That's the biggest problem with Randi-style bullshit skepticism (as indicated by your use of the term 'woo woo'). They rely completely on intuition and gut-feelings to decide if something is or is not credible, rather than reason and evidence. So strong is the impulse, they'll even deny evidence that contradicts their preconceptions even exists.
Fortunately, you weren't completely duped by their irrational brand of popular rationality. Its too bad so many others will remain deluded because of that clown.
I've visited their forums. The groupthink is strong there. They usually argue that things are just as they seem. I guess that's in line with Randi's perspective. But it doesn't seem very skeptical to just defend the status quo. That seems more credulous.
You know this survalience hasn't really poanned out in regards to stopping "terrorism", look at France, San Berndino.
So I am left scratching my head exactly what use is this data?
I mean it's really only useful to spy on your population this way if you believe them to be the threat.
But why would a nation force fed illegal immigration, the shipping of jobs overseas, the repeated financial thefts by large banks who were then bailed out, illegal wars, and a massive growing security apparatus costing billions being built next to crumbling public infrastructure be a threat?
Heh, exactly. The powers that be know they are heating the pot and it will someday boil over. They just don't want to stop and are planning to try and contain it. It won't work forever.
Left
1) Secretary of state uses private email, deletes half of them after they are subpoenaed by Congress investigating one of her employee's death.
2) Refusal to hand over a gun running program's documents, subpoenaed by Congress.
3) Using the IRS to censor political opponents in the year of a presidential election.
4) Had intelligence agencies delete emails about progress of dealing with ISIS to hide what is going on.
5) Lied to Congress about collecting information on every US citizens' phone calls.
Right
1) Deleted 18 minutes of an audio tape to cover up an office break in.
Yea, they are both equally as bad. Now remember, deleting 18 minutes of audio was sufficient to impeach and destroy the reputation of a former president (who wasn't involved in the original office break in).
Really, for the Right all you can come up with is Nixon? Ooookay.
You seem to have missed Okian Warrior's point. And that's a shame because it's a good one. People of various political stripes are fed up with a status quo that serves almost only the Elite. Thus we see the rise of Trump and Sanders. They have appeal as "outsiders". People seem to have figured out that it's not a much about Right and Left as it is Inside and Outside. That is, the real difference in America is whether you are on the inside and get your needs attended to or are on the outside and don't. That's really just another way of describing the parent poster's point, that things are either populist or not.
Most Americans are on the outside. Some folks at Princeton recently did a study and found that popular opinion has a statistically insignificant effect on the policies of the Federal Government. People know that the government is not serving the needs of most of the population. They may disagree on why that is, and what is to be done about it. But they know it. And they know their current representation, D or R, is not going to fix it.
Why the hell isn't there interest in impeaching Obama for the rampant violations of the fourth amendment under his watch?
Because it doesn't affect people's daily lives. If it was in their face they might notice, but it's not. Besides, at least half of them have been so propagandized they think whatever has to be done to "keep us safe" is appropriate. You don't want to be killed by ISIS affiliated Mexican rapists pouring over our southern border do you?
explain to me what you, a consumer, need 256 AES encryption for that you can't use 128 AES encryption for.
What difference does it make? If I need encryption, why wouldn't I want the strongest I can get? To turn it around, why would I use 128 AES when I can use 256 AES? If nothing on my phone is so important, why do you care?
Think about this for a while: Which is more secure for your data, your phone with its 265 bit encryption, or a $2 flash drive that never leaves your desk?
That's easy: the encrypted phone. The flash drive can easily be stolen or accessed when I'm not around. The phone cannot be accessed, even if it's stolen
I understand if you're a bank or a large corporation or something like that, but just you and me don't need encryption schemes like that (and on our phones, of all places) because of situations like this and also because its easy to just not put things on your phone that you would otherwise need to encrypt if it were.
I do banking on my phone, as well as communicate with my health care provider. Both of those involve private, sensitive information. Encryption is appropriate.
I mean, safe manufacturers can't sell their safes unless they have a way of cracking them, why is the same not true here?
Is that really true? I would be surprised if that were actually a requirement of safe manufacturers. But I am not well versed in the subject.
