I played a bit with a miner on my computer for a while just to understand Bitcoin a little better. I calculated the difference in electricity use between my computer idling and mining. Even ignoring hardware cost (it was already bought for other purposes, after all) and only calculating the DIFFERENCE between idle and mining (the computer is always on), projected profits on the mining didn't even cover the difference in electricity usage, and my electricity costs aren't high.
Part of this has to do with the price of Bitcoins at the time, but more of it has to do with the fact that even high-end NVIDIA cards are bad choices for Bitcoin miners.
Presumably, most computers in such a botnet aren't running high-end AMD video cards, and many of them are going to be office computers and inexpensive home desktops and laptops without a dedicated 3D video card. Mining in CPU mode is laughably pointless. Less so if you're not paying for the electricity.
Like you, I'm not convinced Bitcoins do more good than harm, strictly based on being a semi-fiat currency whose backing is, effectively, electricity waste.
Yep, we played with early versions of Timbuktu, too. Our favourite gag was, once a week or so, was to have the computer "talk" to the user via Timbuktu dialogue. Most people weren't computer savvy (and those who were certainly didn't have Macs at home), so the idea that the computer really is talking to you when it greets you AS the computer was no more or less alien than the idea of a person messaging you.
It's only censorship if the government is involved. Oh wait, schools are government entities. Restricting information access is censorship, even when it's justified censorship, such as blocking out hardcore pornography.
Oh, yeah, I understood that, but even if deleting a profile wasn't an option, the nuclear option of rooting is always available. One thing that made me chuckle is the claim in the title of the article. I suspect it didn't take one week, merely that it took one week for most students to know about it. I suspect the first success was on day one.
I was in high school when Macintoshes were new; they had a laser printer and several dot matrix printers. Laser printing was more expensive at the time, but the queue was shorter due to less people on it and shorter print times. Our computer lab teacher would watch us, literally right over our shoulders, as we'd try to bypass his security (like you, I think "hack" is too grand a word here) and permissions. By the end of the second day, my two best friends and I and a couple of our other friends all had boot disks with LaswerWriter permissions. The teacher had a great attitude that really fostered learning the technology, and was consistent with him watching over our shoulders while we tried to do things we weren't supposed to be able to do (and in every case I can remember, succeeded): he didn't care as long as you didn't make more work for him by breaking something. He was content to learn what we were up to. We had pretty much carte blanche in the computer lab to do whatever we wanted as long as we were learning something new every day, and we'd write a brief summary report at the end of the week. One day, we learned how to hex edit savegames for some old RPG, using the same sorts of techniques we were using on our C64s at home, but with a proper hex editor rather than a C64 sector editor. They were saved in something weird like octal reversed digits instead of the standard reversed hex or forward hex. I can't recall which game it was, only that it had multiple windows up. A quick Google image search doesn't show me anything familiar.
It's an important civics lesson about the futility of censorship in an open society, and a technology exercise to boot! In a world where tools and processes to root just about every iOS and Android device out there exists, I'm not sure how they ever would have imagined device-level censorship would have worked; router-level censorship is a difficult enough challenge. Did they imagine that that wouldn't be good enough once the childrens got out of school and connected to non-school WiFi hotspots? That's cute.
Couldn't agree more. Free trade and fluid labour forces between countries with a comparable standard of living is a lot different than importing work (via virtual outsourcing) or workers (via actual work visas) from poorer nations.
Interestingly, China has to deal with this dynamic internally, though I'm only passingly familiar with how they handle it. In a word, poorly, at least by the human rights and labour standards of the US. The GDP difference between Shanghai and, say, Tibet is fairly striking - 4x.
You bring up a point I don't think is understood well enough in the classical "supply and demand" method of educating and indoctrinating children about capitalism.
In the last few decades, the typical American has been told over and over that passively investing in reputable mutual funds are a Good Thing, either directly or more frequently via a 401K or IRA. And, honestly, this is mostly true.
It's had a side effect, however, into convincing working-class Americans into thinking of themselves as "investors" and that whatever is good for the wealthy is good for them because they're just investors, too. This has actually been a very effective way in getting working-class Americans to vote against their own economic interest.
The typical American worker is absolutely not an investor in the same class as the wealthy classes, and it is a mistake to confuse the two.
