In the end we're all writing Machine Code we've just wrapped it up in a nicer package is all
Rubbish.
Toggled in the binary code for any bootloaders recently? Addressed any registers lately in C? Dealt with any vectorising and prefetching in C in the past week? Inserted an NOP's in C recently to keep nasty timing stuff from hapening?
No? Then you're clearly talking nonsense. The C virtual machine is way different from the processor it targets.
Just as driving a car is different from dealing with a water-cooled internal combustion engine, a gearbox, a drivetrain, the suspension, brake disks, a chassis and a set of wheels.
You'd never get anywhere if you tried. Same with assembler, let alone machine code.
Take application development. Pioneering has been replaced by engineering. Great for making complicated and reliable products, not so great for empowerment of the individual. Software engineering tends to be teamwork. Depending on how "standard" the required end product is you can parcel out the interface design, the overall apllication design, the datastructures, the core algorithms, data management, and housekeeping. Could be 3-50 software engineers in a team. Used to be 1 programmer doing all of that.
Take high-performance programming. It used to be an art. Found e.g. in DOD stuff, scientific software, and games. Often in assembler, for speed. Nowadays that's mostly out. Certainly for scientific software. You use compilers of even scripting languages that call libraries to do the heavy lifting. You're quite unlikely to do better than the library builders. If you're writing some really new algorithm, you'll code it in C/C++. If absolutely necessary, you can make that code tunable (array stride, blocksize, etc.) and write an algorithm to optimise those parameters for your specific hardware (like e.g. BLAS). If it's too slow, buy better hardware. If it's still too slow, get access to a Hadoop cluster and parallelise your algorithm.
Take datacommunication. In the early days datacommunication meant controlling some UART and sending squiggles down a wire. Now it's calling a packaged protocol stack and talking to the appropriate protocol layers. More often than not that's the connection or session layer or higher... unless you are a specialised networking engineer.
As for computer users as clients: the nerdy types are dying out. What today's consumer wants is things like smartphones and tablets. And what do they want it for? To surf the web (shopping, news, amusement (e.g. video torrents, Youtube)), and to waste time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and various chats. If they somehow want a desktop computer, they'll only know it for the OS it runs. That would be "Windows" or "Apple" (meaning macOs, but Apple users typically don't know that). And that's what the industry is giving them. Want "Basic Freddoms" ? Bugger off and run Linux, you freak.
So, yes. Computing as a product has become commoditised and geared towards the mass market. It's not easy to turn a buck by catering for nerds: the real money is in serving customers. And it shows. Consumer-grade users get a consumer-grade experience plus consumer-grade treatment (read: DRM, spyware, bloatware).
Those who want to play around with a computer however never had it better. For less than 50$ you can get a complete Raspberry Pi system (or a lookalike) that's more powerful than a clunky old PC. For 500$ you can get performance you used to have only on workstations, and for 1500$ you can get the same power you used to need a supercomputer for.
The only thing stopping you is know-how, time and interest. But that's not the industry's fault,
Fairly obvious it might be, but it's also fairly obvious that quite a lot of manufacturers simply chose to ignore the problem.
And why?
It costs money to think of the problem, it costs even more money to evaluate any risks, it costs still more money to think about fixing them, and it's downright expensive to actually implement any fixes.
Incorporating cyber-security risk management will be part of the development process as soon as people are willing to pay for it. Which they aren't, because they can't see it so they can't even check it's there. Plus, it's probably a lot cheaper to just settle with any victims out of court than to bust a gut trying to turn medical devices into electronic fortresses. So don't count on the market to fix anything.
This seems a typical case where "self-regulation" is dead on arrival and only statutory safety requirements will get results. But that's not happening because of politics. Conservative politics to be precise. Pussyfooting about where industry regulations are concerned is the reason we're seeing such a lot of unsafe devices.
Expect that to continue for the next 4 years. Until and unless someone can whip up a juuuge scare story about ISIS sabotaging medical devices in the US. Oh wait... what will happen then is that they'll shut down the Internet within half a mile of any hospital and start a fresh bombing campaign wherever. Ok, that won't work.
Perhaps if some reality star is killed through a hacked medical device? Or a photogenic child?
Those financial firms (many of them US banks) cater to the EU rather than Britain. While Britain was in the EU it made sense to set up shop in London. Good place to live, they speak English over there, good timezone, good communications, adequate and halfway familiar legal environment, sufficient critical mass of a raft of supporting firms, relatively liberal trading rules (for Europe), their customers just a phone call or a 1-3 hour flight away, and zero complications doing business with anyone else in the EU. That's what the EU was designed for. Life was good.
Various other EU countries might have preferred the seat of all that financial service to be in their own country instead of London. Financial firms provide high quality jobs and have a high (taxable) turnover. Only they couldn't do shit about it. EU guarantees free exchange of services and the most influential players (US banks) happened to prefer London. Not in the last place because London and the UK really listened to industry demands (knowing full well what they stood to lose if they didn't). So London it was. End of story.
Enter Brexit.
