IT is a ponzi scheme, and just because the government is involved, doesn't change a thing.
Ponzi schemes collapse when no new investors can be found to pay off the old investors. But if the government is doing it, then participation is compelled and there is no danger of collapse. Young people today are almost certainly going to get screwed by SS, and would be much better off investing elsewhere, but they don't have that option.
I'd point to Denmark too, but it hasn't failed completely yet.
Denmark is not socialist. In many ways they are more capitalist than America. They rank higher on the Ease of Doing Business index. There are few barriers to starting a business, and less bureaucracy when running one. Even their Postal Service is privatized.
Keep in mind, this is for a theoretical backdoor, somehow hidden in plain site, and used on serious and sensitive machines all throughout US infrastructure.
Just like the Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL, except for the "theoretical" part.
That seems unlikely, right?
Yes, it is unlikely, but similar things have happened before.
If the mechanism involves using a virus, couldn't there be massive unintended consequences if the virus transfers to another host?
Viruses already exist, any many of them do things much more nasty than fixing T-cells. CRISPR is programmed to target a specific sequence of DNA, usually around 40 base pairs. Since each pair is two bits, the chance of this sequence just randomly occurring is around 2^80.
Even if a virus isn't very communicable, and can't survive outside of a host, what if the patient transmits it sexually after treatment?
If someone has sex with their identical twin, that twin's cancer may also be cured. Otherwise, nothing will likely happen. Far more dangerous DNA modifications are happening naturally on a nearby toilet seat.
Maybe Canada has fewer goofballs with drones who think their hobby takes precedence over people's lives and property.
America has much more permissive regulations for "hobbyists" than for professionals. The regulations are not about safety, they are about restricting drone operators from offering services that compete with piloted aircraft.
If Apple gets away with this, everyone else will follow.
I don't want to be forced to buy a $40 adapter for my $10-20 earbuds
Just buy earbuds with usb-c instead of a jack. They are already available, and will soon be common. In the future, audio jacks will be as common as DB-9 serial ports are today. That was another port that many predicted would last forever. You HAVE to have a serial port, right? How else can you connect to a modem?
No. Seafile is a Chinese company with a German subsidiary. They started in Beijing, helping college students illegally swap music and movies. Today, they also help German students do the same.
Indeed. Seafile is an illegal file sharing site run out of China. They may call themselves a "cloud company", but that is really stretching the definition. Paypal is not asking for any user-specific data, but just anonymized aggregate statistics about file types and traffic. Of course, if Seafile did that, they would 100% match the profile of illegal file sharing (because that is what they are), so they refuse and pretend to be a victim standing up for principles. Paypal was going to cut them off, no matter what, so at least this way they garner some free publicity. Whatever.
What this law is designed to do (and needs to be done in Vancouver BC, Seattle WA, Portland Oregon, and San Francisco California) is stop people from hoarding property from the people who live in the city and need that property.
The obvious solution to a shortage of housing is to BUILD MORE HOUSING. Last year, SF rejected 95% of all building permit requests, and most people don't even bother to submit a request. Despite soaring demand, the number of new housing units is near zero. So the result is high prices. Duh. NYC and other cities are not much better. The problem is driven by NIMBY and BANANA voters. It is absurd to blame this on Airbnb.
There might be strangers sleeping somewhere in a property near you.
You don't need a law to prevent that. Individual HOAs or CC&Rs can allow or disallow short term rentals as they see fit.
But the people pushing this law are using contradictory justifications. They say it is to prevent people running an entire building as an "Airbnb hotel", then they say it is to prevent neighboring apts from being rented out to evil dangerous tourists who travel halfway around the world to mug innocent apartment dwellers in hallways and stairwells.
This is interesting to me. I've been considering getting some chickens, but other family members who have them say they're actually quite expensive to feed, and argue that the resulting eggs, while good, are far more expensive than those from the grocery store. What's your take?
