Within the past few months I have seen Windows boxes where Defender refuses to update and/or work correctly... Is there any evidence of this being exploited in the wild?
SMB is just the beginning - from Vista on they've packed all kinds of listening-by-default crap into each successive version. Stuff way less useful than SMB.
Seriously though - everything I do with an "app" is either functionality that used to be embedded in my flip phone's OS, or something I did on my laptop, or on the game console hooked up to the TV.
Facebook can censor whatever they want, they could in fact go offline entirely, and the Internet would be just fine. If Facebook isn't giving people what they want, they can use an alternative service.
What the internet won't survive is corporatist guys like Ajit Pai regulating it. He'd rather have you buy "Facebook Internet" or whatever, where you can't access any site that's not on Comcast's approved list. Not without coughing up an extra couple hundred, anyway.
That "political will" translates directly into more foreign wars and/or erosion of our free society at home. The terrorists have realized that option 1 isn't particularly effective against them, and option 2 is what they've wanted all along. Congratulations on letting yourself be terrorized.
Once you've decided to kill someone, nothing Facebook does will stop you. But it sounds more like you're suggesting Facebook itself is what incites people to commit murder... I'll just let the ridiculousness of that assertion speak for itself. Not that the Trumpesque "vetting" you proposed would do much to stop a killer, whatever the motivation. They're already choosing to put up with being the target of a multi-state law enforcement manhunt. I'd like to see Facebook try raising that bar. Actual users would start moving to Tinychat, Youtube, Snapchat, Skype, Google Hangouts...
Really this is just about Facebook's PR. Lately they feel like they have to project an air of social responsibility. Which is great, our corporations should serve the society that birthed them. But they are concerned about smells, not substance. Substance would be making those 3000 employees *real* employees with fair pay, benefits, and conditions - not hiding it behind a contractor to make their own numbers look better. What I think is that the contract is going to get cancelled before the end of the year, when the heat from the press is off.
It's like when Apple decided to replace the pistol emoji with a water gun. They do inconsequential things like this and then get a round of applause for their "brave stance against gun violence".
That's because most fast food workers live locally.
The GP's point was that they wouldn't be able to live locally, due to the rent. What might be happening is that these jobs are being filled by youngsters - students and other people who don't have to pay rent. In most of the country, those people are simply getting pushed out of the job market; the workforce participation rate is dropping among young people faster than any other age group. The middle-aged uneducated guys who take the fast food jobs in the rest of the country have been pushed out. Kids with rich parents haven't.
Maybe there's simply less of that type of job, too. Perhaps Silicon Valley types rather spend their money at a full-service restaurant, where proportionally higher tips would make housing more in reach. Maybe some of the cities in question have raised the minimum wage within their borders, to accomplish the same thing without praying to the Invisible Hand.
I can think of a bunch of scenarios, but seeing some hard data on any of these points would be even more interesting.
That depends; what's it like to work at Infosys? My currently employer (in Texas) is barely paying above minimum wage, the working conditions suck, they don't provide health insurance, and they don't give the legally-required breaks. If the Infosys job fixed at least 2 of those issues, I'd move across the country to work there.
I feel that the US - probably most of the Western world but I feel more qualified to talk about the US in particular - is actually in the middle of a huge employment bubble. Basically, a lot of the jobs we have are "bullshit jobs" that provide little of value to society. Jobs for the sake of jobs. Jobs, not to provide useful services or products, but just to keep someone employed.
To copy some junk I posted earlier:
Our current economic system is good at creating jobs, since it's "employment or die". What it's not good at is creating good jobs. Jobs that are productive/useful, and pay a living wage. We are becoming an economy of middlemen. We have call centers full of people who are essentially telephone panhandlers, providing little of value. We've got paper shufflers baked-in to our corporations at every level, whose main job is to justify their own salary. We have fast-food workers who can't sit down for 2 minutes because they have to appear to be busy with *something* at all times, whether or not there is anything to be done. We have entire industries, like the health insurance industry, doing nothing but shuffling money around and skimming a percentage off the top. We are ignoring the population's basic medical needs in order to sustain
those
particular jobs for another few years. (How this system maintains a reputation for hyper-efficiency baffles me - ignorance is the only way I can explain it.)