Brexit means the UK leaves the EU and has to negotiate terms on which to continue trading. The most basic terms of free trade (WTO--level) ensure free movement of goods but NOT free movement of services. Which EU membership guarantees, only that's what Britain is ending. So Britain is very much the asking party here.
Anyone prepared to bet that other EU countries (like Ireland) will be eager to let Britain keep all that yummy taxable business? And those jobs? When they can simply negotiate away London-based firms' comfy access to the EU, grab the jobs and (part of) the revenue? Really?
Autonomous cars are at the start of a long learning curve. One that might take a decade to complete.
So where do you carry out the live experiments to slide down that learning curve?
Someplace where driving is complicated and where you have a lot of opportunities to kill people like California, or someplace where there's enough room and people are sparse like Arizona?
No prizes for coming up with Arizona.
When those autonomous cars have proven themselves there is ample time to allow them in more densely populated areas. Which is where those cars can generate the most revenue.
And he really doesn't like it when the evidence contradicts him. Especially not when it reflects on the (in)advisability of his policies.
He might not personally order a wipe, but with a view to running the country as a business, he has appointed some "climate sceptics" who could very well appoint like-minded trustees to actively realign publicly funded research efforts with national priorities, restructure research departments with a view to national needs, and focus monetary and computing resources in accordance with those needs and priorities.
Translation: he has appointed a few idiots who in turn might appoint a posse of yahoos who see it as their mission in life to vanish anything or anyone the boss doesn't like and hide the evidence. As in: fire anyone who openly says global warming is a fact, have their funding cut, their computing resources confiscated, and their data wiped. That's what "running the country like a business" means, you know.
Given that perspective... why not extend and enhance current backup policies to guarantee continuity of valuable research data with an eye towards potential refocusing of research priorities and allocation of means.
Tanslation: why not save an offshore copy of your work while you still can?
It's interesting to see history repeat itself (again). Years ago you had some very vocal pimply-faced youths who jeered about how they were illegally distributing copyrighted works (software, music, video, books. Stupid companies! No copyright protection, lame copyright protection... easy meat !
Result ? Among others the DMCA. Various individuals were sued into bankruptcy by the music industry, just to show people what the risks were (remember single mother Jammie Thomas ? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) . Some were driven to suicide (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ).
What shouty nerds tend to forget is that (like it or not) they are part of a society that can (and does) sets certain limits on their behaviour. Which can be enforced. With or without their consent.
Tor routers can be a force for the good (avoiding censorship, protecting human rights activists, protecting investigative journalists) but they really _can_ be eradicated, given sufficient incentive.
Just outlaw the servers, force ISP's to scan all Internet traffic for TOR servers, log any connections and isolate / report them as soon as they're detected. Send a SWAT team to visit anyone who connects to a TOR server to seize their computers pending investigation. Set penalties sufficiently high to pay for all that and publicly sue a few tens of offenders into bankruptcy.
Should cow 99% of all TOR users, right? The 1% who aren't cowed are probably up to no good anyway.
A bit like China. Not pretty, and people won't like it, but it really can be enforced.
The detection and tracking part is already in place. Just consider the raft of deep-packet inspection routers that has been installed already (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ).
I'm not saying I'd like to see something like that (I wouldn't). All I'm saying is that stupid and venal abusers like this a**hole botnet operator make it that much more likely that something like that will occur. Whether we realise it or not. To the detriment of us all.
Banning hearsay rants from German facebook has nothing whatsoever to do with "repressing" Free Speech.
You're always allowed to say factual things like: "I saw a girl being assaulted by immigrants from Africa in xxx on yyy" (factual report) or "I spoke with a girl who was assaulted by immigrant from Africa..." (firsthand report), or "My girlfriend says she spoke with a girl who was assaulted by an immigrant from Africa" (hearsay report). But if you do, it had better be true.
But things like "Immigrant apes from Africa are raping our daughters, spit on our laws and come here to sponge on welfare. How long are we're going to let those bastards continue to do that before we string them up?" would be prohibited.
I think that preventing out-and-out hoaxers from hijacking a platform (like facebook) that many (stupid) people lend unthinking credence to is good thing. It only muddies the waters.
I also think that preventing rabble-rousers and deliberate hate-speech merchants from doing the same can't hurt either.
If people want to claim something as a fact, they should bring proof. If they can't, they should preface their claim with "I believe this is the case:... " and preferably end it with "... but I can't prove it".
People have the right to their own opinions, but they don't have the right to their own "facts".
Just adopt legislation that requires anyone in the possession of an encrypted camera to provide the encryption key to any police officer who asks, on pain of... say... 2 years of jail time for each offense.
Like in the UK.
That should teach tech-obsessed journos who is boss.
It's a lot cheaper to shoot the messenger than it is to shore up a leaky piece of software.
Besides... patching the software is never a permanent solution. Anarchist sympathisers will burrow into the system until they've found another vulnerability. And another. And another.
Best to attack the problem at its root: sue anyone who publishes a leak out of existence. That will also deter malfeasants, right?
Seriously, no manufacturer will spend a dime on security since security doesn't sell very well. Markets won't provide what isn't valued. And security is a niche market, not a mass market.
This guarantees that the upcoming deluge of IoT devices will be insecure unless we do something.
