I don't agree with visarga's first sentence. But I don't think it's childish to want a war criminal to be held to some account. More than 100,000 civilians died in that conflict, and Rice played a key role in knowingly selling the lies that lead to their deaths.
She deserves prison, and the founders and board of Dropbox deserve to be hounded for their complicity in her escape from any negative consequence resulting from her actions.
I thought the Boring company was the most "obviously for Mars" project. One of the cheapest ways to create pressurized, radiation-sheltered spaces is to dig.
This subthread is off of devmunchies comment about Reddit and Twitter, and the OP is about 4chan. All of these forums are global.
My point is that American-style conservatism may represent half of Americans, but it's overwhelmed in other developed countries (which, taken together, are larger in population). So much so that I would argue that in the global context, American conservatism is small enough and far enough to one side of the debate that it's accurate to call it an extreme.
Something that's popular is practically by definition not on the extreme any more.
In most of the developed world the Democrats would be considered a moderate right-wing party, and the Republicans a far-right theocratic extremism party (like, say the DUP in the UK, or CHP in Canada).
What you're seeing is a ground-shift in values, and what used to be considered OK is now considered extreme, and is therefore being shifted into the margins of the discussion.
To put it in sharper contrast: if you started loudly expressing the most mainstream views of the 1700s in today's society, you'd get a lot of people trying to shut you up and, failing that, marginalize you. And, probably, they'd be right to do so.
I could just as easily say that this the result of 40 years of the upper class shifting the tax burden downward to the middle class, while lobbying for the passage of laws to ensure that all of the economic gains during that period are funneled upwards towards themselves.
Telling the middle class to tighten their belt because - despite a growing economy - there just isn't enough to sustain the lifestyle that their parents enjoyed isn't sound economic principles, it's class war.
I have no problem with the possibility that men and women are different. What's unjustified is, given the powerful effect of culture on behaviour, someone making offhand claims that they know what differences are natural.
I read "natural difference between men and women that are implicitly understood by people" as saying that what's "implicitly" (i.e. commonly) understood as to be the natural differences is correct. Because what has been "implicitly" understood has differed substantially across time and cultures, that's a highly suspect claim that requires a matching degree of evidence.
Furthermore, just the long and loud history of people spouting off absolute bullshit about what women are and aren't is, by itself, enough to demand significant evidence for any positive statements of what's natural or not.
That plot would fit into, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which had a viewship in the millions) no problem.
Also, if you're going to say things like "natural difference between men and women that are implicitly understood by people" (down thread), you're going to have to bring some double-blind, peer-reviewed evidence.
This is a controversial subject that's overflowing with armchair sociologists. Right now you're indistinguishable from them.
That's the standard ideological line, but this whole story is about how Apple is stockpiling cash, not investing.
(And yes, I understand that the cash isn't just stuffed in a mattress, but it's an important distinction that the money isn't being invested in the direct sense)
Genuine question: given this, am I correct in thinking that if there was a big corporate tax cut the most likely outcome is that the money retained would just further inflate this savings glut?
That theoretically makes the hack harder (you've got to hack two systems/vendors), but we're talking about attackers with potentially state-level resources.
The bigger problem is that it can be used to verify that a coerced voter cast their ballot the way that the coercer wanted.
My question is: why go through all this incredible effort, and take such huge risks, when paper ballots do the job just fine?
The right talks about more freedom, but their actions result in less of it.
Arbitrary power used to be much more concentrated in one particular race and one particular gender. The left has been trying to diffuse that power, the right is trying to re-concentrate it.
Furthermore, there is the concentration of power that comes with having vastly more money than the median person, and the ability to use it politically. Or the power that comes from monopolistic control over an industry. The left generally seeks to curb these powers (e.g. the fight against Citizens United, or for more antitrust action).
The Magna Carta is illustrative: it's a set of regulations aimed at reducing the exercise of absolute power. The lesson is: if you restrict the powerful, the net freedom of the population increases.
A more modern example: the regulations that prohibit companies from firing their employees without cause are a reduction in freedom for the employer, true. But with them, the far more numerous employees are now more free to be and say things that upset the powerful within the company (in ways that are specifically unrelated to the performance of the work) without fearing retribution. Overall, an increase of freedom.
The right wing, under the banner of "less regulations", have consistently lessened the protections of the weak against arbitrary power. They fight for the freedom of those with money, corporate power, and political influence to do as they please. That's a retrogression of overall freedom, and (IIRC) exactly what Atwood was talking about.
Imagine if you took a vote with paper ballots, and then went to every one of the tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people who had a hand in creating a voting machine (think of the millions of lines of code in the OS and drivers, and the billions of transistors) and left the unsealed box of votes with each of them, alone, for several hours. That box would travel to people in many foreign countries, some working for intelligence agencies. Would you trust the votes after that?
It's possible to hide exploits in so many places - consider the obfuscated C contests, or the trojans that have been found in SSDs, or that hack a while ago where someone compromised a RNG by undetectably tweaked the dopant levels on a chip.
It takes very little to swing an election if you're strategic, sometimes less than 1% of the vote, and having the head of a state owe you a favour (not to mention the blackmail material), is well worth compromising one or more of the people involved in the production of the machine.
To make a demonstrably exploit-free voting machine, you'd have to design and manufacture every chip yourself and write every line of software (including the OS) yourself. Not only that, but everyone involved would have to be trusted to not be bribed, and to not make any mistakes that could lead to an external exploit. That's completely unrealistic, so countries are essentially saying "it's OK if there's a possibility for someone to take control of our country through fraud, because even though we know for sure that it's possible, we don't think it will happen to us".
Elections are too important to let the fools and charlatans who say things like "unhackable" to have influence over anyone with the the power to make decisions about electronic voting machines. Everything is hackable, given the resources and the motivations. Gaining control of an entire country is sufficient to have both.