This doesn't show up much in the statistics either. Maybe a bit, now that we are seeing worker productivity drop in the US. Perhaps that indicates we have hit a tipping point. More jobs, but less being done.
In nature, there is a limit to the amount of food and shinies you can stash in your cave. In capitalism, there is essentially no limit. You can stash your "cave" with enough capital to feed or house thousands of people. Punishing tax rates on the rich are the only way I see to re-establish the natural ceiling on wealth accumulation, short of full-out Communism, which either wouldn't work or would be a bloodbath during the transition phase.
People didn't complain about that because they have been conditioned to think that tax cuts are invariably good. They DID get a check from the government, but they could feel righteous about it. It's the opposite for welfare programs; people have been conditioned to think it's bad, so their gut reaction is going to be negative.
Of course, this could all change around when we get politicians seriously proposing a basic income. Threatening to implement it gives people something of a reality check - it takes the issue from hypothetical ("The guy on the news said welfare is for bad lazy people"), to actual ("I'm going to get a check.") We see this happening regarding healthcare now - the ACA's popularity surged when the possibility of it going away became real.
We might have more jobs in absolute terms, but we also have more population. What's relevant is the relationship between the two, which I think is best measured by the workforce participation rate. The picture being painted there is that people are starting to drop out of the workforce, permanently. Is it because they don't want money, or is it because there are not enough acceptable jobs?
I think the situation is actually worse than the workforce participation rate makes it appear. We've kept inventing new positions for middlemen and bullshitters which is masking the problem of useful jobs going away. But that path is not sustainable. Already within the past couple years, we have seen the statistics show worker productivity in the US dropping.
Our current economic system is good at creating jobs, since it's "employment or die". What it's not good at is creating good jobs. Jobs that are productive/useful, and pay a living wage. We are becoming an economy of middlemen. We have call centers full of people who are essentially telephone panhandlers, providing little of value. We've got paper shufflers baked-in to our corporations at every level, whose main job is to justify their own salary. We have fast-food workers who can't sit down for 2 minutes because they have to appear to be busy with *something* at all times, whether or not there is anything to be done. We have entire industries, like the health insurance industry, doing nothing but shuffling money around and skimming a percentage off the top. We are ignoring the population's basic medical needs in order to sustain those particular jobs for another few years. (How this system maintains a reputation for hyper-efficiency baffles me - ignorance is the only way I can explain it.)
I see the US economy as having an employment bubble right now. I would actually call it the bubble, since it pervades all of our industries and our society at such a deep level. The ideas we have about employment are going to need to be seriously adjusted to make it through this crisis. The longer we wait, the worse it's going to be when the bubble finally pops. Up to and including the collapse of Western civilization. The economic model we used in the 1800s isn't going to cut it anymore. The economy we had in the 1950s won't ever come back. Technology has advanced beyond that, and there's no putting the genie back in the bottle. What hasn't advanced is our society and our government. Many Western countries are taking slow steps to address the automation problem, while the US is sticking its head in the sand. Instead of being proactive, we are blaming Mexicans, Muslims, Chinese, Indians... basically everyone but ourselves. Then we continue to wonder why we fall behind.
We don't need foreign workers for the most part. The number of workers needed is dropping, which will more than negate the skew toward an older populace. There's also plenty of capable people here that we lock out of the economy in one way or another. Look at our "justice" system.
If we need to import anything, it's that portion of our nation's wealth that is locked up in private accounts in the Caymans.
The information I was more skeptical about was that there are still schools in the US without internet access. I could have understood that 20 years ago, but now? I know that in my state, at least, there are whole sections of state-mandated curricula that require the internet to teach. Do these school districts not do things like digitize attendance records...?
