> Legislation was passed under President Obama that made it a legal requirement for trains carrying hazardous flammable materials to have ECP brakes, but this was rescinded in 2017 by the Trump administration.
> The National Transportation Safety Board, a federal agency responsible for investigating rail accidents, told The Lever that the Ohio train that derailed was not fitted with ECP brakes.
> Another way to reduce envy is to realize that, ultimately, it's luck all the way down. There are plenty of talented, hard-working people who will never see even moderate success
Realizing that it's luck all the way down only reinforces my opinion that the wealthy pay a pittance in taxes relative to the value they get from our society. Those talented, hard-working people who will never see success deserve affordable healthcare, a functioning safety net that allows them to overcome difficulty and take chances, equal education opportunities for their kids, and a hope for a retirement that doesn't require giving up everything or overburdening their families.
Unhappiness that we (in the US at least) are not on that path is more than envy.
"[F]lew to Barcelona to collect a bribe before passing this regulatory change" seems too strong a claim, but there should be serious questions after AT&T paid Cohen and also got a meeting that was off the record.
I don't imagine it actually changed Pai's opinion, but it seems unethical.
> A completely different question is whether vendors like Apple will refuse to support something like this because it circumvents the need to deliver via the app store (and the $$$ they collect through the Apple Developer Program) but there's no reason background services and processes can't be implemented in JavaScript.
I could see Apple et al resisting, but wouldn't a store still be useful for discoverability and giving the sense that an app is trustworthy? I agree stores would not be _required_ though, and I think that diminishes the value of a store and therefore the cost of listing your app in one.
> Incidentally, insofar as "fake news" is real, it is highly unlikely to have any major effect
I think this study is too limited. The problem is not that a single article changes minds. It's a well-poisoning problem. Stories about the Clintons assassinating their opponents have been floating around right-wing media for decades.
When I was growing up, I heard an adult talk about the time their friend went to see the Clintons land at an airport. When the friend asked Hillary to end abortion because it was killing babies, Hillary supposedly replied "We will kill your babies."
Nonsense circulated for decades has a toxic effect on political discussion. "Fake news" is just the latest nonsense fad to join Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and their kind.
What do you call information that is produced to resemble reputable news sources but contains very little true information?
Is there any support for the claim that it was reported, and a term was coined for it, in order to limit competition?
Why should we think it's that vs genuine reporting on a trend where people profit from producing this material AND a complimentary trend for Americans (trending toward conservative views) to believe anything that fits their preferred narrative without question?
I think this is absolutely different from propaganda because it's done first and foremost from a profit motive. It did not generally (as far as we actually know) come from powerful groups who want to control a political narrative. [0] I'm sure that has already started to change- Russia and other countries will certainly use this attack vector. The material they produce would be fake news used as propaganda.
> I am reminded of Fulton Sheen's comments on Jesus - a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not God stretches the limit of rationality.
That always sounded like an unimaginative argument. Another possibility is that his followers exaggerated his words and deeds after his death.
I think this is brilliant social satire come to life. Can there be a block chain of people who "trust" a source within the net and where central claims originate?
I definitely think we should if we can have very good plans for how the data is kept secure, how access is granted, and oversight- all from separate organizations that report to citizens in a useful way.
But we'll probably do it anyway, without those things.
And I think I'd actually be ok with this method if our military/police/political leaders had a better track record of respecting rules for using the data.
In the article, he points out that Tesla's been given a lot of taxpayer money plus a lot of incentives for buyers to make their product more attractive. And now they now get to skirt around the market rules that other companies have been stuck with and had to build infrastructure and procedures to deal with more effectively.
Maybe Tesla's handouts should be pared back as they grow and are allowed to bypass the old rules.
Any dissenters around here? We're going through this stuff now in Georgia. I like the ideal of trying different market approaches than your competitors, and I generally think businesses should; but I did read a counter point[0] that at least made me think.
If a large number of individuals or businesses are heavily invested in the-way-things-are, is it ever dangerous to rapidly change the market rules that we've built up- usually for the purposes of consumer protection or fostering businesses that benefit the larger community?