I see I have to work on my SO to drop Netflix now. She likes it but I think the're really not that many good things on it at all, just sort of a lot of crappy teenage movies with a few decent series . You can't even search their database of movies in a decent way. But if you're going to take my money, abuse your employees and warp the system to hurt ME, well, I think it's time for us to come to a partings of the ways.

I take it as a project; it's just a matter of time now for Netflix at my house.

Sorry but the NSA and the Presidents who authorized this shit have lost their way completely. IF and when the NSa is busted interfering in American or European economic or political life in the name of "national security" which they may have already done because clearly this is a group of technocrats, reputation hounds, careerists and yes men in whom any notion of what constitutes a civil society is entirely absent. They don't *get* that as soon as they're caught tipping outcomes, ruining lives, thwarting the speech and actions of individuals in the name of national security it's game over for us as a unified nation;It will break us up. IT will serve as the flashpoint for people who on the right are fed up with what they see as a statist regime and on the left as what they see as corptocry, a fascist unification of state and business interests who could give a shit about democracy. They will not accept the government as legitimate any more and in this they may have a majority opinion.

They've built a big machine that is just begging to be used in just this fashion, and just as with Snowden, what they've done WILL leak. Then it's game over, the United States will break up- at the hands of our own "national security" infrastructure.

They don't get this. They don't get that just the fact that X COULD be done with the information they stockpile, people will assume they ARE doing X in society generally and to them personally and no amount of telling them "you're crazy, no one cares about you" is going to change that perception.

This dynamic can not be permitted to exist ,period. It's not EVEN about what the NSA does or doesn't do (although it can be as above) it's about what it's like to be watched and recorded with no ability to watch the watcher. What psychological place that puts human being in. The fact that they don't get this, the fact that they didn't understand Snowden would happen, they think it's an aberration caused by his individual personality or personality type, the fact that they are not philosophers or have enough of the statesmen about them to even doubt the rightness of what it is they're doing but just blindly and ferociously defend it against all objections, all this means they've lost their way utterly.

As has Obama. Which is very bad on many levels.,

Of all our Presidents, you would expect a Constitutional scholar to puke up all over this shit. The fact that he doesn't could mean a lot of things. First, being good at school is just being good at school and nothing more. It's basically an isolated, disconnected stand alone specialized skill that doesn't come with any real world performance implications.

It may also mean that the NSA et al can overwhelm nearly anyone. With their presentations, unverfiable assertions, their ability to paint a picture of reality that no one else can verifiy or deny, no Commander in Chief is going to go against them. This means they're an unofficial 4th branch of government superior in power to the other three.

Isn't this what the FISA courts prove? They're the NSA's pet and nothing ore. Isn't this what the insane invocation of state's secrets whenever anything gets as far a courtroom proves? That they're unaccountable to our system of justice ? Isn't this what the unpunished lying to Congress and years and years of withholding and distorting information from and to Congress proves? That they're unaccountable to and superior to our system of government? Isn't what secret laws with secret interpretations which Congress and the People and the Courts can't see or even know about , isn't this a defacto fascist state, whatever their motivations or however benign (for now, with this particular crew) their actions?

I would vote impeach Obama. I would reach backwards and go after Bush and Cheney and Yoo and Addington and all the rest. It's not over, not by a long shot. I was a full on progressive Obama supporter. I cried when he took that walk to the inauguration with Michelle and his kids.. No shit. I sat there with tears streaming down my face completely chocked up. He needs to be impeached. Bush needs to be prosecuted as does Cheney and the rest of his criminal crew.

We have a lot of threats which should be considered potentially mortal to this nation. Global warming is certainly at the top of that list, as is the power terrorists could unleash using advanced technology. We need to take extreme measures to thwart these very very real threats. Another one equally as real is the destruction of this nation from within via political unrest borne of the certain knowledge that our system of government has been subverted from within and dissenters or anyone who opposes that subversion in any way , even inadvertantly, are being dealt with, perhaps in ways invisible, subtle, and - they think- unprovable or perhaps in ways which are overt, criminal and meant to intimidate.

It has to end. This is not about any individual personality; it's about keeping this country together.

Sometimes justice is also entertaining, witness Hog Farmer Reality Show ZZ-Top guy Show or whatever THAT was. Here, doing the Riight Thing is also amusing. I think at cocktail parties of a certain sort this is politely referred to as a "teachable moment".

That said, in this case it's not *just perfectly* clear the remark was meant to aggressively hurt anyone or was indicative of a truly racist mind. She wasn't saying Africans are X [bad thing] , she was saying that .. fuck... I actually have no idea what the fuck she was saying. Neither does she probably. Twitter's part 95% submerged iceberg taking down otherwise unsinkable titans and goddamn faux paus factory throttle wide open trying to meet demand of footless mouths everywhere.

