The Earth's average temperature is rising and would be rising even if humans did not exist. Eventually temperatures will rise to and exceed the levels we've been told are bad, it's simply a matter of how quickly they get there.
This is not in dispute.
So what we're talking about in reality is how long a time-frame will humans and civilization have to adapt to inevitable future higher temperature norms.
What must be weighed is first the efficacy of reducing CO2 in slowing rising temps, but even given that it's the best methodology, how much extra adaptation time is needed and at what cost to society and people does the time-frame increase become a bad deal.
For example, I think most people would agree it would be bad if nations spent huge amounts of their people's money and curtailed standards of living just so that the elites could maintain their luxury beach homes for a couple more decades.
With facial recognition systems, the more sample photos of a subject you have, the better it works. A lot better than having just one passport picture.
The DHS folks want to build a bigger database that allows law enforcement folks to better identify criminal folks from surveillance cameras.
This.
It's about building facial databases which can be shared among the various Federal. and State agencies and departments.
If anyone thinks it will only be used to identify and track "criminals" and not journalists, whistle blowers, political enemies and more, they are fools.
Couple this with AI using facial micro-expression analysis and you can quickly learn anything about anyone, how someone will react to a given situation, their strengths & weaknesses, if they're lying or telling the truth, what makes them angry, sad, happy, what scares them, or makes them laugh, cry...or kill.
The more data/images/video the AI has to work with, the more specific and precise the predictive ability and also conversely the ability to know what will manipulate individuals and groups to do, say, and believe whatever those in control desire.
For heavily used apps, leaving the validation client side can result in substantially lower hardware requirements on the server side.
There's a much more fundamental reason; Human Nature.
In general, the same type of people will approach the same type of problem in a similar way, including all the attempts at short-cutting, offloading, etc etc.
One can observe this phenomenon writ large in history, as people fall for the same ideological/political promises of Utopia again and again every few generations. A pioneering rock band of the 1960s called "The Who" had a famous song named "Won't Get Fooled Again" in which they summed this phenomenon up with the line; "Meet the new Boss, same as the old Boss". (BTW, if you've never heard The Who, do it. Do it now. Read comments later. Thanks optional but welcome:) )
Then we could reduce spending in the form of the DEA! AND on jails and prisons!
We'd need a good name for it, though. We could call it "freedom"?
Sorry, no.
"Freedom" would cost far too many union jobs in law enforcement and the private prison industry. That's not even considering the loss of those sweet drug-smuggling cartel kick-backs for keeping illegal drug prices high. Sadly, it's also mostly bi-partisan so there's no easy solution of simply choosing the right Party as both have contributed to the problems.
It doesn't work like that in every country. In some countries the spying has always been legal due to the interest of national security giving a sufficient weight into the consideration of proportionality for an exception to the associated rights, as the constitution explicitly allows. Since most EU documents already contain lots of national security exceptions, I do expect the German constitution to contain such proportionality argument as well.
The problem I see is one of legal interpretation regarding spy agencies possessing positive powers or negative powers.
Positive powers means that the agency can do whatever is not explicitly prohibited, and negative powers means the agency only has those narrow & specific powers granted by law.
All intelligence gathering agencies should be constrained under negative powers. Secret powers lead to secret governments which inevitably lead to public tyranny.
Nobody would be stupid enough to talk about anything important to national security on an unsecured cellphone, right?
Of course not, especially if one were the head of a Federal department, that's just silly!
One uses their own private email server for Top Secret/Classified government data and wipe it, like with a cloth, and never allow any direct examination of the server and it's data by the FBI.
I didn't "accuse others", I gave a long list of Nazi policies that coincide with leftist policies and the historical close connections between fascists and leftists.
You are exactly correct with your original post and the points you made there.
When Mussolini took power and turned Italy fascist, Lenin congratulated him. They are both at their core a Marxist/Leninist ideology, differing only that by either the state owning factories, railways, etc outright, or under fascism, the entities already in charge were simply placed under government control.
Those who disagree can compare for yourselves the Nazi's own 25 point declaration of their platform against any socialist regime's core principles you'd like. If you are being intellectually honest in the slightest one would have to recognize the obvious and glaring similarities in the majority of principles declared if one simply puts them all into contemporary terms, but yet people insist otherwise.