IoT devices will have their OS hardwired in so that it can't be upgraded (cost considerations; and we'll sell you a new gadget if this one becomes compromised). Which means we'll be waist-deep in applications that will be botnet components within a year of manufacture and which will phone home to wherever from day one.
Like it or not, the only way to prevent this is... legislation and regulation.
And it's a lot cheaper and easier to regulate new devices than to regulate the existing Internet to be 100% safe.
Damn right ! Compulsory tagging of demented old biddies is something they could only think if in Japan.
In the US we'd never do anything like that. We're Christians ! We have Morals !
Instead people will be told that, to better serve them and to keep medical costs down, all medicare recipients will be offered a chance to enroll in a programme that offers them expedited ambulance transport in case of accidents (they're easier to locate), emergency treatment in hospitals (because their medical data can be found more easily) plus waiver of the upcoming 1000$ a month service surcharge... provided they consent to have an RFID chip implanted with their SSN.
Those who elect not to participate in the programme will not be eligible for expedited ambulance transport, will experience a light delay upon admission until their medical data has been found and their insurance status clarified, and will be asked to pay the service surcharge.
Net participation in the chipping program will therefore be 99%, of which 100% will be voluntary, you see?
Sorry but no. Let's not be dogmatic about this, shall we? Authoritarianism really can outpace free societies in economic growth.
When the objective is clear, as in when your population haven't got basic appliances or sufficient housing, it's much more efficient to take an engineer's approach to the problem than allowing every tom dick and harry clutter up decision making with their combined ignorance and stupidity. Look at e.g. Singapore. Autocracy is what propelled it upwards out of the marsh it was in.
Also. successful companies don't operate by popular vote either.
There comes a point when the road ahead is less clear... and there free societies have the advantage because they can afford to try everything and keep what is good.
French criminal law is different from the US. For cases involving penalties of up to 15 years of prison, guilt isn't determined by a jury but by a judge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Plus laws pertaining to State Security are a bit sharper there and less encumbered by checks and balances. http://www.theverge.com/2016/2...
From the desciription It sounds as if the French authorities were careful to collect evidence that might allow one of their judges to decide whether the suspect was merely curious or a sympathiser (and hence in breach of their anti-terrorism laws).
It looks as if that evidence led their judge to decide that man was a sympathiser. Hence the sentence.
Internet is a main source of radicalisation. Given that dragnet internet surveillance will show such browsing, it offers an opportunity to go after people engaging in it.
Not exactly what would have been done in the US as it is today, but not unreasonable either. Given mr. Trump and his right-wing radical cabinet appointees I guess this will become policy in the US too. Perhaps with appropriate window-dressing and executive orders.
Those who are counting on the House to block that, think again. Those who are counting on the Supreme Court to put a stop to that... consider that mr. Trump has one vacancy to fill there already. And there may be more before his 4 years are done. Personally I don't think any judge who doesn't see eye to eye with radical right wing policies will stand a chance.
Therefore the way towards implementing precisely this measure in the US seems clear. Ironically the advent of mr. Trump seems to mean that the US will become a bit more European in this respect.
I believe that people are going to get what they voted for. Good and hard.
We may already have such an indicator over here. It's called "net worth".
Net worth determines what people you can hang around with, what neighbourhoods you can live in, how safe your residence is, how much comfort and security you enjoy when traveling, which clubs you can join, what schools your children can go to and what their prospects are, what medical care you can have, what your life expectancy is, how likely you are to have your legal rights respected (or enforced), and (to some extent) how the authorities treat you.
Scary if you look at it this way eh? Only... we all accept it. It's how our society works. The only difference is: scores aren't determined by the state.
Ah... we have a typical Trump supporter here. Politifact explicitly listing the promises they grade mr. Obama on doesn't matter. Their discussing each of 25 promises before grading them doesn't matter. Would take too much time to read the lot anyway.
No... the only thing that matters is some kind of ratty conspiracy theory connection between politifact and Democrats. Add a gratuitous slur on mrs. Clinton (nevermind that several investigative committees failed to come up with paydirt).
Nah, typical Trump supporters don't deal with facts. Too much hassle. Makes their poor little minds tired and confused.
Much better go with something that sounds good and writes quick. Like a hint at conspiracy. Saves time, thinking, and effort. Great!
I understand. With mrs. Clinton you don't know if any shady dealings are going on. Certainly no evidence pointing at malfeasance ever surfaced. Despite intense investigations by thoroughly motivated political opponents. It doesn't matter of course. She's guilty of being a suspect and sounding and looking elitist.
With mr. Trump on the other hand, certain clear examples mixing between business interests with state business are out in the open. He's relatively open about it, perhaps because he doesn't know or doesn't care. Therefore his supporters don't either.
It's completely understandable that you, therefore, prefer someone who openly has conflicts of interests over someone who's been guilty of being suspected and being subjected to character assassination. Ah, the thinking of a Trump supporter. Mr. Trump would have been proud of you.
These results, while in themselves facts, aren't very meaningful facts.
Just consider this: Google works using a (modified) version of the pagerank algorithm. That algorithm ranks pages on importance as measured by referral links weighted by their rank, etc. etc..
