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User: lessthan

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  1. Re:They should have been doing this all along. on US Lawmakers Propose Allowing Prisons To Jam Signals From Smuggled Cellphones (apnews.com) · · Score: 1

    Skipped right over the issues and went with condemnation. I'm sure that helps the situation.

  2. Re:Well, this is scary on Salon: Republicans Are Launching Fake Local News Sites To Spread 'Propaganda' (salon.com) · · Score: 1

    Totally is okay. What isn't okay is buying into the narrative that paints the media as the enemy of the people.

  3. Well, this is scary on Salon: Republicans Are Launching Fake Local News Sites To Spread 'Propaganda' (salon.com) · · Score: 1, Troll

    This story just came up for me and the first (chronologically) 20 posts are about how we can't trust the mainstream media and how the Republicans deserve a voice. I guess this is how a country ends, in a tidal wave of propaganda screaming about "both sides!"

  4. Re:So, balance it out a little on Salon: Republicans Are Launching Fake Local News Sites To Spread 'Propaganda' (salon.com) · · Score: 5, Informative

    No. None of what you said is true. Even "Let the GOP have one too." Fox News is a prominent "news" source, wholly run for the Republican party. You have got to be troll to claim to be unaware of Fox. You might not know of Sinclair, which is also a conservative news organization, that has been buying up local stations. They are converting local news programs into propaganda machines for the Republicans. So the right is not hurting for "news" outlets.

  5. Re:Republicans launching fake propaganda sites? on Salon: Republicans Are Launching Fake Local News Sites To Spread 'Propaganda' (salon.com) · · Score: 1, Informative

    Is there a difference? Republicans seem to be willing to go to any lengths for power, so if the Russians offer help winning elections...

  6. Re:No, it's good sense on Is a Lack of Data Holding Back Universal Basic Income Programs? (technologyreview.com) · · Score: 1

    I agree with you there. Weirdly, I discounted the military as a government program, as if it was its own entity, but it is a government program.

    The military funding bothers me too, because I have seen the conditions that the enlisted live in and it isn't that great. Where is that money going?

    Another example, now that you have set me on this track, is all the intelligence agencies. There is something like 17 intel agencies.

  7. Re:No, it's good sense on Is a Lack of Data Holding Back Universal Basic Income Programs? (technologyreview.com) · · Score: 1

    I've read your comments going back 6 months. I'm hurt by your comments about my sig (don't worry, I'll survive) and I don't see a point in rebutting you on the examples I'm familiar with or researching the examples that I'm unfamiliar with, made by someone who gets their kicks from being nasty to other people. By engaging with you, even by this comment, I am nearly guaranteed to receive back something low on information and high on personal attack. So, I can only present you with this conversational cliff. Good night.

  8. Re:No, it's good sense on Is a Lack of Data Holding Back Universal Basic Income Programs? (technologyreview.com) · · Score: 1

    Everyone talks about wasteful government programs. What are these programs?

  9. Re:And the big question must be... on This Was the Year the Robot Takeover of Service Jobs Began (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 1

    Death, maintenance, and art. A shit-ton of people are going to die in poverty because they are unnecessary (and the elimination of service jobs is happening suddenly with no time to adapt) and the ones that don't die will maintain the machines the rich need to be rich or will make art (TV, movies, music) the wealthy consume. I would hope that the ability to create things like food and shelter would experience some democratization, but I doubt it.

  10. Re:Story is already debunked on Worried About Trump iPhone Eavesdroppers? China Recommends a Huawei (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    Something like 95% of his tweets are sent from an iPhone. Do you think that he keeps it just for tweets?

  11. Re: Welcome in China on Google Drops Out of Pentagon's $10 Billion Cloud Competition (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    Eh, I find that the most persistent delusion that humans nurture is that they are "good." Yeah, maybe they did that kind of unethical thing, but really they had no choice. (Except suffer consequences or not be as successful or be slightly inconvenienced.) My personal favorite was a woman who told me that Jesus spoke to her and that Jesus conveniently wanted all the things her id wanted.

  12. Re:Welcome in China on Google Drops Out of Pentagon's $10 Billion Cloud Competition (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 2

    I support your statement brickhouse. I want to add that the GP is jumping to conclusions. IMHO the "cloud" is a bad place to keep secure information. This JEDI project is a dumb idea and probably comes with some ridiculous onerous conditions, particularly for a multinational company. If I were Google, I simply wouldn't want the project and I could burnish my "Do no evil" credentials at the same time by acting like my hands were too clean to touch it.

  13. Re:Why would you want to do nothing? on The Coders Programming Themselves Out of a Job (theatlantic.com) · · Score: 1

    Why shouldn't you expect to be rewarded all the time from automation? The company pays you to do X. If you weren't able to automate X, you would still be doing X. It is your work doing the work (lol), you should receive the benefits of the results. Fairness is a concept used to exploit the naive.

  14. Re:Why would you want to do nothing? on The Coders Programming Themselves Out of a Job (theatlantic.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because automating your job means that the job no longer exists? I have had many bosses. The best of them would do as you say (I hope), the rest would have just "let me go." I can't eat praise.

