Compliance is based on the idea that if you are in compliance with a particular control (per NIST 800-53, say), then you have reduced the risk the control is meant to protect against by default. Compliance doesn't reduce all of the risk, but yes, it will reduce the risk profile to a degree depending on the control.
Multifactor, non-phishable credentials do reduce risk of unauthorized login, absolutely. It reduces the risk of having a username and password that anyone can use if they know it. Give someone the PIN to your PIV or CAC card, and it's useless without the card. The risk then is that someone grabs your card and then beats you for the PIN, but that's a much less likely scenario. Sure you can mitigate brute force attempts at guessing passwords, and you can check things like source IP of the client and make decisions whether to allow the login or not.
The problem with compliance in my experience is that while it does reduce risk, when your mission must use or configure equipment that doesn't or can't use that control for some reason, the IT powers that be (esp. in government) demand you comply anyway, or else, even if you have mitigated that particular risk with compensating controls. That's when 'checkbox compliance' becomes a real threat to mission success.
You can do anything you want business-wise under a single LLC, though the IRS wants you to identify the primary business category you're in, they really just want statistical info, it does not prevent you from doing other types of work under it. The point of separating into multiple LLCs (or S or C corps) is entirely to isolate the risk of financial ruin including bankruptcy. If a separate LLC fails, goes bankrupt, gets sued, it won't impact any of your other LLCs unless you've intermingled accounts and pierced the corporate veil, so to speak. If you're doing anything that requires a professional license such as health care, engineering (building bridges), and so on, you'll want to get advice from the experts, but NOLO guides would be a good start.
Certainly. I felt the way you describe my whole life until 2016. In 2013 I had a sleep study done. I had what's called central sleep apnea, an issue where the carbon dioxide 'sensor' in my brain stem wasn't functioning properly, so it didn't detect when I needed to breath in again. Not as easy to replace as my car's oxygen sensor unfortunately. I needed a BiPAP, which pushed air in and pulled air out -- first doc put me on a CPAP and it was much worse. BiPAP was not fun but it helped.
I would take the machine to the neurologist monthly or so, he'd read the SD card and show me the results: stopped breathing at least 40-100 times a night.
Fast forward about 3 years, I entered into ketosis -- that's another story, but for now it just means that I stopped eating all carbs, my liver started pulling fat from my diet and fat stores and forming ketones. Muscle would burn the fat, the brain would use the ketones exclusively.
I felt amazing, slept incredibly well, did not nap during the day, was just all manner of incredible things happen from that. Went from 202 to 187 in about 55 days (I wasn't monitoring it, just knew what I'd weighed, and went for a weigh in to get clearance for a gym at work one day and there it was. I was shocked.)
Took the BiPAP machine in about 3 months after going into ketosis: Zero events. I had zero times I stopped breathing at night.
Maybe my cause was different, but I'd bet anyone going into ketosis for a period of months would see healing in the brain that may help this and other issues. I think this because back in the day, epilepsy was treated with a diet that kept patients in ketosis, and after about 6 months, they no longer had epilepsy. Sounds to me like the brain did some repairs it couldn't do when on carbs.
I now think ketosis used to be our natural state before agriculture. Not like there were vending machines with Snickers bars on the savannas we evolved on - high carb diets I don't think existed. Wish I could find the reference, but some research showed that someone on the typical modern diet (high levels of blood glucose) would, when given ketones exogenously (they ate or drank them), have them taken up by the brain immediately -- the brain prefers ketones, even over glucose, the opposite of what we keep being told. Hardly anyone today ever enters ketosis with our diets.
Before doing any further drastic and potentially irreversible things like surgery or drugs, I'd seriously consider trying to get and stay in ketosis for at least 3 months and see how that affects your apnea. It can be a challenge, but not insurmountable. First couple of weeks may be hard, read up on what to do to get through that time, then stick with it for a while.
(EDIT: Forgot to mention, I had GERD too, that's gone. No more acid reflux, even when I eat foods that used to trigger it.)
