What difference does it make at this point? The case is closed, the company is gone, people have gone to jail. It's completely irrelevant today. There are also plenty of public records of the trials if anyone wants to know the details.
It may be due to the upcoming Mueller report and Sidney Powell, who wrote an expose book a couple of years back about the FBI.
She was recently interviewed on Mark Levin's show, and has some very condemnatory information about Mueller, some people on Mueller's team, and the FBI in general.
(NB: Sydney Powell is a former federal prosecutor, worked at the DOJ for 10 years, and lead counsel in over 500 federal appeals. Highly credible, whose information can't be dismissed out of hand.)
The Enron data might have been deleted because it might have been used to prove/disprove some of Sidney Powell's accusations.
Yes, Trump got played like a baby by Foxconn. They roped him like a baby calf and he was more than happy to buy their ridiculous claims.
Despite the article saying specifically that it was the election of a Democrat that changed their mind?
Regarding the Trump thing, you're complaining about something that doesn't go our way in the middle of the situation. The right time to pass judgement is when it's all over, when the dust has settled, and when we can evaluate whether minor setbacks in the middle were worth the overall outcome.
Similar with the N. Korea peace negotiations. These things take time, there will be some back and forth, and possibly nothing will come of it... but now is not the time to make judgement. Let the situation play out, and *then* figure out whether we are better off. At the very least, the president talked us out of a nuclear war.
State governments giving away billions in tax benefits is arguably a bad idea. How long would it take for 13,000 additional labor-jobs to be worth the loss of $3 billion in tax credits? Even if you account for add-on benefits to the economy, it would take decades... and depending on inflation and other details, the deal might possibly never be revenue neutral.
We really don't know at this point whether this is good or bad for the US, and the tendency to blame Trump for every little thing that irks you in the country is tedious as hell.
Grow up, set your hatred aside, and post something insightful for a change.
That was before interfering with US election process was on the table.
And before that, Hillary asked her staff for ways to kill him - and was taken serious enough that a couple of aides took it at face value and researched ways to do it.
So your statement could be expanded as:
That was before tanking Hillary's election because she threatened to kill him.
But of course he did that, and now America wants revenge.
And all of this, originally, over making public the "collateral murder" videos (and a bunch of other stuff). America talks big about whistleblowers, but when it comes right down to it, our government is just as petty and vindictive as any dictatorship.
The blacklist lists a 2-year suspension, with an update wayyyyy down the page indicating that the suspension was reduced, as noted in the OP. And you really have to read into the text to find this out.
"The Central Disciplinary Court has declared a number of complaints components to be (partially) unfounded and has imposed on the plastic surgeon the lower measure of conditional suspension for a period of 4 months with a probationary period of 2 years."
So it seems that some of the original 9 complaints are unfounded, and this is a case of he said/she said, with a dispute of what actually happened.
If we are really serious about combating fake news, then why shouldn't Google have to delist the biased and misleading blacklist, in favor of other more accurate reviews?
I note that Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) complained that doing an image search of him came up with a photoshopped image of his head on a Nazi uniform in the top row. (source) Scott complained to Google and got no response, and only after asking his followers complain did the image get *somewhat* downranked. It's still there in the first page of image results.
He points out that the image came from a twitter account with 15 followers:
“Now, these are real pictures that people have ‘memed up’ on Twitter and somewhere else, but here’s the thing, if you click through to those pictures they are the least, smallest, most minor mention of me compared to everything I’ve been doing for years. So, I’m asking myself, and I’m gonna ask you as well, do you think given that – so one of these clicks through, one of the pictures of me wearing a photoshopped Nazi uniform, if you click through it goes to a fake Twitter account that’s pretending to be me that has only 15 followers.”
Adams asked: “Do you think that a fake Twitter account that has only 15 followers would have enough followers that Google’s algorithm would pick that? Of all the pictures there are of me, there are a lot of pictures of me in the public domain, in articles. I was probably in 25 major articles last year alone, and this one little 15 user fake Twitter account is the fourth image that comes up?”
It seems perfectly reasonable that people should start pushing back against Google's search manipulation, and the "right to be forgotten" seems to be a good first step.
“With the southern border, we have the loss of at least 15,000 Americans a year. You have 2,000 that are homicides by illegal aliens, according to federal government data. You’ve got another 15,000, 16,000 that die each year from heroin overdoses, 90 percent of which comes across our porous southern border. That’s not counting the 55,000 additional deaths that are caused by overdoses, a significant amount of which comes across the southern border,” Brooks stated."
I've looked into this, and the numbers are accurate. The GAO estimates for 2009 show that Arizona had 240 illegal immigrant inmates incarcerated in federal prison for homicide related charges. California had 2430, Florida had 480, New York had 1350, and Texas had 900.
"Taking the data only from these five states, and assuming that each person incarcerated for a homicide-related offense is responsible for only one death, yields 5,400 people killed by illegal aliens."
For comparison, automobile deaths in the US is around 35,000 annually.
Total non-medical deaths in the US is about 161,000 annually. Deaths due to illegals is more than 2% of that, possibly as much as 10%, depending on where you put the blame for overdosing.
All of this is fact, and should be the basis for any political arguments about the wall.
My favorite study along these lines was a randomized selection of men, half of whom were injected with steroids and half got no steroids. Neither group showed muscle gains during the study period. Not mentioned in the headline was that neither group lifted weights or engaged in any exercise. So in a sense the headline was true: just taking steroids doesn't give you big muscles. But the guys in my gym who took steroids got big because they were able to recuperate faster from heavier workouts.
My favorites are medical studies on vitamins and supplements and other related.
For example, a 4-week study of Glucosamine/Chondroitin supplements that had no effect on joint pain of Rheumatoid Arthritis patients.
Conclusion? G/C supplementation has no effect.