You said it brother. Supporting genocide and mass murder in the name of "American interests" is evil.
America should act (or not) based on **principles** and not "interests".
"Interests" are wholly subjective depending on the ideological/political/economic biases of politicians and Parties deciding what they are what they mean (and what they will cost *us* on many levels).
I would always prefer to interact with someone who holds to principles, even if I may strongly disagree with those principles, than I would someone who looks at things and acts (or not) based on "interests" that may one day inform him that cutting your throat while you sleep is in his "interest".
At least with the former you know where things stand and you can make rational decisions based on their known principles.
Principles both in government and among the people at large (one cannot exist without the other) are what make a civilized society, as without them chaos is certain to eventually occur heralding the destruction of that once-civilized society.
Happens when you don't make it nationwide like in Australia.
Australia is totally surrounded by oceans making smuggling something like firearms evtremely difficult. The US has land borders that people, including smugglers, regularly simply walk or drive across. The existing drug and human smuggling cartels would simply add another item to the menu: firearms. Actual military-grade, select-fire/full-automatic rifles, sub-machine guns, and more. If people in the US are unable to obtain a legal firearm that complies with laws and regulations they'll buy from the black market that has no restrictions at all.
There is also the problem of the hundreds of millions of guns...many never registered...that are already in civilian hands. It would be impossible to confiscate enough to make it unlikely a criminal could not obtain one.
Another thing is that guns favors the aggressor.
Guns are an equalizer. They allow a 120 pound (~55 kg) woman a chance to defend herself against a much larger and stronger (usually male) assailant and do it at a distance out of the assailant's reach. Same for older people. Guns save lives as well as take them. It happens almost daily in the US.
The US has had widespread civilian gun ownership since it's founding. The recent violence is a societal problem, not a "tool" problem. Simply look at the UK. Now they're talking about knife bans and one judge in the UK even suggesting people deliberately dull their kitchen knives(!). That's stupid in the extreme.
Of course, enacting bans makes politicos appear to the low-info types to be doing something without having to address the societal problems at the root of the violence that is largely due to their own government policies and laws to begin with.
Any solution that relies on shooting the shooter means that you tolerate one or several innocents shot before the aggressor is dealt with.
The frequency of that having occurred in the many thousands of times criminals have been shot in self defense by civilians in the US is statistically zero, where the number of lives saved is far above statistically zero.
But, let's not allow facts to get in the way of agendas.
These digital plates have GPS built-in. The point being that the GPS is the *actual* goal, not the convenience for vehicle owners. That's just the "sell" to help get them adopted with minimal push-back and then eventually required for every vehicle.
Making sure that even cars without GPS incorporated into the car's onboard electronics can be tracked via GPS in real time. Got to make sure that Jay Leno's vintage cars are properly taxed per mile when they enact the mileage tax because of electric cars not paying gasoline taxes.
What you're missing (along with many other partisan "rah-rah-team" types here) is the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution.
SCOTUS, particularly now with Gorsuch on the bench, will slap CA down. Hard. The same thing that's going to happen to "sanctuary cities" and the criminals in office who are criminal accessories both to violations of Federal immigration law, but also accessories to every crime committed by illegal aliens they've allowed to continue breaking the law by remaining illegally.
If AZ can't enforce laws regarding immigration because it's a Federal Department that has sole, exclusive authority, neither can CA do it regarding NN which is also under exclusively Federal authority.
It would be like Louisiana enacting a law banning jet aircraft, cellphones, or AM radio stations. States don't have such authority for good reason which we see playing out here.
Look, protectionism isn't a "new" idea. It has been tried over and over throughout history. In fact, it has been more the norm than the exception. It hurts the economies of both importers and exporters, and leads to job losses and lower living standards.
Tell that to the Chinese as they've been using protectionist policies against the US for decades and engaging in tactics like flooding Western markets with super-cheap goods by "dumping" products at artificially-low prices subsidized by the Chinese government at a loss with the sole purpose of destroying US industrial and commercial sectors.