But on the question of encryption, I want it because I want to keep my personal information and effects secure; from everybody not authorized by me. That includes criminals, corporations, government and entities where those three categories intersect. It's my data and it's in my interest to secure it if I see fit. I have locks on my doors not because I have anything to hide, but to deter burglars and trespassers. I would not consent to search of my house by the authorities because it is not in my interest. The authorities exist to enforce laws and identify wrongdoing. They are not my friends and have no interest in my well being. So I have no interest in making their job any easier.
Every news site in the whole world, behind a paywall. Want to get a second perspective on a news story? Better pay for every single other viewpoint, every single secondary source you want to look at -- unless you visit a "free" one funded by a political activism group. Remember, if you're not the customer, you're the product. Ads keep you in the customer chair.
Entertainment sites, Youtube, comics, all of them: subscribe or get nothing. (Maybe no big loss most of the time.) Maybe they'll bundle together like cable...because we all love cable's pricing model. Content creators can get paid by the label they're a part of, because record labels aren't predatory to small creators at all!
Want to look up DIY stuff? The web is now a bookstore, not a library. Free knowledge goes out the window. People who can't afford it miss out. Unlike local libraries, web sites aren't going to get much public funding.
Sure, some sites would fund themselves by donations. Imagine a half-screen-size Wikipedia beg screen stamping on a human face...forever. But then, almost every single donation-powered website I've ever seen has gone back to ads within a couple months. They just couldn't make enough.
I'm not sure this would be so awful. I used to have magazine and newspaper subscriptions. Sure they had ads in them, but if I didn't pay I didn't get the magazine. I remember the Internet when there were no ads. Websites existed and there was free content because the authors wanted to put it up there. There were not nearly as many websites. But really, the bulk of websites could go away tomorrow and we wouldn't be much worse off.
I think there is a place for ad-driven content. But what we have now is really just everyone trying to make a buck without adding much value. The Free Market is supposed to allocate capital to where it does the most good. Maybe if people aren't willing to pay for something, that something just isn't that valuable.
They need to figure out a way to make money that doesn't annoy the shit out of their 'customers'. Because otherwise people will go elsewhere and all the advertising in the world will be worthless.
I wish I knew what that way to make money was.
As far as I can tell, the only way writers and artists are able to make money from content on the internet is by putting up a kickstarter and basically saying "send me money".
The thing is, Capitalism requires scarcity to work. The less there is of something, the higher its value. Digital technology and the Internet have almost eliminated scarcity for products you see and hear. It's a circumstance our economic system just isn't set up to handle. So we get things like DRM and DMCA and stronger IP laws and enforcement to try to create scarcity through the legal system. But that's just a symptom of, and reaction to, our economic system breaking down. Because when the marginal cost of something is near zero, so is its value in the marketplace.
Main street is viewing it differently than tech world. People fear security more than privacy.
That's to be expected. Generally speaking, people fear what they are told to fear and don't question the viewpoints presented to them. They think that if unlocking this phone will help catch terrorists, then it should be done. If that's as far as one's thinking goes, it makes perfect sense.
Fair enough. I'm just distressed at the erosion of the presumption of innocence. It seem all that's required these days for someone to become a criminal or terrorist is for someone in authority to label them as such. The media dutifully report it, and it gets put into the public consciousness. So I push back against such thinking by pointing out that people must be convicted to be labeled a criminal or terrorist. In this case, you're right, it's kind of moot.
Yeah, I have one of those cameras - by default it makes your security camera into a public webcam.
Now, I can do VLANs and put firewall rules in, but most people aren't even paranoid enough to think to look.
Then again, they just want to buy cheap crap off eBay, not hire a pro who knows the ins and outs of the product field.
For most cases of blaming cheap manufacturers, there's a cheap consumer who wants pro quality for rock-bottom pricing.
“We’ve arranged a society on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it?” – Carl Sagan
Modern technology might as well be magic to most people. They don't have the expertise, critical thinking skills, or self restraint to make informed decisions about the tech they buy and use. As you say, they just want it. And people are naive. I had to laugh years ago when it came out that Taco Bell's $.79 taco didn't contain 100% beef. People were pissed. But Taco Bell's response was basically, "You buy a 79 cent taco and think it's all beef?"
But yeah, that's what people thought because they are naive. On another note, one of my old bosses got out of corporate IT a while ago. When I asked him why he said, "Everyone expects dial tone." What he meant was people want stuff to just work. They have no idea of what it takes to make things work and they don't care. Just make it work. So we get things like insecure or backdoored IoT devices.