Reality? We don't really know. 1) G/C supplementation is to make stronger and healthier joints by supplying building blocks not otherwise found in the diet, and 2) Joints have no blood vessels, so change very slowly. Typically 7 weeks or more would be needed to see an effect.
Compare with: St. John's Wort depression studies lasting less than 4 weeks (medical depression meds sometimes take as much as 6 weeks to show an effect), Omega 3 fatty acid supplementation studies in healthy adults (instead of children/adults with behavioral issues), and so on.
Nutrition studies are particularly useless. My favorite example is the guy making Soylent started out by asking the simplest question: what nutrients do we actually need to be healthy?
The answer is: No one knows, the literature is a bewildering mess of confusing and contradictory results, and nutrition experts have differing views.
(If you don't believe me, see if you can determine a) the *minimum* amount of vitamin D needed daily to prevent disease, and b) the *optimum* amount needed for best health. Bonus points if you can determine whether mega doses of Vitamin D are toxic. Supplemental bonus points if you can determine whether mega doses of Iodine are toxic.)
This 60% thing is an interesting statistic, but it would be more relevant if we could see the proportion of Americans who didn't get pay raises for the last 5 years or so. It's effectively citing a number without a baseline for comparison.
Additionally, it could also be phrased as "40% of Americans got a pay raise this year", and in the context of our recent depression (starting at around 2008) might be a piece of good news. We'll never know.
The economy only really started to take off about October of last year, so we've only had a little more than a year of good economy. Will this trend continue? It might be nice to see a sparkline for this pay raise information month-by-month to see if represents an increasing trend.
Additional to that, the article as posted in a negative light (60%, without baseline) and immediately dives into how management all got raises. It then goes on to talk about minimum wage and how inflation hit a 6-year high in July of 2018.
The article is all about class envy, trying to gin up outrage in order to get clicks. Isn't it simply *awful* how those evil managers reward themselves while keeping most worker wages the same!!!
(Inflation in July 2018 was 0.01%, yet another number cited without baseline to provoke outrage.)
Really. It's well known that wages have been flat for much of the 2000's, and others report that US wage growth is at a nine-year high.
Just because we're having unexpectedly bigger than expected pay increases doesn't mean everyone is helped. Only the average is helped. Overall, most people have had their lives destroyed by Trump and now make less. I know my life is shit now that Trump has hurt the tech industry, and it's hard to find a job. My of my friends with CS degrees have lost their jobs under Trump. So fewer people are driving to jobs now that traffic is less worse in the Bay Area.
Out of curiosity, what's the difference between average and overall?
Can you reconcile "most people have had their lives destroyed" and "fewer people are driving to jobs..." with a steady unemployment rate of 3.8%?
So here's a little reality check for you... the rest of the world is losing patience with your President, and losing any feelings of friendship towards the US. We can no longer separate your asshole president from your idiot citizens who parrot the dumb shit he says.
I hear what you're saying - you would like your country to pay for your defense from Russia.
I think we can arrange that.
Real friends don't leech off of others, they abide by their obligations.
We're only making the tariffs fair and even. Trump has said repeatedly that he would welcome getting rid of all tariffs on both sides. He's said that directly to Merkel, using those exact words. Her response was to laugh.
I'm sorry, which industries has he bailed out? Coal? Natural gas and renewable are still eating their lunch. Steel and aluminum? I fail to see the boom except is CEO's blowing smoke in Trump's direction, although he very much likes and believes it.
In the meantime, he's helped tanked the farming and ag business. His tariffs are being paid by every industry and customer reliant on those imports. And now that inflation is taking off and given the eye-watering deficits and debt, the interest rates will continue to rise. That is tanking the rest of the world's economies. And sooner or later, they won't be able to afford American exports because of the dollar's strength and their own currencies weakness. See Turkey for a preview.
Steel and aluminum were national security issues. Specifically, there was one remaining foundry in the US capable of making steel plates, and you need those to make ships. We can't depend on other countries for war materiel, reference the English blockade of nitrates against Germany in the 1910s.
(Typical quote: "This meant that during the fifteen years preceding the outbreak of WWI, Germany became deeply dependent on obtaining goods from foreign merchants in order to keep its society stable and productive.")
Also, it's not hard to google the effect of steel and aluminum tariffs, and it's universally lauded in the cities where the foundries are.
Most of your argument is a simple prediction, with no modeling or rationality - simply saying "this bad thing will happen". He also hasn't "tanked" anything - I don't know if you've noticed, but the economy is doing great.
Normalizing tariffs, bringing the tariffs into parity with those of other nations, is a step towards free trade. Either by having commensurate tariffs or getting rid of tariffs altogether.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Isn't it time to look at a different tool for changing the relationship between the US and China? I can't imagine this hurting anybody but the US consumer - AND I suspect that it could be a boon for other countries looking for lower cost goods for their economies.
No offense, but Trump's tactics *are* the different tool.
Or would you rather go back to giving away our wealth to everyone and anyone worldwide?
Trump's not going to do shit about China. They're laughing at him and they know all they've got to do is wait now. It won't be long.
Plus, any further tariffs will be written on one of those pieces of paper his staff has been snatching off his desk to keep him from fucking up completely.
People who can read minds and predict the future belong on late night cable TV shows, 900 number call-ins on billboards, and newspaper horoscopes.
I don't know about the rest of/. but my wages have not kept pace with inflation. Cheap foreign goods has been the only thing that's kept my head above water. Now, you can argue that my wages will start climbing as a result of this, but a) that's not going to happen right away and in the meantime it means big inflation I can ill afford and b) it's not likely to happen since even if the factories come back they're likely to be modern factories heavy on automation, meaning few jobs.
