It is rumored the animated film, The Point (1971), informed Microsoft's Linux strategy. Further, I have it on good authority Microsoft has secretly contributed to at least half the Linux desktops.
"A point in every direction is the same as no point at all." -The Pointless Man, speaking to Oblio around 15:30 in the film.
"The Pointless man did have a point...he had hundreds of them, all pointing in different directions."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If you think this is incredible, may I suggest it's more credible than believing the Linux community did this to itself?
The Linux desktop fiasco reminds me of the takeaway lesson from the animated classic The Point (1971):
I'd be willing to spend some money to opt out of the surveillance dystopia we continue racing towards. I'd personally be willing to spend $500 to $1000 EXTRA to get a TV which worked FOR my privacy and against any sneaky attempts to collect information about me or target me for advertising.
In the area of phones, I currently have an iphone for this reason and I put down money for a "purism" phone for this same reason. At work, I am heading an initiative to physically separate the network from the internet -- since for the most part there is NO good reason why anyone using office resources needs to access internet from the same computer system (we have purchased laptops for those who need to shop or conduct other internet business and these laptops have a separate wifi internet access). On my home computer I block almost everything.
But what can I reasonably do about TV, short of not having any? Specifically, why can't I get a TV which is legitimately "smart" enough to act on my preferences to not share my information; to not allow "software updates" (which never seem to add anything I actually want my TV, so they are not upgrades, but clearly are adding more and more of the pork that Google and other evil companies are determined to subject me to)? Why don't I even have this choice?
It has occurred to me recently that there ought to be a cottage industry in hacking smart TVs to add advertisement blocking, etc.....but there is a difference between ought and is. And even if there IS such a cottage industry, how do I find them? I've tried searching the internet using all the key words I can think of (e.g., "TVs which do not have android"; "privacy oriented smart TVs"; etc.) but the search results have not been at all helpful.
Suggestions?
Talk about what the banks don't want you to even think about: Use of Credit and Debit cards adds an enormous additional cost to the merchant and, ultimately, to the consumer -- usually just shy of 5%.
The conversion to cashless isn't being done to help the citizen, that is for sure. Help the consumer out of their money and their privacy? Of course. Control the consumer? Absolutely. And the dumber than dumb Millennial generation can't put two brain cells together to figure it out.
Cui bono?
A really stupid article.
Those short sellers who were able to survive the CRIMINAL short squeeze get their money back at the end - plus a little more. Those who were forced ought in margin calls are still screwed.
Regardless of the FELON being caught he still committed a FELONY. He needs to be tried first under criminal law -- and then he and TESLA the corporation need to be tried under both regulatory law and civil law.
And I actually like Musk. So this makes me real sad. But you can't let Senators, Presidents and Billionaires get away with things *because* they are too "special" to prosecute. Indeed, those who have access to lawyers without limits need to be held to an even higher standard -- not easily allowed to escape under dodge of tears and excuses.
To do otherwise is to make the entire system of laws even more transparently a farce than it already has become.
The article says "Regulation is the only answer.The first step to any regulation is transparency." That's defeatist, bordering on transparently inane. Since sufficient regulation is unlikely to happen in our lifetimes, because our government is both implicated and corrupt, waiting for "regulation" by a government body is kind of like saying "accept it".
I don't accept much of anything and my standard of opting out keeps going higher.
I block ALL ads in general website hopping and increasingly use Qubes &/or Tor to scrub my browsing. If I use firefox I've got like 5 different blockers running all the time (slashdot now shows with most graphics and formatting stripped and HTML tags all over the place). Of course I don't often use google, bing, or anything but startpage for my search engine. And I try to fuck with google & bing for kicks in my idle moments - I may be a loss leader for them.;-/
I don't use "Android"; only low class people use Android, selling their Manhattan for trinkets. I've got my fingers crossed for Purism/PureOS.
If a site whines or simply forbids my blocking, I generally ignore the complaints or move on. Sometimes I will use the article title to find an alternate source.
Anyway, there are a LOT of things you can do to sidestep the Dystopia most people are bending over and lubing up for, Stop complaining and start acting up both actively and passive-agressively. You have more power than you think. Don't waste your time trying to "vote" corruption out of the government. If some privacy regulation someday comes down the pike that may be nice... but more likely it will be just another con or system of control.
You are their whore or their sheep or their hamburger; how can they extract more from you while delivering less by increasingly short planned obsolescence; gratuitous "features" while not actually making anything that fundamentally matters any better (and often worse); changing the "agreement" into something you have no real control of due to a dizzying confusion of changes.
The headphone jack is the latest attempt to squeeze more from you by removing choices. Your old headphones were fundamentally better but won't won't be allowed to work with a new phone. We will FORCE you to get a new phone by throttling, bloating the OS with lots of crapola while taking away features and ease of use. "What are you going to do about it you fucking milk cow of a consumer?"
I predict this ends eventually in MASSIVE hatred and backlash against the corporations and plutocrats, but by then Tim Cook figures to be well retired and the politicians who enabled all this monopolistic abuse will be retired as well.
There is rape and then there is rape. It is so cunning how they manage us to make us surrender everything to them, including our privacy and pride.
But there will eventually be huge backlash. It's unfortunate eventually can take a long time arriving.
One of the side effects of the internet is that it's becoming ever harder for governments to hide their true nature from their citizenry.