You are NOT going to save money unless you consider your time to be worthless. You can't compete with factory farms. You should just think of it as more of a hobby. Here are some benefits:
1. You will have fresh eggs everyday. More in the summer but a few even in the winter. Roughly 300 eggs/year/hen. 2. Your kids will learn that food doesn't come from factories, and they will learn responsibility. 3. You will know that your eggs came from humanely treated chickens, and not from a warehouse of hens crammed into battery cages. Go visit a factory farm. The stench alone will make you never want to eat store-bought eggs again. 4. They will eat almost anything, including watermelon rinds, apple cores, carrot peels, etc. and convert all of that into protein nodules. You will still need to supplement that with some commercial feed. 5. The eggs taste much better, especially if they have access to a lot of insects and worms. I use a pitchfork to turn over part of the compost heap so they can get to the wrigglers. 6. When the zombie apocalypse comes you can feed the human corpses to your chickens, or if you prefer, you can let the bodies decompose and feed the maggots to your hens. You will survive while others starve.
They are cleaner and easier to care for than my dogs.
I have chickens. They are cleaner than dogs. But in some ways they are harder, and in other ways easier to raise. If I forget to feed my dog, or her water dish is empty, she will come and let me know. With chickens, I have to remember. But you don't have to walk a chicken, and they will scrounge and scratch for some of their food. Also, dogs don't lay eggs. My daughter had parakeets for several years, and the chickens are definitely less trouble than those.
Poverty in rich countries is not comparable to poverty in poor countries. The root causes are totally different. Poverty in poor countries is mostly caused by government mismanagement, and lack of opportunities. Poor people in rich countries are surrounded by an ocean of opportunity, but fail to take advantage of it, often because of substance abuse, mental illness, or simply bad health. Those are much harder problems to fix.
So what, aid organizations should only help the most needy country?
The poorest countries tend to be corrupt and mismanaged, so most aid is stolen or ineffective. Aid is more effective when it goes to poor people in not-so-poor countries.
There's a lot of them on Kauai, but only because the island has almost no predators.
The Polynesians brought chickens to Hawaii, and all of the islands used to have feral chickens. But introduced mongooses wiped them out on all the other major islands. Kauai has no mongooses, so they survive there. Mongooses cannot kill an adult chicken, but they eat the eggs and young.
Just think of the energy cost of laying an egg on most days.
Feral chickens quickly revert to laying far fewer eggs. The feral chickens on Kauai only lay a few clutches per year, when they are ready to brood.
What do you think the effect on an agrarian economy would be if you came in and flooded the market with free food?
This would not "flood the market". 100,000 chickens is less than 0.1% of Bolivia's annual chicken production, and only a small portion of the 100K chickens would go to Bolivia. Most are going to Africa. Anyway, this is not about "more chickens", it is about chicken redistribution. It is not like crates of chickens are going to flown from America. The chickens will be purchased locally and given to a handful of the poorest families. The reason that BG is doing this is because there is actual data that shows it this program has helped similar families in the past.
I know this took place in Bolivia, but I'm using Venezuela as an example of where officials are willing to cut their own country's throat to save some face.
Bolivia is another country where appearances matter more than reality to the government. Bolivia as a whole is not as poor as many countries in Africa, but there are still some very poor people who would benefit from this gift. Instead of refusing it out of pride, maybe Morales should let the individual families decide for themselves.
Disclaimer: I am a non-poor American, and I have chickens (six leghorn laying hens). Chickens are very easy to care for, and mine live mostly on table scraps, garden waste, and bugs.
A: Only if you don't care if everyone in the world sees it and tries to use it against you.
Why should I care if everyone sees my medical records? The only argument I have heard is that insurance companies might charge more, and employers may be reluctant to hire people with bad health. But I don't have any health problems, so if my records are public, I should get lower insurance rates and better employment offers, and potential GFs can verify that I am STD free. So it seems like a win-win for me to just store everything in the cloud, and hope it leaks. Is there some downside that I am overlooking?
Slashdot Mirror
IT is a ponzi scheme, and just because the government is involved, doesn't change a thing.
Ponzi schemes collapse when no new investors can be found to pay off the old investors. But if the government is doing it, then participation is compelled and there is no danger of collapse. Young people today are almost certainly going to get screwed by SS, and would be much better off investing elsewhere, but they don't have that option.
I'd point to Denmark too, but it hasn't failed completely yet.
Denmark is not socialist. In many ways they are more capitalist than America. They rank higher on the Ease of Doing Business index. There are few barriers to starting a business, and less bureaucracy when running one. Even their Postal Service is privatized.