It could. Where are the floodwaters coming from? What is the ground composed of and what does the water table underneath look like? Are there any dikes or dams along the way that we might adjust? Boiling flood risk down to a single number might work for insurance companies, but devising a real solution to the problem requires a bit more analysis and thought.
Just because its not absorbed in the intestinal walls doesn't make it "extra crap". Well, maybe literally, but it's useful crap. Fiber, for example, pulls out a lot of the debris (=toxins) that would otherwise stay stuck to the walls of your gut.
But regarding soy protein in particular, I do recall that it causes some type of hormonal imbalance.
For something like drug manufacturing, it makes sense to take the approach of chemically isolating the relevant compound and removing anything else. Nutrition can't be applied that way, it needs almost the opposite approach - making sure that you eat a wide enough variety of things that, included somewhere among them, will be the required amounts of everything your body needs.
It's also my belief that nutritional science hasn't yet progressed to the point where we can manufacture something from whole cloth (Soylent) and be confident that we aren't missing some critical, poorly a understood part of a natural diet.
Considering the juicer is $400, and there is only a tiny install base yet, there is probably a ton of money in the juicer at this point. However, given that the company is in Silicon Valley, all that revenue is probably being used just to keep the eviction notices off the office door.
MSN messenger is actually dead. AIM might be too, I'm not sure. MSN users in the United States were actually migrated to Skype. You might still be able to connect to some server somewhere, but Microsoft hasn't published a client for MSN in many years. 2009, I think.
The idea isn't new, but people might not have heard of this particular distro. I have an old netbook with ZSNES on it, but if I wanted something more modern this distro would expedite the installation process quite a bit. I'm actually thinking I might get a Pi and a new controller now and put this on it.
Skinny jeans have been hip since way before millennials.
"And with your hair swung right
And your pants too tight, it's gonna be all right"
-The Byrds, "So You Want to Be a Rock n Roll Star?" (1967)
Seriously, look at em: https://lastfm-img2.akamaized....
They look exactly like indie kids, just missing the Chuck Taylors, because I don't think those existed yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Within the past few months I have seen Windows boxes where Defender refuses to update and/or work correctly... Is there any evidence of this being exploited in the wild?
SMB is just the beginning - from Vista on they've packed all kinds of listening-by-default crap into each successive version. Stuff way less useful than SMB.
I was waiting for some insightful analysis of how governments influence computer security, but it never came.
How do you know Nicki isn't on 4chan? Because Nicki is entertaining.
Seriously though - everything I do with an "app" is either functionality that used to be embedded in my flip phone's OS, or something I did on my laptop, or on the game console hooked up to the TV.
Smugness is what Apple users pay for. The survey indicates it's working beautifully. It's not a good measure of value though.
Facebook can censor whatever they want, they could in fact go offline entirely, and the Internet would be just fine. If Facebook isn't giving people what they want, they can use an alternative service.
What the internet won't survive is corporatist guys like Ajit Pai regulating it. He'd rather have you buy "Facebook Internet" or whatever, where you can't access any site that's not on Comcast's approved list. Not without coughing up an extra couple hundred, anyway.
That "political will" translates directly into more foreign wars and/or erosion of our free society at home. The terrorists have realized that option 1 isn't particularly effective against them, and option 2 is what they've wanted all along. Congratulations on letting yourself be terrorized.
Once you've decided to kill someone, nothing Facebook does will stop you. But it sounds more like you're suggesting Facebook itself is what incites people to commit murder... I'll just let the ridiculousness of that assertion speak for itself. Not that the Trumpesque "vetting" you proposed would do much to stop a killer, whatever the motivation. They're already choosing to put up with being the target of a multi-state law enforcement manhunt. I'd like to see Facebook try raising that bar. Actual users would start moving to Tinychat, Youtube, Snapchat, Skype, Google Hangouts...
Really this is just about Facebook's PR. Lately they feel like they have to project an air of social responsibility. Which is great, our corporations should serve the society that birthed them. But they are concerned about smells, not substance. Substance would be making those 3000 employees *real* employees with fair pay, benefits, and conditions - not hiding it behind a contractor to make their own numbers look better. What I think is that the contract is going to get cancelled before the end of the year, when the heat from the press is off.