Meaning that if the internet contains more coherent clusters of cross-referring pages of a lliberal/consevative signature referring to a page with a certain match string, those results will end up in Google results. It sort of reflects the intensity of discussion.
Apparently there are fewer conservative leaning pages in referring clusters than that link to "minimum wage" than liberal ones.
Surprised?
Try googling for "protect our second amenment rights" and count the liberal hits.
Ideas and thought aren't demeaned by sharing them but they can stunted and distorted in retelling, grow far beyond their merits, and confuse people who are unable to think critically about what they read. All by sharing them in the wrong place.
Think of the "echo chamber effect" of e.g. Facebook. The whole scare of inocculations supposedly leading to autism. Birtherism. The Flat Earth theory. The whole "Obama is coming to get your guns" rubbish. The Hollow Earth theory. Fortune telling through Zodiac Signs. Various Perpetuum Mobile theories. Jihadism. Bundy supporters. All co-powered by Social Media.
There is no idea so wrong and stupid that it will not find adherents somewhere who will echo it and by doing so lend it credence on the same level as the average paper (in the eyes of people who are susceptible to lurid and/or extremist stories).
Social media have their uses, like e.g. LinkedIn. You can basically advertise your resume for free and make yourself available for networking. That's not bad.
Twitter and Facebook however just spin you an illusion. An illusion of community and an illusion of discourse.
Youtube is great for sharing all sorts of video clips, documentories, instruction video's lectures, amusement... But it also helps spread Jihadism and convert hundreds of European teenagers to extremism. It also helps spread "gangsta rap", clips of people beating people into hospital (or a coffin), snuff movies, (in Mexico) propaganda for gang membership, probably leading impressionable teenagers to criminal activities they would not otherwise have thought of. Because it's "cool", you know?
Social media are enormous time sinks, we agree about that... but they are a lot more than just that. They facilitate social interaction, and some of that is highly undesirable if not actively dangerous.
The fact that the article is optimistic doesn't mean it's correct. I realise that nowadays about 58 mln. out of 149 mln. jobs are managers and professionals versus 26 mln. service, 33 mln. sales, 14 mln. "natural resources" and 18 mln. production and transportation (see http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat0... ). I understand that new technologies also produce new jobs and I don't want to be a doomsayer, but I still think the outlook for "ordinary" (i.e. low-skilled or unskilled) jobs is not good. Here's why.
Automation makes no business sense unless it contributes to the bottom line. Meaning it should be better, cheaper, or faster than existing human labour (preferably all three). If the total amount of (wage paying) man hours per unit of output isn't lower than without automation, it's not competitive. In all three cases it will mean a net reduction in human labour in a particular niche plus support jobs (insofar as they are billed through to the work they're replacing),.
In the past there were always new investment opportunities (new things to do; often new natural resources to exploit) that would absorb that labour, and offer a return on investment. In other words: it would drive up our collective wealth to more than pay for those new jobs.
For better or worse I don't quite see where the next big economic expansion is to come from (and if I did I wouldn't be telling you until I had secured a slice of the pie). I fear it may be absent.
Unfortunately some of the biggest niches in US labour market are in manual work: manufacturing things, mining, driving trucks, warehousing, janitorial work, and the service industry.
Ever read about the time when so much employment was in farming jobs? Mostly gone. Automated. Jobs absorbed by industry.
Manufacturing jobs are shifting. Some offshore. Some to automation. As far as I know, the bulk of shop floor manufacturing jobs (just look at the automobile industry) are assembly-type jobs (i.e. not skilled machining). Which can be automated as pick and place robots become more affordable and more capable.
Warehousing: same thing. Jobs being automated. Just ask Amazon. Easier to run 24/7 and no more restroom breaks.
I believe that mr. Trump's recent win is mostly because whole groups of US citizens are facing the problem that what they have to offer (their labour) is no longer in demand. It can be (and often has been or is being) replaced by automation, different products, even cheaper competition offshore, or illegal immigrants. That should at least tell us that people are feeling the squeeze.
To continue a bit with mr. Trump: his promises seem to hinge on three economic pillars: erecting trade barriers, exploiting the commons for commercial gain (as in exchanging environmental protection statutes for operating profit), and injecting a trillion
The IRS can however, force banks, foreign exchanges, and now electronic currency exchange houses, to disclose the identity of those engaged in transactions. It can do this to any individual or corporation if they decide to audit them: see here: http://www.libra.tech/blog/how...
As far as I know, criminal law does not necessarily apply. A mere administrative decision to audit someone (could even be selected at random) is enough. See https://www.irs.gov/businesses... and here http://www.investopedia.com/as...
Of course, a complete regulatory framework for bitcoin and lookalikes hasn't yet materialised. According to this post: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/ar... it took about a decade to establish it for derivatives, so one might expect the same for bitcoin.
So what we see is the IRS seeing how far it can go, but they seem to have a very strong case. They're not auditing anyone in particular, but merely tracing a web of payments. Could be an audit. And consider the alternative. Suppose for example that bitcoin exchanges need not disclose the names of participants in transactions on request. You'd have an instant on-shore tax evasion mechanism... and that is against the general thrust of tax law in general, not to mention common sense.
