It wouldn't be that hard to provide alternative versions of the small number of "important" packages which depend on either libpam-systemd or systemd itself (I'm talking about things like gdm3, gnome-settings-daemon, lightdm, network-manager and policykit here). There aren't many of them (there are also a few packages which are uninteresting and have a hard depend which I'd be less fussed about.)
Slightly further up the difficulty scale is libsystemd0; it might perhaps be possible to replace that with a safe do-nothing shim if you really cared about it (eg because you want to reduce the potential security attack surface).
Ultimately, I think Debian should have worked harder to support multiple init systems. A requirement for packages above a certain importance level to support sysvinit in addition to systemd and to provide installable alternatives which don't create dependencies on systemd packages (other than perhaps libsystemd0) would have assuaged most people's concerns for very little effort.
Although that's true it's effectively impossible to avoid installing libsystemd0 (if you care about that). In current Debian stable it's also very hard on a desktop system to avoid installing the systemd package even if you use sysvinit as your init system (it gets brought in via policykit-1 which depends on libpam-systemd and which is depended on indirectly by the big desktop metapackages). In testing and unstable you can manage to only have elogind instead of systemd.
The problem the US have with Huawei is about more than whether they have been spying or not - it's about the fact that the US as a nation have lost control of the technology because the Chinese are the only credible firms producing 5G equipment. That means that they can control or break the standards in subtle ways, and then deliberately make it much harder or impossible for US (or other non-Chinese) firms to compete on a level playing field (by making only Chinese equipment truly cross-compatible). I don't know if this is actually happening but it is a legitimate concern - it's like the difference between Microsoft's OOXML vs ODF - the OOXML standard is technically open but it's close to impossible to truly implement something which is properly cross-compatible with MS Office.
A level playing field with open and transparent standards is something we should all be concerned to maintain because the next logical stage will be for the firms benefiting from the closed standard is to leverage that "lockin" to raise prices.
Which is why rewriting basic system utilities from scratch, repeatedly, instead of relying on the battle-hardened code which has already had its fair share of vulnerabilities exploited and patched over a long lifespan, is likely to increase the attack surface.
systemd's apparent need to replace/rewrite basic system utilities which have worked for decades (in some cases) and don't need changing IS part of the problem.
The language of "trade deficits" is exactly the wrong way around.
The rest of the world gives you *actual things which are useful* and you only have to give them a piece of paper (or even better, increment a number in a database) in return. I know who I think wins in that equation.
And all modern cars - petrol, hybrid, diesel, EV, etc result in quite a lot of particulates being produced in the form of rubber wear from the tyres. I think this is probably underappreciated in terms of human health impact but unfortunately there isn't a huge amount of research into this.
Battery pack replacements may not be as common as people expected them to be. When you have a Nissan Leaf dropping to a top range of 60 miles, then you do need to replace the battery pack. However, if your Chevrolet Bolt EV drops to only 60% of its original range, you still have more than 140 miles of range.
I think this is the result of two things
(1) range not being big enough to start with. People who bought an EV where 230 miles was "enough" range for their specific use case probably won't replace the battery if it drops from 230 to 140, because they're both "enough" for the purpose they bought that vehicle for - i.e. if 140 miles isn't enough, 230 miles probably doesn't move the needle enough for many people. If range started at 600 miles and dropped to 360 miles, I suspect there'd be a greater replacement rate.
(2) You can easily finance a new car but not a repair. So people would rather replace the car than the battery because the upfront cost is much more manageable.
Assuming that the balance of renewable energy production vs non-renewable production in the world isn't itself affected by the decision of where to site these plants (which isn't always true of course but unless you're building your own generation it's close enough) - this is the wrong way to think about it. Instead, it makes much more sense to locate manufacturing facilities in such a way as to reduce the transport-miles involved in manufacturing since this results in a reduction in the total system energy usage ("the global economy" is the system), which should result in lower CO2.
