Huge if true... Trump explodes as he learns open source could erode China tech ban The Register has obtained the following transcript of a recent White House conversation between US President Donald Trump and advisors regarding the ban on American technology reaching Huawei. We, of course, cannot reveal our sources. Having said that, we were tipped off to the existence of a since-deleted GitHub repo …
Wot! Has Trumpo sold off Hawaii and Alaska and didn't tell anyone? Was that money going to be use to buy Greenland?
Fox News demands to know!
Seriously, I really do hope he explodes before November. But there again, the GOP might just keep him president after all dead people can still vote in many US States.
"Wot! Has Trumpo sold off Hawaii and Alaska and didn't tell anyone? Was that money going to be use to buy Greenland?"
Shh, don't tell anyone, but - yeah, he did. I bought them. I'm planning to buy a really big angle grinder and a really big tugboat and have them switch places, just for the lulz.
I'm imagining it went more like this..
Trade Advisor: I expect you're going to ask me whether since we passed this new law any of our companies are doing business with Huawei.
Trade Advisor: The answer is No, Mr Pres...
Trump: That's great. I'm great. We won a really great victory. I think my car is here. We should play golf sometime when this whole uh trade thing is over. Bye-bye.
Technology Advisor: ...
Fox News: "Corona Virus may only kill 1% of people, its a Democrat plot that will go away after the elections, masks are a gateway Sharia law, mail-in ballots are a coup!!"
1% Old Fat Rich Fox News Viewer: "Oooo we must fund Republican lawsuits undermining stay-at-home orders, and blocking mail-in ballots, and undermining Hawaii successful quarantine. My Yacht in in Hawaii, I can't go to Hawaii if its overrun by dem Democrats!"
They don't realize that the people we're talking about killing, are *them*: Fat people, old people, ill people. Them and a bunch of others. People could wear the masks but, well, it is *only* old people and I'm not old! It's *only* ill people and I'm not ill. It's *only* fat people and I'm just big boned!
The 1% are the 1%.
It's a weird disconnect. All that power money and influence they have, once they're dead they have nothing, they become nothing. And yet they're using it to undermine themselves.
Republicans work for the 1%, and divide the 99% into groups to hold power. "Vote for us: We hate the people you, [#1], hate, those lying: [#2]". They do targetted marketing both to #1 and #2, and sometime #1 is the hate group of #2 and sometimes #2 is the hate group of #1.
And now #1 is the rich old people who need to die so #2 the young people, can live. The targetted hate group is also Republicans biggest sponsors.
How is their quarantine going? Is Palm Beach nice? Trump couldn't even keep Corona Virus out of the Whitehouse, you think he can keep it out of Mar-a-Lago next door to you? Do you think he cares about you? No. Me neither.
Non-food markets were open since Friday, shopping malls opened on Sunday, there has been only 3 new case so far. Pools opened. Masks are compulsory and temperature checks at the entrances are enforced.
It's mostly working, there was a cluster of non-mask wearers at Taladrodfai in the back corner of the market that should be tackled. Ikea at an out of town mall, was swamped and had to close.
When you're clear of Corona Virus, you should open *mid* week and open lots of things to give lots of choice to spread people out. Not Sunday as a *partial* opening to concentrate them in!
Malls took contact details at the entrance, if there is a super-spreader outbreak at the mall traced back to that day, you will be notified. This needs work, the queue to get in, itself was a spread risk.
Restaurant have separating partitions in the middle, those are ridiculous, the people at one table are a social group, any partition needs to be *between* tables, not between diners in a single group.
People are cooperating, things are getting busy quickly. People have confidence in the virus handling, the stock market is rising on the confidence of that. Things are recovering fast.
Plans are ongoing on how to open up between uninfected countries. The ones doing the quarantines are rushing to finish with hard lockdown so they can join the clean group.
If UK wants to have this success *faster*, they need to quarantine *harder*. Don't open prematurely, that's not the way to do it, it only prolongs the pain. Isolate harder, ask for that last determined push to clear the virus and then you're done. The optimism that confidence brings will bounce the economy back quicker.