Tariffs are good at protecting an existing business, but you have to have a business to protect for a tariff to work. The US has manufacturing and we were already doing a good job of protecting it. We've doubled out manufacturing output in the last 40 years (while cutting the workforce by 1/3 due to automation, I might add). Broad tariffs at this point are just closing the barn door after the cows got out.
Wages have been slow to adjust, but a recent report shows wage growth(*) at 2.9% last month (monthly increase, annualized for a year), which is higher than inflation. Unemployment is at about 2.9% and steady.
Don't forget that the economy, from the point of view of the *people*, only started to get better about October of last year. Looking at the DJIA (or other leading indicators) shows we were out of the woods and back to health in 2013.
We've had real economic recovery for the people only for about 11-ish months. Wages are starting to come up again, and it'll take some time to scrub off the barnacles that have been slowing us down.
(*)Yes, Breitbart.com, which always lies and never tells the truth and are a bunch of poo-poo heads that should be banned. Now dispute the actual numbers and the government report like an adult, or GTFO.
But he's a billionaire so it's called "eccentric". Sort of like Elizabeth Holmes and her fraud.
And he apparently smoked pot during the interview...
The newswires are all ablaze right now about Musk smoking pot in public(*), noting that the stock is down 5% in pre-market trading, and sure enough the stock is down 16 points today.
I admit that seems pretty stupid on his part.
(*) Which is apparently legal in the time and place where he did it, but still...
Hovering over countries (and US states) at random, I see that the UK is (at 9:45AM Eastern, US):
63% low carbon 40% renewable
Good for them! Uh... now I'm wondering what those numbers actually mean.
Since the percentages add to 103%, I assume they are measuring different things. Then, 63% of *what* is low carbon, and 40% of *what* is renewable?
Poring through the FAQ for explanation is not viewer friendly, they're not doing the public a favor. And for most cases, when the percentages add to *less than* 100% who would realize that they are measuring different things?
So you agree that entities that choose to serve to the public should be required to serve everyone; like say a baker making cakes, regardless of their personal beliefs?
I'd like to hear the court's opinion on that, but I think that one boils down to the difference between a commodity sale and a contract negotiation.
For custom work, you're basically negotiating a contract and you aren't required to agree to any particular contract or statement of conditions.
For a commodity sale, then yes - if you generally sell something to the public, then you should be required to sell to the parts of the public that you don't agree with.
We're seeing a lot of boycotting nowadays - "in-and-out burgers" got a boycott recently for making a donation to the Republican party. Mastercard and Visa stopped doing business with Wikileaks, and so on and so on. This is the analogue to social media banning and deleting accounts - they are a public company choosing who they do business with.
Can a Telco stop servicing a customer because they have a Trump sign in their front yard? Can the electric company (privately owned, as virtually all of them are) say that they will no longer deliver electricity to houses of gun owners? You don't *need* to get electricity, and in any event you could choose to move to another city.
My take is that having a license to do business gives you government-mandated protections, and in return there should be government-mandated requirements.
One of which is that, commodity sales have to be made to anyone.
In general, the court held that the more an area was opened up to public use, the more it had to abide by statutory rights of a person in a public place.
I'd like to see your source for that. That sounds like some weird quirky law. I can't imagine malls are legally required to have a public corkboard in the first place in most locations. I haven't looked for one, but I don't recall ever seeing one in any mall I've been in.
I think you're trying to provoke a snarky response.
Do you honestly have no way to search for this information?
1. Those in power that advocate socialism never live by he very rules they set for everyone else.
2. Eventually you run out of other people's money.
Number 1 is correct. The old Russian joke of a man standing on the corner expounding communism:
Man on soapbox: "Communism is great! If I have two cars, I give you one. If I have two houses, I give you one" Man in the audience: "What about shirts? If you have two shirts, will you give me one" Man on soapbox: "No" Man in audience: "Why?" Man on soapbox: "Because I have two shirts."
In the case of Bernie, he lives quite the hypocritical life for a socialist.
But onto point two:
It is straightforward to fund UBI, so long as you do it gradually (ie - not all at once).
Set aside $1 million for each UBI awarded, invested in index funds. Give out $25,000 annually from that fund, and it will still grow faster than inflation in perpetuity. Hold a lottery to pass out the UBI benefits.
Each $1 billion investment in UBI would remove 1,000 people from the workforce, which over time would greatly improve the working conditions for the remaining workers.
Over the course of a few decades, this would transition a large portion of the workforce over to UBI, while not relying on "other peoples' money".
For comparison, current welfare costs about $492 billion and serves 39 million people. Allocating $100 billion to a UBI would reduce that number by 100,000 people each year and fund them in perpetuity, reducing that particular taxpayer burden by 1/3 of one percent each year until it is no longer needed. That 1/3 of a percent reduction actually grows over time, as the $100 billion/100,000 people represents an ever larger percent of the people involved.
As opposed to costing $492 billion in taxes each year for the same number of people - in perpetuity.
The only current threat is THEIR censorship of political opposition who they are intolerant of.
Either they support free speech or they do not.
Unless Facebook and Twitter have been made public and are no longer private entities, they are not required to keep posted everything you write. They are corporate entities dealing with the public at large. They want to attract as large a public as possible to boost their incomes and help out their shareholders; sometimes that means removing things like hate speech that might otherwise make their platforms less desirable to certain demographics.
Facebook and Twitter aren't required to give you free speech.
And this should change.
That's the point everyone is making, that although it is perfectly legal that these sites are censoring whoever they like, that should change.
There's some legal precedent for this: when a shopping center is torn down and a mall built in its place, the mall can't prevent [otherwise legal] postings on its corkboard, because the mall has taken place of the supermarket public corkboard. Even though the mall is privately owned - the supermarket was also privately owned.