So I'm afraid the IRS will get its way... and will go even further. Block chains are electronic records of transactions. Therefore potentially every last blockchain involving electronic currency transactions could become subject of disclosure to the IRS.
Slashdot Mirror
Rubbish.
Toggled in the binary code for any bootloaders recently? Addressed any registers lately in C? Dealt with any vectorising and prefetching in C in the past week? Inserted an NOP's in C recently to keep nasty timing stuff from hapening?
No? Then you're clearly talking nonsense. The C virtual machine is way different from the processor it targets.
Just as driving a car is different from dealing with a water-cooled internal combustion engine, a gearbox, a drivetrain, the suspension, brake disks, a chassis and a set of wheels.
You'd never get anywhere if you tried. Same with assembler, let alone machine code.
Take application development. Pioneering has been replaced by engineering. Great for making complicated and reliable products, not so great for empowerment of the individual. Software engineering tends to be teamwork. Depending on how "standard" the required end product is you can parcel out the interface design, the overall apllication design, the datastructures, the core algorithms, data management, and housekeeping. Could be 3-50 software engineers in a team. Used to be 1 programmer doing all of that.
Take high-performance programming. It used to be an art. Found e.g. in DOD stuff, scientific software, and games. Often in assembler, for speed. Nowadays that's mostly out. Certainly for scientific software. You use compilers of even scripting languages that call libraries to do the heavy lifting. You're quite unlikely to do better than the library builders. If you're writing some really new algorithm, you'll code it in C/C++. If absolutely necessary, you can make that code tunable (array stride, blocksize, etc.) and write an algorithm to optimise those parameters for your specific hardware (like e.g. BLAS). If it's too slow, buy better hardware. If it's still too slow, get access to a Hadoop cluster and parallelise your algorithm.
Take datacommunication. In the early days datacommunication meant controlling some UART and sending squiggles down a wire. Now it's calling a packaged protocol stack and talking to the appropriate protocol layers. More often than not that's the connection or session layer or higher ... unless you are a specialised networking engineer.
As for computer users as clients: the nerdy types are dying out. What today's consumer wants is things like smartphones and tablets. And what do they want it for? To surf the web (shopping, news, amusement (e.g. video torrents, Youtube)), and to waste time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and various chats. If they somehow want a desktop computer, they'll only know it for the OS it runs. That would be "Windows" or "Apple" (meaning macOs, but Apple users typically don't know that). And that's what the industry is giving them. Want "Basic Freddoms" ? Bugger off and run Linux, you freak.
So, yes. Computing as a product has become commoditised and geared towards the mass market. It's not easy to turn a buck by catering for nerds: the real money is in serving customers. And it shows. Consumer-grade users get a consumer-grade experience plus consumer-grade treatment (read: DRM, spyware, bloatware).
Those who want to play around with a computer however never had it better. For less than 50$ you can get a complete Raspberry Pi system (or a lookalike) that's more powerful than a clunky old PC. For 500$ you can get performance you used to have only on workstations, and for 1500$ you can get the same power you used to need a supercomputer for.
The only thing stopping you is know-how, time and interest. But that's not the industry's fault,
And why?
It costs money to think of the problem, it costs even more money to evaluate any risks, it costs still more money to think about fixing them, and it's downright expensive to actually implement any fixes.
Incorporating cyber-security risk management will be part of the development process as soon as people are willing to pay for it. Which they aren't, because they can't see it so they can't even check it's there. Plus, it's probably a lot cheaper to just settle with any victims out of court than to bust a gut trying to turn medical devices into electronic fortresses. So don't count on the market to fix anything.
This seems a typical case where "self-regulation" is dead on arrival and only statutory safety requirements will get results. But that's not happening because of politics. Conservative politics to be precise. Pussyfooting about where industry regulations are concerned is the reason we're seeing such a lot of unsafe devices.
Expect that to continue for the next 4 years. Until and unless someone can whip up a juuuge scare story about ISIS sabotaging medical devices in the US. Oh wait ... what will happen then is that they'll shut down the Internet within half a mile of any hospital and start a fresh bombing campaign wherever. Ok, that won't work.
Perhaps if some reality star is killed through a hacked medical device? Or a photogenic child?
Just for you I'll explain.
Those financial firms (many of them US banks) cater to the EU rather than Britain. While Britain was in the EU it made sense to set up shop in London. Good place to live, they speak English over there, good timezone, good communications, adequate and halfway familiar legal environment, sufficient critical mass of a raft of supporting firms, relatively liberal trading rules (for Europe), their customers just a phone call or a 1-3 hour flight away, and zero complications doing business with anyone else in the EU. That's what the EU was designed for. Life was good.
Various other EU countries might have preferred the seat of all that financial service to be in their own country instead of London. Financial firms provide high quality jobs and have a high (taxable) turnover. Only they couldn't do shit about it. EU guarantees free exchange of services and the most influential players (US banks) happened to prefer London. Not in the last place because London and the UK really listened to industry demands (knowing full well what they stood to lose if they didn't). So London it was. End of story.