Why would Apple want to shield the communications of mass murderers and their accomplices whom the FBI is trying to track down?
Mass murderers? Has someone been convicted?
What we have here are people being accused of murder. To my knowledge no one has been convicted. So let's not go throwing out the presumption of innocence just because you saw something on TV.
Nine quadrillion, nine hundred trillion combinations...if I worked that web calculator correctly.
Perhaps they should try 1,2,3,4.
As others have pointed out, there are only 10,000 combinations using a four digit numeric pin. Of course, with an iphone, you only get to try ten of them incorrectly before it wipes the phone.
I have a 7 digit PIN on my iPhone. The default is 4, but you can have up to 50 AFAIK.
I won't claim to know a lot about it, but I would say Germany is a counter example.
What??? Germany has among the lowest tariffs in the world. Most of their imports are completely tariff free. On a per capita basis, they have one of the world's highest rates or both imports and exports, much higher than America's.
Fair enough. But they are doing something different from America that is preventing their middle class from being hollowed out.
As I said, I am not well versed in comparing national economies. I'm sure there are a number of reasons for the differences. What I do know is that in the US worker compensation has been divorced from productivity gains. The very wealthy are taking almost all of the value created in the form of higher returns and compensation, and have used their power in government to rig the system in their favor. Policy decisions are what is driving this dynamic, not the mythical Free Market.
If laws can drive industry away, they can keep it around too.
There is little evidence for that. The problem with tariffs is that other countries can also use them, and will do so to retaliate against our tariffs. So trade wars quickly degenerate into a race to the bottom, as populists in each country demand higher and higher barriers. Countries end up producing products where they have little competitive advantage. Do you think America would be richer if we produced more t-shirts and fewer aircraft and CPUs?
If you look around the world today, the countries with the highest trade barriers tend to be impoverished. They also tend to be authoritarian. Governments that believe in economic repression tend to believe in political repression as well.
I won't claim to know a lot about it, but I would say Germany is a counter example. They have retained a strong middle class and industrial base. As I understand it they do this with a strong social safety net, good employee education, and labor laws that encourage employing domestic workers. They are not without their problems, to be sure. But the fact is that in the US currently wealthy individuals and corporations are making a killing while the bottom 90% is not.
Some say that's just the way of things, but that is not the case. It is a result of policy decisions that favor business over labor. We used to have strong middle class in this country, and it wasn't just due to having the only manufacturing base left standing after WWII. Something stopped the owners from keeping it all for themselves back then. It's not only one thing or another, but trade and labor policies had a lot to do with it.
I feel there should be a massive public backlash against this. The line between reading all encrypted data (never mind the inevitable security catastrophe of building in backdoors to encryption - making it no longer encryption at all, really) and reading people's minds to know their every thought is very thin. Our government would love to do the latter. Our populace seems indifferent to both. Time to move somewhere else maybe. But what country actually provides more than the illusion of liberty and privacy?
Yeah, but you know the answer. It's about framing. Banning encryption is being done to stop Terrorists and Bad Guys. Law enforcement needs these tools to keep you and your family and your friends and your dog safe from the threatening world. It's us Good Guys against those Bad Guys.
That's why there is no public backlash; at least not the sort that makes the evening news. It's presented in a way that makes it seem like it's for your own good. Indeed, many of the people pushing such a misguided policy genuinely believe it is for your own good. So no, there is no backlash because people don't understand the implications. The issue is not presented to them that way.
We have pushed many of our industries overseas again and again with heavy government regulations. While OSHA, workers comp, EPA, etc. minimum wage, etc. laws and regulations may have some sense, we have to realize that these same laws also reduce employment and push industries overseas and make many of our overseas competitors more competitive. If we could create a 100% safe society through passing safety and employment laws we may have to satisfy ourselves with 100% unemployment as well.
We could also have import tariffs and whatnot to offset the reduced cost of not caring about employee safety. But we're all about "free trade" nowadays, where companies are free to roam the globe looking for the cheapest, most desperate labor with the lowest cost of living. If laws can drive industry away, they can keep it around too.
A performance car. One that could be driven to it's limits by a computer. Limits far beyond human capabilities. THAT is the self driving car I want.
