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User: Fjandr

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  1. Libertarians are automatically against anything that has even a hint of humanity. We eat children and abuse the elderly for sport. At least, thats what I'm told I believe by random people on the Internet.

  2. Yeah, but it's so much easier to complain about how "they took our Slashdot!"

    Those who hate group X have a hard time seeing that there is a lot of shit flung at group X here. Substitute whatever group you want and there are people who irrationally hate them. I agree that there are very few places on the Internet where you get a larger cross-section of society than here. Despite all the crap, there is still a lot of insightful commentary Glad there are others who still recognize that fact.

  3. Re:US Post Office always secure. on Senator Wants Nationwide, All-Mail Voting To Counter Election Hacks (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Interesting is one way to put it with that additional context. That actually subtracts from my estimation of the original comment, but "headline" was all that was available to comment on before. He's certainly made headlines, but I have yet to see one that wasn't actually about an important issue. I'm not in Oregon any more though, so I only see the national ones.

  4. Re:US Post Office always secure. on Senator Wants Nationwide, All-Mail Voting To Counter Election Hacks (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    The difference between standard mail-in ballots and absentee ballots is huge. First, mail fraud requires that the real voter never returns their ballot for every fraudulent vote. When a 2nd ballot comes in (the real one, or a replacement if they actually managed to get ahold of originals and the voter requests it because they never received their ballot), the voter is contacted and the ballots are examined to determine what happened. For 100% mail-in systems, there are no absentee ballots. They're irrelevant. Second, large-scale fraud requires massive coordination in order to create voters who don't exist and create counterfeit ballots linked to those voters. It requires access to the voter database and the ballot processing equipment in order to get them into the mail stream without being blatantly obvious. Doing so on any sort of scale would require the system to already be so thoroughly compromised that the fraud would be simply a matter of course at that point.

    So no, while the system is vulnerable to certain frauds, wholesale fraud is not one of those vulnerabilities. Being "way more susceptible to fraud" is only obvious if you think about it for a few minutes and then stop thinking before you actually get to the important parts.

  5. Re:US Post Office always secure. on Senator Wants Nationwide, All-Mail Voting To Counter Election Hacks (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    You apparently know nothing about him then. He's one of the few Senators I'm aware of who still commands a significant amount of respect from both sides of the aisle (among voters, anyway).

  6. Re: US Post Office always secure. on Senator Wants Nationwide, All-Mail Voting To Counter Election Hacks (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    The signature is used when more than one ballot with the same voter information comes in. Only one will be valid, at most.

  7. Re: US Post Office always secure. on Senator Wants Nationwide, All-Mail Voting To Counter Election Hacks (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Might be easier, assuming you have access to voter lists necessary to craft counterfeit ballots and envelopes containing accurate voter data. What happens when those names pop up twice, half of which came from a single location, however, is not as easy to control. That requires significant access to the entire voting apparatus, and if you're that intimately involved with the entire process there are easier methods of fraud. Of course, that assumes there are people who have access to the entire vote-by-mail system at that level, which is not borne out by any evidence anywhere.

  8. Re:US Post Office always secure. on Senator Wants Nationwide, All-Mail Voting To Counter Election Hacks (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    No, then you're followed in and monitored as you vote. It doesn't happen in the modern era, but it most certainly has happened. When it has happened, it happens on a wholesale level at every precinct in which it occurs. With vote-by-mail, it gets a lot more difficult to commit wholesale fraud without resorting to completely different means.

  9. Re:Prostitution? on Facebook Launches Marketplace On App, Takes On eBay and Craigslist (betanews.com) · · Score: 1

    Wait, that's not what Facebook is for now?

  10. Re:Wherever data is collected, it is abused on Across US, Police Officers Abuse Confidential Databases (ap.org) · · Score: 1

    I can answer the "why" part: power. Whether it's the busybody down the street, or the DA downtown, making and enforcing laws and mores makes people feel powerful and in control. Many people cannot abide having nobody on whom they can look down in smug superiority. The drug laws were created to "keep them in their place." Which group was "them" has varied over time. With opium, it was the Chinese laborers in the West. With marijuana, it was the Latinos. With crack it was the blacks in LA. The rest are just a very rich icing of civil asset forfeiture on top of the sick, fat, and corrupt cake that is the entire US law enforcement community and criminal justice system.

  11. To be fair, only dumbass democrats believe anything of the sort. It is politically convenient to whip up some foreign boogeyman
    (Mexican rapists, Syrian terrorists) than to focus on more disturbing questions here at home, such as how child rapist Trump is the best their party has to offer.

    That was easy, and just as informative.(and non-authoratative) as the original. And no, I'm not a Hillary supporter either, but you don't have to be one to see how much stupid is encapsulated in your statement.

  12. Re:Simple fix, just requires money on Across US, Police Officers Abuse Confidential Databases (ap.org) · · Score: 1

    The problem isn't that it can't be mitigated, it's that there's no political will to oppose police unions during contract renegotiation. My city council rolled over and wet itself rather than enforce a voter-lead initiative to change the city charter and add an independent police ombudsman with investigatory and disciplinary powers. The office has never done anything in its 5 or so years of existence, and can't until the newly-negotiated contract expires. State law says the union has to okay any changes that could effect disciplinary procedures, so the only way things change is if the city council doesn't blink, lets the contract lapse, and contracts with the sheriff's office until a new police department can be hired.