The Chinese have in effect been waging a trade and economic war against the US for decades. This response is long overdue and relatively mild in comparison.
Thanks for that link to video of the huge number of people who peacefully marched in protest of Tommy Robinson's imprisonment for (make no mistake, nothing to do with violating a court order, that's just CYA).daring to expose the British government's suppression of news surrounding Muslim child rape-gangs and sex-slavery rings.
Take heart Brits! You are NOT alone! There are many, many here in America who are praying for Tommy and you, and are ready to lend what support we can. Our governments may 'take the piss' with each other, but Americans by and large are with you! We kicked one set of fascist's asses together, we can do it again.
"Never, never, never give up!" -- Winston Churchill
If I pay $3000 for a top of the line laptop, I can install whatever OS I want.
Only for the present, but that too shall change. The Political-Industrial Complex will push to have ALL devices locked into officially-sanctioned bootloaders and OS's soon. Lost profits and lost opportunities to snoop due to a non-homogeneous software/OS/encryption/security environment making spying and mass data-collection difficult will not be tolerated.
The business types get control of art, and they homogenize it into a fetid featureless river of shit.
Luckily, there is so much creativity outside of the mainstream, if you only cut the feed of shit they feed you, and go explore on your own.
You and I rarely agree on a whole host of topics, but here we find common ground. I agree. Go out to local clubs and other venues where "unsigned" bands and musicians perform, often without even a cover charge or ticket required, and explore local talent that the "industry" won't promote because it doesn't fit into their molds dictated by algorithms and MBAs. There's tons and tons of amazing musical talents and musicians performing live shows right in your local area. The best part is you can support them directly and personally without the "industry" walking away with most of it and leaving the artists crumbs at best while locking away our culture in perpetual copyrights.
Yes, you're right. Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Also, drug sellers aren't killing people, it's the users that are killing themselves.
Although you post in sarcasm, you are precisely correct on both points.
Guns in civilian hands in the US have been around since there was a US, the relatively recent problems are societal. Although, gun homicides in general in the US are down 50% over the last 25 years according to official government data despite a sharp uptick in firearm sales.
The War On (some) Drugs has been an abject failure and was originally initiated to oppress racial minorities. Education and treatment rather than tossing users in prison would quickly cause drug dealers and the cartels that supply them to find themselves without sufficient customers to make it a worthwhile endeavor.
That's pretty much the entire reason governments want to go to a cashless system; tracking (and taxation). I'd be more shocked if, in a cashless society, the government did NOT hoover-up user data regardless of any laws or constitutional prohubitions. That kind of data is simply too valuable.
It was both conservatives and progressives that interned Japanese and Germans. It WAS conservatives who were the party of slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow.... Lincoln was a progressive (hell, by todays standards, Reagan was a progressive... raising taxes 11 times, giving immigrants legal status to be here; and even Nixon would be somewhat progressive... you know, that whole EPA thing.). It was conservatives in both the GOP and DNC that fought civil rights, which is why all the dixicrats changed to being full fledged racists pos republicans. It was conservatives who voted in the current fascists we have now who are systematically destroying the future of this country.
Nice revisionist history attempt, but MASSIVE FAIL.
Go read some history books. ProTip: They're the ones without Marvel or DC characters.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm picturing a fire at a "grid-scale" lithium-ion battery farm...
And I'm picturing the worldwide marshmallow** shortage and massive increase in average obesity levels among the local population to follow...
Strat :)
**(Lithium-roasted marshmallows might be a way to increase prescribed lithium-based medication compliance among mentally ill "street people". :) )
The Earth's average temperature is rising and would be rising even if humans did not exist. Eventually temperatures will rise to and exceed the levels we've been told are bad, it's simply a matter of how quickly they get there.
This is not in dispute.
So what we're talking about in reality is how long a time-frame will humans and civilization have to adapt to inevitable future higher temperature norms.
What must be weighed is first the efficacy of reducing CO2 in slowing rising temps, but even given that it's the best methodology, how much extra adaptation time is needed and at what cost to society and people does the time-frame increase become a bad deal.