In Thailand this is possible because everyone wants to save their people. Wearing a mask is trivial next to the death of a loved one, even if its not your loved one that dies. IT'S JUST A MASK KAREN.
UK this is still possible, you do have a society too, people will work to save the boomers.
USA? Well Republicans and their division shit are kicking off again. Clearly heading for a second wave.
Non-residents are banned from entering the country. Residents are quarantined on entering.
The people already here that could not return home, because their flights were closed, got automatic visa extension (currently to end of July). They are subject to quarantine.
I think there is still one Russia living/working at temple, obeying quarantine. He ran out of money and is waiting for his flights to reopen.
They're trying to work out the plan on what to do next. I am not party to the discussions on the tourism plans, the only proposal that's been made public is a special 'long stay' visa available to clean countries. That proposal was received with skepticism.
"Non-food markets were open since Friday, shopping malls opened on Sunday, there has been only 3 new case so far. "
Yeah you're not going to see new cases until 2 weeks later. That's the whole thing that makes Corona so dangerous as a pandemic - for 2 weeks before people start showing any signs of illness, they're highly infectious.
If 3 weeks after you've started opening up you've still got no cases, THEN you can say you're probably in the clear. Declaring now that your good. Is jumping the gun just a bit...
"Yeah you're not going to see new cases until 2 weeks later. "
Didn't I just read that Texas has reported a large spike in positive tests 2 weeks after opening up? What's most worrying about the US is that it seems Republican states were the slowest to lockdown and the fastest to re-open and so most likely to have a second wave. I really hope it doesn't happen because using party politics in this sort of situation will lead to more deaths.
Agreed. The problem appears to be the word "so" in your second sentence. Most Americans don't have the background knowledge of how common sickness spreads therefore it's unlikely the cause/effect relationship you're pointing out will be understood or accepted.
More basic is that many Americans can't / won't process the fact that the spread of disease is not contingent upon what humans understand or accept.
Of course this makes no sense. Yet, here we are.
"Agreed. The problem appears to be the word "so" in your second sentence. Most Americans don't have the background knowledge of how common sickness spreads therefore it's unlikely the cause/effect relationship you're pointing out will be understood or accepted."
Ah, thanks for that. Now I understand why calling it a plot by the Democrats works for Trump voters.
This is not the first opening phase. Phase 1: Food markets, and floating markets with hawker food stalls were open since ~8th. The borders between provinces were opened up depending on the province, so the strays cases have tended to link back to migrant workers returning from the Phuket's border opening.
This is the malls opening phase, which is a biggy. The cautious thumbs up for it is based on the masks and compliance with distancing.
This is explains the registration app:
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1920148/ccsa-satisfied-with-mall-reopening-day
I don't carry a phone and gave a contact number to a person who wrote it down.
This is "The Register" Thai version:
https://www.khaosodenglish.com/
This is the outcome, the where, who, by age, by gender, by pre-existing condition, by province, breakdown of the people who caught it:
http://203.157.41.228/t/CENTER/views/ncd_covid-19/sheet0
China, Hong Kong, Macau, and South Korea have been removed from the "Corona Virus Diseased Countries" list. Now they have it under control.
So you get a little bubble of information in the UK, perhaps this can help you see a broader picture. See that this could be you, and first you just have to shed the virus which needs a last final push.
Seagoon: I was 6 ft 3 when I was young, but I was struck by a lift.
Whatever you think of the man himself, Charlie Brooker had a good stab at the satire last week.
The News Quiz used to be good at this sort of thing, but it's suffering both with a "work from home" production model and a less-than-stellar guest presenter.
Have I Got News For You is faring a bit better under lockdown than The News Quiz, and The Now Show didn't do too badly either.
M.
and I don't think computer viruses can cross over into humans
Is that evidence of a particular lack of peculiar human thinking leading to crippling indebtedness situations?