You are confusing Social Democracy with Socialism. They are two entirely different things.
Keep in mind, this is for a theoretical backdoor, somehow hidden in plain site, and used on serious and sensitive machines all throughout US infrastructure.
Just like the Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL, except for the "theoretical" part.
That seems unlikely, right?
Yes, it is unlikely, but similar things have happened before.
If the mechanism involves using a virus, couldn't there be massive unintended consequences if the virus transfers to another host?
Viruses already exist, any many of them do things much more nasty than fixing T-cells. CRISPR is programmed to target a specific sequence of DNA, usually around 40 base pairs. Since each pair is two bits, the chance of this sequence just randomly occurring is around 2^80.
Even if a virus isn't very communicable, and can't survive outside of a host, what if the patient transmits it sexually after treatment?
If someone has sex with their identical twin, that twin's cancer may also be cured. Otherwise, nothing will likely happen.
Far more dangerous DNA modifications are happening naturally on a nearby toilet seat.
Maybe Canada has fewer goofballs with drones who think their hobby takes precedence over people's lives and property.
America has much more permissive regulations for "hobbyists" than for professionals. The regulations are not about safety, they are about restricting drone operators from offering services that compete with piloted aircraft.
Which now require the operator to have an unaided line of sight to the drone at all times.
The article is about Canada, where FAA regulations don't apply. America has dumb regulations on drones. Most other countries are far more sensible.
not giving more money and power to the oil cartels to pollute and control the media/government.
Most fracking is done by small independent operators. The oil cartel would love to see fracking shut down.
Yet another reason not to buy apple products
If Apple gets away with this, everyone else will follow.
I don't want to be forced to buy a $40 adapter for my $10-20 earbuds
Just buy earbuds with usb-c instead of a jack. They are already available, and will soon be common. In the future, audio jacks will be as common as DB-9 serial ports are today. That was another port that many predicted would last forever. You HAVE to have a serial port, right? How else can you connect to a modem?
This is how you cash in. Use stockholder money to buy your own company.
This is a stock transaction. No money is changing hands.
So, file-sharing is wrong
Some file-sharing is illegal. Whether it is "wrong" or not is subjective.
Seafile is a German company
No. Seafile is a Chinese company with a German subsidiary. They started in Beijing, helping college students illegally swap music and movies. Today, they also help German students do the same.
What does BANANA stand for in this context?
BANANA = Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.
Another problem is CAVEs = Citizens Against Virtually Everything.
I did not, in all likelihood, read the article.
Indeed. Seafile is an illegal file sharing site run out of China. They may call themselves a "cloud company", but that is really stretching the definition. Paypal is not asking for any user-specific data, but just anonymized aggregate statistics about file types and traffic. Of course, if Seafile did that, they would 100% match the profile of illegal file sharing (because that is what they are), so they refuse and pretend to be a victim standing up for principles. Paypal was going to cut them off, no matter what, so at least this way they garner some free publicity. Whatever.
What this law is designed to do (and needs to be done in Vancouver BC, Seattle WA, Portland Oregon, and San Francisco California) is stop people from hoarding property from the people who live in the city and need that property.
The obvious solution to a shortage of housing is to BUILD MORE HOUSING. Last year, SF rejected 95% of all building permit requests, and most people don't even bother to submit a request. Despite soaring demand, the number of new housing units is near zero. So the result is high prices. Duh. NYC and other cities are not much better. The problem is driven by NIMBY and BANANA voters. It is absurd to blame this on Airbnb.
There might be strangers sleeping somewhere in a property near you.
You don't need a law to prevent that. Individual HOAs or CC&Rs can allow or disallow short term rentals as they see fit.
But the people pushing this law are using contradictory justifications. They say it is to prevent people running an entire building as an "Airbnb hotel", then they say it is to prevent neighboring apts from being rented out to evil dangerous tourists who travel halfway around the world to mug innocent apartment dwellers in hallways and stairwells.
There would still be homeowner's and such.
Your household maid robot could be programmed to detect and extinguish fires, and to detect, photograph, and report burglars.