For example, I think most people would agree it would be bad if nations spent huge amounts of their people's money and curtailed standards of living just so that the elites could maintain their luxury beach homes for a couple more decades.
Strat
UBI, whether a left-wing concept or a right-wing concept, is fundamentally barbaric because it treats individuals as property of the state.
There's already a name for a system in which the government is the provider/controller of life-sustaining essentials like income, food, housing, etc.
Prison.
The "cashless society" types are simply prisons without physical walls.
Strat
Because our q-bit earth's location state is represented by vibration, technically the Earth does NOT revolve around the Sun!
So the Beach Boy's song "Good Vibrations" is actually a quantum-science statement?
Fascinating!
Strat :)
With facial recognition systems, the more sample photos of a subject you have, the better it works. A lot better than having just one passport picture.
The DHS folks want to build a bigger database that allows law enforcement folks to better identify criminal folks from surveillance cameras.
This.
It's about building facial databases which can be shared among the various Federal. and State agencies and departments.
If anyone thinks it will only be used to identify and track "criminals" and not journalists, whistle blowers, political enemies and more, they are fools.
Couple this with AI using facial micro-expression analysis and you can quickly learn anything about anyone, how someone will react to a given situation, their strengths & weaknesses, if they're lying or telling the truth, what makes them angry, sad, happy, what scares them, or makes them laugh, cry...or kill.
The more data/images/video the AI has to work with, the more specific and precise the predictive ability and also conversely the ability to know what will manipulate individuals and groups to do, say, and believe whatever those in control desire.
Strat
...For the trees.
For heavily used apps, leaving the validation client side can result in substantially lower hardware requirements on the server side.
There's a much more fundamental reason; Human Nature.
In general, the same type of people will approach the same type of problem in a similar way, including all the attempts at short-cutting, offloading, etc etc.
One can observe this phenomenon writ large in history, as people fall for the same ideological/political promises of Utopia again and again every few generations. A pioneering rock band of the 1960s called "The Who" had a famous song named "Won't Get Fooled Again" in which they summed this phenomenon up with the line; "Meet the new Boss, same as the old Boss". (BTW, if you've never heard The Who, do it. Do it now. Read comments later. Thanks optional but welcome :) )
Strat
Then we could reduce spending in the form of the DEA! AND on jails and prisons!
We'd need a good name for it, though. We could call it "freedom"?
Sorry, no.
"Freedom" would cost far too many union jobs in law enforcement and the private prison industry. That's not even considering the loss of those sweet drug-smuggling cartel kick-backs for keeping illegal drug prices high. Sadly, it's also mostly bi-partisan so there's no easy solution of simply choosing the right Party as both have contributed to the problems.
Strat
It doesn't work like that in every country. In some countries the spying has always been legal due to the interest of national security giving a sufficient weight into the consideration of proportionality for an exception to the associated rights, as the constitution explicitly allows. Since most EU documents already contain lots of national security exceptions, I do expect the German constitution to contain such proportionality argument as well.
The problem I see is one of legal interpretation regarding spy agencies possessing positive powers or negative powers.
Positive powers means that the agency can do whatever is not explicitly prohibited, and negative powers means the agency only has those narrow & specific powers granted by law.
All intelligence gathering agencies should be constrained under negative powers. Secret powers lead to secret governments which inevitably lead to public tyranny.
Strat
Nobody would be stupid enough to talk about anything important to national security on an unsecured cellphone, right?
Of course not, especially if one were the head of a Federal department, that's just silly!
One uses their own private email server for Top Secret/Classified government data and wipe it, like with a cloth, and never allow any direct examination of the server and it's data by the FBI.
Naturally!
Strat
I didn't "accuse others", I gave a long list of Nazi policies that coincide with leftist policies and the historical close connections between fascists and leftists.
You are exactly correct with your original post and the points you made there.
When Mussolini took power and turned Italy fascist, Lenin congratulated him. They are both at their core a Marxist/Leninist ideology, differing only that by either the state owning factories, railways, etc outright, or under fascism, the entities already in charge were simply placed under government control.
