I repeat: This isn't news, it's olds. I've seen the White Helmets being doubted publicly for well over a year, maybe two. Sometimes even in mainstream media.
That they are part of the ISIS propaganda efforts is plain as day. The only question remaining is how strongly they are aligned with Daesh, if they are a pure propaganda tool created for this purpose or a humanitarian organisation being used additionally for propaganda, or somewhere inbetween.
What is turning people against each other is the doctrine of total competition that neo-liberalism has brought to every aspect of modern life. It used to be limited to sports and the workspace and even there we had rules of fair play.
During the cold war, there was a balance between capitalism and socialism in most western countries, because it was understood that releasing the full barrage of unrestricted capitalism on people would make them turn towards communism. After communism (rightfully) fell, that balance wasn't necessary any longer.
Really, the biggest thing Russia ever did to regular Americans was crumbling down and dropping communism. The ripple effect of that is still showing itself today with every year the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer while employee rights get demolished, regulations abandoned, any echos of the New Deal or similar compromises in other western countries are lost and the future of future generations is sold for the benefit of next quarters profits.
Every once in a while, a story comes up on/. that makes me question the authors sanity. This is one of them.
There is plenty of reason to doubt the neutrality and motives of the White Helmets, outside of and being shared around long before any Russian news stories. There are plenty of pictures where the same people are seen as victims in different locations, and the curious fact that the White Helmets are routinely at the scene immediately and seemingly active exclusively in islamist-controlled territory.
So what is this story? FUD? Did too many questionable details about these guys surface recently?
From an outside perspective, two things seem to be obvious: One, the White Helmets are doing humanitarian work and providing emergency services to civilian victims in a war zone. Two, they are clearly aligned with one of the sides in this conflict.
Neither of these diminishes the importance of the other.
and as a service Google can take steps to minimize abuse.
Which steps would that be?
We haven't been able to solve the issue of spam, despite trying for 25 years. What makes you think those mysterious "steps" would be any more successful?
The verification would be a credit card number
a) check b) check c) well, since you absolutely can't get such a number anywhere unless you are the rightful owner of said card...
Also if the bot can't respond it seamlessly hands off to a call service employee, so there shouldn't be any issues with the bot wasting the time of the reservation takers time.
And you buy that?
To gain any advantage of having a human make the call in the first place, the system needs to be autonomous, i.e. the call center agent is not listening in all the time.
So when you "seamlessly" hand over, you hand over to a person who until one second ago had no insight into the call that is happening. He might have some information on his screen, but it won't be seamless and information will be lost or repeated.
I'm much less concerned about the "omg the person I was talking to wasn't actually a person" and much more about the abuse potential of the whole thing.
A lot of the real world works because as human beings we can generally trust each other, exceptions are rare enough to not break the system and a personal interaction establishes a slim line of bidirectional trust.
If you have access to such a system, and I'm certain they will make it generally available, there's a business there, you can now flood the restaurant or hairdresser etc you didn't like with fake reservations, denying them actual business.
They will have to answer with verification systems, which a) makes everything more complicated for us actual humans and b) adds a small overhead and c) just starts the arms race we already know from IT security.
And that is just the very first thing that comes to mind. Criminals are sure to be more creative than that. These systems are disruptive, and I haven't seen anyone thinking about solutions to that so far. Maybe the world after we solve this will be better than the world now, but it will be a major change. I'm reasonably sure that reservations of all kinds via telephone will go away. When the dust settles, you will no longer call a restaurant to ask for a table. You will tell your smartphone to reserve one, which will then call the restaurants computer, they will manage the verification and validation details in the background and generate a token that you can show at the entrance to get your table.
I'm a tech person, I feel comfortable with that. I would probably prefer it over calling the restaurant and speaking to a real person and we barely understand each other because of the noise in the background, etc. - but many people prefer to actually interact with an actual human being and that will be lost to them.
They pulled out of several European locations already, and the howling and crying of those now left without income is... well... wait... any moment now... there will be an outcry... for sure... no?
Let them pull out. What's all this bullshit panic over some business "pulling out" of something?
BTW, despite what they say, if Facebook thinks for one second that they can make a pile of money from quick hookups, they'll go there too.