What? You would want a performance car, just to be a passenger in it? I guess it might be like a roller coaster or something, but I'd still rather drive it than ride in it.
Why would any poor benighted fool pay money for a Porsche that didn't need to be driven? The entire point of their ridiculously inflated price tags is they're a joy to drive.
This was my immediate thought. Of course Porsche isn't interested in self-driving cars. The whole point of a Porsche is driving it. Though I cannot afford a Porsche, I drive fun, sporty cars and hence have no interest in a self-driving car either.
Police are not enforcing laws because they are being assaulted by the media and obnoxious part of the public. Why do your job when you're going to get prosecuted?
Am I to understand that police must commit crimes in their regular course of duty? If not, for what are they being prosecuted? Or are they being framed?
All of this should make the UK a very dangerous place for pedestrians if speed limits alone were a primary driver of road fatalities, but they aren't. The UK averages 3.6 fatalities per billion kilometres driven. The US average (where limits are on average lower) is 7.1, which is effectively double. It seems much more likely that issues like car quality, driver certification, road design, car design etc are far more influential.
I would put money on the bold part. It is well known, even in America, that Americans can't drive for shit.
According to Infowars, which was alerted to the zine's existence by AnonSec, the hackers' main purpose in hacking Nasa was to highlight the fact that the US government is using climate engineering methods such as cloud seeding and geo-engineering to manipulate the climate and cause more rain to fall in order to combat the effects of carbon emissions.
Because it's not reported on the evening news. And everyone knows that if it's not on the evening news it didn't happen, and anyone who thinks it might have is a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist.
No. But I've heard they might be selling US Govn branded tin foil hats to "special" people.
How do you know? Cloud seeding has been used for decades to modify the weather. I'm not saying it is or isn't happening. But you seem very quick to dismiss such an idea when it's really not far fetched at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Any study that disagrees with what I believe is obviously wrong. The ones that do are irrefutable evidence.
Heh, yep. You're doing it right!
That's the biggest problem with Randi-style bullshit skepticism (as indicated by your use of the term 'woo woo'). They rely completely on intuition and gut-feelings to decide if something is or is not credible, rather than reason and evidence. So strong is the impulse, they'll even deny evidence that contradicts their preconceptions even exists.
Fortunately, you weren't completely duped by their irrational brand of popular rationality. Its too bad so many others will remain deluded because of that clown.
I've visited their forums. The groupthink is strong there. They usually argue that things are just as they seem. I guess that's in line with Randi's perspective. But it doesn't seem very skeptical to just defend the status quo. That seems more credulous.
You know this survalience hasn't really poanned out in regards to stopping "terrorism", look at France, San Berndino.
So I am left scratching my head exactly what use is this data?
I mean it's really only useful to spy on your population this way if you believe them to be the threat.
But why would a nation force fed illegal immigration, the shipping of jobs overseas, the repeated financial thefts by large banks who were then bailed out, illegal wars, and a massive growing security apparatus costing billions being built next to crumbling public infrastructure be a threat?
Heh, exactly. The powers that be know they are heating the pot and it will someday boil over. They just don't want to stop and are planning to try and contain it. It won't work forever.
Both equally bad...
Left 1) Secretary of state uses private email, deletes half of them after they are subpoenaed by Congress investigating one of her employee's death. 2) Refusal to hand over a gun running program's documents, subpoenaed by Congress. 3) Using the IRS to censor political opponents in the year of a presidential election. 4) Had intelligence agencies delete emails about progress of dealing with ISIS to hide what is going on. 5) Lied to Congress about collecting information on every US citizens' phone calls.
Right 1) Deleted 18 minutes of an audio tape to cover up an office break in.
Yea, they are both equally as bad. Now remember, deleting 18 minutes of audio was sufficient to impeach and destroy the reputation of a former president (who wasn't involved in the original office break in).
Really, for the Right all you can come up with is Nixon? Ooookay.
You seem to have missed Okian Warrior's point. And that's a shame because it's a good one. People of various political stripes are fed up with a status quo that serves almost only the Elite. Thus we see the rise of Trump and Sanders. They have appeal as "outsiders". People seem to have figured out that it's not a much about Right and Left as it is Inside and Outside. That is, the real difference in America is whether you are on the inside and get your needs attended to or are on the outside and don't. That's really just another way of describing the parent poster's point, that things are either populist or not.