You might like to consider and/or realise, although I'm sure many will not like to at all, there may be more than just a few who know things quite differently and would be extremely active in ensuring a leading untouchable invisible positively reinforcing mutually beneficial advantage in the Madness and Mayhem of Markets in Meltdown and Systems in Stasis.
Possibly also laid the path for Trump to turn thought into sexual harassment. JFK amongst other US presidents kept quiet about extramarital proclivities.
"It's getting hard to satirise various countries leaders these days. It appears like art imitating life."
When Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson wrote their brilliant "Illuminatus" satires back in the early '70s, the biggest problem that they had, according to their later Playboy interview*, was that they were writing about U.S. and Russian administrations that were stupid, venal, and corrupt, and every time they thought that they had come up with something totally bonkers, Nixon and Brezhnev would top them.
Plus ça change...
* Yes, I actually DID read the articles**.
** Sometimes.
Only those "news" agencies that regularly cite "sources say" without doing actual journalism, as a pipe organ for a specific political position (one that would continue to hate Trump even if he were to personally cure cancer and end all poverty) would look upon the title in which the initials for 'SATIRE' are clearly visible, and either ignore it or miss it entirely, and then report this as if it were fact SIMPLY because they'd want to believe it to be so.
Most people, however, seem to have got the joke from the beginning, though it would be BETTER satire if it were grounded in truth, and not just 'pandering to the perception'...
"Only those "news" agencies that regularly cite "sources say" without doing actual journalism, as a pipe organ for a specific political position (one that would continue to hate Trump even if he were to personally cure cancer and end all poverty) would look upon the title in which the initials for 'SATIRE' are clearly visible, and either ignore it or miss it entirely, and then report this as if it were fact SIMPLY because they'd want to believe it to be so."
FTFY. The "red tops", print and video, whatever their politics, are equally as bad. You really should try making those sort of statements both for and against Trump inside your head before posting and then try to decide whether it applies in both case.
Toni the terrible,
"Nuking a small tornado / super cell might stop the tornado, but a hurricane? maybe not."
If the only objection you have is that it may not work against a hurricane then you have very much missed the 'more major' objections to this idea !!!???
Although as current events show ..... killing a lot of your own citizens by gross ineptitude does not seem to be as big a problem as I would have imagined in the US of A. sometimes known as the 'sue' nation. :)
As opposed to, say, someone who prefaces his latest bollocks with "lots of people are saying..."?
TBF here on the right side of the Pond, "unnamed sources" are a well established part of politics/journalism game. Both parties will "anonymously" brief their favourite media outlets prior to policy announcements. This enables them to hurriedly deny that there was any such idea when it blows up in their faces. With denunciations of the media for quoting from unnamed sources of course.
If we're going to ban "sources say" without any identification of the sources, can we also ban all "...well that's what people tell me" comments, as well?
And "lots of people are saying...." comments?
And maybe even, "I get calls all the time..." claims?
I mean: If we're going to insist on identifiable sources for all public statements then we should probably get those taken out of the national discourse, too, right?
... like your comments, here, Bob, that
a) it's less dangerous than the flu
* time passes *
b) it's only as dangerous as the flu
* time passes *
c) it's only about 50% worse than the flu
* time passes *
You don't seem to be saying too much about how it's not such a big deal now, which is something, I guess.
While I applaud any attempt to satirise the twats in charge, I've yet to see any that really land a killer blow on Trump/Bolsonaro/Duterte. And the best they've come up with on President for Life, Xi Jinping is to equate him with Pooh Bear.
For satire to succeed, the target must have some level of credibility which is available to be undermined. Thatcher, for example, was a trained chemist with the ability to comprehend and comment intelligently on various matters scientific. Her mistake was to believe that her competence extended into fields well beyond her experience. This left her wide open to attacks on her neo-liberalism and the absence of Society. Nixon too, was intelligent and occasionally capable but suffered from catastrophic over-confidence in his presidential authority to protect him from wrong doing.