So, use inconveniently-located but very low CO2 sources like hydro to power things like datacentres, which can be sited more or less anywhere. For anything else, there's a trade-off to consider between the two. But in the mean time focus on reducing the CO2 emissions in power generation globally, by extending grids, and focusing new-build generation on lower-CO2 sources.
Fortunately, we already have a machine which can help us balance this trade-off - the price mechanism of the economy. All that's required is that the cost of the externality (CO2 produced) is correctly factored in everywhere in the world, via either a cap and trade scheme or a carbon tax.
So think about that for a little bit, the only thing that was really accomplished was to further polarize the country. The only reason I can think of for wanting to intentionally polarize the country is to give the commoners something to fight about so the elites in washington on both sides of the aisle can continue to sell off the country to the highest bidder.
I'm not an American and don't live there so I have pretty well no skin in this game. I have no idea whether the accusations are true, although my gut instinct is to say they're certainly not well-corroborated enough that they should ever have seen the light of day in such a public forum. But I don't think it's true that all the Democrats have achieved is greater polarisation - it seems to me it's actually some quite clever (and very cynical) politics on their part. Either he's not confirmed, in which case they get a bit more influence over future "political" decisions the court makes, or he IS confirmed, and they have motivated their base to turn out in the midterms. It's win/win for them. Just a shame about Ford and Kavanaugh, for both of whom it's lose/lose.
Why should I be buying new computers and cell phone every 2 years? Used to be you bought a PC, paid like 6K for inflation adjusted and you ran it for 6 or seven years!
A roughly mainstream desktop PC spec in 2012 would have been quad-core AMD Piledriver or Intel Sandy Bridge, probably 4GB RAM. That's still more than enough to run Windows 10 and Office 2016. Laptops similarly. Contrast that to the difference between 1988 and 1994 (for example). This is entirely an issue with phones/tablets, and is down to (1) the relative immaturity of those devices and (2) a pricing structure for phone contracts which incentivises "upgrades" every two years based on contract renewal.
It's really not that difficult. You just say it must be possible to remove the battery without use of any tools or significant effort, by an average person (not a specialist), in less than [x] seconds. Then you delegate responsibility for signing off on whether its complied with to the exact same bodies who already are responsible for product certification - the infrastructure for product certification is already there, so it's just adding another rule to be complied with before the product gets certified. You give manufacturers enough notice (probably 2-3 years) to enable them to build it into their next product cycle and allow old devices to be grandfathered in but that's a short term issue. If the regulation is targeted, no manufacturer who cares about their reputation will dare oppose it given the obvious reasons for it and limited cost.
Yes, you'll never get absolutely everyone and the enforcement effort to get every last manufacturer and stop every last non-compliant import is not worth it - but if even 50% of the market complies, that's still a huge improvement on today's situation. In reality I think you'd get more like 90% of the market fairly easily.
At least in the UK, we already have this part. There are recycling bins where I can take smaller batteries in my local supermarket and at work (and in many other places), and larger batteries (eg car batteries) can be taken to the local dump.
I can't see how this can possibly work in eg Malta, Luxembourg and Cyprus, countries which are very small so will have almost no local content either back catalogue or current production. Just means Netflix etc will never do business there.
It goes beyond 'funding secured'. Potentially even more problematic is 'Investor support is confirmed. Only reason why this is not certain is that itâ(TM)s contingent on a shareholder vote.'
It's a bit more sophisticated than that. There's some good evidence that good professional investors can beat the market (and most amateurs) relatively consistently. Unfortunately there's also very good evidence that they typically take all of that outperformance (and often more) back in the fees they charge, so that if *you* invest with them then you (on average) won't be better off than if you'd just bought the lowest-cost index fund tracking whatever they measure themselves against you can find (which may or may not be an ETF).
Sell-side analysts (ie those not working internally in an investment firm to support investment decisions) are a very different thing to investors of course... they face conflicting incentives which often don't align with "best returns" (as a simple example being controversial can often be much more rewarding for them than being right).