The problem frankly is with your assumption (presumption?) that government is meant to be efficient. I'm not being facetious. A democracy is notsupposed to be 'efficient'. If all parties cannot agree, then something does not pass as law. That is the point of democracy. Democracy is not a business. Look at Switzerland, what a mess of inefficiency that is as a government, yet what a democracy.
Take a look at Zig (ziglang.org). Not sure it meets all of your requirements, but looks like it might. I haven't worked with it yet, but it's on my radar, as is FORTH, for the simplicity aspect you mention. And I should mention Tcl, but that's a scripting language so not what you asked for, but just in case, no, Tcl isn't 'dead', it's in most of the Cisco and other IT infrastructure equipment that's getting this website to you, it runs most of Flightaware's infrastructure, and is in all sorts of places quietly doing its job; it's how SQLite was started (as a Tcl extension, and Tcl is still a first class citizen w/r to SQLite). The creator of Redis wrote a good article on Tcl (which Redis was started in). Oops. This became a Tcl sales comment. Sorry! :)
This has completely simplified my eating, but it's not for everyone. I'm not interested in cooking, and I'm able to eat the same things every day without issue. Right now I have a few burger patties, a chicken thigh or two, and a pork chop every day, and once in a while, salmon. Plus I cook my dogs food too, mostly ground beef and burger patties, and pork loin.
When I say this simplified my life, I no longer use a stove top, induction cooktop, frying pans, or oven, ever, and got rid of most of the cookware. If I want a different meal, I can always order out, or when it's safe, go eat out somewhere, but that's rare for me anyway. I just drop in what I want, spices as desired, turn it on and come back and eat. It will also cook vegetables, and when I used to eat them, I liked them better this way as it gave them an oven-like caramelized flavor.
Here are two different vendor/models that have the exact same basket:
My original Bella still worked, but after using it between 3 and 6 times a day for over a year and a half it was time to retire it as the front had warped. I think it was $85 at the time. Couldn't buy it again as it said and still says not in stock at the link. So I searched for ones that had the same basket, and bought one each of the other two. Before the Bella, I had a much more $$$ Philips XXL, but that was a pain to clean because you had to take the basket apart etc. so I gave it away.
One tip: I don't go above 340 in temp, though they can go to 400 -- it'll warp the front a bit over time at the high temps, and fat can get into the element and make it smoke. Usually it's 280 deg for an hour with still frozen chicken thigh, and 280 deg for 20 mins for a thin burger, 30 mins for thicker. You'll have to experiment with temps and times until you find what you like with each food.
The second thing that has simplified my (cooking) life is a hard boiled egg maker:
Makes it a snap to get the cooking done right for soft, medium or hard boiled eggs, every time, very quickly. Just over $20 and I use it to hard boil 6 eggs every other day.
It's a trap if it's not for you, not what you want to do, not your interests. Whose business is it to solve millennium problems? Certainly not yours to decide for others. I think he does with his life what he chooses, and you do with yours what you choose. What are you doing with your life? I don't think you intended to be arrogant here, but the premise is that someone who has talent is required or expected to solve the world's problems. Not so. I think it's none of your business what someone else does with their life, anymore than it's mine to judge what you've done with yours or expect you to fulfill society's or the world's expectations. And the dude is still a genius, not was.