Those who disagree can compare for yourselves the Nazi's own 25 point declaration of their platform against any socialist regime's core principles you'd like. If you are being intellectually honest in the slightest one would have to recognize the obvious and glaring similarities in the majority of principles declared if one simply puts them all into contemporary terms, but yet people insist otherwise.
http://www.historyplace.com/wo...
Strat
You said it brother. Supporting genocide and mass murder in the name of "American interests" is evil.
America should act (or not) based on **principles** and not "interests".
"Interests" are wholly subjective depending on the ideological/political/economic biases of politicians and Parties deciding what they are what they mean (and what they will cost *us* on many levels).
I would always prefer to interact with someone who holds to principles, even if I may strongly disagree with those principles, than I would someone who looks at things and acts (or not) based on "interests" that may one day inform him that cutting your throat while you sleep is in his "interest".
At least with the former you know where things stand and you can make rational decisions based on their known principles.
Principles both in government and among the people at large (one cannot exist without the other) are what make a civilized society, as without them chaos is certain to eventually occur heralding the destruction of that once-civilized society.
Strat
Happens when you don't make it nationwide like in Australia.
Australia is totally surrounded by oceans making smuggling something like firearms evtremely difficult. The US has land borders that people, including smugglers, regularly simply walk or drive across. The existing drug and human smuggling cartels would simply add another item to the menu: firearms. Actual military-grade, select-fire/full-automatic rifles, sub-machine guns, and more. If people in the US are unable to obtain a legal firearm that complies with laws and regulations they'll buy from the black market that has no restrictions at all.
There is also the problem of the hundreds of millions of guns...many never registered...that are already in civilian hands. It would be impossible to confiscate enough to make it unlikely a criminal could not obtain one.
Another thing is that guns favors the aggressor.
Guns are an equalizer. They allow a 120 pound (~55 kg) woman a chance to defend herself against a much larger and stronger (usually male) assailant and do it at a distance out of the assailant's reach. Same for older people. Guns save lives as well as take them. It happens almost daily in the US.
The US has had widespread civilian gun ownership since it's founding. The recent violence is a societal problem, not a "tool" problem. Simply look at the UK. Now they're talking about knife bans and one judge in the UK even suggesting people deliberately dull their kitchen knives(!). That's stupid in the extreme.
Of course, enacting bans makes politicos appear to the low-info types to be doing something without having to address the societal problems at the root of the violence that is largely due to their own government policies and laws to begin with.
Any solution that relies on shooting the shooter means that you tolerate one or several innocents shot before the aggressor is dealt with.
The frequency of that having occurred in the many thousands of times criminals have been shot in self defense by civilians in the US is statistically zero, where the number of lives saved is far above statistically zero.
But, let's not allow facts to get in the way of agendas.
Strat
But that's a use case for GPS plates.
These digital plates have GPS built-in. The point being that the GPS is the *actual* goal, not the convenience for vehicle owners. That's just the "sell" to help get them adopted with minimal push-back and then eventually required for every vehicle.
Strat.
What's the use case for an e-ink license plate?
Making sure that even cars without GPS incorporated into the car's onboard electronics can be tracked via GPS in real time. Got to make sure that Jay Leno's vintage cars are properly taxed per mile when they enact the mileage tax because of electric cars not paying gasoline taxes.
Strat
What am I missing?
What you're missing (along with many other partisan "rah-rah-team" types here) is the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution.
SCOTUS, particularly now with Gorsuch on the bench, will slap CA down. Hard. The same thing that's going to happen to "sanctuary cities" and the criminals in office who are criminal accessories both to violations of Federal immigration law, but also accessories to every crime committed by illegal aliens they've allowed to continue breaking the law by remaining illegally.
If AZ can't enforce laws regarding immigration because it's a Federal Department that has sole, exclusive authority, neither can CA do it regarding NN which is also under exclusively Federal authority.
It would be like Louisiana enacting a law banning jet aircraft, cellphones, or AM radio stations. States don't have such authority for good reason which we see playing out here.
Strat
Look, protectionism isn't a "new" idea. It has been tried over and over throughout history. In fact, it has been more the norm than the exception. It hurts the economies of both importers and exporters, and leads to job losses and lower living standards.
