q1: How does Facebook know with any certainty that these are Russian *government* actors. The implication being that the Russian government acted with intent to sow dissent during our elections.
How does Facebook know that these are not separate, individual Russian citizens without ties to the Russian government?
If one actor took out ads highlighting both sides of an issue, then yes... that would be intent to sow dissent.
But if the different sides were taken by different actors, a simpler explanation is that people in Russia are also divided on an issue, of American politics.
Almost as if people in Russia have, I don't know, relatives in America or something.
Q2: How does Facebook know that ads highlighting both sides of an issue were taken by the *same* actor, and not different actors with legitimate different opinions?
I'd be really interested to know how Facebook determines both of these bits of meta-information.
Seriously, what's the point of Government jobs if they're not going to employ Americans? This is what my tax dollars go to? Sending money overseas? And yes, it's my tax dollars too. State School systems get federal money.
This is why you're seeing the resurgence of neo-nazis and white supremacists. We're abandoning the working class. Same Bloody thing happened in Germany in 1944 and we ignored it then too because nobody wanted their taxes to go up. How's that quote go? Something about business getting out of hand and us being lucky to live through it...
I've never found a liberal who could state a position without resorting to insults.
The inevitable result is that people simply stop, keep quiet, and get on with their lives. Then, in the privacy of the voting booth, they vote for the candidate promising reform, and against the candidate with insults and no real position.
Isn't that a better and simpler explanation than "nazis and supremacists"?
I guess he's getting tired of living in his Ecuadorian mom's basement and his 15 minutes of fame are over about an hour ago. Let that co-opted weasel dangle.
Does this actually matter?
I've often wondered why people keep trotting out these sorts of attacks. It's saying, literally, "this is not a good thing, because the person is somehow bad".
Firstly, it's only your opinion.
Secondly, Julian does not seem to have a lot of conceit, pompousness, or self-importance in other matters - including interviews. He's certainly confident and well-informed, but I haven't seen anything particularly negative about his demeanour.
Attention whore is an explanation of this one action, but with no other corroborating evidence do you think the explanation is likely? Are other explanations more likely than this one?
Thirdly, and most importantly, is this in any way relevant? Is there some reason we can't say "good job, Julian!" and think that maybe his actions are doing some good for the world?
Must we discount this achievement because he's not your model of perfection?
Unless we're talking H1-Bs I don't see that in the slightest. What I do see is several of my buddies in dead end jobs (and a few acquaintances rocking recent CS degrees stuck in crap IT jobs) while workers here on cheap visas and outsourcing dominate the industry.
Okay, now turn that around.
How do you feel about DACA, total amnesty, and unrestricted immigration?
Lots and lots of people are screaming for DACA and giving citizenship to just about anyone who can evade the border guards and get here.
DACA and other immigration issues speak to the same problems you are complaining about. The argument is that the country cannot absorb the illegal immigrants(*), doing so would wreck the future outlook and way of life for US citizens.
So, based on your post, how do you feel about DACA and amnesty?
(*) Legal immigration is a separate issue. Related, but it can compensate for negative population growth, so it isn't actually a problem.
>Yes, people can be retrained. Really depending on age and openmindedness though. But robots can also retrained and in less time for certain things.
Sure. More options for business. They will choose whatever is cheaper option.
The only answer to technological progress vis-a-vis employment problem is 2000 years old: "bread and circuses". Free bread and free circuses for fired. In our days this must include shelter.
>Yes, people can be retrained. Really depending on age and openmindedness though. But robots can also retrained and in less time for certain things.
Sure. More options for business. They will choose whatever is cheaper option.
The only answer to technological progress vis-a-vis employment problem is 2000 years old: "bread and circuses". Free bread and free circuses for fired. In our days this must include shelter.
I'd like to think that we're (the world) smarter than that, and that we (the readers of this forum) are the smart people in the room.
This is an impending problem, and one of the definitions of intelligence is that it is proportional to your planning horizon. We can see this as an impending problem, so let's anticipate the problem and fix it.
Current theories of economics are flawed, being based on assumptions of "infinite" that are no longer true. Consumption isn't infinite, population growth isn't infinite (thankfully, for the sake of our resources), and as a corollary jobs aren't infinite. (Minor other corollaries too; for example, the market for your product isn't infinite.) Productivity rises at an exponential rate (3% growth compounded over time), and has doubled in about the last 40-ish years.
Current theories of economics that extrapolate the past to the future are invalid. Referring to Luddites, sabotaging the looms, throwing your wooden shoes into the looms, or anything that says "it's been OK before, it'll be OK this time" are flawed because they rely on nothing but past performance to predict future behaviour, while future predictions rely on math and assumptions. It's the turkey believing that the farmer will continue to protect and feed it, because that's what the farmer has done for the turkey's entire life.
Current measures of the economy are flawed because they don't include the welfare of the workers. Up to recently, measures of economy have been all about the productivity - the sum total of the profits of businesses, without regard to the welfare of the people. The economy is strong when profits go up. It's flawed because economics is clearly a loop: you need citizens with wealth to purchase products, and the math has to change to reflect that.