I'm typing this on my primary machine, a late 2012 MacBook Pro. That's 8 years of full daily use, travel, downloads, compiling, running Docker, etc. And I really do mean every single day, morning onwards. Not saying all MacBooks will stand up that long, but my secondary laptop is a 2010 MacBook Air, and it's still kicking, though OS upgrades aren't available anymore for it. Aside from the keyboard problems of the past few years (one of the reasons I waited to upgrade), I've found them to be very reliable. Even my PowerBook with the Motorola CPU was still running up until a couple of years ago when I cleaned house. And as they can run OSes in VMs (Linux, FreeBSD, Windows ...), I feel the MacBook Pro is the best development platform, and really, best platform for most things. I have mutt installed for email, so you can still run all your CLI 'apps' if you like. Yeah, it is truly an awesome machine. And this one, 2 months before Apple Care expired, I took it in for a 'checkup' -- they replaced over $1,100 worth of parts, including the logic board. I hadn't noticed anything wrong about the machine, but apparently it didn't meet their standards. If you're already leaning that way, buy one, use it for a while, and if it's not what you want later, sell it and consider the loss as you renting the laptop for that period of time. I could upgrade now the keyboards are fixed, but, well, this still works. Now I think I'll wait for the ARM-based MacBooks coming hopefully later this year.
I have similar issues with a late 2012 MBP when playing music to Bose headphones, sometimes airpods, and external speakers. I thought it was interference from other bluetooth devices. Trying out your recommendation, though I didn't remove Bluetooth PAN, I just set it to 'inactive'. We'll see how that works. I also went through all the network services and set all of the ones I never use to 'inactive' as well. Thanks for the post.
Make it public domain. While any major corporation could still use it without you being paid, many don't and will request you provide the same code but under a license their lawyers are comfortable with. SQLite sort of runs on this model -- it's public domain, but the author has been asked by many big corps for licenses and pay for them. They also pay for direct support, mods to the code. The testing harnesses and other aspects of the development and testing of SQLite but which are not part of SQLite can be kept entirely proprietary. I don't know if this model would fit for your library, SQLite may have a very different niche as an embedded database, and frankly it is used everywhere, so not sure if that would work in your case, but it's another option to think about.
Quite possibly because the stock market is no longer reflective of the health of the US economy. It appears that the majority of stocks (80% or more?) are held by large entities and institutions, not individual investors, so it may reflect large troughs of money, very large businesses, not small businesses, which are not on the markets. Also, private equity investing has increased over the decades, as those with a lot of wealth want to find somewhere to put that money while avoiding the regulated public investment arena. Individual investors don't get any view or ability to invest in private equity opportunities, as they aren't listed, and there is no avenue for them to invest in. I suspect private equity will continue to grow as a whole, and public equity decrease, and as that continues, the public markets will no longer (and don't now) really reflect most of the US. So what may be keeping the markets at highs now is that they are disconnected from small businesses, so they may not at all see any real damage from COVID-19 in the short term. In the long term, these large businesses rely on individuals to purchase, and at some point I expect the inability of individuals to buy products and services to have an impact on those larger companies. No idea if that will come to pass, but without customers, it's hard to see how these companies can sustain earnings in the future. It could also be that a lot of people are jumping in expecting a V shaped recovery, and the markets are looking like I 'V' now, but I don't think that applies to everything outside of the markets, which are not likely to make a 'V' shaped recovery -- how and if the two interact -- "Main Street" and "The Markets" is anyone's guess at this point.
Again, no idea what happens next, as the behavior of markets is changed by the changes in who owns stocks, in that we have large institutional investors rather than small individual investors, and it's very difficult to forecast the behaviors of complex adaptive systems.
This article goes into some of the potential reasons for market behavior today:
I will close by saying that there will be much less public ownership of equity within companies in general, as less companies will be listed in the markets, so over time, large companies/businesses will be privately owned. Whether this is good or bad, I don't know, but it cuts out regular individual investors who can't even invest via indexed style funds, because that to my knowledge doesn't exist w/r to private equity funds.