The current crop of, particularly, right wing authoritarian leaders have no such initial plausibility so satirising the likes of Trump (or any other leader with learning difficulties) is nigh impossible because it's almost like abusing someone for their affliction.
And simply replaying their mind boggling performances just makes the whole situation worse.
But a light has appeared in the darkness. Replaying their performances through Lip-syncing turns out to be a near perfect response. Interestingly the first comics charging out of these traps are all female, perhaps because the words of an ignorant malicious male look ten times dumber when they appear to emerge from a female face. Here are some of the examples I've collated, all Trump related, so far, but give it time. At the bottom is the grauniad story which explains the context...
How to more cases that anybody in the world
The most disappointing thing about this article is that the Reg obviously thinks its readers are complete f***witted morons.
Thanks, but you didn't need to put the asterisk in and actually tell us that "Stealth Anti-Tracing Intelligence Remote Exfiltration" was an acronym for 'satire'. I mean really???
Point that opinion at..
As for assuming this is aimed purely at the registers usual British readers, I'm pretty confident this is not for them. The site does get its occasional infiltrators from other news agencies or even cited in court rooms and I'm pretty sure it was spelled out before the first US of A based lawsuit was aimed at them or FOX news tried quoting it as fact.
Don't forget, sarcasm is often missed by those with an agenda and taking irony seriously has lead to things like scientology becoming a thing so sometimes it's better to assume the reader is abit lacking and spell things out.
Seriously? You've never noticed to completely blindingly obvious joke comments from commentards that get downvoted because people didn't "get it" without an actual joke icon being placed there? There are a small but significant contingent of readers who need to be lead to the trough and then shown how to drink.
The article was funny, but the number of downvotes you got from asking for more subtly is a sign of the times.
El Reg used to look like a site run by techies with a journalistic interest. Now it appears to be some journalists with a tech-based business plan.
The article has a lot of comments. In the old days it would be all people riffing off the article with jokes of their own. Now its just a few at the top with the rest yelling "orange man bad!"
I hope El Reg takes note of what is happening to Vice, Vox, Buzzfeed et al. and changes course before the political infection gains such a hold that it would rather die than change. Count the number of comments for/against Trump. Look at the how the population voted. Then ask where the other half of your readership went.
"orange man bad!"
But orange man *is* bad.
"Look at the how the population voted"
No amount of votes can change the laws of physics.
Yes, this is a tech site, but it reports on things based in reality. Those are not things that can escape from politics. You might have a different opinion to me as to big gov vs small gov, but you only have to have ears to hear that Trump doesn't know what he's talking about a lot of the time (and that's being charitable).
We all bemoan clients and managers not having a clue. "cup holder doesn't work", "the client accepted the mock up of the UI, so that means you're nearly finished, right?". Trump is that times a thousand. The fact that he has people cheering in him on, is like people defending "Mr Cup Holder". It's initially hilarious how clueless people seem to be. Followed by terrifying when you realise they are being serious...
Then you try to pushback with things like "facts" and "reality".
"That's not a cupholder", "The mock up is not the application", "Saying Mexico will pay for a wall shows a fundamental lack of understanding how economics/import tariffs work", "Injecting bleach is bad".
Imagine having explain to your boss these things, only to be told it is "fake news", that the bullshit they told the client was an "alternative fact", and is now *your* problem to make a reality.
If mocking clueless bosses/users is a sport. Mocking politicians is merely an extension. Finding people *even here* actually sticking up for the clueless (whichever side you're on).... is how flame wars start.
In Summary: We have mercifully few anti-vaxers, quite a few climate change denialist (distinct from sceptics). A few who still believe in trickle down economics on an intellectual level. Then there's Bombastic Bob and codejunky. If they are about, anyone you'd care to namecheck from the other side of the isle?
Yep, very good it did make me laugh. Not to be taken seriously at all although there are a few who would.