As citizens increasingly wake up to the fact that they are, in fact, no more than "copper tops" and that their governments are, really, not a "social contract" at all but rather a self-serving mafia and both the governments and their currencies can be expected to lose legitimacy with increasing volatility.
In the US, because of our longer history with rule of law (at least to some extent) we've got a choice -- or our government does. The US government can begin to lock up the thousands of insiders who have been illegally milking the system and selectively enforcing the rules, or it can face rapid collapse in the years pretty immediately ahead. Armstrong has written extensively about this as have the folks behind "The Fourth Turning".
Of course, their are still a fair number of copper tops and agents who are happy with their role in the mafia organization for now. Time will tell. With regard to currency and banking specifically, there is no legitimate reason why the government is borrowing money from private banks and giving some connected people net zero interest loans and bailouts while other people are being reamed. Yes, their is a Ponzi scheme in play: it is a government sanctioned and led Ponzi scheme and it will end soon, one way or another.
Most programmers think code can be made secure if they only have better compilers, debuggers, or follow better practices. They are fundamentally mistaken about the nature of the problem.
This article lays out the nature of the error far better than I can. Please read it and then THINK:
I expected my "smart" TV to start off by taking all the guess work out of connectivity, but it doesn't. And surely a Smart TV should be smart enough to take all my preferences -- starting with let me delete all your preinstalled apps and/or only SEE what I want to see (Amazon prime, Netflix, and Pandora) -- and help me get what I want. But it is absolutely incapable of doing that, either. Indeed, it appears to have been "smartly" designed to be sure that I, the supposed owner, have approximately ZERO say in anything any more.
And what kind of "smart" does it take to forever be needing a "update"? I mean, what is to be updated but the spyware and the attempts to push new ads?
I could go on, but this whole IOT thing is pretty transparently shaping up as taking humanity down the toilet by about the fastest route anyone could imagine.
Is is possible to *PITH* a smart TV and still have it function? I see that as a growth industry, in all seriousness. Certainly I would pay for that -- a jailbroken smart TV I would definitely like.
This is kind of a poorly formed study - and post. "humble, unassuming people as leaders improve the performance of a company in the long run." All companies? How do they improve performance specifically, and how is that measured? What is the long run? In the "long run" companies get bigger and more bureaucratic; but is that an appropriate size and behavior for a startup?
I could go on, but this is a poorly formed topic for discussion.
"Despite competition from Google Home, and a rumored "Home Hub" from Microsoft, Amazon "has a two-year jump on its competition..." That isn't the issue at all...not at all.
Google and Microsoft have both satisfactorily established that they are pederasts, here to sell YOU to their buddies for profit. Anyone who trusts them in their home alone with the kids is short a few marbles and will be shorter more than marbles in the years ahead.
Amazon and Apple are the only two remaining major technical players who have "benefit of the doubt" remaining. Yes, they make money by selling you....but they are not selling YOU, if you get the distinction.
Google said "don't be evil" but they only said that to get you to let your guard down. Then Larry made a quick move on your wife while Schmidt stuck his hand down your kid's pants (yeah, they have infiltrated the school system, too). Microsoft well...anyone who trusted Microsoft after the mid 90s was probably born after the mid 90s and got another wakeup call with Bing, Windows10 etc. Anyway, these two companies do NOT have your best interests in mind and too many people know that, already, for them to be successful putting a microphone and maybe camera 24/7 in the the average home. Android and Win10 are bad enough on the privacy abuse scale to thoroughly discredit their.... "good will".
Anyway, that is really why Amazon can succeed with this microphone in the home move: they are a *retail* store and not a pederast nor pimp wanna-be. At least that is their public perception so far until or unless they go too far. Apple could also have a shot in this market, although it is harder to establish their legitimacy as a "benefit of the doubt" intermediary in the home.
Google changed their name to Alphabet in large part because they realized their reputation as utilizing trust AGAINST those who previously trusted them had, shall we say, soured their opportunities for future "scores". But I think Alphabet is a simple enough name for me to follow, no matter how many other brand names they try to hide behind.
Microsoft and Google, and Facebook as well, have little hope of becoming serious contenders in the home microphone business. It is purely Amazon's territory to lose....let's see if they can keep it. I have my doubts Amazon will keep their trusted 3rd party status given Bezos' seemingly unending ambition to be all things...including questionable things....including the Washington Post!
I am glad to see some attention being put to our exponentially growing FRAGILITY, as we race to replace all "dumb" infrastructure with really stupid plans for "smart" IOT everywhere. So thanks for the post.
But I don't have a lot of hope. All the SF books and stories in the world haven't prevented our mad race to surrender all our privacy and create all the trappings required for totalitarianism way beyond anything imaginable in Brave New World. So, why should I hope that we will pull back from this race to make computers and buggy software the ultimate arbiters of all our cars, planes, stoves, heating systems, refrigerators, washing machines, toilets, door knobs, etc. etc. etc.
I used to think humans were too smart to fall for anything so transparent. But here we are -- and racing headlong toward nightmare.
Yeah, IOT. Humans haven't evolved their common sense and self control in thousands of years so we might as well go for AI and IOT in everything.
That's what this is most symptomatic of. Connect the dots on what has been going on over there, including the Greek squeeze; the Cyprian bank balance asset tax; the importation of as many Muslims as they can entice to flood the continent; BREXIT; and the effort to now build an EU military force.
It may not be an ex-post facto (any more than US *selective* enforcement of laws is ex post facto... but it reeks of desperation and corruption.
The EU is second in line, after Japan, to go down. It's coming on like a freight train.