It appears that a majority of people my be deficient. The blood serum measure of 25(OH)2D3 that are considered in the 'normal' range is based on how much D you need in order to not have D-deficiency diseases (e.g. rickets), and not based on an amount that may be optimal (and I think those 'normal' ranges are based on epidemiological, not randomized controlled trials). Those values also do not reflect activated D3 -- 25(OH)2D3 is not usable by the body in that form, and much of it goes through the liver, and then the kidneys, to get activated into 1,25(OH)2D3, which is the form that is actually used by the body. Studying tribes in natural settings (Masai warriors, for example), they have 2-4x (maybe more) the amount of D in their blood (25(OH)2D3). Also, it seems it's really difficult to take enough D to induce a toxic response. Yes, it's fat soluble, but that doesn't mean it's being stored in your body fat. You have to reach a level significantly higher than the normal range before any D is available for storage in body fat -- there is a graph in one of the talks, I think the first one, that shows that. Cases of toxicity so far have been of people taking millions of IUs of D3 per day over an extended time period, inadvertently. D has been reduced or eliminated from foods precisely because of the few cases where millions of IUs were being put into bottles of milk which wasn't supposed to happen. Europe banned D in foods IIRC. This was decades ago. Many are now deficient because they stay out of the sun or wear sunscreen. Surprisingly, taking much higher doses of D battles TB -- they now think that sending TB patients to solariums and warmer climates worked because they were getting more sun, and thus making more D. I've been taking 30,000-50,000 IUs a day for about two months now, not because of coronavirus, but because of these three talks by doctors and other evidence I've looked at. I do think, based on these talks, that the majority of individuals in this country and others have suboptimal D levels and D availability:
If you're not prepared to invest the time to make an independent determination one way or the other, and you want to rely on the consensus view of experts, that's fine, there is nothing inherently wrong in that. Just understand that your belief that they're right doesn't mean they're right, and consensus is not evidence. That's all. Using "most experts agree" as an argument is an argumentum ad populum by definition. It's a fallacious argument to make, because you're saying that the number of people (experts or otherwise) who believe something to be true, means that it must be true. Using that argument to try and convince someone of a position to take is a fallacious argument. If you say I don't know the truth of it, but I'm going to side with the consensus, that's at least being clear.
You don't have to have the expertise to form a judgement contrary to that of literally thousands of experts here for them to be actually incorrect. Note how you're using language to make it seem more 'true' and 'weighty': "judgement contrary to that of literally thousands of experts" -- again, implying that the vast number of experts that believe something to be true makes it more true than if fewer experts believed it. That's precisely the fallacy I'm talking about. You just made an argumentum ad populum, when you're fully made aware of what that is and understand what that is, you still couldn't help it. The more experts that believe something to be true, the more that will jump on the bandwagon because that many already think it true. That may be part of what's happening, because I don't think anyone actually knows what is happening and why yet. There are plenty of examples in history, even recent history, of that type of groupthink happening, and the Ancel Keys Dietary fat theory of coronary heart disease is one of them. Once he said that was the cause, then others believed him, took his study as showing causation, rather than correlation, and the overwhelming consensus was that saturated fat and cholesterol caused heart disease. And they were all wrong, the consensus was wrong, his evidence was inaccurate.
Here's how it seems to me right now, and I'll use an analogy: if you had a consensus of financial experts saying that Apple stock was going to go to $600 a share, and it does, were they 'right' or were they 'lucky'? Because there is no way, no matter how much 'evidence' they have, that they can know that Apple will reach $600. They don't know what will happen, they are speculating. Go read up on counterfactuals.
Yeah, I'm beating a dead horse here, repeating myself so I'll stop now and close.
Because I poke holes in evidence that supports the theory of climate change does not mean I'm against that theory -- it doesn't mean I'm for it either. I can take the position of, "I don't know", and that is my position. But I can still poke holes in evidence from both sides of that debate, while still holding the position that I don't know whether the theory is accurate or not. I can't poke holes in a 'consensus', because a consensus is not evidence. Belief in something is not evidence. Evidence is evidence, and our interpretation and understanding of such complex systems is poor at best.
Climate change may be happening, and it may be due to us, and it may have dire consequences. Or it may not, and we'll be fine, the climate will start to cool, and we'll see maybe we don't know all the mechanisms at play or how they interact.
Watch the first 20 mins of the Crichton talk. You'll know if you want to watch more by then. We think we know things, but we really don't when it comes to things as complicated as climate.