There's some legal precedent for this: when a service makes editorial decisions about what can and cannot appear on its site, it is then responsible for the content. Newspapers pay people to write articles, they can require any [otherwise legal] style or content they like. A blogging system with a vetted cadre of editors can require that the posts be on specific topics, can have specific views, and so on.
A site that allows anyone to post should be required to allow any post that is otherwise legal.
It's even worse, because these sites *used to be* allowing of legal free-speech, but after the election all that changed. Now that they've lured everyone in and become big, suddenly gun advocates are no longer allowed, or conservative views are no longer allowed.
Social media doesn't have to allow free speech currently, but that should change.
That's the point everyone is making.
It's also quite obvious that this is what has to happen, and that it is going to happen. The "masters of the universe" are too timid and/or clueless to realize this and get out in front of it, so expect this to happen:
a) Lots of warnings about one-sided suppression b) The midterms c) Lots of finger-pointing highlighting one-sided suppression as the cause(*) d) A new law, the "internet free speech act of 2019" soon after.
And again, the "masters of the universe" are too clueless to predict any of this, or avoid it before this happens.
(*) From either side, it doesn't matter. Enough Dems and Reps will be elected to provide fodder for both sides of this issue.
Open about:config in the Firefox location bar Type browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash in the filter box, or search for it manually iny Double click
"resume_from_crash" set to TRUE means don't resume ask the user, while "resume_from_crash" set to FALSE means resume from crash immediately.
It's like you have to leave your command of English at the door and just "do what the devs say to do".
(BTW: Thanks for the tip, I just changed it, and I'll see if it works. Would have saved me a zillion hours of work if I could have found it on the net at the time.)
I really want to like Firefox. I do. I use it as my primary browser right now.
But... I still find myself opening Chrome pretty often for various reasons.
I like to start my computer and go start the coffee, to come back to a system with all my pages reloaded.
Firefox (of the time) absolutely doesn't want to reload pages if it can help it. It would rather wait until the user clicks on a tab and then make them wait for the page load, and/or thinks that yesterday's cache of Slashdot, or the weather report, or Google news is what you really wanted.
This can be fixed, but only after a couple of hours of searching and trying out the various combinations of three obscure "about: config" parameters. (The param: browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand should be set to... true or false?)
Firefox then started with the "Firefox wasn't shut down properly, would you like to restore your pages" thing every time I shut down my computer without closing Firefox first. (Why can't Firefox just ignore this? Why isn't there a checkbox "never ask again" on that page?)
So I made a script that triggers at system boot that automatically finds and presses that button after Firefox has loaded. This is not a trivial task, due to timing and lack of general transparency on X-windows systems, and has taken me tens of hours and much fiddling to get right. It involved various combinations of xtoolwait, wmctrl, and xdotool.
All well and good, until the last update...
And now Firefox starts at system boot, my program presses the "reload button", and... firefox starts and automatically "minimizes" to a tiny screen on the display. I have to manually grab the firefox window, move it, then click the "maximize" window to get a full screen again.
(And note "xdotool windowsize $WindowID 100% 100%" has no effect, and I don't know why because I've only spent about 1/2 an hour trying to figure it out the next problem. Probably a timing issue or something.)
At this point the cumulative aggravation of using Firefox is becoming too much to handle, I'd rather not have to spend three or four hours *every update* trying to figure out how to get it to do simple things, and I really *really* liked some of the previous add-ons.
The problem is the President committed treason, obstruction, tax fraud and about a hundred other crimes and your faggot ass has no spine in it so you justify continuing to support him because he's racist like you are. You should both hang.
I'm going to print that comment out and tack it to my corkboard - thanks!:-)
How can anyone respect, admire, follow, or in any way support this overfed cesspool of ignorance and corruption defies science.
It would help if the cesspool had published this policy beforehand, so that people wouldn't get the wrong impression.
One problem with all of this is that the ranking algorithms are largely opaque - things that happen for completely legitimate and reasonable reasons can be seen to be the child of ignorance and corruption.
A very good example of the way people can take something completely innocent the wrong way is Google's treatment of Trump and Clinton in the last election. The examples show the Google suggestions for various search completions, against those same searches on Yahoo and Bing.
For example, searching for "Hillary Clinton is " shows many results of "is awesome", "is winning", and so on for Google, while that same search on Yahoo and Bing results in many disparaging completions.
All of this, despite "Hillary Clinton is a liar" versus "Hillary Clinton is awesome" shows that the former search term has a much higher relevance.
The Google search term "crooked " returned "smile", "smile lyrics", and "creek" at the time, while the same search on Yahoo and Bing returned "Crooked Hillary" despite *that* phrase having an obvious trend relevance during the election cycle.
On a more recent note, searching YouTube for "How Trump Should Deal With Cohen & Manafort – Ann Coulter", the *exact* title of a video by Anne Coulter, puts the exact match far below a list of dissenting videos that google thinks you should see instead.
It all boils down to Robert Epstein's published paper that shows that search engine results can sway an election.
Google is making use of their position in light of that paper.
Wouldn't you?
This effect has been well documented for the last couple of years or so.
Even the Google search "when is the election" shows a smiling image of Hillary Clinton, as if her presidential opponent didn't exist. That page clearly (and subliminally) associates the smiling image of Hillary with the upcoming election.
All these results *seem* to be statistically and scientifically valid.
This is the sort of thing our president is complaining about.
And it seems that there is, in fact, a problem here.
Slashdot Mirror
What difference does it make at this point? The case is closed, the company is gone, people have gone to jail. It's completely irrelevant today. There are also plenty of public records of the trials if anyone wants to know the details.
It may be due to the upcoming Mueller report and Sidney Powell, who wrote an expose book a couple of years back about the FBI.
She was recently interviewed on Mark Levin's show, and has some very condemnatory information about Mueller, some people on Mueller's team, and the FBI in general.