  15. Re: Capitalism is fine on Fewer Than Half of Young Americans Are Positive About Capitalism (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Youâ(TM)re right. I don't have much knowledge about charities. What information I have comes from the news, which is always when something has gone catastrophically wrong. Most of those stories are from the other side though, refusing to adopt to gay people, refusing to allow gay people from participating in events, etc..

  16. Re:No, there are two ways he could obtain his insu on Fewer Than Half of Young Americans Are Positive About Capitalism (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    That the government is uncontrollable is kind of our fault. Somebody's sig from ages ago: Ballot, soap, ammo - use the boxes in order.

  17. Re:No, there are two ways he could obtain his insu on Fewer Than Half of Young Americans Are Positive About Capitalism (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    I know and it lights my fire more than anything else. Why does righteousness lead so easily into self-righteousness? (Of course, the mirror shows my face.)

  18. Re:Is it really capitalism then? on Fewer Than Half of Young Americans Are Positive About Capitalism (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    In the healthcare field, how is more regulation bad? I assume that, since regulation is burdensome to the market, most of them stem from "Well, hundreds of people died because we weren't doing that, so now we have to do that." Fresh gloves would be a good example.

  19. Re:Not surprising on Fewer Than Half of Young Americans Are Positive About Capitalism (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Salacious B. Crumb did pretty well too. (Yes, I had to look the name up.)

  20. Re:No, there are two ways he could obtain his insu on Fewer Than Half of Young Americans Are Positive About Capitalism (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    I like, in a sarcastic way, how you skirted the idea that charities would only help those they deemed worthy. I suspect that 'lazy' has a wealth of meanings for you. I am familiar with Charity Navigator. I would point you towards Rotten Tomatoes, which was, more or less, subverted the moment the big movie studios took a hit in profits they could trace back to the site. Do you think that the mega-churches would fail to do the same to Charity Navigator?

    Republicans whine about unfunded liabilities, then spend big. If they were concerned about government debt, they wouldn't add to it every time they get into power. Also, stuff like Social Security was designed to be "unfunded." We pay taxes to fund those currently on SS, as future generations are to pay for us. The only way the system breaks down is if people stop paying taxes (which could come about from a number of apocalyptic scenarios).

    Again, this comes back to you and those like you. This belief that anything that doesn't directly benefit you is a waste of money, no matter the net benefit to our society as a whole, that people who need assistance are just "lazy." It is short-sighted, narrow-minded, and it is dragging the US down more effectively than any outside agent ever could.

  21. Re:No, there are two ways he could obtain his insu on Fewer Than Half of Young Americans Are Positive About Capitalism (cnbc.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Charities don't give the money out equitably. For the most part they have an agenda and you either have to meet a criteria or do something for the charity. What happens to the people who don't meet the criteria or are incapable of what is asked? Gay youth make up something like 40% of the homeless children. I can guarantee you that most of the Christian charities would ask them to "renounce their wicked ways" before helping them. Since being gay isn't a choice, that would be a little difficult for the kids to do.

    Charity isn't a guarantee. You say charity would be a more robust net and that may be true for some, but the net would definitely have larger holes in it than the one the government provides. A thin blanket is better than none at all.

    I would also point out that terrible people always find a way. If we were to switch to social safety nets based on charity, there would immediately be people taking advantage of both sides of the system. The rich would use their promises of donations to distort the missions of charities to favor the rich and the scammers would set up shop finding ways of getting more than they should. That is inevitable.

    In fact, while writing this, it occurred to me that shifting everything over to charity would allow for much less oversight. There would be more grift. What is the purpose of that? The charities that you know may be stellar, but you can't deny there are terrible people out there willing to use the word "charity" to make money. Heck, our president uses his "charity" to pay off his legal fees. It's like we are in a cave of scarcity and you anti-government people want the rest of us to throw away the flashlight. And it really sounds like you just don't want to pay taxes for the programs that you disagree with and to hell with other people.

    Also, Medicare alone is 702 billion dollars per year. 402 billion isn't going to cover it.

    Also, also, I realized that the system you are suggesting would resemble the scholarship system for colleges. Have you ever applied for scholarships? It is a PITA. It is always not enough, there are always conditions on the money, and you always find the great ones after it is too late to apply. Scholarships are what happen when you leave college tuition funding to charity.

  22. There is a better word. Socialism.

  23. You were trying to incite doubt, but you really just revealed that you've never been in a job with a prolonged physical component.

  24. Re: It's not the content, it's how you say it on Twitter Is Limiting the Visibility of Prominent Republicans In Search Results (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    You act like this is a point, but the only thing that has been holding up a compromise bill in Congress is the reduction in legal immigration that the hard right wants.

  25. Re: It's not the content, it's how you say it on Twitter Is Limiting the Visibility of Prominent Republicans In Search Results (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    You're right, I don't know where I got 10 years from. The price of eyeballing graphs...