Do as I do. Stay away.

There's this.

http://climatesciencedefensefund.org/

They are also looking for donations:

Are we really obliged to refute every manufactured opinion of faux scientists, paid liars and psychotic ideologues float in order to keep the fossil fuel gravy train going ? At what price.

Wikipedia comes through in fine form on this topic. I urge people to everyone reading this to donate 3 bucks a month on an ongoing basis to Wikipedia. It's a commons we all draw upon daily.

Thanks Wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial

Well then, you mean "yes", (and I'm not suggesting you meant otherwise) brains in humans are responsible for this behavior. What yo're saying, I think, is it can occur (or WILL occur) in any sufficiently complex system. That it *could * occur is just to say it could be modeled, so no argument there. That is WILL occur, that it's even some kind of metaphysical inevitability , like the train heading to Neo, given a complex enough system, I strongly disagree with.

Creatures generally have the characteristics they have owing to the particular and quiet accidental - which is not to say acausal - evolutionary path they went down over millenia. This left them with a predisposition to compete for limited resources *as though to reproduce an infinite number of their own kind were their goal*. This works to reproduce the genes that create the behavior, and we're done. This is the Blind Watchmaker. The watch works - in some haphazard and much less than ideal way, and the watchmaker proceeds.

There is never enough for us now because we evolved in an environment in which there was never enough , on balance, in reality. Now, this isn't the case and there's no need to continue as though it were. We fuck like we want a million copies of ourselves because that's what fuck tells us to do and for no other reason.

The path we've taken is particular, quirky and not at all inevitable, but it determines how we think and act. We evolved to compete against other creatures for limited resources - there was no other choice- AND ALSO AS IT HAPPENED we wanted to survive (this seems obvious, but it's necessary and also significant as explained later ) AND ALSO AS IT HAPPENED survival depended on sexual reproduction AND ALSO AS IT HAPPENED the particular mechanism that genes employ results in a deep concern for our kin above others. The list of things we do for reasons which are directly attributable to the peculiarities of an underlying mechanism and which *could* be different is long.

I actually have to run out the door right now. I have not fully read your post. I'll be back online later.

Robots aren't the problem. Robots are the latest extension of humanity's will via technology. The fact that in some cases they're somewhat anthropomorphic (or animalpomorphic) is irrelevant. We don't have now nor will we have a human vs robot problem; we have a human nature problem.

Excepting disease and natural catastrophes and of course human ignorance- which taken together are historically the worst inflictors of mass human suffering- the problems we've had throughout history can be laid at the feet of human nature and our own behavior to one another.

  We are creatures, like all other creatures, which evolved brains to perform some very basic social and survival functions. Sure, it's not ALL we are, but this list basically accounts for most of the "bad parts" of human history and when I say history I mean to include future history.

At the most basic brains function to ensure the individual does well at the expense of other individuals, then secondly that the individual's family does well at the expense of other families and thirdly that the individual's group does well at the expense of other groups and finally that the individual does well relative to members of his own group.

The consequences for not winning in any of the above circumstance are pain suffering and, in a worst case scenario, genetic lineage death- you have no copulatory opportunities and / or your offspring are all killed. (cure basement-dwelling jokes)

All of us who have been left standing at the end of this evolutionary process, we all are putative winners in a million year old repeated game. There are few, or more likely zero, representatives of the tribe who didn't want to play, because to not play is to lose and to lose is to be extinguished for all time.

What this means is, we are just not very nice to each other and that niceness falls away with exponential rapidity as we travel away from any conceptual "us" ; Supporting and caring about each other is just not the first priority in our lives and more bluntly any trace of the egalitarian impulse is totally absent from a large part of the population. OTOH we're , en masse, genocidal at the drop of a hat. This is just the tale both history and our own personal experience tells.

    Sure, some billionaires give their money away after there's no where else for them to go in terms of the "I'm important, and better than you, genuflect (or at least do a double take) when I light up a room" type esteem they crave from other members of the tribe. Many more people under that level of wealth and comfort just continue to try to amass more and more for themselves and then take huge pains to passed it on to their kin.

The problem is, we are no longer suited, we are no longer a fit, to the environment we find ourselves in, the environment we are creating.

We have two choices. We can try to limit, stop, contain, corral, monitor and otherwise control our fellow human beings so they can't pick up the fruits of this technology and kill a lot or even the rest of us one fine day. The problem here is as technology advances, the control we need to exert will become near absolute. In fact, we are seeing this dynamic at play already with the NSA spying scandal. It's not an aberration and it's not going to go away, it's only going to get worse.