Eric asked me: "...what do you make of this chart shown on the nasa.gov page? It shows the cycles that you're talking about, but then it shows how our situation is incredibly different from any other cycles over thousands of years. https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
So given evidence like that, what is your reaction?"
I responded that based on my assessment, this is not good evidence to support a claim that climate change (e.g. global warming) is 'real' and is human caused, and I specifically laid out why.
That's it. That was the point.
If you want to respond to any or all of those specific items, and show where I might be mistaken, great.
Note that I did not make any claims as to whether climate change (e.g. global warming) is or isn't 'real', nor whether humans are or are not involved or the cause. If that's what you got from my reply to Eric, then you're reading more into my response than I wrote. I think we should be analyzing and challenging all evidence, supporting any claims and any position. That's what science is supposed to be about, IMO. I made that clear:
"First, I want to be clear about the context for my challenging that slide you pointed me to located at https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence -- I am not challenging whether climate change is real or not, and I'm not challenging whether humans are or aren't the cause of it."
I do think we should be working on renewable energy sources that are cleaner, reducing environmental pollution, and so on, because that really makes sense regardless of what's going on with the climate.
In response to your other comments:
I'm not a climate scientist either, but I don't think you need to be one to analyze data and evidence. Read the study and the NOAA data that the evidence Eric pointed me to is based on, and see for yourself. As for whether most people have the time, I agree, most probably don't, but Eric specifically asked me to look at this data; I think it fair to ask him to do the work to analyze it as well.
Your comment along the lines of "most climate scientists believe X" doesn't really say anything other than that most climate scientists believe X. So? Most experts used to believe the Sun revolved around the Earth. As I've said prior, consensus is not evidence. That many experts believe something is presented as evidence may be very true. But that doesn't say anything about whether what they believe is actually true.
"An argumentum ad populum (Latin for 'appeal to the people') is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition must be true because many or most people believe it, often concisely encapsulated as: "If many believe so, it is so. Other names for the fallacy include appeal to (common) belief,[2][3] appeal to the majority,[4] appeal to the masses,[5] appeal to popularity,[6][7] argument by consensus,[8] authority of the many,[8][9] bandwagon fallacy,[7][10] consensus gentium (Latin for 'agreement of the people'),[10] democratic fallacy,[11] and mob appeal.[12]" (From WikiPedia I think).
As for the consequences being dire, we'll see.
I recommend you watch the Michael Crichton talk I gave the link for.
Eric, I assume you don't want to do the work, or you don't want to allocate time doing so. So I'll close this out.
First, I want to be clear about the context for my challenging that slide you pointed me to located at https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence -- I am not challenging whether climate change is real or not, and I'm not challenging whether humans are or aren't the cause of it.
I am challenging the specific evidence you point to, and not blindly accepting a graph without questioning what data it is based on and how that data was analyzed. The problem with providing a slide like that to people as evidence is that it fits what they already believe, and so no one questions the source that generated these results. Slapping an atmospheric CO2 value in ppm onto a graph taken from a study that measures CO2 values in ppmv from ice cores isn’t science.
The slide you point to on that page shows a graph from the study mentioned in the graph’s caption, and purports to show historical atmospheric CO2 over the past 800,000 years, to measurements of the actual CO2 taken from actual current atmosphere. I have read and annotated the study, and I’ll accept that data as accurate for now and won’t challenge what is in that study.
However:
1. The graph you point to is not the graph that the referenced study supplied -- it is that graph with a portion added on the end that did not come from the study. It looks like someone took the graph from the study, and tacked on the ‘1950 on’ CO2 levels measured from the actual atmosphere (which are from the NOAA Mauna Loa measurements).
2. The “1950s on” label is inaccurate. The study states that accurate measurements of atmospheric CO2 did not begin until 1958. It’s minor, but it’s important to be accurate here.