Tell that to the Chinese as they've been using protectionist policies against the US for decades and engaging in tactics like flooding Western markets with super-cheap goods by "dumping" products at artificially-low prices subsidized by the Chinese government at a loss with the sole purpose of destroying US industrial and commercial sectors.
The Chinese have in effect been waging a trade and economic war against the US for decades. This response is long overdue and relatively mild in comparison.
Strat
https://twitter.com/TommyR0binson/status/1000691873432985600 != hundreds
Thanks for that link to video of the huge number of people who peacefully marched in protest of Tommy Robinson's imprisonment for (make no mistake, nothing to do with violating a court order, that's just CYA).daring to expose the British government's suppression of news surrounding Muslim child rape-gangs and sex-slavery rings.
Take heart Brits! You are NOT alone! There are many, many here in America who are praying for Tommy and you, and are ready to lend what support we can. Our governments may 'take the piss' with each other, but Americans by and large are with you! We kicked one set of fascist's asses together, we can do it again.
"Never, never, never give up!" -- Winston Churchill
Strat
I've seen how these revolutions play out before: https://youtu.be/Kb1ztV93dsE?t...
I've seen how this revolution in particular may well play out also.
https://youtu.be/_-gHVGOoE48
Strat
If I pay $3000 for a top of the line laptop, I can install whatever OS I want.
Only for the present, but that too shall change. The Political-Industrial Complex will push to have ALL devices locked into officially-sanctioned bootloaders and OS's soon. Lost profits and lost opportunities to snoop due to a non-homogeneous software/OS/encryption/security environment making spying and mass data-collection difficult will not be tolerated.
It's coming unless there is serious pushback.
Strat
The business types get control of art, and they homogenize it into a fetid featureless river of shit.
Luckily, there is so much creativity outside of the mainstream, if you only cut the feed of shit they feed you, and go explore on your own.
You and I rarely agree on a whole host of topics, but here we find common ground. I agree. Go out to local clubs and other venues where "unsigned" bands and musicians perform, often without even a cover charge or ticket required, and explore local talent that the "industry" won't promote because it doesn't fit into their molds dictated by algorithms and MBAs. There's tons and tons of amazing musical talents and musicians performing live shows right in your local area. The best part is you can support them directly and personally without the "industry" walking away with most of it and leaving the artists crumbs at best while locking away our culture in perpetual copyrights.
Strat
Yes, you're right. Guns don't kill people; people kill people.
Also, drug sellers aren't killing people, it's the users that are killing themselves.
Although you post in sarcasm, you are precisely correct on both points.
Guns in civilian hands in the US have been around since there was a US, the relatively recent problems are societal. Although, gun homicides in general in the US are down 50% over the last 25 years according to official government data despite a sharp uptick in firearm sales.
The War On (some) Drugs has been an abject failure and was originally initiated to oppress racial minorities. Education and treatment rather than tossing users in prison would quickly cause drug dealers and the cartels that supply them to find themselves without sufficient customers to make it a worthwhile endeavor.
Strat
So blaming the oil companies is missing the point from a scientific perspective.
This is not about science or logic, it's about politics, ideology, and emotion.
Re-calibrate perspectives as needed.
Strat
That's pretty much the entire reason governments want to go to a cashless system; tracking (and taxation). I'd be more shocked if, in a cashless society, the government did NOT hoover-up user data regardless of any laws or constitutional prohubitions. That kind of data is simply too valuable.
Strat
You're psychotic.
Seek professional psychiatric help before you hurt yourself or others.
Strat
It was both conservatives and progressives that interned Japanese and Germans. It WAS conservatives who were the party of slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow.... Lincoln was a progressive (hell, by todays standards, Reagan was a progressive... raising taxes 11 times, giving immigrants legal status to be here; and even Nixon would be somewhat progressive... you know, that whole EPA thing.). It was conservatives in both the GOP and DNC that fought civil rights, which is why all the dixicrats changed to being full fledged racists pos republicans. It was conservatives who voted in the current fascists we have now who are systematically destroying the future of this country.
Nice revisionist history attempt, but MASSIVE FAIL.
Go read some history books. ProTip: They're the ones without Marvel or DC characters.
Strat