"Shareholder value" is not a method of making sure a working-class American with some shares in a mutual fund gets a better return. "Shareholder value" refers to those very few shareholders who actually hold meaningful control in any given company, and protects their interests. Even when majority shares of a given company's stock is comprised of mutual funds, most mutual funds are in turn representing majority shareholders who are driving actual investment.
The working class make money by selling their time and skills for income. The wealthy class make money by leveraging money. If your net worth is greatly affected by whether or not you actually show up to work, you are not in the wealthy class.
> Let's ignore for a moment that this visas mandate US level salaries
Most of the problem isn't that we can ignore it, but that the companies in question as well as Congress does ignore it. The entire program only exists because it acts as a loophole by which employers can pay sub-standard wages, not competitive wages, despite what you might wish or the actual law might require before you get into the contingencies and loopholes. The biggest of these is that "competitive wage" is defined by occupation and region, not actual job function. You want a lead programmer at journeyman prices? Not a problem in the law.
H1B visas are by law only allowed when there is not a US citizen with comparable skills at the local prevailing wage. The prevalence of H1B visas requires one to believe that the US job market is just so great that it's difficult for employers to find qualified applicants.
As well as the advantages which directly affect the US wage:
Off-the books overtime. Denial of legally required benefits. Hiring under one firm and working under another. These workers can be sent back the minute they cease to be a bargain.
There are plenty of US workers for what are mostly entry-level programming positions. The companies don't want H1B visas because, in accordance with the intent of the law, they can't find suitable candidates at market value. They want them precisely because they want them below market value.
Just wrote something about H1Bs in a different post. Modified to be more relevant to this post:
Every time a company tells Congress they need more H1Bs, they're not telling you they can't find programmers, they're telling you they don't want to pay a competitive wage. Combine this with the fact that a lot of programmer types consider themselves too "individualist" to be involved with anything so "workmanly" as a labour union, and you set up a system where talented workers' wages are artificially reduced.
The result is a competent creative who is suddenly being pitted against people whose standard of living requires a third or less of the salary by a company whose primary interest isn't in being a good corporate citizen, investing in the community, or even playing by the rules that conservative and libertarian proponents pay lip service to, but increasing "shareholder value" by any means necessary no matter who suffers, and no matter how bad it is for the community, the region, and the country.
Though obviously my statement was a tongue in cheek upbraid of hiring policies, the key point is that it was, in fact, about hiring policies.
Getting paid a living wage in the US as a programmer is a much different prospect than being a sports star, a top-level comedian, a bestselling author, a rock star, or... one of the most respected artists in history.
Right now, there are enough US programmers to meet domestic needs, yet companies outsource (or us what is effectively indentured servitude via H1B visas) not because the market isn't meeting the need, but to drive down wages by piggybacking US standards of living onto, say, Indian wages.
Every time a company tells Congress they need more H1Bs, they're not telling you they can't find programmers, they're telling you they don't want to pay a competitive wage. Combine this with the fact that a lot of programmer types consider themselves too "individualist" to be involved with anything so "workmanly" as a labour union, and you set up a system where talented workers' wages are artificially reduced.
So, no, it's not like being in the NFL, being a top-tier performance artist, or a hit author.
It's exactly like being a competent creative who is suddenly being pitted against people whose standard of living requires a third or less of the salary by a company whose primary interest isn't in being a good corporate citizen, investing in the community, or even playing by the rules that conservative and libertarian proponents pay lip service to, but increasing "shareholder value" by any means necessary no matter who suffers, and no matter how bad it is for the community, the region, and the country.
I don't think you enter tinfoil land by acknowledging how law is written in this country, and by whom. Industry lobbyists frequently come to Congress with exactly the legislation they want already written.
I presume that since this issue is (briefly) referenced in the Constitution, it would probably require a Constitutional Amendment to alter in any meaningful way that isn't continued extension:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
I discussed this a bit in a blog post, SOPA, the Open Act, and Copyright: A Five Year Plan and flesh it out there a bit more than I do here. The Amendment process is probably the only way this can ever happen because it's the only method that doesn't count on Congress doing the morally defensible thing.