Most Americans are on the outside. Some folks at Princeton recently did a study and found that popular opinion has a statistically insignificant effect on the policies of the Federal Government. People know that the government is not serving the needs of most of the population. They may disagree on why that is, and what is to be done about it. But they know it. And they know their current representation, D or R, is not going to fix it.
Wow and he's a Democrat? Scary
Bit like the Labour government we had here with Tony Blair, socialist morals led to the most authoritarian government in the UK since the war.
Socialism doesn't understand privacy or rights of the individual, you keep hearing about "the greater good".......
How is this related to Socialism? Is the NSA Socialist?
Why the hell isn't there interest in impeaching Obama for the rampant violations of the fourth amendment under his watch?
Because it doesn't affect people's daily lives. If it was in their face they might notice, but it's not. Besides, at least half of them have been so propagandized they think whatever has to be done to "keep us safe" is appropriate. You don't want to be killed by ISIS affiliated Mexican rapists pouring over our southern border do you?
explain to me what you, a consumer, need 256 AES encryption for that you can't use 128 AES encryption for.
What difference does it make? If I need encryption, why wouldn't I want the strongest I can get? To turn it around, why would I use 128 AES when I can use 256 AES? If nothing on my phone is so important, why do you care?
Think about this for a while: Which is more secure for your data, your phone with its 265 bit encryption, or a $2 flash drive that never leaves your desk?
That's easy: the encrypted phone. The flash drive can easily be stolen or accessed when I'm not around. The phone cannot be accessed, even if it's stolen
I understand if you're a bank or a large corporation or something like that, but just you and me don't need encryption schemes like that (and on our phones, of all places) because of situations like this and also because its easy to just not put things on your phone that you would otherwise need to encrypt if it were.
I do banking on my phone, as well as communicate with my health care provider. Both of those involve private, sensitive information. Encryption is appropriate.
I mean, safe manufacturers can't sell their safes unless they have a way of cracking them, why is the same not true here?
Is that really true? I would be surprised if that were actually a requirement of safe manufacturers. But I am not well versed in the subject.
But on the question of encryption, I want it because I want to keep my personal information and effects secure; from everybody not authorized by me. That includes criminals, corporations, government and entities where those three categories intersect. It's my data and it's in my interest to secure it if I see fit. I have locks on my doors not because I have anything to hide, but to deter burglars and trespassers. I would not consent to search of my house by the authorities because it is not in my interest. The authorities exist to enforce laws and identify wrongdoing. They are not my friends and have no interest in my well being. So I have no interest in making their job any easier.
Every news site in the whole world, behind a paywall. Want to get a second perspective on a news story? Better pay for every single other viewpoint, every single secondary source you want to look at -- unless you visit a "free" one funded by a political activism group. Remember, if you're not the customer, you're the product. Ads keep you in the customer chair. Entertainment sites, Youtube, comics, all of them: subscribe or get nothing. (Maybe no big loss most of the time.) Maybe they'll bundle together like cable...because we all love cable's pricing model. Content creators can get paid by the label they're a part of, because record labels aren't predatory to small creators at all! Want to look up DIY stuff? The web is now a bookstore, not a library. Free knowledge goes out the window. People who can't afford it miss out. Unlike local libraries, web sites aren't going to get much public funding.
Sure, some sites would fund themselves by donations. Imagine a half-screen-size Wikipedia beg screen stamping on a human face...forever. But then, almost every single donation-powered website I've ever seen has gone back to ads within a couple months. They just couldn't make enough.
I'm not sure this would be so awful. I used to have magazine and newspaper subscriptions. Sure they had ads in them, but if I didn't pay I didn't get the magazine. I remember the Internet when there were no ads. Websites existed and there was free content because the authors wanted to put it up there. There were not nearly as many websites. But really, the bulk of websites could go away tomorrow and we wouldn't be much worse off.
I think there is a place for ad-driven content. But what we have now is really just everyone trying to make a buck without adding much value. The Free Market is supposed to allocate capital to where it does the most good. Maybe if people aren't willing to pay for something, that something just isn't that valuable.
They need to figure out a way to make money that doesn't annoy the shit out of their 'customers'. Because otherwise people will go elsewhere and all the advertising in the world will be worthless.
I wish I knew what that way to make money was.
