Posts by veti 4492 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Mar 2010
What then happens when cities and even whole states start demanding Pokemon Go not use their areas of authority for these games?Then their legislators will have to explain to their voters why they can't enjoy this amazing phenomenon they've been hearing about everywhere else.
I'm sure some cities will go that way. (After all, to this day the USA has counties that pretend prohibition was never repealed.) But not most.
Yes, the "reinforcement of negative or unrealistic stereotypes" does harm society.
But then, so does censorship.
I'd like to know what rigorous study or analysis has been done to determine that the harm from one outweighs the other. I'd like to, but I suspect none has - because we're talking about articles of faith, not science.
You guys - the story author included - are reading way too much into this.
Nobody needs to "break end-to-end encryption". All they need to do is grab the mobile phone of the person sending or receiving the message, and it's game over. And when you're a government, you can do that sort of thing.
That's totally feasible, and also explains how the laws of Australia can override those of maths.
Emojis need to die in a fire.
In fact, any and all auto-corrections - where you type one set of characters, and $SOFTWARE converts them into another character that it thinks you really wanted to type instead - need to stop right now. (I'll allow exceptions for common typos, such as "abotu". But even those need to be completely customisable.)
Don't change my text to emojis, don't auto-format my lists, and shove your "smart quotes" where the Windows don't open.
Does this mean that unsecured http:// websites would be banned? So in order to own a website, you have to register with a certification authority? That's a step backward for privacy, right there.
What about Usenet, or plain old-fashioned email? Are those still allowed at all?
It seems to me that mandating encryption is every bit as bad as banning it.
In my school we had no stall doors and there was no soap. Needless to say it had to be a pretty severe emergency to get me to use one. Especially since there was always some kid ready to smack me into the wall or throw water on me.
You had water? Luxury! In my school, if you wanted water, you had to wait for a nerd to come in and smack him into the wall until he cried!
This, exactly.
The fact is, data about me is worth far more to Google than it is to me. I couldn't begin to monetise it the way they do. I wouldn't know where to start. So why should I begrudge it to them, when they give me a whole raft of useful services in return?
Yes, they know what I'm likely to buy. I still don't see almost any ads (thank you, Adblock), and those I do see are more likely to be of interest to me. Is that a bad thing?
Yes, they know where I live and where I work. I have no objection to them knowing that, provided I'm reasonably confident it's not available on demand to any old nutjob who asks - and I am reasonably confident of that. Yes, they probably know what I do for a living. They may know who I bank with, who I do business with, what sites I browse, what kinds of porn I enjoy. But I have faith that they're not going to use any of that information improperly, because there's no plausible way of making a profit out of it.
And sure, governments may be able to access it too. People have this fantasy about the secret police kicking in their door one night and dragging them off for re-education, or something. In the immortal words of Slaartibartfast: "That's perfectly normal paranoia, everyone has that." Face it: you're not that interesting. Not even your porn collection.
"No coalition" is entirely possible, it's called a minority government. Nothing particularly groundbreaking about that as a concept, we've had 'em before, and some Europeans have them regularly.
A "no confidence" vote needs more than just defectors from those you're counting on, it also needs a solid turnout from everyone else. Depending on the cause and the opposition at the time, it's by no means guaranteed that Labour, the SNP, the Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru could all be persuaded to support the same motion on anything without defections from their ranks too.
Lobbyists are powerful because they can deliver votes. One way or another. In their own right, they're nothing; their power is solely in how many votes their support can be bartered into.
If you can persuade a politician that a single issue is so unpopular that no lobbyist can outweigh the votes it'll cost them, then the lobbyists are powerless. That's what happened to Trumpcare Mk I and II, and will probably happen to Mk III.
The $1 million is in "general liability coverage". It's not a fee that you actually have to pay up front, it's an insurance policy that you have to take out against the likelihood of being sued at a later date.
Seen in that light, it's very reasonable. Probably not much more expensive than 3rd-party car insurance.
As any journalist can tell you, notes taken at or immediately after a meeting carry a lot of weight, if you ever end up in court.
Their strength decreases rapidly as time passes before making them, so it's important to make them as quickly as possible. If there's no dispute that the meeting took place, and if there are no other records, your memo - written immediately afterward - is likely to be accepted as the most authoritative account that's ever likely to exist.
So what's your suggestion, we should only go after the biggest criminals and leave the smaller ones alone?
No thanks. One perp stopped is better than none. Particularly as now there's an outside chance he'll straighten up and channel his talents into something productive.
Right, which is one reason why Uber told him not to do it, and cut him off when he did.
The other reason being, their best hope is to throw this one guy to the prosecutors and just pray that no-one has enough evidence to pin anything on the rest of the company. If they try to stand by him at this point, they would put themselves at risk.
Unfortunately, Uber has every opportunity and likelihood that it can put enough distance between itself and this guy that he's the one who takes the fall, and they get to walk away with only superficial damage.
The American business system is pretty much designed to allow this - companies throwing lone employees to the wolves and walking away. It's a kinda mirror image of the British system, which is designed above all to protect the people at the top, even if the company goes down the khazi.
(Because one doesn't want one's old pals from Eton and Oxbridge trying to mooch off one when their careers go titsup, that's why.)
The result was so close that you can reasonably claim just about everything swung it.