(NB: Sydney Powell is a former federal prosecutor, worked at the DOJ for 10 years, and lead counsel in over 500 federal appeals. Highly credible, whose information can't be dismissed out of hand.)
The Enron data might have been deleted because it might have been used to prove/disprove some of Sidney Powell's accusations.
See title.
Yes, Trump got played like a baby by Foxconn. They roped him like a baby calf and he was more than happy to buy their ridiculous claims.
Despite the article saying specifically that it was the election of a Democrat that changed their mind?
Regarding the Trump thing, you're complaining about something that doesn't go our way in the middle of the situation. The right time to pass judgement is when it's all over, when the dust has settled, and when we can evaluate whether minor setbacks in the middle were worth the overall outcome.
Similar with the N. Korea peace negotiations. These things take time, there will be some back and forth, and possibly nothing will come of it... but now is not the time to make judgement. Let the situation play out, and *then* figure out whether we are better off. At the very least, the president talked us out of a nuclear war.
State governments giving away billions in tax benefits is arguably a bad idea. How long would it take for 13,000 additional labor-jobs to be worth the loss of $3 billion in tax credits? Even if you account for add-on benefits to the economy, it would take decades... and depending on inflation and other details, the deal might possibly never be revenue neutral.
We really don't know at this point whether this is good or bad for the US, and the tendency to blame Trump for every little thing that irks you in the country is tedious as hell.
Grow up, set your hatred aside, and post something insightful for a change.
That was before interfering with US election process was on the table.
And before that, Hillary asked her staff for ways to kill him - and was taken serious enough that a couple of aides took it at face value and researched ways to do it.
So your statement could be expanded as:
That was before tanking Hillary's election because she threatened to kill him.
But of course he did that, and now America wants revenge.
And all of this, originally, over making public the "collateral murder" videos (and a bunch of other stuff). America talks big about whistleblowers, but when it comes right down to it, our government is just as petty and vindictive as any dictatorship.
The blacklist lists a 2-year suspension, with an update wayyyyy down the page indicating that the suspension was reduced, as noted in the OP. And you really have to read into the text to find this out.
This comment stood out in the legal proceedings:
"The Central Disciplinary Court has declared a number of complaints components to be (partially) unfounded and has imposed on the plastic surgeon the lower measure of conditional suspension for a period of 4 months with a probationary period of 2 years."
So it seems that some of the original 9 complaints are unfounded, and this is a case of he said/she said, with a dispute of what actually happened.
If we are really serious about combating fake news, then why shouldn't Google have to delist the biased and misleading blacklist, in favor of other more accurate reviews?
I note that Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) complained that doing an image search of him came up with a photoshopped image of his head on a Nazi uniform in the top row. (source) Scott complained to Google and got no response, and only after asking his followers complain did the image get *somewhat* downranked. It's still there in the first page of image results.
He points out that the image came from a twitter account with 15 followers:
“Now, these are real pictures that people have ‘memed up’ on Twitter and somewhere else, but here’s the thing, if you click through to those pictures they are the least, smallest, most minor mention of me compared to everything I’ve been doing for years. So, I’m asking myself, and I’m gonna ask you as well, do you think given that – so one of these clicks through, one of the pictures of me wearing a photoshopped Nazi uniform, if you click through it goes to a fake Twitter account that’s pretending to be me that has only 15 followers.”
Adams asked: “Do you think that a fake Twitter account that has only 15 followers would have enough followers that Google’s algorithm would pick that? Of all the pictures there are of me, there are a lot of pictures of me in the public domain, in articles. I was probably in 25 major articles last year alone, and this one little 15 user fake Twitter account is the fourth image that comes up?”
It seems perfectly reasonable that people should start pushing back against Google's search manipulation, and the "right to be forgotten" seems to be a good first step.
There is also the human cost to consider.
Rep. Brooks outlines the cost of not having a wall:
“With the southern border, we have the loss of at least 15,000 Americans a year. You have 2,000 that are homicides by illegal aliens, according to federal government data. You’ve got another 15,000, 16,000 that die each year from heroin overdoses, 90 percent of which comes across our porous southern border. That’s not counting the 55,000 additional deaths that are caused by overdoses, a significant amount of which comes across the southern border,” Brooks stated."
I've looked into this, and the numbers are accurate. The GAO estimates for 2009 show that Arizona had 240 illegal immigrant inmates incarcerated in federal prison for homicide related charges. California had 2430, Florida had 480, New York had 1350, and Texas had 900.
"Taking the data only from these five states, and assuming that each person incarcerated for a homicide-related offense is responsible for only one death, yields 5,400 people killed by illegal aliens."
For comparison, automobile deaths in the US is around 35,000 annually.
Total non-medical deaths in the US is about 161,000 annually. Deaths due to illegals is more than 2% of that, possibly as much as 10%, depending on where you put the blame for overdosing.
All of this is fact, and should be the basis for any political arguments about the wall.
The human cost of not having a wall is very high.
My favorite study along these lines was a randomized selection of men, half of whom were injected with steroids and half got no steroids. Neither group showed muscle gains during the study period. Not mentioned in the headline was that neither group lifted weights or engaged in any exercise. So in a sense the headline was true: just taking steroids doesn't give you big muscles. But the guys in my gym who took steroids got big because they were able to recuperate faster from heavier workouts.
My favorites are medical studies on vitamins and supplements and other related.
For example, a 4-week study of Glucosamine/Chondroitin supplements that had no effect on joint pain of Rheumatoid Arthritis patients.
Conclusion? G/C supplementation has no effect.
Reality? We don't really know. 1) G/C supplementation is to make stronger and healthier joints by supplying building blocks not otherwise found in the diet, and 2) Joints have no blood vessels, so change very slowly. Typically 7 weeks or more would be needed to see an effect.