3. How do we know that the CO2 in an ice core can be directly compared to a measurement taken of actual, live atmosphere? How do we know there isn’t some process whereby the CO2 in an ice core shows up as lower than an actual atmospheric measurement? That may be in the end notes of the study, but I’m not going to do the work to dig through that now. It’s something that needs to be validated, if it hasn’t already, before being accepted as fact.
4. The study says that CO2 levels and arctic temps are strongly coupled (correlated). Correlation isn’t causation. Correlation is correlation. We see that two things are correlated, and our brain immediately sees a causal connection. STOP DOING THAT. Cholesterol is correlated with coronary heart disease, but it is not a cause of CHD.
5. Despite the study stating that CO2 levels and arctic temps are strongly coupled (correlated), it also states that there were significant deviations between Temperature and CO2 levels multiple times over that period, meaning that there were multiple times where the CO2 levels were not correlated with arctic temperatures. Clearly then, CO2 levels are not always in line with what you would expect temps to be if CO2 were driving the temps higher -- what mechanism is causing temps to be what they were despite CO2 levels suggesting the temps should be different? Maybe CO2 levels were higher, but the temps stayed lower, meaning that more CO2 was released from some other mechanism -- or maybe something else prevented temps from going higher despite increases in CO2.
6. Let’s assume that there is a strong correlation in the evidence of the study’s data that actually points to there being a true cause and effect result between CO2 levels and temperature levels. You still have to prove what is causing what, not just that one causes the other. You have to show whether temperature rise is the result of increased CO2 in the atmosphere, OR increased CO2 in the atmosphere is the result of increasing temperatures. Even if CO2 increases show up prior to temperature rises, it still doesn’t mean CO2 is causing the temperature rises. CO2 could be a leading indicator of future temperature increases, not a cause of them, meaning that whatever mechanisms are increasing the temperature, they are first triggering increases in CO2 in the atmosphere. That could mean that both CO2 levels and temperature rises are both caused by a something else.
7. By far the biggest error I find in the slide you pointed to: They used different unit measurements!!! The ice cores measure CO2 in ppmv, the NOAA atmospheric measure of CO2 is in ppm. They are not the same! It is quite possible that if you could convert the ppm of the NOAA data into ppmv units, it might fit right in to the study’s graph! I haven’t proven anything, I’m saying it’s now an open question, that the slide you pointed me to is a result of someone tacking together two separate graphs of data that is measured in two different units. You cannot compare them directly. See here:
That could make the NOAA data comparable to the units of the study’s data, and plot that and it might fit the study graph perfectly, and not the slide you showed me. Even if it doesn’t, it’s not proof of the opposite. The CO2 in the ice cores is in water; the CO2 in the NOAA measurements is in gaseous form. That alone might account for the difference, but still, I question whether CO2 measurements in water can be compared to CO2 measurements in air without some conversions and adjustments for units, or other factors.
So I’ve poked holes in that graph you provided as evidence. It isn’t proof that climate change isn’t happening, and it isn’t proof that humans are not to blame -- it is simply showing that the evidence in that graph you provided has serious problems, and should not be used as ‘evidence’ until those problems are resolved. But it will be passed around and people will believe it is evidence and not question it, because they've already decided what the truth is and aren't interested in challenging evidence that fits their already selected belief.
I highly recommend watching Michael Crichton’s talk:
Multifactor, non-phishable credentials do reduce risk of unauthorized login, absolutely. It reduces the risk of having a username and password that anyone can use if they know it. Give someone the PIN to your PIV or CAC card, and it's useless without the card. The risk then is that someone grabs your card and then beats you for the PIN, but that's a much less likely scenario. Sure you can mitigate brute force attempts at guessing passwords, and you can check things like source IP of the client and make decisions whether to allow the login or not.
The problem with compliance in my experience is that while it does reduce risk, when your mission must use or configure equipment that doesn't or can't use that control for some reason, the IT powers that be (esp. in government) demand you comply anyway, or else, even if you have mitigated that particular risk with compensating controls. That's when 'checkbox compliance' becomes a real threat to mission success.