Enter Brexit.
Brexit means the UK leaves the EU and has to negotiate terms on which to continue trading. The most basic terms of free trade (WTO--level) ensure free movement of goods but NOT free movement of services. Which EU membership guarantees, only that's what Britain is ending. So Britain is very much the asking party here.
Anyone prepared to bet that other EU countries (like Ireland) will be eager to let Britain keep all that yummy taxable business? And those jobs? When they can simply negotiate away London-based firms' comfy access to the EU, grab the jobs and (part of) the revenue? Really?
Those financial firms sure aren't. The incoming US commerce secretary Wilbur Ross (see http://www.npr.org/sections/th... ) isn't (see http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/u... ). I wouldn't either.
People who bet that Britain will keep providing financial services to Europe surely aren't picking the best odds here.
So where do you carry out the live experiments to slide down that learning curve?
Someplace where driving is complicated and where you have a lot of opportunities to kill people like California, or someplace where there's enough room and people are sparse like Arizona?
No prizes for coming up with Arizona.
When those autonomous cars have proven themselves there is ample time to allow them in more densely populated areas. Which is where those cars can generate the most revenue.
Seriously, what's the problem with that?
And he really doesn't like it when the evidence contradicts him. Especially not when it reflects on the (in)advisability of his policies.
He might not personally order a wipe, but with a view to running the country as a business, he has appointed some "climate sceptics" who could very well appoint like-minded trustees to actively realign publicly funded research efforts with national priorities, restructure research departments with a view to national needs, and focus monetary and computing resources in accordance with those needs and priorities.
Translation: he has appointed a few idiots who in turn might appoint a posse of yahoos who see it as their mission in life to vanish anything or anyone the boss doesn't like and hide the evidence. As in: fire anyone who openly says global warming is a fact, have their funding cut, their computing resources confiscated, and their data wiped. That's what "running the country like a business" means, you know.
Given that perspective ... why not extend and enhance current backup policies to guarantee continuity of valuable research data with an eye towards potential refocusing of research priorities and allocation of means.
Tanslation: why not save an offshore copy of your work while you still can?
Ordinary precaution I'd say.
Result ? Among others the DMCA. Various individuals were sued into bankruptcy by the music industry, just to show people what the risks were (remember single mother Jammie Thomas ? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) . Some were driven to suicide (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ).
What shouty nerds tend to forget is that (like it or not) they are part of a society that can (and does) sets certain limits on their behaviour. Which can be enforced. With or without their consent.
Tor routers can be a force for the good (avoiding censorship, protecting human rights activists, protecting investigative journalists) but they really _can_ be eradicated, given sufficient incentive.
Just outlaw the servers, force ISP's to scan all Internet traffic for TOR servers, log any connections and isolate / report them as soon as they're detected. Send a SWAT team to visit anyone who connects to a TOR server to seize their computers pending investigation. Set penalties sufficiently high to pay for all that and publicly sue a few tens of offenders into bankruptcy.
Should cow 99% of all TOR users, right? The 1% who aren't cowed are probably up to no good anyway.
A bit like China. Not pretty, and people won't like it, but it really can be enforced.
The detection and tracking part is already in place. Just consider the raft of deep-packet inspection routers that has been installed already (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ).
I'm not saying I'd like to see something like that (I wouldn't). All I'm saying is that stupid and venal abusers like this a**hole botnet operator make it that much more likely that something like that will occur. Whether we realise it or not. To the detriment of us all.
You're always allowed to say factual things like: "I saw a girl being assaulted by immigrants from Africa in xxx on yyy" (factual report) or "I spoke with a girl who was assaulted by immigrant from Africa ..." (firsthand report), or "My girlfriend says she spoke with a girl who was assaulted by an immigrant from Africa" (hearsay report). But if you do, it had better be true.
But things like "Immigrant apes from Africa are raping our daughters, spit on our laws and come here to sponge on welfare. How long are we're going to let those bastards continue to do that before we string them up?" would be prohibited.
Sounds reasonable to me.
I think that preventing out-and-out hoaxers from hijacking a platform (like facebook) that many (stupid) people lend unthinking credence to is good thing. It only muddies the waters.
I also think that preventing rabble-rousers and deliberate hate-speech merchants from doing the same can't hurt either.
If people want to claim something as a fact, they should bring proof. If they can't, they should preface their claim with "I believe this is the case: ... " and preferably end it with "... but I can't prove it".
People have the right to their own opinions, but they don't have the right to their own "facts".
Now that Yahoo have warned their users it's those users who are responsible for changing their passwords. Not Yahoo's problem.
Shame about the publicity though, but you can't have everything.
Like in the UK.
That should teach tech-obsessed journos who is boss.
Any questions ?
Besides ... patching the software is never a permanent solution. Anarchist sympathisers will burrow into the system until they've found another vulnerability. And another. And another.
Best to attack the problem at its root: sue anyone who publishes a leak out of existence. That will also deter malfeasants, right?
This guarantees that the upcoming deluge of IoT devices will be insecure unless we do something.