I doubt it. Only an idiot would do their flings on a track-everything-you-do site like FB, and the second someones wife spots something on their news feed and throws a tantrum, the media will be all over it and FB will suffer more than it gets. It isn't at the point anymore where any PR is good PR.
basically, "independent" should mean exactly that and nothing else.
That is basically what law makers have been trying to do for decades, except that they are also trying to not step on anyones feet, not upset business, consider the next elections, keep in mind their campaign contributors stakes in the whole thing, manage public relations and avoid tricky interview questions, negotiate with their fellow lawmakers over compromises and not forget about the impact on the small business of their wife or best friends.
But that nothing serious gets done is because the opposition party blocks it.
Their "business model", if you want to call it that, was precisely to circumvent those regulations. It's a bit like basing a business on not paying taxes and then crying when the IRS comes knocking.
Really? Your business doesn't function anymore when you have to run it like a proper business? Maybe there's a problem with your business model in such case?
That is a very strange problem you are having. I'm active on a bunch of SO sites and I've never even cared much about what gets your reputation points. Just being active seems to work perfectly well.
From what I've seen, you should be able to answer. Some questions are closed or locked and only people with reputation can answer to those, but there are plenty of questions you can answer even when you just start.
This. Some people seem to make a hobby out of being offended, and finding offense in everything.
There is certainly a grey area there, and there are kind and less kind ways of stating a fact, but what some people get offended over is more of a mental health issue than one of rudeness.
I gave this some thought and must say the question is fascinating.
I don't think there is much material evidence that would survive a couple million years. However, there is one area in which humans are already leaving a permanent mark on Earth. How would a future civilization, millions of years into the future, know we were here?
By the mass extinction event that we are causing. Our scientists know about previous mass extinctions, so we can assume the current one will be visible to the future as well.
So looking into the past, all one has to assume is that a past civilisation would also cause such events, which boils down to the question of would they explode unto the planet like we did? IMHO the answer is a resounding YES. Almost all the destruction caused by humanity is caused by growth - of population and industry. They are just two sides of the same coin, and growth is embedded into our genes. Every species tries to multiply, expand its territory, grow - in short: To win. The ecological disaster we are facing is the simple logical consequence of a species winning so hard that it doesn't even understand it.
Any advanced species would hit a period in their progress like this, and would likely take some time to turn their society around from "we must do everything to survive in this world" to "actually, it would be cute if something else would survive as well".
Other paths are imaginable, but much less likely. We should assume that a previous civilisation would be marked in the fossil records as a mass extinction event.
As in, most of the rest of the world would consider how we run things a complete joke.
"would" ?
We do laugh about you guys and how much you're allowing yourself to be exploited. Until the laughter freezes in our faces when we realize that our governments are shoulder-deep in your asses and every year more and more of that same crap is starting here.
So, please, do get your shit together and start exporting some good ideas again.
Invest in my ICO where you can invest in a mutually funded community pool to secure ICO insurance in to cover all your other ICO investments that you are afraid will go away, too.
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They sold (in the US) 26,566 cars in 2015 alone, and 18,480 the year before. So even by a conservative estimate, Tesla had at least 40,000 cars on the road in 2015.
Statistically speaking, 5 people should have died in Tesla cars in 2015 in the US alone.
If I remember correctly, either one person or no person died in 2015 (the first fatal crash was 2016, but I could be mistaken). In either case, that is far below the statistically expected value.
Seriously that is what "being grilled" means to the US government? Grill me any day.
And./ editors cannot dissect this either, as the headline clearly shows. No, he did not deny knowledge of anything. He said about shadow profiles that he is not familiar with that. Doesn't mean he doesn't know about it or it doesn't exist. I'm not familiar with the workings of my car engine. I know it's there, I know what it does, but aside from a general basic knowledge of engines, that's it.
And they let him off the hook with that. Either they never intended to actually ask any serious questions, or the whole stunt is just a "my re-election campaign is coming up soon" reminder to him, or they are just incredibly badly prepared. What do these people pay their staff for? Making coffee?
Which exact data does FB collect on non-users? How long is it stored? How do you identify people repeatedly visiting FB from different locations? Different browsers? Different devices? How do you identify scrapers using scripts instead of browsers? Which other services or companies cooperate with you on this? Names of the responsible people we can question there? If I go to FB right now from this notebook without logging in, which data will be generated? Can you identify a FB user before he logs in? Do you share the results of your analysis with third parties? With whom and for what purpose?