Like...are we to believe the NSA is concerned about Democracy... or only the appearance of Democracy?
The criminals running the show are starting to confuse the confusion. Sort of how they privatized the privacy.
One thing we ought to have learned by now is that with free Aps from Google *YOU* (and everyone else in your contact list) are their "product". They are a targeted advertising company -- pure and simple; Alphabet may eventually make them something else, and give them a reason to stop doing evil, but that is not now.
With that premise out of the way (and dismantle it if you can) why is google offering this -- and does "With End-to-end Encryption" really mean encrypted so even google can't eavesdrop and datamine?
I recently declined to participate in a paid, on-line seminar because Google was hosting the video service; I would have liked to attend. I refuse to by ANYTHING (no matter how much I want it) which uses Google's payment services. I try to avoid dealing with people who have the bad taste to use gmail for important correspondence. Anyway, I'm not likely to go for this unless I have better assurances of complete privacy than merely a mouthing of words about "end to end encryption". Google has a 100% record of getting their foot in the door with promises of privacy and changing the terms of their "free" offerings later.
And I am taking 20 computers off of Microsoft for the same solid objection. I'm not going to easily sell my privacy for trinkets.
But I would like a good reason to feel differently. It would be nice to be able to video chat with people who don't have iphones.
"If you would not willingly give your body to any passer-by to do with has he willed, why do you give your mind?" -Epictetus
Almost forgot: The purported $200 Million the Clintons have miraculously received during and after "serving" the public....and the much larger amounts "given" to their "charity". Well, obviously these two are all about doing God's work. It isn't their fault if some of the people who gifted them were gifted by "God" in return! It's all God's work. Just move along and vote. The important thing this time around is that God wants a woman who doesn't know how to keep track of emails to be President; just as he wanted a black con last go around.
Obviously it would be "nuts" for either Hillary or the DNC to take revenge. So neither happened.
Obviously it would be stupid for Hillary to have knowingly used a personal email server for government emails, so she couldn't have done that, either. Nor the erasures, of course -- that would be criminal if it were done by just anyone. I mean, Nixon was impeached and dragged through televised, bipartisan coals for erasing 13 minutes of PERSONAL tape recordings, and Hillary would have known that and she isn't stupid. So she obviously didn't do any such things on purpose!
Now making all that money the first (and apparently ONLY) time she decided to try her hand and futures trading....that was just "luck".
Anyway, once we rule out tinfoil-hat possibilities for all the strange, strange events which have surrounded Hillary the only thing a reasonable person can conclude is that Hillary is "SPECIAL" in God's eyes.
That means you either have to vote for her because God wants you to.
Or avoid her like the plague because God wants you to. I mean - it was quite a coincidence for all these awful things to "happen" to poor Hillary. But God could have kept them secret -- but instead he arranged for you to find out about them.
So it's in your hands now. God has spoken.
It's a marriage made in heaven. Government gets more power and tax money (with which to reward its "friends")
What's not to like about Factory medicine?
Plenty - for patients and doctors and nurses; but what do THEY matter?
I've got good friends who are doctors and others are nurses. There is little doubt in their minds (and who else would better know) that all the
documentation is making both the government and the insurance companies more entrenched and the quality of the care go down. Non
compliance with paperwork is unthinkable, while poor outcomes can be tolerated... as long as the boxes are all filled. (pun noted).
The hospitals are now being judged and paid (by both gov regulators and insurance companies) more on compliance with with
record keeping than on outcomes. How would you expect this to go?
Question: Do you think Obama or the Clintons have to put up with Dr. appointment time being metered? Of course not!
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” George Orwell, Animal Farm
"Men have become the tools of their tools." -- Henry David Thoreau
In another way of looking at the problem: it's all an extension of "free trade", right?
You can't squeeze blood from a turnip.
By definition, half the population has an IQ below 105 and is fundamentally incapable of mastering more than the most basic of information, skill, and tooling. Most of the employment in the US is via small businesses and most of those are providing basic goods and services from lawn mowing to hamburger flipping. You can't make these employees worth $15 an hour in a mobile economy by fiat. Indeed, businesses can't make these employees "high tech" by training at all. What you can do is force more of the population - employers and employees both -- to either move or quit.
Nevada, Arizona, Mexico, Canada etc. are close enough to California to make exporting every business that can be exported an eventual certainty. What can't be exported? Well grocery stores, hotels, fast food, etc. But a really high percentage of the customers of these businesses are, themselves, lower income and raising wages in these businesses is going to actually going to squeeze prices up on the most basic goods and services for most of the segment the $15/hour mandate is supposedly there to help. So the biggest victims of the artificial price increases in labor will actually be those employees and small businesses least able to afford further victim hood as employment hours go down, jobs disappear, and welfare goes up. The government, of course, will win as it gains more power and more labor taxes per employee. It will be a completely predictable train wreck although, of course, with time and obfuscation the blame won't be unequivocally be laid at the feet of the supposedly "liberal" government.
If you visit Spain and talk to the people there (I have) they will tell you why even those in Spain who theoretically could work often choose not to - or simply can't.
Meanwhile, here in the US we must, at all cost, keep capital gains tax advantaged and stock options expensable -- while dividends are not. Got to keep that Ponzi running and the government growing!
As has been noted (but not adequately considered) for ANY entity -- including fictitious ones -- any growth beyond maturity is a sign of either obesity or cancer.