And that's ignoring whether the benchmark index is even the right measure (for you) to start with of course.
In some ways, driving with Autopilot (and it will get worse as these systems become more advanced) is like supervising a learner driver. Most of the time (in the limited scenarios it can be fully engaged) it will act like a normal fully-qualified driver but every so often it will fail to react properly or just do something really erratic. If you're the human in charge of the vehicle in those situations, then the role you are fulfilling is more akin to that of a driving instructor than to that of a regular driver. Except actually its worse because you can't communicate with the "actual driver" like a human would and you may well be driving down roads you've never seen in your life before so don't know where the "danger spots" might be which people tend to get wrong.
There are very good reasons why most countries require full time driving instructors to pass additional tests and re-certify relatively frequently. I think it's worth considering whether we ought to apply the same standards to some types of semi-autonomous driving tecnnology.
This is a new use of language even in the UK though. Historically, we had "articled clerkships" for (professional) office jobs, and apprenticeships for trades. That use of language probably disappeared in the 1970s or 80s and it seems everyone has forgotten it.
Under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, in the UK lesser offences are indeed 'forgotten' in many important respects after a period of time (they become 'spent'). For example, it's illegal for most employers to ask about spent offences, and the offenders have the support of the law in lying about them if they are asked anyway. I don't see that this is particularly out of step with that principle.
You can't study the unique feeding behavior of the Carolina Parakeet if all you have is a DNA sequence on a hard drive and no parakeet. Unless at some point, you actually make a parakeet, it's like having a pile of money you never spend and then finding out it's become valueless due to inflation.
Nor can you properly study it if you do bring the species back this way, since a large amount of what many animals do is thought to be heritable through group behaviour, environment and other non-genetic factors.
I think there was a strong political consensus to restrict low-skilled immigration and a general relaxation about high-skilled immigration; indeed for non-EU controlled immigration (including immigration of non-EU spouses of British citizens) strong restrictions on low-skilled immigration have been government policy under Labour, coalition and Conservative majority and minority governments. High-skilled immigration is not politically controversial. That's why the "Australian style points system" was such a vote-winner, even though it arguably would have resulted in higher total numbers.
No, the UK could go back if they wished. The brit rebate by "I want my money back!" Thatcher however wouldn't be reinstated.
Which is one of the reasons why the UK as a whole will never wish to go back in my view.
The EU as it exists today is not really the same organisation as the European Communities/Common Market which existed before the Single European Act and Maastricht Treaties. That was much more of a trade block based on mutual recognition of differing national standards and a customs union with a common commercial policy which retained internal border infrastructure (including duty free zones in between countries, for example). As a trade block, it was a creature of its time, when tariffs and quotas were the biggest barriers to trade before the last few GATT rounds which rather dramatically reduced tariffs in goods on a global basis.
I don't think it would be unfair to call the UK a founder member of the "modern" EU as in particular it was instrumental in pushing for the Single Market (under Thatcher) which is the defining trade relationship within the EU (and since the mid 90s the EEA) and which did much to reduce non-tariff barriers to trade (although the Single Market rules also act as a hugely protectionist barrier against those outside the bloc). The UK has never been an enthusiastic member of the political institutions however, or of Jacques Delors's "Social Europe" vision - indeed both of these have consistently been raised as concerns about membership since their beginnings. If we had not been part of these then I doubt we'd have voted to leave.
Yes. I had assumed until now that it was reserved for the institutions of the EU itself as those are the only domains I've ever seen using it. I suspect a very very large number of the 300,000 are domain squatters who registered the ".eu" version of a ".com" etc. with the hope of selling it to the owners of the.com.
It's different because most companies realise this and try to underpromise and overdeliver publicly. Tesla has a track record of doing the opposite. And the stakes are also a lot higher than usual - the company's survival could depend on this single product.