Compare with: St. John's Wort depression studies lasting less than 4 weeks (medical depression meds sometimes take as much as 6 weeks to show an effect), Omega 3 fatty acid supplementation studies in healthy adults (instead of children/adults with behavioral issues), and so on.
Nutrition studies are particularly useless. My favorite example is the guy making Soylent started out by asking the simplest question: what nutrients do we actually need to be healthy?
The answer is: No one knows, the literature is a bewildering mess of confusing and contradictory results, and nutrition experts have differing views.
(If you don't believe me, see if you can determine a) the *minimum* amount of vitamin D needed daily to prevent disease, and b) the *optimum* amount needed for best health. Bonus points if you can determine whether mega doses of Vitamin D are toxic. Supplemental bonus points if you can determine whether mega doses of Iodine are toxic.)
This 60% thing is an interesting statistic, but it would be more relevant if we could see the proportion of Americans who didn't get pay raises for the last 5 years or so. It's effectively citing a number without a baseline for comparison.
Additionally, it could also be phrased as "40% of Americans got a pay raise this year", and in the context of our recent depression (starting at around 2008) might be a piece of good news. We'll never know.
The economy only really started to take off about October of last year, so we've only had a little more than a year of good economy. Will this trend continue? It might be nice to see a sparkline for this pay raise information month-by-month to see if represents an increasing trend.
Additional to that, the article as posted in a negative light (60%, without baseline) and immediately dives into how management all got raises. It then goes on to talk about minimum wage and how inflation hit a 6-year high in July of 2018.
The article is all about class envy, trying to gin up outrage in order to get clicks. Isn't it simply *awful* how those evil managers reward themselves while keeping most worker wages the same!!!
(Inflation in July 2018 was 0.01%, yet another number cited without baseline to provoke outrage.)
Really. It's well known that wages have been flat for much of the 2000's, and others report that US wage growth is at a nine-year high.
Take a skeptics view of click-bait articles.
Just because we're having unexpectedly bigger than expected pay increases doesn't mean everyone is helped. Only the average is helped. Overall, most people have had their lives destroyed by Trump and now make less. I know my life is shit now that Trump has hurt the tech industry, and it's hard to find a job. My of my friends with CS degrees have lost their jobs under Trump. So fewer people are driving to jobs now that traffic is less worse in the Bay Area.
Out of curiosity, what's the difference between average and overall?
Can you reconcile "most people have had their lives destroyed" and "fewer people are driving to jobs..." with a steady unemployment rate of 3.8%?
I can reconcile those claims in three words:
Trump Derangement Syndrome
So here's a little reality check for you ... the rest of the world is losing patience with your President, and losing any feelings of friendship towards the US. We can no longer separate your asshole president from your idiot citizens who parrot the dumb shit he says.
I hear what you're saying - you would like your country to pay for your defense from Russia.
I think we can arrange that.
Real friends don't leech off of others, they abide by their obligations.
We're only making the tariffs fair and even. Trump has said repeatedly that he would welcome getting rid of all tariffs on both sides. He's said that directly to Merkel, using those exact words. Her response was to laugh.
Eliminating all tariffs seems fair.
Do you have a problem with fair?
I'm sorry, which industries has he bailed out? Coal? Natural gas and renewable are still eating their lunch. Steel and aluminum? I fail to see the boom except is CEO's blowing smoke in Trump's direction, although he very much likes and believes it.
In the meantime, he's helped tanked the farming and ag business. His tariffs are being paid by every industry and customer reliant on those imports. And now that inflation is taking off and given the eye-watering deficits and debt, the interest rates will continue to rise. That is tanking the rest of the world's economies. And sooner or later, they won't be able to afford American exports because of the dollar's strength and their own currencies weakness. See Turkey for a preview.
Steel and aluminum were national security issues. Specifically, there was one remaining foundry in the US capable of making steel plates, and you need those to make ships. We can't depend on other countries for war materiel, reference the English blockade of nitrates against Germany in the 1910s.
(Typical quote: "This meant that during the fifteen years preceding the outbreak of WWI, Germany became deeply dependent on obtaining goods from foreign merchants in order to keep its society stable and productive.")
Also, it's not hard to google the effect of steel and aluminum tariffs, and it's universally lauded in the cities where the foundries are.
Most of your argument is a simple prediction, with no modeling or rationality - simply saying "this bad thing will happen". He also hasn't "tanked" anything - I don't know if you've noticed, but the economy is doing great.
Normalizing tariffs, bringing the tariffs into parity with those of other nations, is a step towards free trade. Either by having commensurate tariffs or getting rid of tariffs altogether.
I don't know why anyone would be against that.
If you want people to look at the government report, link to the government report, not fucking Breitbart.
Yeah... those guys are a real bunch of poopy heads. Right?
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Isn't it time to look at a different tool for changing the relationship between the US and China? I can't imagine this hurting anybody but the US consumer - AND I suspect that it could be a boon for other countries looking for lower cost goods for their economies.
No offense, but Trump's tactics *are* the different tool.
Or would you rather go back to giving away our wealth to everyone and anyone worldwide?
Trump's not going to do shit about China. They're laughing at him and they know all they've got to do is wait now. It won't be long.
Plus, any further tariffs will be written on one of those pieces of paper his staff has been snatching off his desk to keep him from fucking up completely.
People who can read minds and predict the future belong on late night cable TV shows, 900 number call-ins on billboards, and newspaper horoscopes.
I don't know about the rest of /. but my wages have not kept pace with inflation. Cheap foreign goods has been the only thing that's kept my head above water. Now, you can argue that my wages will start climbing as a result of this, but a) that's not going to happen right away and in the meantime it means big inflation I can ill afford and b) it's not likely to happen since even if the factories come back they're likely to be modern factories heavy on automation, meaning few jobs.