Given these flaws in our economics, we need a way forward that doesn't predict in the collapse of civilization.
I know there are at least 5 changes that might work, but it all starts with the smart people in the room.
What changes can we come up with, and how do we encourage these changes?
Without using words such as "only way", "doomed to", and "must".
We need to make changes. How do we do that?
When Facebook was censoring posts, and taking down insane things under the pretext of "hate speech" you never heard a peep from the liberals.
Now there's a chance of a Russia connection so OMFG WE WANT ANSWERS!
Meanwhile, the NH has found that out-of-state voters probably tipped the state to Hillary away from Trump, and almost definitely stole the Senate seat.
(NH allows for same-day voter registration, and you don't need a NH license to vote - only a "promise" that you've moved to NH and that you're in the process of getting your license transferred. Using round numbers, of 6,000 non-resident voters who registered on the day of the election, 5,000 have not actually moved to NH 9 months later. MA and VT are predominately Democratic, but NH is a swing state and the senate race was particularly close: incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte lost to challenger Maggie Hassan (D). Hassan won by a razor-thin margin of 1,017 votes. if 59.2 percent of out-of-state voters voted democratic, then that senate seat was stolen by non-resident voters.)
(Also, the senate currently sits at 52-48 in favor of R, and there have been several razor-thin votes since the election. That one seat stolen illegally has had an amplified effect on federal policy.)
Trump uses Russian dressing on his salad and it's all Russia! Russia! Russia!, but mention voter fraud and it's "nothing to see here, move along".
Why? Because it is? I know that you're a small minded individual unable to critically think but you might be shocked to learn...
Does this address the points he made, or is it an attempt to derail the issue by getting into a shouting match?
How does something like this get modded up?
If we allow this sort of thing on our debate floor (and yes, this forum is ours) we will never have reasoned debate.
It'll be trivial to take any subject out of view by derailing it.
If we let it. Please don't mod this crap up.
Because there's a difference between burning books at some points in time (which Christianity certainly did, as did many other religious and ideologies) and burning books being such a complete default that one should be "surprised" by it. In that context, just like some of the other Islam related comments in this thread, it is classic trolling, and if sincere says more about the people making the statements than it does about the groups they are making comments about.
Says more what?
This is a nice example of "innuendo from nothing". It implies that the people in a debate are somehow inferior, while saying exactly nothing about them.
It's a cross between an ad-hominem attack and a stand-alone complex.
Shouldn't we focus on the debate instead of the character of the debater?
No, you were not. You read Breitbart, which clearly indicates your PoV.
Yeah, but before about a year ago I *didn't*.
Today I go to Breitbart first, to find out what's going on.
Then I check the MSM, to find out why it's Trump's fault.
If you want people to start believing in climate change, you should start using logic and science in your arguments.
Instead of, you know, insults.
Two storms of unusual magnitude, exceptional temperatures in parts of CA, but hey, climate change is worldwide con, right?
Not a con, closer to a religion.
Scientists who want to speak out are threatened in various ways, the arguments are made by insult and bullying, some (read: some) of the methods are sketchy, and some of the data has been manipulated.
I used to be a climate change believer, until about a year ago when it was highlighted as a political issue, and not an issue of science. I had been blinded by everyone saying things like "the science is settled" and "all scientists agree" and so on. It was an epiphany to discover that something I held as "obviously correct" was based on, effectively, nothing.
Well, the science is not settled, the "all scientists agree" is taken out of context and doesn't refer to what you think it does, the data has been manipulated, and most importantly critique and debate are not allowed.
The whole issue also conflates the political decisions with the science. Anyone who disagrees with the political policy, such as carbon credits or reducing US birth rate, is called stupid for not believing in science.
Interpretation by a chosen elite, evidence in either direction supports the conclusion, disbelievers are harassed and threatened, discussion and disagreement are not allowed... that sounds like a religion.
Climate change is a religion.
I would rather actually fund education so more people would be qualified for work beyond being a meat-part in a machine, doing the same thing over and over again for days, months, years.
That was a good idea in previous decades.
Currently the number of jobs is shrinking, while the workforce is not(*). it's already causing a lot of stress in our society, and probably one reason for the recent election results.
The system was able to soak up some of the excess - the meme of children living with their parents until well into adulthood is one result - but it's starting to show signs of saturation. The burgeoning debt of education versus finding a job, currently being a topic of concern, is one bit of evidence.
Training and education are certainly important, but it doesn't address the problem. It'll only result in educated unemployed.
We need a way to support non-workers in our society, and pretty quick.
(*) Roughly speaking, population is remaining steady. Meanwhile, productivity keeps rising.
US production per worker is currently about $58,000, and seems to be going up by $10,000 per decade.
That's per capita, meaning "per person". If the per-capita output were distributed equally to every man, woman, and child everyone would have about $58.000 to spend. Each year. Including kids and babies. And they could do it again next year.