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It wouldn't be that hard to provide alternative versions of the small number of "important" packages which depend on either libpam-systemd or systemd itself (I'm talking about things like gdm3, gnome-settings-daemon, lightdm, network-manager and policykit here). There aren't many of them (there are also a few packages which are uninteresting and have a hard depend which I'd be less fussed about.)
Slightly further up the difficulty scale is libsystemd0; it might perhaps be possible to replace that with a safe do-nothing shim if you really cared about it (eg because you want to reduce the potential security attack surface).
Ultimately, I think Debian should have worked harder to support multiple init systems. A requirement for packages above a certain importance level to support sysvinit in addition to systemd and to provide installable alternatives which don't create dependencies on systemd packages (other than perhaps libsystemd0) would have assuaged most people's concerns for very little effort.
Although that's true it's effectively impossible to avoid installing libsystemd0 (if you care about that). In current Debian stable it's also very hard on a desktop system to avoid installing the systemd package even if you use sysvinit as your init system (it gets brought in via policykit-1 which depends on libpam-systemd and which is depended on indirectly by the big desktop metapackages). In testing and unstable you can manage to only have elogind instead of systemd.
The problem the US have with Huawei is about more than whether they have been spying or not - it's about the fact that the US as a nation have lost control of the technology because the Chinese are the only credible firms producing 5G equipment. That means that they can control or break the standards in subtle ways, and then deliberately make it much harder or impossible for US (or other non-Chinese) firms to compete on a level playing field (by making only Chinese equipment truly cross-compatible). I don't know if this is actually happening but it is a legitimate concern - it's like the difference between Microsoft's OOXML vs ODF - the OOXML standard is technically open but it's close to impossible to truly implement something which is properly cross-compatible with MS Office.
A level playing field with open and transparent standards is something we should all be concerned to maintain because the next logical stage will be for the firms benefiting from the closed standard is to leverage that "lockin" to raise prices.
Which is why rewriting basic system utilities from scratch, repeatedly, instead of relying on the battle-hardened code which has already had its fair share of vulnerabilities exploited and patched over a long lifespan, is likely to increase the attack surface.
systemd's apparent need to replace/rewrite basic system utilities which have worked for decades (in some cases) and don't need changing IS part of the problem.
God clearly doesn't want us to burn oil, or he wouldn't have buried it almost entirely under assholes and terrorists.
You mean, here?
The language of "trade deficits" is exactly the wrong way around.
The rest of the world gives you *actual things which are useful* and you only have to give them a piece of paper (or even better, increment a number in a database) in return. I know who I think wins in that equation.
And all modern cars - petrol, hybrid, diesel, EV, etc result in quite a lot of particulates being produced in the form of rubber wear from the tyres. I think this is probably underappreciated in terms of human health impact but unfortunately there isn't a huge amount of research into this.
Battery pack replacements may not be as common as people expected them to be. When you have a Nissan Leaf dropping to a top range of 60 miles, then you do need to replace the battery pack. However, if your Chevrolet Bolt EV drops to only 60% of its original range, you still have more than 140 miles of range.
I think this is the result of two things
(1) range not being big enough to start with. People who bought an EV where 230 miles was "enough" range for their specific use case probably won't replace the battery if it drops from 230 to 140, because they're both "enough" for the purpose they bought that vehicle for - i.e. if 140 miles isn't enough, 230 miles probably doesn't move the needle enough for many people. If range started at 600 miles and dropped to 360 miles, I suspect there'd be a greater replacement rate.
(2) You can easily finance a new car but not a repair. So people would rather replace the car than the battery because the upfront cost is much more manageable.
Assuming that the balance of renewable energy production vs non-renewable production in the world isn't itself affected by the decision of where to site these plants (which isn't always true of course but unless you're building your own generation it's close enough) - this is the wrong way to think about it. Instead, it makes much more sense to locate manufacturing facilities in such a way as to reduce the transport-miles involved in manufacturing since this results in a reduction in the total system energy usage ("the global economy" is the system), which should result in lower CO2.