On another note, we do laugh at Trump, unless you are a Trump supporter, but he could be the most influential President since Roosevelt took America into the Second World War. I've just read an article, a believable one, about the restrictions of exports for silicon chips to China, this could be the drive of a distinct difference between Asia and the rest of us in Tech. Some say this is a bit of a nightmare scenario that leads to two different tech races in years to come and its all started by Trump.
I would love to be able to see what history makes, 100 years from now, of this whole scenario we are in at the moment Coronas and all.
I had thought, when reading this, that it was a fiction devised to discomfort The Chosen One. However, I now realise it's all factual reportage, as signalled by the quote: "This is the stupidest thing I’ve heard since they told me I can’t buy Greenland or nuke a hurricane."
As only a fat pig-ignorant narcissistic sociopath could ever have made a remark like that, there can be no doubting the truth.
Well done Mr Sharwood. May the big purple spotted Stealth Anti-Tracing Intelligence Remote Exfiltration machine long continue.
The cats haven't had any treats for a couple of days, which was a mistake. Jet is the kind of cat pigeons land beside to feed because he is not threat unless you trip over him in the dark. Miko by contrast is a serial bird killer, a persistent deadly threat within twenty metres. The cruise missile of cats. She caught one in the garden before I was awake and dad went out to stop her, but he's doddery so she brought it into the house and released it.
So I woke up to an injured bird behind the kitchen units. As you do, in a mad house in a mad world.
A nurse was coming to check on my mum and just in the nick of time because my mum had just spotted the cat with the bird and ran after them shrieking just as he arrived. It looked like her third heart attack but I couldn't do anything because it was just too funny to react to. Apparently her blood pressure is 190, so bad. The nurse went looking for a bird, which isn't a service I didn't expect the NHS to provide. Nice young man but not great at hunting birds. Luckily we have Miko, the cause and solution to the problem
My mum was swearing about my dad. I'm never marrying. I don't even care if I survive longer than the bird, because toothache. Birds don't get toothache.
I'm increasingly queasy about death and dying things, I never used to have such qualms.
Fifteen years ago an activist with MS told me she could no longer keep her chickens but she couldn't bring herself to kill them. I replied no problem, I'll kill them for you. I totally misread that, I'm fairly certain she was wanting me to care for them. Our relationship never really recovered from that.
What you missed was the need for a cathartic release of the 'Great mental burden' Danny 2 was under.
It was not only useful, to him, but also a snapshot of the daily life many of us are living under now during COVID-19 global epidemic [part 1].
I found it funny and strangely familiar ...... I thought only I had days like that !!!
I hope Danny 2 is now feeling much better and can return to his full time job as 'Health Minister' :) ;)
This post has been deleted by its author
Even if part or most of this exchange between Trump and his advisors are true, it remains plausible that no-one in that room has any intelligent or cogent idea what "Open Source Software" really is, particularly because they all use term "..give away" as if Open Source Software is "owned" by some corporation or government. Hot Sauce for his Chicken wings, that's another issue.
I have been in professional technology consulting and solution provision for more than twenty five years, specializing in Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) which has a definitive description on Wikipedia, and still, to this date most of those in technology especially involved with Microsoft Windows all their careers have no concrete concept what-so-ever of the true nature of FOSS, and could not articulate it even if you were to pay them.
Such is the general ignorance of a significant part of most societies, particularly in North America, whether technology users, politicians or average business owners, even though FOSS is infrastructure for most every bank, Financial Stock Exchange, NASA, all largest technology firms - Microsoft (yes), Google, Facebook, Twitter, IBM, Yahoo, most of USA Fortune 1000, national rail systems, US Defense Dept, Supercomputer research, Artificial Intelligence,Aerospace Industry, universities, etc, etc.
Fortunately the opposite is mainly true for Europe and many countries in Asia, where FOSS is mandated for several government regulations in Education and public services. Maybe it's because they use the Metric system - :), which is only explanation on earth that I can conclude for these jurisdictions being so much more ahead of USA, and more generally advanced in STEM/technology - like for Math, Engineering, Science and acceptance of Truth and Climate Change - and as a civilization compared to USA.
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