Tariffs are good at protecting an existing business, but you have to have a business to protect for a tariff to work. The US has manufacturing and we were already doing a good job of protecting it. We've doubled out manufacturing output in the last 40 years (while cutting the workforce by 1/3 due to automation, I might add). Broad tariffs at this point are just closing the barn door after the cows got out.
Wages have been slow to adjust, but a recent report shows wage growth(*) at 2.9% last month (monthly increase, annualized for a year), which is higher than inflation. Unemployment is at about 2.9% and steady.
Don't forget that the economy, from the point of view of the *people*, only started to get better about October of last year. Looking at the DJIA (or other leading indicators) shows we were out of the woods and back to health in 2013.
We've had real economic recovery for the people only for about 11-ish months. Wages are starting to come up again, and it'll take some time to scrub off the barnacles that have been slowing us down.
(*)Yes, Breitbart.com, which always lies and never tells the truth and are a bunch of poo-poo heads that should be banned. Now dispute the actual numbers and the government report like an adult, or GTFO.
But he's a billionaire so it's called "eccentric". Sort of like Elizabeth Holmes and her fraud.
And he apparently smoked pot during the interview...
The newswires are all ablaze right now about Musk smoking pot in public(*), noting that the stock is down 5% in pre-market trading, and sure enough the stock is down 16 points today.
I admit that seems pretty stupid on his part.
(*) Which is apparently legal in the time and place where he did it, but still...
Hovering over countries (and US states) at random, I see that the UK is (at 9:45AM Eastern, US):
63% low carbon
40% renewable
Good for them! Uh... now I'm wondering what those numbers actually mean.
Since the percentages add to 103%, I assume they are measuring different things. Then, 63% of *what* is low carbon, and 40% of *what* is renewable?
Poring through the FAQ for explanation is not viewer friendly, they're not doing the public a favor. And for most cases, when the percentages add to *less than* 100% who would realize that they are measuring different things?
Or am I missing something?
So you agree that entities that choose to serve to the public should be required to serve everyone; like say a baker making cakes, regardless of their personal beliefs?
I'd like to hear the court's opinion on that, but I think that one boils down to the difference between a commodity sale and a contract negotiation.
For custom work, you're basically negotiating a contract and you aren't required to agree to any particular contract or statement of conditions.
For a commodity sale, then yes - if you generally sell something to the public, then you should be required to sell to the parts of the public that you don't agree with.
We're seeing a lot of boycotting nowadays - "in-and-out burgers" got a boycott recently for making a donation to the Republican party. Mastercard and Visa stopped doing business with Wikileaks, and so on and so on. This is the analogue to social media banning and deleting accounts - they are a public company choosing who they do business with.
Can a Telco stop servicing a customer because they have a Trump sign in their front yard? Can the electric company (privately owned, as virtually all of them are) say that they will no longer deliver electricity to houses of gun owners? You don't *need* to get electricity, and in any event you could choose to move to another city.
My take is that having a license to do business gives you government-mandated protections, and in return there should be government-mandated requirements.
One of which is that, commodity sales have to be made to anyone.
Here's one about handing out leaflets.
In general, the court held that the more an area was opened up to public use, the more it had to abide by statutory rights of a person in a public place.
I'd like to see your source for that. That sounds like some weird quirky law. I can't imagine malls are legally required to have a public corkboard in the first place in most locations. I haven't looked for one, but I don't recall ever seeing one in any mall I've been in.
I think you're trying to provoke a snarky response.
Do you honestly have no way to search for this information?
Two axiomatic problems with Socialism
1. Those in power that advocate socialism never live by he very rules they set for everyone else.
2. Eventually you run out of other people's money.
Number 1 is correct. The old Russian joke of a man standing on the corner expounding communism:
Man on soapbox: "Communism is great! If I have two cars, I give you one. If I have two houses, I give you one"
Man in the audience: "What about shirts? If you have two shirts, will you give me one"
Man on soapbox: "No"
Man in audience: "Why?"
Man on soapbox: "Because I have two shirts."
In the case of Bernie, he lives quite the hypocritical life for a socialist.
But onto point two:
It is straightforward to fund UBI, so long as you do it gradually (ie - not all at once).
Set aside $1 million for each UBI awarded, invested in index funds. Give out $25,000 annually from that fund, and it will still grow faster than inflation in perpetuity. Hold a lottery to pass out the UBI benefits.
Each $1 billion investment in UBI would remove 1,000 people from the workforce, which over time would greatly improve the working conditions for the remaining workers.
Over the course of a few decades, this would transition a large portion of the workforce over to UBI, while not relying on "other peoples' money".
For comparison, current welfare costs about $492 billion and serves 39 million people. Allocating $100 billion to a UBI would reduce that number by 100,000 people each year and fund them in perpetuity, reducing that particular taxpayer burden by 1/3 of one percent each year until it is no longer needed. That 1/3 of a percent reduction actually grows over time, as the $100 billion/100,000 people represents an ever larger percent of the people involved.
As opposed to costing $492 billion in taxes each year for the same number of people - in perpetuity.
The only current threat is THEIR censorship of political opposition who they are intolerant of.
Either they support free speech or they do not.
Unless Facebook and Twitter have been made public and are no longer private entities, they are not required to keep posted everything you write. They are corporate entities dealing with the public at large. They want to attract as large a public as possible to boost their incomes and help out their shareholders; sometimes that means removing things like hate speech that might otherwise make their platforms less desirable to certain demographics.
Facebook and Twitter aren't required to give you free speech.
And this should change.
That's the point everyone is making, that although it is perfectly legal that these sites are censoring whoever they like, that should change.