All we have to go on are beliefs and good evidence. While there historically has been such a thing as voter fraud here in the US as egregious as dead people voting (do I really need to research that for you?) there are also less obvious -- but also fraudulent -- techniques such as bending the rules (e.g., gerrymandering), disqualifying select votes, allowing non-citizens to vote, and.... using public funds to sway opinions. The EU is hardly immune to human nature. There was quite a bit of the latter, indisputably, in the UK election (do I really need to research that for you?).
I'm merely surprised the establishment didn't get more outrageous in their efforts to influence things. Yes, they did ship in Obama to attempt to scare the electorate into remaining. And, yes, they did print the voter instructions showing how to vote "remain" -- but, notably, not leave.
They must have misjudged the sentiment, is the most reasonable "belief". God knows the establishment and bankers have lost enough money and power over this imbroglio.
If you haven't visited Washington D.C. recently you ought to. For our "Servants" in Washington, Money is clearly not an object -- they will drain every drop of blood from every private sector citizen in all 50 states, and derelict all other cities, to make sure they and their patrons are maintained in the style to which they have become accustomed. And then they will extract more.
It hasn't taken the leaches in Brussels long at all to build their palaces and award themselves outrageous pay and perquisites. They have to keep up with the "Joneses" in D.C., after all. This UK vote was obviously not according to the Serpants' plan -- neither there nor here. I can hardly believe they didn't just print the money to "accidently" miscount the vote. I'm sure Obama/Clinton would have authorized a loan for that cause if asked.
Look to Switzerland for a better idea of how it is possible to be part of the EU for purposes of trade yet still largely sovereign. This is a huge opportunity for the UK to pull itself out of the black hole which has been dragging down their economy for some time. Good for them. Too bad we can't do something equivalent over here.
Two things I didn't explicit say so I figured I'd add them in a comment:
(1) The password algorithm for a particular site should be pretty easy for you (and only you) to map to a particular site or application. It should be based on (a) how much you have at risk (b) how often you use the site and (c) some feature of the site or site name.
(2) Think FUNCTION. Every site or application should ideally equate to a pretty obvious input (domain) value (e.g., every second letter of the name backward). Every member of the possible domain should map every time to the same range value.
As I said, because of IDIOTIC rules (restrictions) being instituted in the name of site security, sites are actually making themselves -- and especially their users -- actually more at risk as this encourages a lot of "forgot password" and password reuse situations. Therefore the advice to "think function" means that you need to make sure no matter what idiotic schemes the site institutes to screw with your algorithm, your algorithm actually needs to be able to uniquely map. This is easier to handle than you might think -- especially with the proper use of the "vague hints" in the doubly encrypted notebook. So, for example, your algorithm allows spaces but the site doesn't, you can have a hint in your notebook that for a particular site you should modify the normal algorithm, domain or range.
(3) I've personally found that I tend to make my algorithms actually TOO complex. A 20 character password with lots of weird characters embedded may be technically "highly secure" and, because of that length + complexity, actually unusable. Remember, when you type in your password you will generally not be able to see a "typo" on the 13th character, let's say. So...too much complexity is actually one of the harder things I had to learn to work around. Here a couple of quotes suggest themselves:
"Pointing everywhere is the same as pointing nowhere" -The Point
"KISS".
In the end, especially if you are using good sense about fucking with google, facebook, microsoft, yahoo, etc. on real info, don't worry too much. Reserve a well thought through function -- which incorporates failsafes for idiot sites which break your algorithm from mapping properly -- for those situations where you really need that kind of security.
I think the above is a much better topic for discussion, especially since some recent research suggests that one way to increase security is to reuse passwords extensively....just not reusing them on sites where you, personally, have anything much to lose if the password is penetrated. In particular, don't reuse passwords which give access to financial information.
So, a couple rules of thumb suggest themselves to me:
(0) Be a lot more careful about what you post on-line. Is it really worth it to save your credit card information on line rather than re-enter it when you really need to make a purchase?
(1) Reuse passwords extensively for 2nd and 3rd tier sites -- and don't give them any important, REAL information. An alter identity is generally a good idea if you find but-insky sites wanting your birthdate, cellphone number etc. Note google, yahoo, microsoft, etc. aren't really asking for your cell phone number primarily in order to help you -- they want it to surveill you better and tie you together inextricably with your friends, purchase history, address, etc. Fuck these guys good with false or or changing data whenever possible and your security will actually go up.
(2) Use a reasonably complex, pretty reliable personal algorithm so you can reliably FIGURE OUT your weird password every time. You might even use several algorithms...a simple one and a massively complicated one.
(3) Use some sort of encrypted notebook to put in sufficient (yet sufficiently vague) password hint info. I strongly advise you carry that with you and keep it up to date.
(4) I specifically suggest you NOT use a dedicated "password manager" "in the cloud" as (1) these companies seem to get hacked a lot (2) go out of business or are not available when you need them (3) Lack enough flexibility for you to be able to put in sufficient notes which can be regularly updated. One thing to keep in mind is a majority of serious sites have arbitrary, generally idiotic rules which will screw with your algorithm (e.g., not allowing spaces, not allowing certain characters) and tend to force you to periodically change your password (thus breaking your stock algorithm).
Anyway, the question of how to create a sufficiently "highly-secure" password is absolutely the wrong question. Creating is pretty easy; recalling is the killer...and coincidentally the thing which tends to kill security as well....unless locking yourself out of your account regularly is something you regard as a "good" thing.