As far as I can tell, the only way writers and artists are able to make money from content on the internet is by putting up a kickstarter and basically saying "send me money".
The thing is, Capitalism requires scarcity to work. The less there is of something, the higher its value. Digital technology and the Internet have almost eliminated scarcity for products you see and hear. It's a circumstance our economic system just isn't set up to handle. So we get things like DRM and DMCA and stronger IP laws and enforcement to try to create scarcity through the legal system. But that's just a symptom of, and reaction to, our economic system breaking down. Because when the marginal cost of something is near zero, so is its value in the marketplace.
Main street is viewing it differently than tech world. People fear security more than privacy.
That's to be expected. Generally speaking, people fear what they are told to fear and don't question the viewpoints presented to them. They think that if unlocking this phone will help catch terrorists, then it should be done. If that's as far as one's thinking goes, it makes perfect sense.
Fair enough. I'm just distressed at the erosion of the presumption of innocence. It seem all that's required these days for someone to become a criminal or terrorist is for someone in authority to label them as such. The media dutifully report it, and it gets put into the public consciousness. So I push back against such thinking by pointing out that people must be convicted to be labeled a criminal or terrorist. In this case, you're right, it's kind of moot.
Yeah, I have one of those cameras - by default it makes your security camera into a public webcam.
Now, I can do VLANs and put firewall rules in, but most people aren't even paranoid enough to think to look.
Then again, they just want to buy cheap crap off eBay, not hire a pro who knows the ins and outs of the product field.
For most cases of blaming cheap manufacturers, there's a cheap consumer who wants pro quality for rock-bottom pricing.
“We’ve arranged a society on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces. I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it?” – Carl Sagan
Modern technology might as well be magic to most people. They don't have the expertise, critical thinking skills, or self restraint to make informed decisions about the tech they buy and use. As you say, they just want it. And people are naive. I had to laugh years ago when it came out that Taco Bell's $.79 taco didn't contain 100% beef. People were pissed. But Taco Bell's response was basically, "You buy a 79 cent taco and think it's all beef?"
But yeah, that's what people thought because they are naive. On another note, one of my old bosses got out of corporate IT a while ago. When I asked him why he said, "Everyone expects dial tone." What he meant was people want stuff to just work. They have no idea of what it takes to make things work and they don't care. Just make it work. So we get things like insecure or backdoored IoT devices.
Why would Apple want to shield the communications of mass murderers and their accomplices whom the FBI is trying to track down?
Mass murderers? Has someone been convicted?
What we have here are people being accused of murder. To my knowledge no one has been convicted. So let's not go throwing out the presumption of innocence just because you saw something on TV.
Nine quadrillion, nine hundred trillion combinations...if I worked that web calculator correctly.
Perhaps they should try 1,2,3,4.
As others have pointed out, there are only 10,000 combinations using a four digit numeric pin. Of course, with an iphone, you only get to try ten of them incorrectly before it wipes the phone.
I have a 7 digit PIN on my iPhone. The default is 4, but you can have up to 50 AFAIK.
I won't claim to know a lot about it, but I would say Germany is a counter example.
What??? Germany has among the lowest tariffs in the world. Most of their imports are completely tariff free. On a per capita basis, they have one of the world's highest rates or both imports and exports, much higher than America's.
Fair enough. But they are doing something different from America that is preventing their middle class from being hollowed out.
As I said, I am not well versed in comparing national economies. I'm sure there are a number of reasons for the differences. What I do know is that in the US worker compensation has been divorced from productivity gains. The very wealthy are taking almost all of the value created in the form of higher returns and compensation, and have used their power in government to rig the system in their favor. Policy decisions are what is driving this dynamic, not the mythical Free Market.
If laws can drive industry away, they can keep it around too.
There is little evidence for that. The problem with tariffs is that other countries can also use them, and will do so to retaliate against our tariffs. So trade wars quickly degenerate into a race to the bottom, as populists in each country demand higher and higher barriers. Countries end up producing products where they have little competitive advantage. Do you think America would be richer if we produced more t-shirts and fewer aircraft and CPUs?
If you look around the world today, the countries with the highest trade barriers tend to be impoverished. They also tend to be authoritarian. Governments that believe in economic repression tend to believe in political repression as well.