The other choice is to face up to what we are as a species (I'm sure all my fellow /. ers are noble exceptions to these evolutionary pressures) and change what we are using our technology, at least somewhat, so that, say, flying plane loads of people into skyscrapers doesn't seem like the thing to do to anyone and nor does it seem like a good idea to treat each other as ruinously as we can get away with in order to advantage ourselves.

This would be using technology to better that part of the world we call ourselves and recreating ourselves in our own better image. In fact, some argue, that's the real utility of maintaining that better image - which we rarely live up- at all. We are not this, very much, but this is what we can dream we could be.

Is this any different than dreaming of a tricorder or a communicator and then making them happen? In fact , if you watch enough (too much!!) sci-fi, you'll eventually encounter an interesting meme. Good humanoids from the future are often less mesomorphic, have bigger craniums, and are more gentle and wise and caring and pursue, often in hidden and inscrutable ways, broadly egalitarian and humane goals.

And they're a lot less sexy, which is significant I argue because it's tacitly implied that the way forward in evolution is something other than the one favored by evolution and which directly and singly gives rise to the above enumerated dynamics, sexual selection.

One choice we don't have is the Luddite choice. Technology is going to move forward. That limits our options severely and strongly defines the choices we will be faced with going forward. I will bet on technology and not against it. We've brought engineering to every aspect of our environment except as yet the most important one- ourselves, our brains and the impulses, values and proclivities they generate.

Would love to hijack this thread and see what everyone uses since /. ers are likely more sophisticated and knowing in their selection than most ....

Well that's the point isn't it? They don't have it so good here. The fact that people elsewhere are held in worse conditions is immaterial just the way a man who beats and rapes a woman can't turn around to that woman and say "you have it so good, I didn't sell you into slavery.."

The fact is way too many Americans DON'T have to good - period. They have it pretty bad in fact. 22% of children live in outright poverty. When you look at how "poverty" is defined, it's really far far worse than that sounds 18.6K a year for a family of 3.

Perhaps you'd accept an employers logic that you should be paid 18.6 k a year because , hey, an entire *family* can make that much and STILL be OK. Or perhaps you'd find that logic exploitative, self-serving and irrelevant and the lifestyle which was forced on you by those wages grinding and abusive leaving you little in terms of time, money or energy so you could advance yourself.

The people who have it good ARE the top 1% and they're doing it at other people's expense, and to their own detriment BTW. Distorting laws and markets , in the long run hurts everyone. The problem is that run is long enough for an entire lifetime to play out nicely for the distorter. Given that people will do drugs that ruin their entire lives almost immediately in order to feel good for a very brief time, we can't expect the system to ever self correct.

The "you have it so good relative to X" is a fascist meme (not saying you yourself are fascist ! ! ). Scratch the surface and you'll see It's used almost exclusively to excuse abuse by an abuser or an enabler or sympathsizer of the enabler or, at best, someone who heard it and thought it sounded tough and realistic is a macho "life's tough, get over it" kinda way.

Following this. This headline is not exactly true. 1) RSA was paid 10M to make the NSA algo the default in their bSecure product. We have no direct evidence that RSA (now owned by EMC) KNEW the RNG (random number generator) in the NSA compromised algo had been compromised. This is 20/20 hindsight.

2) at the time, *some* people were suspiious generally of work done by NSA cryptographers for a variety of reason- the NSA had fought for the Clippe r Chip in the 90s ; the NSA was generally hsotile to strong encryption for civiliians etc. However, those opinions were countered by the majority of people who plausibly considered that the NSA had a real interest in seeing real encryption be used by US corporations etc. We now know who was right, the skeptics, but we didn't know that at the time that deal went down.

This is what's called "plausible deniability" or "cover" in intelligence circles and everywhere else now but that's the point- it IS plausible, entirely, that RSA was taking money (and not a lot to RSA) to make it the default because they believed the NSA.

Overall, at the time, the people who believed the NSA participated in encryption with the public out of a concern to see it done right were the majority.

Just keeping the story as straight as possible because what we're interested in is the truth as far as we can discern it, right?

Right. Exactly. People who go for this kind of thing are people who get transfixed on a certain narrative about how it will all go down. They're good at imagining a better world and bad,very bad, at imagining all the possible alternative branching for events that can take place, which is what actually happens.

You can't blame them, history is basically unpredictable because the number of interacting variables, and even what those variables are, is both unknown and astronomically large It's fundamentally inconceivable and very likely chaotic in the mathematical sense.