IoT devices will have their OS hardwired in so that it can't be upgraded (cost considerations; and we'll sell you a new gadget if this one becomes compromised). Which means we'll be waist-deep in applications that will be botnet components within a year of manufacture and which will phone home to wherever from day one.
Like it or not, the only way to prevent this is ... legislation and regulation.
And it's a lot cheaper and easier to regulate new devices than to regulate the existing Internet to be 100% safe.
In the US we'd never do anything like that. We're Christians ! We have Morals !
Instead people will be told that, to better serve them and to keep medical costs down, all medicare recipients will be offered a chance to enroll in a programme that offers them expedited ambulance transport in case of accidents (they're easier to locate), emergency treatment in hospitals (because their medical data can be found more easily) plus waiver of the upcoming 1000$ a month service surcharge ... provided they consent to have an RFID chip implanted with their SSN.
Those who elect not to participate in the programme will not be eligible for expedited ambulance transport, will experience a light delay upon admission until their medical data has been found and their insurance status clarified, and will be asked to pay the service surcharge.
Net participation in the chipping program will therefore be 99%, of which 100% will be voluntary, you see?
That's how you do things !
When you fire them, they won't be in a position to come and beat you up !
When the objective is clear, as in when your population haven't got basic appliances or sufficient housing, it's much more efficient to take an engineer's approach to the problem than allowing every tom dick and harry clutter up decision making with their combined ignorance and stupidity. Look at e.g. Singapore. Autocracy is what propelled it upwards out of the marsh it was in.
Also. successful companies don't operate by popular vote either.
There comes a point when the road ahead is less clear ... and there free societies have the advantage because they can afford to try everything and keep what is good.
Plus laws pertaining to State Security are a bit sharper there and less encumbered by checks and balances. http://www.theverge.com/2016/2...
From the desciription It sounds as if the French authorities were careful to collect evidence that might allow one of their judges to decide whether the suspect was merely curious or a sympathiser (and hence in breach of their anti-terrorism laws). It looks as if that evidence led their judge to decide that man was a sympathiser. Hence the sentence.
Internet is a main source of radicalisation. Given that dragnet internet surveillance will show such browsing, it offers an opportunity to go after people engaging in it.
Not exactly what would have been done in the US as it is today, but not unreasonable either. Given mr. Trump and his right-wing radical cabinet appointees I guess this will become policy in the US too. Perhaps with appropriate window-dressing and executive orders.
Those who are counting on the House to block that, think again. Those who are counting on the Supreme Court to put a stop to that ... consider that mr. Trump has one vacancy to fill there already. And there may be more before his 4 years are done. Personally I don't think any judge who doesn't see eye to eye with radical right wing policies will stand a chance.
Therefore the way towards implementing precisely this measure in the US seems clear. Ironically the advent of mr. Trump seems to mean that the US will become a bit more European in this respect.
I believe that people are going to get what they voted for. Good and hard.
Well, looks like Trump voters are about to get what they voted for. Unfortunately the rest of us too.
Net worth determines what people you can hang around with, what neighbourhoods you can live in, how safe your residence is, how much comfort and security you enjoy when traveling, which clubs you can join, what schools your children can go to and what their prospects are, what medical care you can have, what your life expectancy is, how likely you are to have your legal rights respected (or enforced), and (to some extent) how the authorities treat you.
Scary if you look at it this way eh? Only ... we all accept it. It's how our society works. The only difference is: scores aren't determined by the state.
No ... the only thing that matters is some kind of ratty conspiracy theory connection between politifact and Democrats. Add a gratuitous slur on mrs. Clinton (nevermind that several investigative committees failed to come up with paydirt).
Nah, typical Trump supporters don't deal with facts. Too much hassle. Makes their poor little minds tired and confused.
Much better go with something that sounds good and writes quick. Like a hint at conspiracy. Saves time, thinking, and effort. Great!
I understand. With mrs. Clinton you don't know if any shady dealings are going on. Certainly no evidence pointing at malfeasance ever surfaced. Despite intense investigations by thoroughly motivated political opponents. It doesn't matter of course. She's guilty of being a suspect and sounding and looking elitist.
With mr. Trump on the other hand, certain clear examples mixing between business interests with state business are out in the open. He's relatively open about it, perhaps because he doesn't know or doesn't care. Therefore his supporters don't either.
It's completely understandable that you, therefore, prefer someone who openly has conflicts of interests over someone who's been guilty of being suspected and being subjected to character assassination. Ah, the thinking of a Trump supporter. Mr. Trump would have been proud of you.
Just consider this: Google works using a (modified) version of the pagerank algorithm. That algorithm ranks pages on importance as measured by referral links weighted by their rank, etc. etc.. Meaning that if the internet contains more coherent clusters of cross-referring pages of a lliberal/consevative signature referring to a page with a certain match string, those results will end up in Google results. It sort of reflects the intensity of discussion.
Apparently there are fewer conservative leaning pages in referring clusters than that link to "minimum wage" than liberal ones.
Surprised?
Try googling for "protect our second amenment rights" and count the liberal hits.