This is interesting to me. I've been considering getting some chickens, but other family members who have them say they're actually quite expensive to feed, and argue that the resulting eggs, while good, are far more expensive than those from the grocery store. What's your take?
You are NOT going to save money unless you consider your time to be worthless. You can't compete with factory farms. You should just think of it as more of a hobby. Here are some benefits:
1. You will have fresh eggs everyday. More in the summer but a few even in the winter. Roughly 300 eggs/year/hen.
2. Your kids will learn that food doesn't come from factories, and they will learn responsibility.
3. You will know that your eggs came from humanely treated chickens, and not from a warehouse of hens crammed into battery cages. Go visit a factory farm. The stench alone will make you never want to eat store-bought eggs again.
4. They will eat almost anything, including watermelon rinds, apple cores, carrot peels, etc. and convert all of that into protein nodules. You will still need to supplement that with some commercial feed.
5. The eggs taste much better, especially if they have access to a lot of insects and worms. I use a pitchfork to turn over part of the compost heap so they can get to the wrigglers.
6. When the zombie apocalypse comes you can feed the human corpses to your chickens, or if you prefer, you can let the bodies decompose and feed the maggots to your hens. You will survive while others starve.
They are cleaner and easier to care for than my dogs.
I have chickens. They are cleaner than dogs. But in some ways they are harder, and in other ways easier to raise. If I forget to feed my dog, or her water dish is empty, she will come and let me know. With chickens, I have to remember. But you don't have to walk a chicken, and they will scrounge and scratch for some of their food. Also, dogs don't lay eggs. My daughter had parakeets for several years, and the chickens are definitely less trouble than those.
what about?
Poverty in rich countries is not comparable to poverty in poor countries. The root causes are totally different. Poverty in poor countries is mostly caused by government mismanagement, and lack of opportunities. Poor people in rich countries are surrounded by an ocean of opportunity, but fail to take advantage of it, often because of substance abuse, mental illness, or simply bad health. Those are much harder problems to fix.
So what, aid organizations should only help the most needy country?
The poorest countries tend to be corrupt and mismanaged, so most aid is stolen or ineffective. Aid is more effective when it goes to poor people in not-so-poor countries.
There's a lot of them on Kauai, but only because the island has almost no predators.
The Polynesians brought chickens to Hawaii, and all of the islands used to have feral chickens. But introduced mongooses wiped them out on all the other major islands. Kauai has no mongooses, so they survive there. Mongooses cannot kill an adult chicken, but they eat the eggs and young.
Just think of the energy cost of laying an egg on most days.
Feral chickens quickly revert to laying far fewer eggs. The feral chickens on Kauai only lay a few clutches per year, when they are ready to brood.
What do you think the effect on an agrarian economy would be if you came in and flooded the market with free food?
This would not "flood the market". 100,000 chickens is less than 0.1% of Bolivia's annual chicken production, and only a small portion of the 100K chickens would go to Bolivia. Most are going to Africa. Anyway, this is not about "more chickens", it is about chicken redistribution. It is not like crates of chickens are going to flown from America. The chickens will be purchased locally and given to a handful of the poorest families. The reason that BG is doing this is because there is actual data that shows it this program has helped similar families in the past.
I know this took place in Bolivia, but I'm using Venezuela as an example of where officials are willing to cut their own country's throat to save some face.
Bolivia is another country where appearances matter more than reality to the government. Bolivia as a whole is not as poor as many countries in Africa, but there are still some very poor people who would benefit from this gift. Instead of refusing it out of pride, maybe Morales should let the individual families decide for themselves.
Disclaimer: I am a non-poor American, and I have chickens (six leghorn laying hens). Chickens are very easy to care for, and mine live mostly on table scraps, garden waste, and bugs.
Insurance is supposed to be for people who are not in good health.
Is car insurance for people that have already wrecked their car?
A: Only if you don't care if everyone in the world sees it and tries to use it against you.
Why should I care if everyone sees my medical records? The only argument I have heard is that insurance companies might charge more, and employers may be reluctant to hire people with bad health. But I don't have any health problems, so if my records are public, I should get lower insurance rates and better employment offers, and potential GFs can verify that I am STD free. So it seems like a win-win for me to just store everything in the cloud, and hope it leaks. Is there some downside that I am overlooking?