There's some legal precedent for this: when a shopping center is torn down and a mall built in its place, the mall can't prevent [otherwise legal] postings on its corkboard, because the mall has taken place of the supermarket public corkboard. Even though the mall is privately owned - the supermarket was also privately owned.
There's some legal precedent for this: when a service makes editorial decisions about what can and cannot appear on its site, it is then responsible for the content. Newspapers pay people to write articles, they can require any [otherwise legal] style or content they like. A blogging system with a vetted cadre of editors can require that the posts be on specific topics, can have specific views, and so on.
A site that allows anyone to post should be required to allow any post that is otherwise legal.
It's even worse, because these sites *used to be* allowing of legal free-speech, but after the election all that changed. Now that they've lured everyone in and become big, suddenly gun advocates are no longer allowed, or conservative views are no longer allowed.
Social media doesn't have to allow free speech currently, but that should change.
That's the point everyone is making.
It's also quite obvious that this is what has to happen, and that it is going to happen. The "masters of the universe" are too timid and/or clueless to realize this and get out in front of it, so expect this to happen:
a) Lots of warnings about one-sided suppression
b) The midterms
c) Lots of finger-pointing highlighting one-sided suppression as the cause(*)
d) A new law, the "internet free speech act of 2019" soon after.
And again, the "masters of the universe" are too clueless to predict any of this, or avoid it before this happens.
(*) From either side, it doesn't matter. Enough Dems and Reps will be elected to provide fodder for both sides of this issue.
Open about:config in the Firefox location bar
Type browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash in the filter box, or search for it manually iny
Double click
browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash
It should change from
browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash default boolean true
to
browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash user_set boolean false
And this is another peeve I have about Firefox.
"resume_from_crash" set to TRUE means don't resume ask the user, while
"resume_from_crash" set to FALSE means resume from crash immediately.
It's like you have to leave your command of English at the door and just "do what the devs say to do".
(BTW: Thanks for the tip, I just changed it, and I'll see if it works. Would have saved me a zillion hours of work if I could have found it on the net at the time.)
I really want to like Firefox. I do. I use it as my primary browser right now.
But... I still find myself opening Chrome pretty often for various reasons.
I like to start my computer and go start the coffee, to come back to a system with all my pages reloaded.
Firefox (of the time) absolutely doesn't want to reload pages if it can help it. It would rather wait until the user clicks on a tab and then make them wait for the page load, and/or thinks that yesterday's cache of Slashdot, or the weather report, or Google news is what you really wanted.
This can be fixed, but only after a couple of hours of searching and trying out the various combinations of three obscure "about: config" parameters. (The param: browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand should be set to... true or false?)
Firefox then started with the "Firefox wasn't shut down properly, would you like to restore your pages" thing every time I shut down my computer without closing Firefox first. (Why can't Firefox just ignore this? Why isn't there a checkbox "never ask again" on that page?)
So I made a script that triggers at system boot that automatically finds and presses that button after Firefox has loaded. This is not a trivial task, due to timing and lack of general transparency on X-windows systems, and has taken me tens of hours and much fiddling to get right. It involved various combinations of xtoolwait, wmctrl, and xdotool.
All well and good, until the last update...
And now Firefox starts at system boot, my program presses the "reload button", and... firefox starts and automatically "minimizes" to a tiny screen on the display. I have to manually grab the firefox window, move it, then click the "maximize" window to get a full screen again.
(And note "xdotool windowsize $WindowID 100% 100%" has no effect, and I don't know why because I've only spent about 1/2 an hour trying to figure it out the next problem. Probably a timing issue or something.)
At this point the cumulative aggravation of using Firefox is becoming too much to handle, I'd rather not have to spend three or four hours *every update* trying to figure out how to get it to do simple things, and I really *really* liked some of the previous add-ons.
The problem is the President committed treason, obstruction, tax fraud and about a hundred other crimes and your faggot ass has no spine in it so you justify continuing to support him because he's racist like you are. You should both hang.
I'm going to print that comment out and tack it to my corkboard - thanks! :-)
How can anyone respect, admire, follow, or in any way support this overfed cesspool of ignorance and corruption defies science.
It would help if the cesspool had published this policy beforehand, so that people wouldn't get the wrong impression.
One problem with all of this is that the ranking algorithms are largely opaque - things that happen for completely legitimate and reasonable reasons can be seen to be the child of ignorance and corruption.
A very good example of the way people can take something completely innocent the wrong way is Google's treatment of Trump and Clinton in the last election. The examples show the Google suggestions for various search completions, against those same searches on Yahoo and Bing.
For example, searching for "Hillary Clinton is " shows many results of "is awesome", "is winning", and so on for Google, while that same search on Yahoo and Bing results in many disparaging completions.
All of this, despite "Hillary Clinton is a liar" versus "Hillary Clinton is awesome" shows that the former search term has a much higher relevance.
The Google search term "crooked " returned "smile", "smile lyrics", and "creek" at the time, while the same search on Yahoo and Bing returned "Crooked Hillary" despite *that* phrase having an obvious trend relevance during the election cycle.
On a more recent note, searching YouTube for "How Trump Should Deal With Cohen & Manafort – Ann Coulter", the *exact* title of a video by Anne Coulter, puts the exact match far below a list of dissenting videos that google thinks you should see instead.
It all boils down to Robert Epstein's published paper that shows that search engine results can sway an election.
Google is making use of their position in light of that paper.
Wouldn't you?
This effect has been well documented for the last couple of years or so.
Even the Google search "when is the election" shows a smiling image of Hillary Clinton, as if her presidential opponent didn't exist. That page clearly (and subliminally) associates the smiling image of Hillary with the upcoming election.
All these results *seem* to be statistically and scientifically valid.
This is the sort of thing our president is complaining about.
And it seems that there is, in fact, a problem here.