It's like when Apple decided to replace the pistol emoji with a water gun. They do inconsequential things like this and then get a round of applause for their "brave stance against gun violence".
That's because most fast food workers live locally.
The GP's point was that they wouldn't be able to live locally, due to the rent. What might be happening is that these jobs are being filled by youngsters - students and other people who don't have to pay rent. In most of the country, those people are simply getting pushed out of the job market; the workforce participation rate is dropping among young people faster than any other age group. The middle-aged uneducated guys who take the fast food jobs in the rest of the country have been pushed out. Kids with rich parents haven't.
Maybe there's simply less of that type of job, too. Perhaps Silicon Valley types rather spend their money at a full-service restaurant, where proportionally higher tips would make housing more in reach. Maybe some of the cities in question have raised the minimum wage within their borders, to accomplish the same thing without praying to the Invisible Hand.
I can think of a bunch of scenarios, but seeing some hard data on any of these points would be even more interesting.
That depends; what's it like to work at Infosys? My currently employer (in Texas) is barely paying above minimum wage, the working conditions suck, they don't provide health insurance, and they don't give the legally-required breaks. If the Infosys job fixed at least 2 of those issues, I'd move across the country to work there.
Our current economic system is good at creating jobs, since it's "employment or die". What it's not good at is creating good jobs. Jobs that are productive/useful, and pay a living wage. We are becoming an economy of middlemen. We have call centers full of people who are essentially telephone panhandlers, providing little of value. We've got paper shufflers baked-in to our corporations at every level, whose main job is to justify their own salary. We have fast-food workers who can't sit down for 2 minutes because they have to appear to be busy with *something* at all times, whether or not there is anything to be done. We have entire industries, like the health insurance industry, doing nothing but shuffling money around and skimming a percentage off the top. We are ignoring the population's basic medical needs in order to sustain those particular jobs for another few years. (How this system maintains a reputation for hyper-efficiency baffles me - ignorance is the only way I can explain it.)
This doesn't show up much in the statistics either. Maybe a bit, now that we are seeing worker productivity drop in the US. Perhaps that indicates we have hit a tipping point. More jobs, but less being done.
In nature, there is a limit to the amount of food and shinies you can stash in your cave. In capitalism, there is essentially no limit. You can stash your "cave" with enough capital to feed or house thousands of people. Punishing tax rates on the rich are the only way I see to re-establish the natural ceiling on wealth accumulation, short of full-out Communism, which either wouldn't work or would be a bloodbath during the transition phase.
People didn't complain about that because they have been conditioned to think that tax cuts are invariably good. They DID get a check from the government, but they could feel righteous about it. It's the opposite for welfare programs; people have been conditioned to think it's bad, so their gut reaction is going to be negative.
Of course, this could all change around when we get politicians seriously proposing a basic income. Threatening to implement it gives people something of a reality check - it takes the issue from hypothetical ("The guy on the news said welfare is for bad lazy people"), to actual ("I'm going to get a check.") We see this happening regarding healthcare now - the ACA's popularity surged when the possibility of it going away became real.
We might have more jobs in absolute terms, but we also have more population. What's relevant is the relationship between the two, which I think is best measured by the workforce participation rate. The picture being painted there is that people are starting to drop out of the workforce, permanently. Is it because they don't want money, or is it because there are not enough acceptable jobs?
I think the situation is actually worse than the workforce participation rate makes it appear. We've kept inventing new positions for middlemen and bullshitters which is masking the problem of useful jobs going away. But that path is not sustainable. Already within the past couple years, we have seen the statistics show worker productivity in the US dropping.