Ideas and thought aren't demeaned by sharing them but they can stunted and distorted in retelling, grow far beyond their merits, and confuse people who are unable to think critically about what they read. All by sharing them in the wrong place.
Think of the "echo chamber effect" of e.g. Facebook. The whole scare of inocculations supposedly leading to autism. Birtherism. The Flat Earth theory. The whole "Obama is coming to get your guns" rubbish. The Hollow Earth theory. Fortune telling through Zodiac Signs. Various Perpetuum Mobile theories. Jihadism. Bundy supporters. All co-powered by Social Media.
There is no idea so wrong and stupid that it will not find adherents somewhere who will echo it and by doing so lend it credence on the same level as the average paper (in the eyes of people who are susceptible to lurid and/or extremist stories).
Social media have their uses, like e.g. LinkedIn. You can basically advertise your resume for free and make yourself available for networking. That's not bad.
Twitter and Facebook however just spin you an illusion. An illusion of community and an illusion of discourse.
Youtube is great for sharing all sorts of video clips, documentories, instruction video's lectures, amusement ... But it also helps spread Jihadism and convert hundreds of European teenagers to extremism. It also helps spread "gangsta rap", clips of people beating people into hospital (or a coffin), snuff movies, (in Mexico) propaganda for gang membership, probably leading impressionable teenagers to criminal activities they would not otherwise have thought of. Because it's "cool", you know?
Social media are enormous time sinks, we agree about that ... but they are a lot more than just that. They facilitate social interaction, and some of that is highly undesirable if not actively dangerous.
Automation makes no business sense unless it contributes to the bottom line. Meaning it should be better, cheaper, or faster than existing human labour (preferably all three). If the total amount of (wage paying) man hours per unit of output isn't lower than without automation, it's not competitive. In all three cases it will mean a net reduction in human labour in a particular niche plus support jobs (insofar as they are billed through to the work they're replacing),.
In the past there were always new investment opportunities (new things to do; often new natural resources to exploit) that would absorb that labour, and offer a return on investment. In other words: it would drive up our collective wealth to more than pay for those new jobs.
For better or worse I don't quite see where the next big economic expansion is to come from (and if I did I wouldn't be telling you until I had secured a slice of the pie). I fear it may be absent.
Unfortunately some of the biggest niches in US labour market are in manual work: manufacturing things, mining, driving trucks, warehousing, janitorial work, and the service industry.
Ever read about the time when so much employment was in farming jobs? Mostly gone. Automated. Jobs absorbed by industry.
Manufacturing jobs are shifting. Some offshore. Some to automation. As far as I know, the bulk of shop floor manufacturing jobs (just look at the automobile industry) are assembly-type jobs (i.e. not skilled machining). Which can be automated as pick and place robots become more affordable and more capable.
Warehousing: same thing. Jobs being automated. Just ask Amazon. Easier to run 24/7 and no more restroom breaks.
Driving trucks seems on its way to being automated too. According to this site http://www.alltrucking.com/faq... there are about 3.5 mln. truck drivers in the US. What if we can eliminate just the easiest 10% of those? See e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/te... and http://www.latimes.com/project... and https://www.wired.com/2015/05/... and here http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... . Any ideas where about 350k former truck drivers will find employment? That's a lot of low-skilled jobs to offset by generating new demand. In fact, it's about 2% of the labour force (see http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat0... ).
I believe that mr. Trump's recent win is mostly because whole groups of US citizens are facing the problem that what they have to offer (their labour) is no longer in demand. It can be (and often has been or is being) replaced by automation, different products, even cheaper competition offshore, or illegal immigrants. That should at least tell us that people are feeling the squeeze.
To continue a bit with mr. Trump: his promises seem to hinge on three economic pillars: erecting trade barriers, exploiting the commons for commercial gain (as in exchanging environmental protection statutes for operating profit), and injecting a trillion
Bitcoin and other electronic currencies are "property" (see e.g. https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsro... )
Now the IRS doesn't automatically monitor all bank accounts: see e.g. here: http://peopleof.oureverydaylif... for
The IRS can however, force banks, foreign exchanges, and now electronic currency exchange houses, to disclose the identity of those engaged in transactions. It can do this to any individual or corporation if they decide to audit them: see here: http://www.libra.tech/blog/how... As far as I know, criminal law does not necessarily apply. A mere administrative decision to audit someone (could even be selected at random) is enough. See https://www.irs.gov/businesses... and here http://www.investopedia.com/as...
Of course, a complete regulatory framework for bitcoin and lookalikes hasn't yet materialised. According to this post: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/ar... it took about a decade to establish it for derivatives, so one might expect the same for bitcoin.
So what we see is the IRS seeing how far it can go, but they seem to have a very strong case. They're not auditing anyone in particular, but merely tracing a web of payments. Could be an audit. And consider the alternative. Suppose for example that bitcoin exchanges need not disclose the names of participants in transactions on request. You'd have an instant on-shore tax evasion mechanism ... and that is against the general thrust of tax law in general, not to mention common sense.
So I'm afraid the IRS will get its way ... and will go even further. Block chains are electronic records of transactions. Therefore potentially every last blockchain involving electronic currency transactions could become subject of disclosure to the IRS.