Slashdot Mirror
It is rumored the animated film, The Point (1971), informed Microsoft's Linux strategy. Further, I have it on good authority Microsoft has secretly contributed to at least half the Linux desktops. "A point in every direction is the same as no point at all." -The Pointless Man, speaking to Oblio around 15:30 in the film. "The Pointless man did have a point...he had hundreds of them, all pointing in different directions." https://www.youtube.com/watch?... If you think this is incredible, may I suggest it's more credible than believing the Linux community did this to itself? The Linux desktop fiasco reminds me of the takeaway lesson from the animated classic The Point (1971):
I'd be willing to spend some money to opt out of the surveillance dystopia we continue racing towards. I'd personally be willing to spend $500 to $1000 EXTRA to get a TV which worked FOR my privacy and against any sneaky attempts to collect information about me or target me for advertising. In the area of phones, I currently have an iphone for this reason and I put down money for a "purism" phone for this same reason. At work, I am heading an initiative to physically separate the network from the internet -- since for the most part there is NO good reason why anyone using office resources needs to access internet from the same computer system (we have purchased laptops for those who need to shop or conduct other internet business and these laptops have a separate wifi internet access). On my home computer I block almost everything. But what can I reasonably do about TV, short of not having any? Specifically, why can't I get a TV which is legitimately "smart" enough to act on my preferences to not share my information; to not allow "software updates" (which never seem to add anything I actually want my TV, so they are not upgrades, but clearly are adding more and more of the pork that Google and other evil companies are determined to subject me to)? Why don't I even have this choice? It has occurred to me recently that there ought to be a cottage industry in hacking smart TVs to add advertisement blocking, etc.....but there is a difference between ought and is. And even if there IS such a cottage industry, how do I find them? I've tried searching the internet using all the key words I can think of (e.g., "TVs which do not have android"; "privacy oriented smart TVs"; etc.) but the search results have not been at all helpful. Suggestions?
Talk about what the banks don't want you to even think about: Use of Credit and Debit cards adds an enormous additional cost to the merchant and, ultimately, to the consumer -- usually just shy of 5%. The conversion to cashless isn't being done to help the citizen, that is for sure. Help the consumer out of their money and their privacy? Of course. Control the consumer? Absolutely. And the dumber than dumb Millennial generation can't put two brain cells together to figure it out. Cui bono?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... "... No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost." -The Matrix
A really stupid article. Those short sellers who were able to survive the CRIMINAL short squeeze get their money back at the end - plus a little more. Those who were forced ought in margin calls are still screwed. Regardless of the FELON being caught he still committed a FELONY. He needs to be tried first under criminal law -- and then he and TESLA the corporation need to be tried under both regulatory law and civil law. And I actually like Musk. So this makes me real sad. But you can't let Senators, Presidents and Billionaires get away with things *because* they are too "special" to prosecute. Indeed, those who have access to lawyers without limits need to be held to an even higher standard -- not easily allowed to escape under dodge of tears and excuses. To do otherwise is to make the entire system of laws even more transparently a farce than it already has become.
The article says "Regulation is the only answer.The first step to any regulation is transparency." That's defeatist, bordering on transparently inane. Since sufficient regulation is unlikely to happen in our lifetimes, because our government is both implicated and corrupt, waiting for "regulation" by a government body is kind of like saying "accept it". I don't accept much of anything and my standard of opting out keeps going higher. I block ALL ads in general website hopping and increasingly use Qubes &/or Tor to scrub my browsing. If I use firefox I've got like 5 different blockers running all the time (slashdot now shows with most graphics and formatting stripped and HTML tags all over the place). Of course I don't often use google, bing, or anything but startpage for my search engine. And I try to fuck with google & bing for kicks in my idle moments - I may be a loss leader for them. ;-/
I don't use "Android"; only low class people use Android, selling their Manhattan for trinkets. I've got my fingers crossed for Purism/PureOS.
If a site whines or simply forbids my blocking, I generally ignore the complaints or move on. Sometimes I will use the article title to find an alternate source.
Anyway, there are a LOT of things you can do to sidestep the Dystopia most people are bending over and lubing up for, Stop complaining and start acting up both actively and passive-agressively. You have more power than you think. Don't waste your time trying to "vote" corruption out of the government. If some privacy regulation someday comes down the pike that may be nice ... but more likely it will be just another con or system of control.
You are their whore or their sheep or their hamburger; how can they extract more from you while delivering less by increasingly short planned obsolescence; gratuitous "features" while not actually making anything that fundamentally matters any better (and often worse); changing the "agreement" into something you have no real control of due to a dizzying confusion of changes. The headphone jack is the latest attempt to squeeze more from you by removing choices. Your old headphones were fundamentally better but won't won't be allowed to work with a new phone. We will FORCE you to get a new phone by throttling, bloating the OS with lots of crapola while taking away features and ease of use. "What are you going to do about it you fucking milk cow of a consumer?" I predict this ends eventually in MASSIVE hatred and backlash against the corporations and plutocrats, but by then Tim Cook figures to be well retired and the politicians who enabled all this monopolistic abuse will be retired as well. There is rape and then there is rape. It is so cunning how they manage us to make us surrender everything to them, including our privacy and pride. But there will eventually be huge backlash. It's unfortunate eventually can take a long time arriving.