I won't claim to know a lot about it, but I would say Germany is a counter example. They have retained a strong middle class and industrial base. As I understand it they do this with a strong social safety net, good employee education, and labor laws that encourage employing domestic workers. They are not without their problems, to be sure. But the fact is that in the US currently wealthy individuals and corporations are making a killing while the bottom 90% is not.
Some say that's just the way of things, but that is not the case. It is a result of policy decisions that favor business over labor. We used to have strong middle class in this country, and it wasn't just due to having the only manufacturing base left standing after WWII. Something stopped the owners from keeping it all for themselves back then. It's not only one thing or another, but trade and labor policies had a lot to do with it.
I feel there should be a massive public backlash against this. The line between reading all encrypted data (never mind the inevitable security catastrophe of building in backdoors to encryption - making it no longer encryption at all, really) and reading people's minds to know their every thought is very thin. Our government would love to do the latter. Our populace seems indifferent to both. Time to move somewhere else maybe. But what country actually provides more than the illusion of liberty and privacy?
Yeah, but you know the answer. It's about framing. Banning encryption is being done to stop Terrorists and Bad Guys. Law enforcement needs these tools to keep you and your family and your friends and your dog safe from the threatening world. It's us Good Guys against those Bad Guys.
That's why there is no public backlash; at least not the sort that makes the evening news. It's presented in a way that makes it seem like it's for your own good. Indeed, many of the people pushing such a misguided policy genuinely believe it is for your own good. So no, there is no backlash because people don't understand the implications. The issue is not presented to them that way.
We have pushed many of our industries overseas again and again with heavy government regulations. While OSHA, workers comp, EPA, etc. minimum wage, etc. laws and regulations may have some sense, we have to realize that these same laws also reduce employment and push industries overseas and make many of our overseas competitors more competitive. If we could create a 100% safe society through passing safety and employment laws we may have to satisfy ourselves with 100% unemployment as well.
We could also have import tariffs and whatnot to offset the reduced cost of not caring about employee safety. But we're all about "free trade" nowadays, where companies are free to roam the globe looking for the cheapest, most desperate labor with the lowest cost of living. If laws can drive industry away, they can keep it around too.
That they know how to make people buy something that they don't want or care about!
This part is actually true, for the good ones.
A performance car. One that could be driven to it's limits by a computer. Limits far beyond human capabilities. THAT is the self driving car I want.
What? You would want a performance car, just to be a passenger in it? I guess it might be like a roller coaster or something, but I'd still rather drive it than ride in it.
Why would any poor benighted fool pay money for a Porsche that didn't need to be driven? The entire point of their ridiculously inflated price tags is they're a joy to drive.
This was my immediate thought. Of course Porsche isn't interested in self-driving cars. The whole point of a Porsche is driving it. Though I cannot afford a Porsche, I drive fun, sporty cars and hence have no interest in a self-driving car either.
Police are not enforcing laws because they are being assaulted by the media and obnoxious part of the public. Why do your job when you're going to get prosecuted?
Am I to understand that police must commit crimes in their regular course of duty? If not, for what are they being prosecuted? Or are they being framed?
All of this should make the UK a very dangerous place for pedestrians if speed limits alone were a primary driver of road fatalities, but they aren't. The UK averages 3.6 fatalities per billion kilometres driven. The US average (where limits are on average lower) is 7.1, which is effectively double. It seems much more likely that issues like car quality, driver certification, road design, car design etc are far more influential.
I would put money on the bold part. It is well known, even in America, that Americans can't drive for shit.
From TFA:
According to Infowars, which was alerted to the zine's existence by AnonSec, the hackers' main purpose in hacking Nasa was to highlight the fact that the US government is using climate engineering methods such as cloud seeding and geo-engineering to manipulate the climate and cause more rain to fall in order to combat the effects of carbon emissions.
Well...? Are they?
Given that Cloud seeding has been around for 70 years why would it it be a surprise or controversial that NASA was experimenting with it?
Because it's not reported on the evening news. And everyone knows that if it's not on the evening news it didn't happen, and anyone who thinks it might have is a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist.
"Well...? Are they?!"
No. But I've heard they might be selling US Govn branded tin foil hats to "special" people.
How do you know? Cloud seeding has been used for decades to modify the weather. I'm not saying it is or isn't happening. But you seem very quick to dismiss such an idea when it's really not far fetched at all.