This will only go up as AI and automation take over. A huge number of driving jobs will be taken over by self-driving vehicles in the next decade (already happening with long-haul trucks), and AI and robotics will take over ever more of the production, working 24/7 and making more goods, more cheaply, and faster than humans.
We need to transition away from the current economic system real soon, or suffer massive riots and the downfall of our culture as unemployed people riot and take it down for us.
We need a way to spread the wealth out a little more evenly. UBI is one way, and we're getting really close to the point where UBI will be cheaper than the cost of government assistance plus the lost cost of higher crime and prison for the poor.
Perhaps taxing the robots and using the money to fund the rest of UBI would work.
We could also lower the SS retirement age, or go to a 4-day work week. Lots of options, many would work or could be made to work.
But we have to start transitioning just about now, or risk the downfall of our culture.
If it is Google Fiber specifically or from another company, the project was a total succeeds. In my neighborhood, access speeds went from being around 20-30mbps on the top end to Gigabit through CenturyLink. Countless other ISPs have all started offering gigabit class service due to the pressure that Google Fiber caused. Google brought competition, and the market was forced to react. (almost) everyone wins! Except those smucks still stuck in areas that have government restrictions on what can/cant be made available in their areas.
Uh, no dude. It wasn't.
A small section of the country wins, and every other community in the nation loses, because the incumbents were able to push Google out of the market.
It only goes to show that the carriers could give us all broadband, and would even probably make money from doing that.
We have to vote agaisn't our own self interests as those guys on AM radio and Fox make seem voting for anyone who favors us as pretty scary. If we give them some more free money they will be nice to us.
Our side has been actually doing something about it.
Lots of Republican congress seats are coming up in 2018, and many of them realize that if they don't get off their butts and do something, they're going to be voted out. There's a mood running through the population right now to that specific effect: people are saying "do something or we'll kick your butt to the curb in next year's elections".
Many Republicans are worried that they'll lose to a challenger in the upcoming primary if they don't start doing things.
Some are planning to use the upcoming debt-limit deadline (end of Sept) to force the Democrats to fund building the wall(*).
And Trump is being selective with his support for certain campaigns, with the result that not having POTUS support makes it increasingly difficult to win reelection. Karma for RINOs.
All these things are putting pressure on Republicans to start making decisions that favour the American people.
You might try asking your side to do that as well. I'd *love* to see the two sides compete for the role of "best leadership".
Here's a hint: marketing tag-lines such as "a better deal" without specific policies to back them up simply won't work.
(*) But with Hurricane Harvey in Texas there's talk of putting that off a few months so that the government doesn't shut down and leave Texas in the lurch.
[...] I find out you put a pic of me on FB without my knowledge and best case, you ain't my friend. Worst case I sue you.
I was under the impression that you need to have suffered damages to sue.
Is that no longer true?
After all, if you declare on your tax return that your annual income is $30,000 and your Facebook page is full of pictures of you taking vacations in Hawaii, Fiji, Bermuda, etc., as well as photos taken from your first class seat in the airplane, then they have good reason to audit you. As long as they're searching public information only (eg. your PUBLIC Facebook profile and Twitter account) and not using special government powers to look at private information which would not be viewable by the general public, then I don't see a problem with this. You have no expectation of privacy when you post your vacation pictures to your public Facebook profile.
I've often wondered whether this sort of data can be used as evidence.
Recently someone live-streamed themselves driving drunk (in Miami, IIRC) and posted it to youtube, and were subsequently arrested and charged. I can suppose that he was also caught on traffic cameras, but what if he wasn't?
There's no reason why this sort of information can't be faked - I could easily make up a FB account to presents myself as much richer than I actually am, I could fake a live-stream drunk driving video, and I can simply put "PhD" after my name for more status. People fake news events all the time, and some of it gets reported by the press.
Absent any corroborating evidence, could social media data be used to convict?
If someone fakes a drunk-driving video and is arrested, can the police then be sued for false arrest?
How much of a legal responsibility do we have for saying only the truth online?
There is something disappointing that punching someone earns 2 people $175 million dollars. Shame we dont have as much enthusiasm for Nobel laureates as we do for sports and the oscars.
It would probably end up like novel writing.
You can openly comment on his post here.
https://www.facebook.com/photo...
Don't do that.
Direct your attention to the slashdot editors, who are the ones responsible for this crap on the front page.
Doxxing and belittling is immature, unfair, and a favourite tactic of our home-grown capital "A" terrorist organization.
Did you want to be known as one of them?
I wish you'd call it a lie when Trump says it and acknowledge that people can be wrong without lying.
Whether Mr. Long is competent, or not, will be seen shortly, but I won't accuse you of lying if he isn't.
I'm sorry that my response offended you.
Next time I'll remember to be polite and gentle responding to a leftist post, because those posts always are.
No, we're not talking about nominations that aren't getting through. We're talking about nominations that haven't been MADE.
You mean like Brock Long, head of FEMA?
The Brock Long that isn't incompetent?
The Brock Long that was confirmed in June?