It's a pathetic show, really. High cringe factor. If you needed any more evidence that business is calling the shots in Washington, there it is.
Nobody sane goes to China with new tech. They will be happy to cooperate with you. One year later, an almost identical car from an almost identical factory in a different city will hit the market. That factory will be owned by your cooperation partner. But unlike your joint factory, only by them. In fact, they'll not even tell you that the other factory exists, despite if you were put in either one without being told which one it is, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
If you want to prove that it has nothing to to do with acupuncure, you are my guest.
Easy.
Take a random sample of people and drive them down the same country road. At the end, ask them individually for the landmarks along the way that they remember.
There is a good chance that you will have a considerable overlap, wouldn't you agree?
Same with the human body. If you are looking for interesting places to prick, or to paint, you will likely end up with similar locations. Especially with a large sample.
I checked up on Oetzi since my ancient Chinese is a bit rusty.
The acupuncture hypothesis is that exactly, and it is brought forth by acupuncture people (main claim "these tattoos are at the locations which I would prick today"). Even they admit that a third or so of the points don't make sense to them.
Fact is that we don't know. People who believe in acupuncture have thrown up a theory that these tattoos are related to acupuncture.
Slashdot Mirror
I repeat: This isn't news, it's olds. I've seen the White Helmets being doubted publicly for well over a year, maybe two. Sometimes even in mainstream media.
That they are part of the ISIS propaganda efforts is plain as day. The only question remaining is how strongly they are aligned with Daesh, if they are a pure propaganda tool created for this purpose or a humanitarian organisation being used additionally for propaganda, or somewhere inbetween.
They did so by making us turn against each other.
As if you needed any help in that area.
What is turning people against each other is the doctrine of total competition that neo-liberalism has brought to every aspect of modern life. It used to be limited to sports and the workspace and even there we had rules of fair play.
During the cold war, there was a balance between capitalism and socialism in most western countries, because it was understood that releasing the full barrage of unrestricted capitalism on people would make them turn towards communism. After communism (rightfully) fell, that balance wasn't necessary any longer.
Really, the biggest thing Russia ever did to regular Americans was crumbling down and dropping communism. The ripple effect of that is still showing itself today with every year the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer while employee rights get demolished, regulations abandoned, any echos of the New Deal or similar compromises in other western countries are lost and the future of future generations is sold for the benefit of next quarters profits.
Every once in a while, a story comes up on /. that makes me question the authors sanity. This is one of them.
There is plenty of reason to doubt the neutrality and motives of the White Helmets, outside of and being shared around long before any Russian news stories. There are plenty of pictures where the same people are seen as victims in different locations, and the curious fact that the White Helmets are routinely at the scene immediately and seemingly active exclusively in islamist-controlled territory.
So what is this story? FUD? Did too many questionable details about these guys surface recently?
From an outside perspective, two things seem to be obvious: One, the White Helmets are doing humanitarian work and providing emergency services to civilian victims in a war zone. Two, they are clearly aligned with one of the sides in this conflict.
Neither of these diminishes the importance of the other.
Oh, maybe noticing when a business is being flooded with calls and refusing to make them?
Congratulations, you've just replaced one DoS attack with a different DoS attack.
The thing that makes spam hard to address is the decentralized nature of SMTP. If all email originated from a single system it would be easy.
What makes you think these systems would be centralized?
And yet this isn't a significant problem for hotels and restaurants that already do this.
Some hotels do, that is true. A small minority of restaurants do. I'm not aware of any hairdressers that ask for your credit card on the phone.
Yes, but you could not automated them and spam them at the rate of your outgoing bandwidth. That is the point.
and as a service Google can take steps to minimize abuse.
Which steps would that be?
We haven't been able to solve the issue of spam, despite trying for 25 years. What makes you think those mysterious "steps" would be any more successful?
The verification would be a credit card number
a) check
b) check
c) well, since you absolutely can't get such a number anywhere unless you are the rightful owner of said card...
Also if the bot can't respond it seamlessly hands off to a call service employee, so there shouldn't be any issues with the bot wasting the time of the reservation takers time.
And you buy that?
To gain any advantage of having a human make the call in the first place, the system needs to be autonomous, i.e. the call center agent is not listening in all the time.