This supposes Popular Science is required to host such discussions, and that in the absence of such hosting, such discussions cannot take place reasonably within the public sphere. They are not suppressing speech, they are not interfering with it whatsoever, they just have chosen not to host a community for it. I am free to discuss their articles anywhere where such communities exist - whether I am an evolution denier, a scientist, a layperson, a climate change skeptic, a political crank, or someone with a professional interest. Was Popular Science suppressing speech BEFORE they had a comment section online? Are they seeking to prevent anyone from talking about their articles in a way that DOESN'T cost them time and money, such as on other peoples' and organizations' website?
Clearly, the answer to both questions is "no"; this is not what censorship looks like. If I hold a conference at my own expense, it is not "censorship" if I decide not to hold it next year because I didn't like the turnout or it became too big of a burden. Is it censorship if I come to you with a religious or political message to your front door and you decide to close the door in my face? Forcing any of these issues isn't free speech, it's forced speech.
They have. They've scientifically developed a way for Christian fundamentalists to complain about articles about evolution, political conservatives to lambast every major article about climate science, a way for every nutjob conspiracy theorist to have their own say about events, a way for scientists in their actual field of specialty to discuss issues, and a way for generalist laymen who are genuinely interested in science to discuss it:
Let them discuss it in their own communities and on their own websites.
> A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics.
True worldwide, alarmingly so in the US, where "it inconveniences my politics" carries the same weight in discussions as "there is no evidence for this hypothesis".
I still don't see a "crime" in writing a fake or bad review about a place that doesn't exist. Nor, for that matter, one that does that I haven't been to. This isn't the Attorney General's problem, this is Yelp's problem, and if Yelp wants to engage in shady tactics, it's just more reason to not trust them for much beyond names, addresses, and phone numbers of businesses.
Slashdot Mirror
And this "spotify for ebooks" isn't exactly streaming content, either, the thing most identified with the Spotify experience.
I played a bit with a miner on my computer for a while just to understand Bitcoin a little better. I calculated the difference in electricity use between my computer idling and mining. Even ignoring hardware cost (it was already bought for other purposes, after all) and only calculating the DIFFERENCE between idle and mining (the computer is always on), projected profits on the mining didn't even cover the difference in electricity usage, and my electricity costs aren't high.
Part of this has to do with the price of Bitcoins at the time, but more of it has to do with the fact that even high-end NVIDIA cards are bad choices for Bitcoin miners.
Presumably, most computers in such a botnet aren't running high-end AMD video cards, and many of them are going to be office computers and inexpensive home desktops and laptops without a dedicated 3D video card. Mining in CPU mode is laughably pointless. Less so if you're not paying for the electricity.
Like you, I'm not convinced Bitcoins do more good than harm, strictly based on being a semi-fiat currency whose backing is, effectively, electricity waste.
Why use such a tortured comparison? Just say "library", or if you must "digital public library".
Yep, we played with early versions of Timbuktu, too. Our favourite gag was, once a week or so, was to have the computer "talk" to the user via Timbuktu dialogue. Most people weren't computer savvy (and those who were certainly didn't have Macs at home), so the idea that the computer really is talking to you when it greets you AS the computer was no more or less alien than the idea of a person messaging you.
"This is your Macintosh. How are you?"
And it would go from there...
It's only censorship if the government is involved. Oh wait, schools are government entities. Restricting information access is censorship, even when it's justified censorship, such as blocking out hardcore pornography.
They were very efficient in Kentucky Fried Movie.
Oh, yeah, I understood that, but even if deleting a profile wasn't an option, the nuclear option of rooting is always available. One thing that made me chuckle is the claim in the title of the article. I suspect it didn't take one week, merely that it took one week for most students to know about it. I suspect the first success was on day one.
I was in high school when Macintoshes were new; they had a laser printer and several dot matrix printers. Laser printing was more expensive at the time, but the queue was shorter due to less people on it and shorter print times. Our computer lab teacher would watch us, literally right over our shoulders, as we'd try to bypass his security (like you, I think "hack" is too grand a word here) and permissions. By the end of the second day, my two best friends and I and a couple of our other friends all had boot disks with LaswerWriter permissions. The teacher had a great attitude that really fostered learning the technology, and was consistent with him watching over our shoulders while we tried to do things we weren't supposed to be able to do (and in every case I can remember, succeeded): he didn't care as long as you didn't make more work for him by breaking something. He was content to learn what we were up to. We had pretty much carte blanche in the computer lab to do whatever we wanted as long as we were learning something new every day, and we'd write a brief summary report at the end of the week. One day, we learned how to hex edit savegames for some old RPG, using the same sorts of techniques we were using on our C64s at home, but with a proper hex editor rather than a C64 sector editor. They were saved in something weird like octal reversed digits instead of the standard reversed hex or forward hex. I can't recall which game it was, only that it had multiple windows up. A quick Google image search doesn't show me anything familiar.