  13. Re:Wherever data is collected, it is abused on Across US, Police Officers Abuse Confidential Databases (ap.org) · · Score: 1

    Not sure what study you're referring to, but years of data from dozens of western countries don't agree (Canada, Australia, Germany, etc).

  14. In terms of the US, only if you ignore that legal fictions are constituted completely under the powers reserved by the States. Regulation of legal fictions is completely within the power of the several States as outlined by the 10th Amendment. We have the problems we do now because people have been complacent regarding the use of expedient, but patently unconstitutional, shortcuts to get the results they desire faster. The electorate is ultimately to blame, because people are greedy and self-serving when it comes to anonymously (from a functional societal standpoint) helping themselves to public resources.

  15. Re: They don't answer the only question we care ab on Smoking Permanently Damages Your DNA, Study Finds (nbcnews.com) · · Score: 1

    Indeed. My post was not well-considered.

  16. Re:Split the company on Appeals Court Decision Kills North Carolina Town's Gigabit Internet (hothardware.com) · · Score: 1

    Too bad you posted Anon. First rational answer here.

  17. Yes, that thing that has never existed, but is routinely blamed by the intellectually dishonest (whether they're pro or anti).

  18. As an actual libertarian, and not the OP, first off: fuck you and your broad brush assumptions. Second, under the laws of the State (and without the unnecessary moralizing from the OP), privatization is probably the only answer that stands a chance in hell of succeeding. That said, libertarians aren't anarchists. Anarchists are anarchists. Privatization, by and large, is pushed by crony capitalists who call themselves libertarian because libertarians are the next-strongest party they have yet to co-opt completely. There is no conflict at all in allowing a legally constituted municipality from extending service to their borders. It becomes problematic when they reach beyond, because they will always have their powers limited by the laws of the State that grants them their very power to exist /at all/. Ultimately, the best thing that could happen is a peering agreement and setting up a legal entity, of whatever stripe necessary, within Pinewood in order to administer the portion of the service in operation outside of the jurisdiction of the county. Jurisdiction is of great importance in US law, and is certainly a significant part of this ruling. It is almost unheard of for a legally-constituted arm of government to operate outside of its jurisdiction. It requires utmost adherence to all applicable laws, and is even then undertaken with kid gloves for the most part.

  19. Re:What happened to the market ..... on Appeals Court Decision Kills North Carolina Town's Gigabit Internet (hothardware.com) · · Score: 2

    The US has never, for a second, had a free market economy any larger than a farmer's market.

  20. Re:Work around? on Appeals Court Decision Kills North Carolina Town's Gigabit Internet (hothardware.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What the US has is crony capitalism. All of the drawbacks of socialism with none of the benefits. It doesn't help that people use terms interchangeably that mean vastly different things. There is a revolving door between big business and the government, so risks are nationalized while the rewards are pocketed. The entire system is fundamentally at odds with laissez faire capitalism, so when people yell that this is what happens in a free market those who actually care what words mean discount them as the ignorant buffoons they are.

  21. Re:Don't blame the courts. on Appeals Court Decision Kills North Carolina Town's Gigabit Internet (hothardware.com) · · Score: 2

    This is long-settled law. The Constitution of a State always trumps municipal powers, because all municipal powers ultimately depend on devolution from the State Constitution.

  22. Re: They don't answer the only question we care ab on Smoking Permanently Damages Your DNA, Study Finds (nbcnews.com) · · Score: 0

    They probably didn't address it because it's obviously heritable. Genetics 101. There's no mechanism by which those genetic changes could be prevented from potentially passing to offspring, except not having offspring (or making a custom gene drive to reverse the changes before spawning).

  23. Re:Can't be that great a tool on NYPD Says Talking About Its IMSI Catchers Would Make Them Vulnerable To Hacking (vice.com) · · Score: 2

    A distributed app collecting signal strength and cell site hardware data could rapidly expose any portable IMSI device. Just needs to be built and publicized by someone with the time, interest, and skill.

  24. Comprehensive defense testing on NYPD Says Talking About Its IMSI Catchers Would Make Them Vulnerable To Hacking (vice.com) · · Score: 2

    Taking a page from the State actors comprehensively exposing the defensive capabilities of the Internet core, there needs to be a distributed network setup to calculate and correlate all physical cell site information. When shared between a large number of users, it would be trivial to map all permanent physical infrastructure such that any IMSI catcher would light up like a bullseye the second it was turned on. Then that hardware could be targeted for comprehensive testing and exploitation. It wouldn't surprise me to see a future cellular botnet set up to do something just like that if it's not done for more above-board accountability reasons first.

  25. No, they're not just passengers. There are lots of people who drive and play. It was bad enough with Ingress, which doesn't require much concentration to use the interface, but Pokemon Go is not nearly so simple.