One of the side effects of the internet is that it's becoming ever harder for governments to hide their true nature from their citizenry. As citizens increasingly wake up to the fact that they are, in fact, no more than "copper tops" and that their governments are, really, not a "social contract" at all but rather a self-serving mafia and both the governments and their currencies can be expected to lose legitimacy with increasing volatility. In the US, because of our longer history with rule of law (at least to some extent) we've got a choice -- or our government does. The US government can begin to lock up the thousands of insiders who have been illegally milking the system and selectively enforcing the rules, or it can face rapid collapse in the years pretty immediately ahead. Armstrong has written extensively about this as have the folks behind "The Fourth Turning". Of course, their are still a fair number of copper tops and agents who are happy with their role in the mafia organization for now. Time will tell. With regard to currency and banking specifically, there is no legitimate reason why the government is borrowing money from private banks and giving some connected people net zero interest loans and bailouts while other people are being reamed. Yes, their is a Ponzi scheme in play: it is a government sanctioned and led Ponzi scheme and it will end soon, one way or another.
Most programmers think code can be made secure if they only have better compilers, debuggers, or follow better practices. They are fundamentally mistaken about the nature of the problem.
This article lays out the nature of the error far better than I can. Please read it and then THINK:
https://medium.com/message/eve...
And then consider: âoeIt is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.ââSâ"âSUpton Sinclair
I expected my "smart" TV to start off by taking all the guess work out of connectivity, but it doesn't. And surely a Smart TV should be smart enough to take all my preferences -- starting with let me delete all your preinstalled apps and/or only SEE what I want to see (Amazon prime, Netflix, and Pandora) -- and help me get what I want. But it is absolutely incapable of doing that, either. Indeed, it appears to have been "smartly" designed to be sure that I, the supposed owner, have approximately ZERO say in anything any more. And what kind of "smart" does it take to forever be needing a "update"? I mean, what is to be updated but the spyware and the attempts to push new ads? I could go on, but this whole IOT thing is pretty transparently shaping up as taking humanity down the toilet by about the fastest route anyone could imagine. Is is possible to *PITH* a smart TV and still have it function? I see that as a growth industry, in all seriousness. Certainly I would pay for that -- a jailbroken smart TV I would definitely like.
This is kind of a poorly formed study - and post. "humble, unassuming people as leaders improve the performance of a company in the long run." All companies? How do they improve performance specifically, and how is that measured? What is the long run? In the "long run" companies get bigger and more bureaucratic; but is that an appropriate size and behavior for a startup? I could go on, but this is a poorly formed topic for discussion.
"Despite competition from Google Home, and a rumored "Home Hub" from Microsoft, Amazon "has a two-year jump on its competition..." That isn't the issue at all...not at all. Google and Microsoft have both satisfactorily established that they are pederasts, here to sell YOU to their buddies for profit. Anyone who trusts them in their home alone with the kids is short a few marbles and will be shorter more than marbles in the years ahead. Amazon and Apple are the only two remaining major technical players who have "benefit of the doubt" remaining. Yes, they make money by selling you....but they are not selling YOU, if you get the distinction. Google said "don't be evil" but they only said that to get you to let your guard down. Then Larry made a quick move on your wife while Schmidt stuck his hand down your kid's pants (yeah, they have infiltrated the school system, too). Microsoft well...anyone who trusted Microsoft after the mid 90s was probably born after the mid 90s and got another wakeup call with Bing, Windows10 etc. Anyway, these two companies do NOT have your best interests in mind and too many people know that, already, for them to be successful putting a microphone and maybe camera 24/7 in the the average home. Android and Win10 are bad enough on the privacy abuse scale to thoroughly discredit their .... "good will".
Anyway, that is really why Amazon can succeed with this microphone in the home move: they are a *retail* store and not a pederast nor pimp wanna-be. At least that is their public perception so far until or unless they go too far. Apple could also have a shot in this market, although it is harder to establish their legitimacy as a "benefit of the doubt" intermediary in the home.
Google changed their name to Alphabet in large part because they realized their reputation as utilizing trust AGAINST those who previously trusted them had, shall we say, soured their opportunities for future "scores". But I think Alphabet is a simple enough name for me to follow, no matter how many other brand names they try to hide behind.
Microsoft and Google, and Facebook as well, have little hope of becoming serious contenders in the home microphone business. It is purely Amazon's territory to lose....let's see if they can keep it. I have my doubts Amazon will keep their trusted 3rd party status given Bezos' seemingly unending ambition to be all things...including questionable things....including the Washington Post!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/... "And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care." -George Carlin
I am glad to see some attention being put to our exponentially growing FRAGILITY, as we race to replace all "dumb" infrastructure with really stupid plans for "smart" IOT everywhere. So thanks for the post. But I don't have a lot of hope. All the SF books and stories in the world haven't prevented our mad race to surrender all our privacy and create all the trappings required for totalitarianism way beyond anything imaginable in Brave New World. So, why should I hope that we will pull back from this race to make computers and buggy software the ultimate arbiters of all our cars, planes, stoves, heating systems, refrigerators, washing machines, toilets, door knobs, etc. etc. etc. I used to think humans were too smart to fall for anything so transparent. But here we are -- and racing headlong toward nightmare. Yeah, IOT. Humans haven't evolved their common sense and self control in thousands of years so we might as well go for AI and IOT in everything.
That's what this is most symptomatic of. Connect the dots on what has been going on over there, including the Greek squeeze; the Cyprian bank balance asset tax; the importation of as many Muslims as they can entice to flood the continent; BREXIT; and the effort to now build an EU military force. It may not be an ex-post facto (any more than US *selective* enforcement of laws is ex post facto ... but it reeks of desperation and corruption.