But none of that makes a difference. The rules are the rules, the game is over and there's no plausible way to replay it.
Does it raise doubts about the mandate of the current bunch of rulers? Yes, but frankly if you didn't have quite a lot of those sorts of doubts already, you're (a) not paying attention and (b) unlikely to be persuaded now.
Are you suggesting that US law should apply immediately to anyone, worldwide, who even wants to travel to the US? I thought we were against extending extra-territorial jurisdiction?
Once they're on US soil (or, probably, in US airspace, not sure how that law works), then we can start talking constitutional protections. Until then, they're not relevant.
There's nothing inherently wrong with IIS. It's a popular choice particularly for smaller companies who simply don't want to shell out on someone who can roll Apache when they already have dedicated admins who know quite enough to configure IIS. If you're some 20-employee workshop or database firm or plumbing supply stockist or pizza shop, then you probably already have all the expertise you need to create and host your own IIS website, whereas using Apache would be a whole new learning curve.
And that's a perfectly honest niche, there's nothing wrong with those sites. They're not going to rival Twitter or Amazon anytime soon, but as a shop window for the business, they're fine.
I really don't know about platforms for new serious commercial or interactive sites. Maybe IIS is holding its own in those markets, maybe not. I suspect not, just because if someone is putting that level of investment into a website, they're likely to budget for a real professional to manage the hosting.
If Seth Rich gave anything to Kim Dotcom, then Dotcom would have published it to the world himself, and he would have done it months ago. Now there's a man who doesn't know the meaning of the word "shy".
And if Kim Dotcom has any actual evidence, he could be a lot more convincing.
@John Brown (no body): he's not. He's never been concerned about that, and the USA has never applied for it.
What he's concerned about is having to do jail time in Sweden. Everything else is just a blind, because - and brace yourself for a shock here, I know it's hard to believe - Assange is a born poseur.
He hasn't flopped on every issue from his campaign. Merely those that promised to benefit ordinary Americans, like cheaper/better health insurance, infrastructure spending, bringing back factory jobs, draining the swamp. If you voted for him on those grounds - well, the more fool you.
But some issues he's been steadfast on. Cutting taxes for the rich, specifically himself and his family, he's pretty firm on that. Appointing a conservative to the Supreme Court. Being anti-abortion. Increasing military spending. Basically, everything the Republican party orthodoxy is into, he's right there beside them, because he knows he needs their support.
Get the federal gov't to pay benefits for their workers, so they don't have to? I imagine Lyft et al will love it.
It's no different from WalMart helping its greeters to claim food stamps. Anything's better than actually paying your pesky workers what they're worth, amirite?
That's Trump's genius. He's identified that the general hatred and distrust of politicians has now reached such levels that you don't even have to pretend to be motivated by anything other than naked greed, now. Indeed, if you do have any other motivation, people will trust you less because they assume you're lying.
It's just one of the ways in which he has successfully broken American democracy, and I don't expect it'll be repaired quickly.
Oh yeah, because Labour would be so much better. From their manifesto:
We will always provide our security agencies with the resources and the powers they need to protect our country and keep us all safe.
Granted, there follows some bromide about preserving civil liberties, but you know what? - the Tories have that too.
I don't think we can blame this on "politicians". Everyone and her dog abuses statistics.
And there are many ways to fudge numbers if you don't know how, and don't have a deep understanding of anything. One of the problems of statistics is not just that it's easy to do them wrong, but that it's actually really hard to do them right.
... is that the owners will take it as a challenge.
Every major nuclear accident - Windscale, TMI, Chernobyl, Fukushima, you name it - came about despite precautions, because administrators saw that all was working well and decided to cut corners. The more failsafe the design, the more they'll cut.
There's no way to avoid it. You need to invent a reactor that literally can't do anything dangerous, no matter how much it's abused, because sooner or later it will be abused to that level.
In the 1970s, did you imagine you'd be able to publish your generic discontent to an audience of millions, for nearly zero effort and zero cost?
It's amazing what people will put up with, provided they're free to whine about it. Take away that freedom, however, and watch the gutters run red. (As witness those idiots who try to stop people posting bad reviews.)
In that case, he's actually OK. All he has to do is make a statement "I never took any docs, I don't have any docs, I haven't communicated any docs to anyone", and he's in the clear.
Unless someone can prove he's lying, of course.
This is arguably where Uber's excessive dickishness comes in. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that he really is completely innocent of these charges - and yet he is, quite rationally, afraid that there might be something else that he could be stitched up for. Possibly, some charge that neither he nor his prosecutors have even thought of yet.
That's exactly why the Fifth Amendment exists, it's to protect people who think they might fall into that category, and that's what Uber - not the court - is forbidding him to use.
He has to hand over all the materials... but he's forbidden to access his own computer systems to do so. He has to tell everyone he's communicated materials to, to hand them over - but he's forbidden to communicate with any Uber employee.
And if he doesn't comply with all these contradictory requirements - as judged unilaterally, and without appeal, by Uber - he's fired.
It's not a nice letter.
I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure a court can't order an individual to waive their 5th amendment rights. Uber can't invoke those rights itself, but Levandowski still can.
Uber, of course, may be asserting the right to fire him if he does. Which may or may not open a whole separate can of worms.
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