So, use inconveniently-located but very low CO2 sources like hydro to power things like datacentres, which can be sited more or less anywhere. For anything else, there's a trade-off to consider between the two. But in the mean time focus on reducing the CO2 emissions in power generation globally, by extending grids, and focusing new-build generation on lower-CO2 sources.
Fortunately, we already have a machine which can help us balance this trade-off - the price mechanism of the economy. All that's required is that the cost of the externality (CO2 produced) is correctly factored in everywhere in the world, via either a cap and trade scheme or a carbon tax.
So think about that for a little bit, the only thing that was really accomplished was to further polarize the country. The only reason I can think of for wanting to intentionally polarize the country is to give the commoners something to fight about so the elites in washington on both sides of the aisle can continue to sell off the country to the highest bidder.
I'm not an American and don't live there so I have pretty well no skin in this game. I have no idea whether the accusations are true, although my gut instinct is to say they're certainly not well-corroborated enough that they should ever have seen the light of day in such a public forum. But I don't think it's true that all the Democrats have achieved is greater polarisation - it seems to me it's actually some quite clever (and very cynical) politics on their part. Either he's not confirmed, in which case they get a bit more influence over future "political" decisions the court makes, or he IS confirmed, and they have motivated their base to turn out in the midterms. It's win/win for them. Just a shame about Ford and Kavanaugh, for both of whom it's lose/lose.
Why should I be buying new computers and cell phone every 2 years? Used to be you bought a PC, paid like 6K for inflation adjusted and you ran it for 6 or seven years!
A roughly mainstream desktop PC spec in 2012 would have been quad-core AMD Piledriver or Intel Sandy Bridge, probably 4GB RAM. That's still more than enough to run Windows 10 and Office 2016. Laptops similarly. Contrast that to the difference between 1988 and 1994 (for example). This is entirely an issue with phones/tablets, and is down to (1) the relative immaturity of those devices and (2) a pricing structure for phone contracts which incentivises "upgrades" every two years based on contract renewal.
It's really not that difficult. You just say it must be possible to remove the battery without use of any tools or significant effort, by an average person (not a specialist), in less than [x] seconds. Then you delegate responsibility for signing off on whether its complied with to the exact same bodies who already are responsible for product certification - the infrastructure for product certification is already there, so it's just adding another rule to be complied with before the product gets certified. You give manufacturers enough notice (probably 2-3 years) to enable them to build it into their next product cycle and allow old devices to be grandfathered in but that's a short term issue. If the regulation is targeted, no manufacturer who cares about their reputation will dare oppose it given the obvious reasons for it and limited cost.
Yes, you'll never get absolutely everyone and the enforcement effort to get every last manufacturer and stop every last non-compliant import is not worth it - but if even 50% of the market complies, that's still a huge improvement on today's situation. In reality I think you'd get more like 90% of the market fairly easily.
At least in the UK, we already have this part. There are recycling bins where I can take smaller batteries in my local supermarket and at work (and in many other places), and larger batteries (eg car batteries) can be taken to the local dump.
I can't see how this can possibly work in eg Malta, Luxembourg and Cyprus, countries which are very small so will have almost no local content either back catalogue or current production. Just means Netflix etc will never do business there.
It goes beyond 'funding secured'. Potentially even more problematic is 'Investor support is confirmed. Only reason why this is not certain is that itâ(TM)s contingent on a shareholder vote.'
It's a bit more sophisticated than that. There's some good evidence that good professional investors can beat the market (and most amateurs) relatively consistently. Unfortunately there's also very good evidence that they typically take all of that outperformance (and often more) back in the fees they charge, so that if *you* invest with them then you (on average) won't be better off than if you'd just bought the lowest-cost index fund tracking whatever they measure themselves against you can find (which may or may not be an ETF).
Sell-side analysts (ie those not working internally in an investment firm to support investment decisions) are a very different thing to investors of course... they face conflicting incentives which often don't align with "best returns" (as a simple example being controversial can often be much more rewarding for them than being right).