The EU is second in line, after Japan, to go down. It's coming on like a freight train.
Like...are we to believe the NSA is concerned about Democracy ... or only the appearance of Democracy?
The criminals running the show are starting to confuse the confusion. Sort of how they privatized the privacy.
One thing we ought to have learned by now is that with free Aps from Google *YOU* (and everyone else in your contact list) are their "product". They are a targeted advertising company -- pure and simple; Alphabet may eventually make them something else, and give them a reason to stop doing evil, but that is not now. With that premise out of the way (and dismantle it if you can) why is google offering this -- and does "With End-to-end Encryption" really mean encrypted so even google can't eavesdrop and datamine? I recently declined to participate in a paid, on-line seminar because Google was hosting the video service; I would have liked to attend. I refuse to by ANYTHING (no matter how much I want it) which uses Google's payment services. I try to avoid dealing with people who have the bad taste to use gmail for important correspondence. Anyway, I'm not likely to go for this unless I have better assurances of complete privacy than merely a mouthing of words about "end to end encryption". Google has a 100% record of getting their foot in the door with promises of privacy and changing the terms of their "free" offerings later. And I am taking 20 computers off of Microsoft for the same solid objection. I'm not going to easily sell my privacy for trinkets. But I would like a good reason to feel differently. It would be nice to be able to video chat with people who don't have iphones. "If you would not willingly give your body to any passer-by to do with has he willed, why do you give your mind?" -Epictetus
Almost forgot: The purported $200 Million the Clintons have miraculously received during and after "serving" the public....and the much larger amounts "given" to their "charity". Well, obviously these two are all about doing God's work. It isn't their fault if some of the people who gifted them were gifted by "God" in return! It's all God's work. Just move along and vote. The important thing this time around is that God wants a woman who doesn't know how to keep track of emails to be President; just as he wanted a black con last go around.
Obviously it would be "nuts" for either Hillary or the DNC to take revenge. So neither happened. Obviously it would be stupid for Hillary to have knowingly used a personal email server for government emails, so she couldn't have done that, either. Nor the erasures, of course -- that would be criminal if it were done by just anyone. I mean, Nixon was impeached and dragged through televised, bipartisan coals for erasing 13 minutes of PERSONAL tape recordings, and Hillary would have known that and she isn't stupid. So she obviously didn't do any such things on purpose! Now making all that money the first (and apparently ONLY) time she decided to try her hand and futures trading....that was just "luck". Anyway, once we rule out tinfoil-hat possibilities for all the strange, strange events which have surrounded Hillary the only thing a reasonable person can conclude is that Hillary is "SPECIAL" in God's eyes. That means you either have to vote for her because God wants you to. Or avoid her like the plague because God wants you to. I mean - it was quite a coincidence for all these awful things to "happen" to poor Hillary. But God could have kept them secret -- but instead he arranged for you to find out about them. So it's in your hands now. God has spoken.
It's a marriage made in heaven. Government gets more power and tax money (with which to reward its "friends") What's not to like about Factory medicine? Plenty - for patients and doctors and nurses; but what do THEY matter? I've got good friends who are doctors and others are nurses. There is little doubt in their minds (and who else would better know) that all the documentation is making both the government and the insurance companies more entrenched and the quality of the care go down. Non compliance with paperwork is unthinkable, while poor outcomes can be tolerated ... as long as the boxes are all filled. (pun noted).
The hospitals are now being judged and paid (by both gov regulators and insurance companies) more on compliance with with
record keeping than on outcomes. How would you expect this to go?
Question: Do you think Obama or the Clintons have to put up with Dr. appointment time being metered? Of course not!
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” George Orwell, Animal Farm
"Men have become the tools of their tools." -- Henry David Thoreau
In another way of looking at the problem: it's all an extension of "free trade", right?
You can't squeeze blood from a turnip. By definition, half the population has an IQ below 105 and is fundamentally incapable of mastering more than the most basic of information, skill, and tooling. Most of the employment in the US is via small businesses and most of those are providing basic goods and services from lawn mowing to hamburger flipping. You can't make these employees worth $15 an hour in a mobile economy by fiat. Indeed, businesses can't make these employees "high tech" by training at all. What you can do is force more of the population - employers and employees both -- to either move or quit. Nevada, Arizona, Mexico, Canada etc. are close enough to California to make exporting every business that can be exported an eventual certainty. What can't be exported? Well grocery stores, hotels, fast food, etc. But a really high percentage of the customers of these businesses are, themselves, lower income and raising wages in these businesses is going to actually going to squeeze prices up on the most basic goods and services for most of the segment the $15/hour mandate is supposedly there to help. So the biggest victims of the artificial price increases in labor will actually be those employees and small businesses least able to afford further victim hood as employment hours go down, jobs disappear, and welfare goes up. The government, of course, will win as it gains more power and more labor taxes per employee. It will be a completely predictable train wreck although, of course, with time and obfuscation the blame won't be unequivocally be laid at the feet of the supposedly "liberal" government. If you visit Spain and talk to the people there (I have) they will tell you why even those in Spain who theoretically could work often choose not to - or simply can't. Meanwhile, here in the US we must, at all cost, keep capital gains tax advantaged and stock options expensable -- while dividends are not. Got to keep that Ponzi running and the government growing! As has been noted (but not adequately considered) for ANY entity -- including fictitious ones -- any growth beyond maturity is a sign of either obesity or cancer.