So when you "seamlessly" hand over, you hand over to a person who until one second ago had no insight into the call that is happening. He might have some information on his screen, but it won't be seamless and information will be lost or repeated.
I'm much less concerned about the "omg the person I was talking to wasn't actually a person" and much more about the abuse potential of the whole thing.
A lot of the real world works because as human beings we can generally trust each other, exceptions are rare enough to not break the system and a personal interaction establishes a slim line of bidirectional trust.
If you have access to such a system, and I'm certain they will make it generally available, there's a business there, you can now flood the restaurant or hairdresser etc you didn't like with fake reservations, denying them actual business.
They will have to answer with verification systems, which a) makes everything more complicated for us actual humans and b) adds a small overhead and c) just starts the arms race we already know from IT security.
And that is just the very first thing that comes to mind. Criminals are sure to be more creative than that. These systems are disruptive, and I haven't seen anyone thinking about solutions to that so far. Maybe the world after we solve this will be better than the world now, but it will be a major change. I'm reasonably sure that reservations of all kinds via telephone will go away. When the dust settles, you will no longer call a restaurant to ask for a table. You will tell your smartphone to reserve one, which will then call the restaurants computer, they will manage the verification and validation details in the background and generate a token that you can show at the entrance to get your table.
I'm a tech person, I feel comfortable with that. I would probably prefer it over calling the restaurant and speaking to a real person and we barely understand each other because of the noise in the background, etc. - but many people prefer to actually interact with an actual human being and that will be lost to them.
They pulled out of several European locations already, and the howling and crying of those now left without income is... well... wait... any moment now... there will be an outcry... for sure... no?
Let them pull out. What's all this bullshit panic over some business "pulling out" of something?
BTW, despite what they say, if Facebook thinks for one second that they can make a pile of money from quick hookups, they'll go there too.
I doubt it. Only an idiot would do their flings on a track-everything-you-do site like FB, and the second someones wife spots something on their news feed and throws a tantrum, the media will be all over it and FB will suffer more than it gets. It isn't at the point anymore where any PR is good PR.
basically, "independent" should mean exactly that and nothing else.
That is basically what law makers have been trying to do for decades, except that they are also trying to not step on anyones feet, not upset business, consider the next elections, keep in mind their campaign contributors stakes in the whole thing, manage public relations and avoid tricky interview questions, negotiate with their fellow lawmakers over compromises and not forget about the impact on the small business of their wife or best friends.
But that nothing serious gets done is because the opposition party blocks it.
potentially upending their business models
Their "business model", if you want to call it that, was precisely to circumvent those regulations. It's a bit like basing a business on not paying taxes and then crying when the IRS comes knocking.
Really? Your business doesn't function anymore when you have to run it like a proper business? Maybe there's a problem with your business model in such case?
That is a very strange problem you are having. I'm active on a bunch of SO sites and I've never even cared much about what gets your reputation points. Just being active seems to work perfectly well.
From what I've seen, you should be able to answer. Some questions are closed or locked and only people with reputation can answer to those, but there are plenty of questions you can answer even when you just start.
This. Some people seem to make a hobby out of being offended, and finding offense in everything.
There is certainly a grey area there, and there are kind and less kind ways of stating a fact, but what some people get offended over is more of a mental health issue than one of rudeness.
Not if they sit one or two miles underground, crushed to small pieces, split up into several regions, no.
When we are talking millions of years, a lot of assumptions go out the window.
I gave this some thought and must say the question is fascinating.
I don't think there is much material evidence that would survive a couple million years. However, there is one area in which humans are already leaving a permanent mark on Earth. How would a future civilization, millions of years into the future, know we were here?
By the mass extinction event that we are causing. Our scientists know about previous mass extinctions, so we can assume the current one will be visible to the future as well.
So looking into the past, all one has to assume is that a past civilisation would also cause such events, which boils down to the question of would they explode unto the planet like we did? IMHO the answer is a resounding YES. Almost all the destruction caused by humanity is caused by growth - of population and industry. They are just two sides of the same coin, and growth is embedded into our genes. Every species tries to multiply, expand its territory, grow - in short: To win. The ecological disaster we are facing is the simple logical consequence of a species winning so hard that it doesn't even understand it.