Life is what happens while you were making other plans, as they say. Neofascist daydreams - and this is what this is- about how much better the world would be if we got rid of democracy are nothing more than looking to simply NUKE the fundamental problem of "other minds".

Sure I know what we ought to do about global warming (and I am the least of such knowers) but I can't convince those other minds whom I perceive as self delusional , venal , suicidially- strike that -genocidially partisan and borderline insane.

These feelings I have go to the heart of the matter without solving it. We don't have a C02 problem so much as we have a human nature problem, a flaw in human psychology which evolved to serve needs other than truth telling and strict adherence to and respect for facts.

There is no political system which will make this problem go away or even be less ruinous. By concentrating power into the hands of fewer people, it becomes MORE ruinous. Those few minds become MORE distorted because they have MORE to lose and MORE to protect against MORE enemies and this triggers off a full dose of all the reality denial and distorted thinking the fascist , anti-democratic system was meant to be a solution to.

If you look at polls on big issues which are not new, specifically I am leaving out the recent spying scandal because it's too new for people to have worked through the implications yet, most people , the majority opinion, is the right one. On global warming. On slavery, in its day. On the banks. On regulation. On the energy companies. On the corrupting influence of money in politics. On the revolving political-corporate door . On a host of issues, while there is substantial minority opinion, the majority understand the world as it is.

We don't have a surplus of democracy problem. We have an efficiency of democracy problem.
 

Sure what you're saying is true, but not complete and therefore it leads to distorted thinking on the part of some people on the matter of fiat currency.

There is nothing that is not fiat about gold and silver (which when Nixon took us off the gold standard was considered "barbaric"). The ONLY thing gold bugs and Ron Paulers point to is the absolute inability for the govt to "print" more and therefore cause inflation or otherwise "control" the economy.

Bitcoin doesn't even have THAT property because unlike a literal periodic chart level element (gold, silver) there's NO shortage of people's ability to create new bitcoin-y type currencies which are very attractive to in their infancy

As far as how much is in circulation, only very indirectly do WE decide. Our (the whole world's ) collective activity decides PLUS the Fed - i.e. human information processing and judgement.

Without faith in the government's ability to make their fiat money worth something through some means, the currency loses value, but without faith in electronic fiat currency, so also it loses value. If the government collapses, what is your fiat electronic currency going to be worth? Nothing. People wont' trust it because it's 100% dependent on , and this is a rough concept just to get the point across- the world being "as stable as it is now or better". That means the distributed collective ability of competitive strangers to detect fraud in the bitcoin chain has to be ongoing and stable and this requires the world keep going in all infra
structur-y and economic aspects as it is now, or gets better. Collapse of the US govt is just one of those events in which this would not hold. BtC depends on the historically most delicate aspects of society and technology working "just so".

Aside from this, people accept fiat electronic currency just because they believe other people with. All currency is something like a confidence game in this limited way. Even gold and silver.

Point is, BtC has no properties or collection of properties which distinguishes it as being a stable or dependable store of value or really even unique- electronic currencies are the ULTIMATE commodity- unless we mean to count "uniquely vulnerable to being worthless".

It's also a commodity. There is nothing to stop someone else from starting their own currency, just as there was nothing to stop BtC from appearing out of nowhere its own line of "value" . As BtC get more expensive and mining get harder we can expect to see "me too" currencies whose "selling" point is to early adopters you can get in on the ground floor and whose "trading / accepting" point is, it hasn't hit its deflationary peak yet, so accept it, it will be worth more tomorrow than it is today.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. This is the real fundamental flaw in all unregulated fiat currencies. Fiat currencies are worth something because , by law, there is a governed amount of money and no other competing monies which themselves are not also so governed.

With Bitcoin, not so much. The exodus to "other" Bitcoiny type currencies hasn't happened yet, but there's no reason to think it won't and ever reason to think it will.

Oh wait, I spoke too soon. Or not soon enough. Or something.

http://www.coindesk.com/litecoin-silver-bitcoins-gold/

Even if Tor works perfectly with no back door, I can think of lots of ways to get at someone's identity if I have governmental level resources and the determination to do it. Tor will not protect you. Tor will protect you from sub governmental peeking. Surf MILF pr0n freely. A Bayesian attack on timing can identify you. Colored packets can identify you. The makers of Tor will tell you that it's not designed to provide invisibility when the network it's deployed on is largely subverted or subvertible.

This is a public service announcement to our younger readers. There'a lot of lore about "dark internet" and it's exact properties and all of this. You WILL be caught doing whatever it is you thought you were going to do. So don't do it. Just. Don't.