All we have to go on are beliefs and good evidence. While there historically has been such a thing as voter fraud here in the US as egregious as dead people voting (do I really need to research that for you?) there are also less obvious -- but also fraudulent -- techniques such as bending the rules (e.g., gerrymandering), disqualifying select votes, allowing non-citizens to vote, and .... using public funds to sway opinions. The EU is hardly immune to human nature. There was quite a bit of the latter, indisputably, in the UK election (do I really need to research that for you?).
I'm merely surprised the establishment didn't get more outrageous in their efforts to influence things. Yes, they did ship in Obama to attempt to scare the electorate into remaining. And, yes, they did print the voter instructions showing how to vote "remain" -- but, notably, not leave.
They must have misjudged the sentiment, is the most reasonable "belief". God knows the establishment and bankers have lost enough money and power over this imbroglio.
If you haven't visited Washington D.C. recently you ought to. For our "Servants" in Washington, Money is clearly not an object -- they will drain every drop of blood from every private sector citizen in all 50 states, and derelict all other cities, to make sure they and their patrons are maintained in the style to which they have become accustomed. And then they will extract more. It hasn't taken the leaches in Brussels long at all to build their palaces and award themselves outrageous pay and perquisites. They have to keep up with the "Joneses" in D.C., after all. This UK vote was obviously not according to the Serpants' plan -- neither there nor here. I can hardly believe they didn't just print the money to "accidently" miscount the vote. I'm sure Obama/Clinton would have authorized a loan for that cause if asked. Look to Switzerland for a better idea of how it is possible to be part of the EU for purposes of trade yet still largely sovereign. This is a huge opportunity for the UK to pull itself out of the black hole which has been dragging down their economy for some time. Good for them. Too bad we can't do something equivalent over here.
Two things I didn't explicit say so I figured I'd add them in a comment: (1) The password algorithm for a particular site should be pretty easy for you (and only you) to map to a particular site or application. It should be based on (a) how much you have at risk (b) how often you use the site and (c) some feature of the site or site name. (2) Think FUNCTION. Every site or application should ideally equate to a pretty obvious input (domain) value (e.g., every second letter of the name backward). Every member of the possible domain should map every time to the same range value. As I said, because of IDIOTIC rules (restrictions) being instituted in the name of site security, sites are actually making themselves -- and especially their users -- actually more at risk as this encourages a lot of "forgot password" and password reuse situations. Therefore the advice to "think function" means that you need to make sure no matter what idiotic schemes the site institutes to screw with your algorithm, your algorithm actually needs to be able to uniquely map. This is easier to handle than you might think -- especially with the proper use of the "vague hints" in the doubly encrypted notebook. So, for example, your algorithm allows spaces but the site doesn't, you can have a hint in your notebook that for a particular site you should modify the normal algorithm, domain or range. (3) I've personally found that I tend to make my algorithms actually TOO complex. A 20 character password with lots of weird characters embedded may be technically "highly secure" and, because of that length + complexity, actually unusable. Remember, when you type in your password you will generally not be able to see a "typo" on the 13th character, let's say. So...too much complexity is actually one of the harder things I had to learn to work around. Here a couple of quotes suggest themselves: "Pointing everywhere is the same as pointing nowhere" -The Point "KISS". In the end, especially if you are using good sense about fucking with google, facebook, microsoft, yahoo, etc. on real info, don't worry too much. Reserve a well thought through function -- which incorporates failsafes for idiot sites which break your algorithm from mapping properly -- for those situations where you really need that kind of security.
I think the above is a much better topic for discussion, especially since some recent research suggests that one way to increase security is to reuse passwords extensively....just not reusing them on sites where you, personally, have anything much to lose if the password is penetrated. In particular, don't reuse passwords which give access to financial information. So, a couple rules of thumb suggest themselves to me: (0) Be a lot more careful about what you post on-line. Is it really worth it to save your credit card information on line rather than re-enter it when you really need to make a purchase? (1) Reuse passwords extensively for 2nd and 3rd tier sites -- and don't give them any important, REAL information. An alter identity is generally a good idea if you find but-insky sites wanting your birthdate, cellphone number etc. Note google, yahoo, microsoft, etc. aren't really asking for your cell phone number primarily in order to help you -- they want it to surveill you better and tie you together inextricably with your friends, purchase history, address, etc. Fuck these guys good with false or or changing data whenever possible and your security will actually go up. (2) Use a reasonably complex, pretty reliable personal algorithm so you can reliably FIGURE OUT your weird password every time. You might even use several algorithms...a simple one and a massively complicated one. (3) Use some sort of encrypted notebook to put in sufficient (yet sufficiently vague) password hint info. I strongly advise you carry that with you and keep it up to date. (4) I specifically suggest you NOT use a dedicated "password manager" "in the cloud" as (1) these companies seem to get hacked a lot (2) go out of business or are not available when you need them (3) Lack enough flexibility for you to be able to put in sufficient notes which can be regularly updated. One thing to keep in mind is a majority of serious sites have arbitrary, generally idiotic rules which will screw with your algorithm (e.g., not allowing spaces, not allowing certain characters) and tend to force you to periodically change your password (thus breaking your stock algorithm). Anyway, the question of how to create a sufficiently "highly-secure" password is absolutely the wrong question. Creating is pretty easy; recalling is the killer...and coincidentally the thing which tends to kill security as well....unless locking yourself out of your account regularly is something you regard as a "good" thing.