Any advanced species would hit a period in their progress like this, and would likely take some time to turn their society around from "we must do everything to survive in this world" to "actually, it would be cute if something else would survive as well".
Other paths are imaginable, but much less likely. We should assume that a previous civilisation would be marked in the fossil records as a mass extinction event.
Why would the US not want quality global security research?
Because Kasperky could detect the next US-government-sponsored malware. The other malware companies can be "convinced" to play nice.
As in, most of the rest of the world would consider how we run things a complete joke.
"would" ?
We do laugh about you guys and how much you're allowing yourself to be exploited. Until the laughter freezes in our faces when we realize that our governments are shoulder-deep in your asses and every year more and more of that same crap is starting here.
So, please, do get your shit together and start exporting some good ideas again.
Invest in my ICO where you can invest in a mutually funded community pool to secure ICO insurance in to cover all your other ICO investments that you are afraid will go away, too.
Not a scam. Promise(*)
(*) limited term offer, null where void, not applicable in your jurisdiction
Let's do the math. Let's focus on the USA, numbers are easier to get and Tesla has most of its business there:
Number of cars on the road:
https://www.statista.com/stati...
Number of road deaths:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
2015 Numbers:
35,485 deaths from 263,610,220 cars.
1 death per 7.429 cars.
Did Tesla have more than 7429 cars on the road in 2016 in the USA?
According to this source:
https://cleantechnica.com/2016...
They sold (in the US) 26,566 cars in 2015 alone, and 18,480 the year before. So even by a conservative estimate, Tesla had at least 40,000 cars on the road in 2015.
Statistically speaking, 5 people should have died in Tesla cars in 2015 in the US alone.
If I remember correctly, either one person or no person died in 2015 (the first fatal crash was 2016, but I could be mistaken). In either case, that is far below the statistically expected value.
Q.E.D.
That is the point.
1.25 million people die on the road every year, world wide (number from 2013, had it in my head due to unrelated research).
If Tesla has one millionth of the car market, expect on death per year. That would be statistical normality.
Seriously that is what "being grilled" means to the US government? Grill me any day.
And ./ editors cannot dissect this either, as the headline clearly shows. No, he did not deny knowledge of anything. He said about shadow profiles that he is not familiar with that. Doesn't mean he doesn't know about it or it doesn't exist. I'm not familiar with the workings of my car engine. I know it's there, I know what it does, but aside from a general basic knowledge of engines, that's it.
And they let him off the hook with that. Either they never intended to actually ask any serious questions, or the whole stunt is just a "my re-election campaign is coming up soon" reminder to him, or they are just incredibly badly prepared. What do these people pay their staff for? Making coffee?
Which exact data does FB collect on non-users? How long is it stored? How do you identify people repeatedly visiting FB from different locations? Different browsers? Different devices? How do you identify scrapers using scripts instead of browsers? Which other services or companies cooperate with you on this? Names of the responsible people we can question there? If I go to FB right now from this notebook without logging in, which data will be generated? Can you identify a FB user before he logs in? Do you share the results of your analysis with third parties? With whom and for what purpose?
It's a pathetic show, really. High cringe factor. If you needed any more evidence that business is calling the shots in Washington, there it is.
Nobody sane goes to China with new tech. They will be happy to cooperate with you. One year later, an almost identical car from an almost identical factory in a different city will hit the market. That factory will be owned by your cooperation partner. But unlike your joint factory, only by them. In fact, they'll not even tell you that the other factory exists, despite if you were put in either one without being told which one it is, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Tall story? Happened to Mercedes Benz.
If you want to prove that it has nothing to to do with acupuncure, you are my guest.
Easy.
Take a random sample of people and drive them down the same country road. At the end, ask them individually for the landmarks along the way that they remember.
There is a good chance that you will have a considerable overlap, wouldn't you agree?
Same with the human body. If you are looking for interesting places to prick, or to paint, you will likely end up with similar locations. Especially with a large sample.
Ever heard about Occams Razor?
Yes, and now you have, too.
I checked up on Oetzi since my ancient Chinese is a bit rusty.
The acupuncture hypothesis is that exactly, and it is brought forth by acupuncture people (main claim "these tattoos are at the locations which I would prick today"). Even they admit that a third or so of the points don't make sense to them.
Fact is that we don't know. People who believe in acupuncture have thrown up a theory that these tattoos are related to acupuncture.