And that's ignoring whether the benchmark index is even the right measure (for you) to start with of course.
In some ways, driving with Autopilot (and it will get worse as these systems become more advanced) is like supervising a learner driver. Most of the time (in the limited scenarios it can be fully engaged) it will act like a normal fully-qualified driver but every so often it will fail to react properly or just do something really erratic. If you're the human in charge of the vehicle in those situations, then the role you are fulfilling is more akin to that of a driving instructor than to that of a regular driver. Except actually its worse because you can't communicate with the "actual driver" like a human would and you may well be driving down roads you've never seen in your life before so don't know where the "danger spots" might be which people tend to get wrong.
There are very good reasons why most countries require full time driving instructors to pass additional tests and re-certify relatively frequently. I think it's worth considering whether we ought to apply the same standards to some types of semi-autonomous driving tecnnology.
This is a new use of language even in the UK though. Historically, we had "articled clerkships" for (professional) office jobs, and apprenticeships for trades. That use of language probably disappeared in the 1970s or 80s and it seems everyone has forgotten it.
Under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, in the UK lesser offences are indeed 'forgotten' in many important respects after a period of time (they become 'spent'). For example, it's illegal for most employers to ask about spent offences, and the offenders have the support of the law in lying about them if they are asked anyway. I don't see that this is particularly out of step with that principle.
You can't study the unique feeding behavior of the Carolina Parakeet if all you have is a DNA sequence on a hard drive and no parakeet. Unless at some point, you actually make a parakeet, it's like having a pile of money you never spend and then finding out it's become valueless due to inflation.
Nor can you properly study it if you do bring the species back this way, since a large amount of what many animals do is thought to be heritable through group behaviour, environment and other non-genetic factors.
I think there was a strong political consensus to restrict low-skilled immigration and a general relaxation about high-skilled immigration; indeed for non-EU controlled immigration (including immigration of non-EU spouses of British citizens) strong restrictions on low-skilled immigration have been government policy under Labour, coalition and Conservative majority and minority governments. High-skilled immigration is not politically controversial. That's why the "Australian style points system" was such a vote-winner, even though it arguably would have resulted in higher total numbers.
No, the UK could go back if they wished. The brit rebate by "I want my money back!" Thatcher however wouldn't be reinstated.
Which is one of the reasons why the UK as a whole will never wish to go back in my view.
The EU as it exists today is not really the same organisation as the European Communities/Common Market which existed before the Single European Act and Maastricht Treaties. That was much more of a trade block based on mutual recognition of differing national standards and a customs union with a common commercial policy which retained internal border infrastructure (including duty free zones in between countries, for example). As a trade block, it was a creature of its time, when tariffs and quotas were the biggest barriers to trade before the last few GATT rounds which rather dramatically reduced tariffs in goods on a global basis.
I don't think it would be unfair to call the UK a founder member of the "modern" EU as in particular it was instrumental in pushing for the Single Market (under Thatcher) which is the defining trade relationship within the EU (and since the mid 90s the EEA) and which did much to reduce non-tariff barriers to trade (although the Single Market rules also act as a hugely protectionist barrier against those outside the bloc). The UK has never been an enthusiastic member of the political institutions however, or of Jacques Delors's "Social Europe" vision - indeed both of these have consistently been raised as concerns about membership since their beginnings. If we had not been part of these then I doubt we'd have voted to leave.
Yes. I had assumed until now that it was reserved for the institutions of the EU itself as those are the only domains I've ever seen using it. I suspect a very very large number of the 300,000 are domain squatters who registered the ".eu" version of a ".com" etc. with the hope of selling it to the owners of the .com.
...within the European Union, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein...
i.e. the EEA states. Odd that the domain is ".eu" and not ".eea" therefore. Also why didn't they just say "EEA"?
It's different because most companies realise this and try to underpromise and overdeliver publicly. Tesla has a track record of doing the opposite. And the stakes are also a lot higher than usual - the company's survival could depend on this single product.