Our current economic system is good at creating jobs, since it's "employment or die". What it's not good at is creating good jobs. Jobs that are productive/useful, and pay a living wage. We are becoming an economy of middlemen. We have call centers full of people who are essentially telephone panhandlers, providing little of value. We've got paper shufflers baked-in to our corporations at every level, whose main job is to justify their own salary. We have fast-food workers who can't sit down for 2 minutes because they have to appear to be busy with *something* at all times, whether or not there is anything to be done. We have entire industries, like the health insurance industry, doing nothing but shuffling money around and skimming a percentage off the top. We are ignoring the population's basic medical needs in order to sustain those particular jobs for another few years. (How this system maintains a reputation for hyper-efficiency baffles me - ignorance is the only way I can explain it.)
I see the US economy as having an employment bubble right now. I would actually call it the bubble, since it pervades all of our industries and our society at such a deep level. The ideas we have about employment are going to need to be seriously adjusted to make it through this crisis. The longer we wait, the worse it's going to be when the bubble finally pops. Up to and including the collapse of Western civilization. The economic model we used in the 1800s isn't going to cut it anymore. The economy we had in the 1950s won't ever come back. Technology has advanced beyond that, and there's no putting the genie back in the bottle. What hasn't advanced is our society and our government. Many Western countries are taking slow steps to address the automation problem, while the US is sticking its head in the sand. Instead of being proactive, we are blaming Mexicans, Muslims, Chinese, Indians... basically everyone but ourselves. Then we continue to wonder why we fall behind.
We don't need foreign workers for the most part. The number of workers needed is dropping, which will more than negate the skew toward an older populace. There's also plenty of capable people here that we lock out of the economy in one way or another. Look at our "justice" system. If we need to import anything, it's that portion of our nation's wealth that is locked up in private accounts in the Caymans.
The information I was more skeptical about was that there are still schools in the US without internet access. I could have understood that 20 years ago, but now? I know that in my state, at least, there are whole sections of state-mandated curricula that require the internet to teach. Do these school districts not do things like digitize attendance records...?
But what they'll tell the voters is that Canada is paying for it.
It could. Where are the floodwaters coming from? What is the ground composed of and what does the water table underneath look like? Are there any dikes or dams along the way that we might adjust? Boiling flood risk down to a single number might work for insurance companies, but devising a real solution to the problem requires a bit more analysis and thought.
Just because its not absorbed in the intestinal walls doesn't make it "extra crap". Well, maybe literally, but it's useful crap. Fiber, for example, pulls out a lot of the debris (=toxins) that would otherwise stay stuck to the walls of your gut. But regarding soy protein in particular, I do recall that it causes some type of hormonal imbalance. For something like drug manufacturing, it makes sense to take the approach of chemically isolating the relevant compound and removing anything else. Nutrition can't be applied that way, it needs almost the opposite approach - making sure that you eat a wide enough variety of things that, included somewhere among them, will be the required amounts of everything your body needs. It's also my belief that nutritional science hasn't yet progressed to the point where we can manufacture something from whole cloth (Soylent) and be confident that we aren't missing some critical, poorly a understood part of a natural diet.
Considering the juicer is $400, and there is only a tiny install base yet, there is probably a ton of money in the juicer at this point. However, given that the company is in Silicon Valley, all that revenue is probably being used just to keep the eviction notices off the office door.
MSN messenger is actually dead. AIM might be too, I'm not sure. MSN users in the United States were actually migrated to Skype. You might still be able to connect to some server somewhere, but Microsoft hasn't published a client for MSN in many years. 2009, I think.
The idea isn't new, but people might not have heard of this particular distro. I have an old netbook with ZSNES on it, but if I wanted something more modern this distro would expedite the installation process quite a bit. I'm actually thinking I might get a Pi and a new controller now and put this on it.
They are probably on their phones too.
Skinny jeans have been hip since way before millennials.
"And with your hair swung right
And your pants too tight, it's gonna be all right"
-The Byrds, "So You Want to Be a Rock n Roll Star?" (1967)
Seriously, look at em:
https://lastfm-img2.akamaized....
They look exactly like indie kids, just missing the Chuck Taylors, because I don't think those existed yet.