It's an important civics lesson about the futility of censorship in an open society, and a technology exercise to boot! In a world where tools and processes to root just about every iOS and Android device out there exists, I'm not sure how they ever would have imagined device-level censorship would have worked; router-level censorship is a difficult enough challenge. Did they imagine that that wouldn't be good enough once the childrens got out of school and connected to non-school WiFi hotspots? That's cute.
Couldn't agree more. Free trade and fluid labour forces between countries with a comparable standard of living is a lot different than importing work (via virtual outsourcing) or workers (via actual work visas) from poorer nations.
Interestingly, China has to deal with this dynamic internally, though I'm only passingly familiar with how they handle it. In a word, poorly, at least by the human rights and labour standards of the US. The GDP difference between Shanghai and, say, Tibet is fairly striking - 4x.
You bring up a point I don't think is understood well enough in the classical "supply and demand" method of educating and indoctrinating children about capitalism.
In the last few decades, the typical American has been told over and over that passively investing in reputable mutual funds are a Good Thing, either directly or more frequently via a 401K or IRA. And, honestly, this is mostly true.
It's had a side effect, however, into convincing working-class Americans into thinking of themselves as "investors" and that whatever is good for the wealthy is good for them because they're just investors, too. This has actually been a very effective way in getting working-class Americans to vote against their own economic interest.
The typical American worker is absolutely not an investor in the same class as the wealthy classes, and it is a mistake to confuse the two.
"Shareholder value" is not a method of making sure a working-class American with some shares in a mutual fund gets a better return. "Shareholder value" refers to those very few shareholders who actually hold meaningful control in any given company, and protects their interests. Even when majority shares of a given company's stock is comprised of mutual funds, most mutual funds are in turn representing majority shareholders who are driving actual investment.
The working class make money by selling their time and skills for income. The wealthy class make money by leveraging money. If your net worth is greatly affected by whether or not you actually show up to work, you are not in the wealthy class.
> Let's ignore for a moment that this visas mandate US level salaries
Most of the problem isn't that we can ignore it, but that the companies in question as well as Congress does ignore it. The entire program only exists because it acts as a loophole by which employers can pay sub-standard wages, not competitive wages, despite what you might wish or the actual law might require before you get into the contingencies and loopholes. The biggest of these is that "competitive wage" is defined by occupation and region, not actual job function. You want a lead programmer at journeyman prices? Not a problem in the law.
H1B visas are by law only allowed when there is not a US citizen with comparable skills at the local prevailing wage. The prevalence of H1B visas requires one to believe that the US job market is just so great that it's difficult for employers to find qualified applicants.
As well as the advantages which directly affect the US wage:
Off-the books overtime. Denial of legally required benefits. Hiring under one firm and working under another. These workers can be sent back the minute they cease to be a bargain.
There are plenty of US workers for what are mostly entry-level programming positions. The companies don't want H1B visas because, in accordance with the intent of the law, they can't find suitable candidates at market value. They want them precisely because they want them below market value.
Just wrote something about H1Bs in a different post. Modified to be more relevant to this post:
Every time a company tells Congress they need more H1Bs, they're not telling you they can't find programmers, they're telling you they don't want to pay a competitive wage. Combine this with the fact that a lot of programmer types consider themselves too "individualist" to be involved with anything so "workmanly" as a labour union, and you set up a system where talented workers' wages are artificially reduced.
The result is a competent creative who is suddenly being pitted against people whose standard of living requires a third or less of the salary by a company whose primary interest isn't in being a good corporate citizen, investing in the community, or even playing by the rules that conservative and libertarian proponents pay lip service to, but increasing "shareholder value" by any means necessary no matter who suffers, and no matter how bad it is for the community, the region, and the country.
Though obviously my statement was a tongue in cheek upbraid of hiring policies, the key point is that it was, in fact, about hiring policies.
Getting paid a living wage in the US as a programmer is a much different prospect than being a sports star, a top-level comedian, a bestselling author, a rock star, or ... one of the most respected artists in history.
Right now, there are enough US programmers to meet domestic needs, yet companies outsource (or us what is effectively indentured servitude via H1B visas) not because the market isn't meeting the need, but to drive down wages by piggybacking US standards of living onto, say, Indian wages.
Every time a company tells Congress they need more H1Bs, they're not telling you they can't find programmers, they're telling you they don't want to pay a competitive wage. Combine this with the fact that a lot of programmer types consider themselves too "individualist" to be involved with anything so "workmanly" as a labour union, and you set up a system where talented workers' wages are artificially reduced.
So, no, it's not like being in the NFL, being a top-tier performance artist, or a hit author.
It's exactly like being a competent creative who is suddenly being pitted against people whose standard of living requires a third or less of the salary by a company whose primary interest isn't in being a good corporate citizen, investing in the community, or even playing by the rules that conservative and libertarian proponents pay lip service to, but increasing "shareholder value" by any means necessary no matter who suffers, and no matter how bad it is for the community, the region, and the country.
If the corporate culture has its way, all of those jobs will be outsourced by the time today's toddlers get to the job market.
Edible insect farmers are one thing, but really, it all goes back to Jonathan Swift.
Sir, I am at the top of the food chain, and I don't plan on stepping down from this lofty perch.
I will not eat them in Siam, I do not like bugs in my ham.
The key point here is that there was no yogurt shop. People were writing fake reviews for a fake business.
I don't think you enter tinfoil land by acknowledging how law is written in this country, and by whom. Industry lobbyists frequently come to Congress with exactly the legislation they want already written.
I presume that since this issue is (briefly) referenced in the Constitution, it would probably require a Constitutional Amendment to alter in any meaningful way that isn't continued extension:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8
I discussed this a bit in a blog post, SOPA, the Open Act, and Copyright: A Five Year Plan and flesh it out there a bit more than I do here. The Amendment process is probably the only way this can ever happen because it's the only method that doesn't count on Congress doing the morally defensible thing.
This seems like a stretch to me, legally, and an arbitrary abuse of power. But, I am not a lawyer or related entity.
This supposes Popular Science is required to host such discussions, and that in the absence of such hosting, such discussions cannot take place reasonably within the public sphere. They are not suppressing speech, they are not interfering with it whatsoever, they just have chosen not to host a community for it. I am free to discuss their articles anywhere where such communities exist - whether I am an evolution denier, a scientist, a layperson, a climate change skeptic, a political crank, or someone with a professional interest. Was Popular Science suppressing speech BEFORE they had a comment section online? Are they seeking to prevent anyone from talking about their articles in a way that DOESN'T cost them time and money, such as on other peoples' and organizations' website?
Clearly, the answer to both questions is "no"; this is not what censorship looks like. If I hold a conference at my own expense, it is not "censorship" if I decide not to hold it next year because I didn't like the turnout or it became too big of a burden. Is it censorship if I come to you with a religious or political message to your front door and you decide to close the door in my face? Forcing any of these issues isn't free speech, it's forced speech.
They have. They've scientifically developed a way for Christian fundamentalists to complain about articles about evolution, political conservatives to lambast every major article about climate science, a way for every nutjob conspiracy theorist to have their own say about events, a way for scientists in their actual field of specialty to discuss issues, and a way for generalist laymen who are genuinely interested in science to discuss it:
Let them discuss it in their own communities and on their own websites.
It's not censorship to decide not to host a comments section on your website any longer. It's an editorial decision which affects all users equally.
> A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics.
True worldwide, alarmingly so in the US, where "it inconveniences my politics" carries the same weight in discussions as "there is no evidence for this hypothesis".
I still don't see a "crime" in writing a fake or bad review about a place that doesn't exist. Nor, for that matter, one that does that I haven't been to. This isn't the Attorney General's problem, this is Yelp's problem, and if Yelp wants to engage in shady tactics, it's just more reason to not trust them for much beyond names, addresses, and phone numbers of businesses.
Yelp sucks. That's not a crime.