Actually, you really don't get it.

The financial system is fundamentally held together by one thing: trust. The US Dollar isn't the key currency because the US was the largest economy, or because we have the most weapons - although those things factor into it. The US Dollar is where it is because the US has the political will and ability to support the world financial system when things go bad, even though those actions may cause severe short-term problems in its own economy.

Do you trust China to manage your currency? Even the Chinese don't trust their government when it comes to money. Russia? The EU?

Good luck with that.

The article sounds pretty ridiculous, but in reality studies have shown that imagining practice is almost as good as practice.

Those "mirror neurons" sound like neurons being used to simulate actions of others. Saying that they automatically reflect actions taken by another is a stretch in humans. In monkeys, maybe it's triggering a pavlovian-style neural pathway.

I would rather not try to base a whole philosophy of something or another on animal studies. Try it on some college students first and see.

"Watching porn triggered the same neural pathways as actual sex."
"When people see violent things it's like they're doing those violent things in their mind."

I think a more accurate statement which is consistent with humanity is:

"Kids model their behavior on what they see adults doing." That isn't the same as "mirror neurons" by far.

Bad music. Wish they had a front facing camera. Why not get a go pro sponsorship?

I remember Cloudera saying that most people use hadoop for ETL. Not sure if you've checked, but hadoop is like the ne plus ultra of ETL tools. It's worth a look if you have to transform lots and lots of data.

Yeah, I remember when 1mhz was fast.

Look on eBay for parts; you can upgrade your device to 240GB. It's pretty easy to do, for the most part.

"I'm going to sit here and drink my coffee."

Great, my data is protected by federal laws.

So what happens when there's an "unauthorized release" of your data by a federal agency?

Nothing!

That's why the laws on "unauthorized release" are bogus when you're talking about the government. No penalty = no enforcement = no care.

The TLA agencies care about your data when they need to ensure your cooperation with an ongoing investigation.

Where's the oversight? Oh, it was by the same people that oversee the NSA, never mind.

This is totally not a story about unintended consequences. If you read all three parts (which is a great read), you'll see that the cycle went like this:

Native fish taken out by alweifes
Alewifes taken out by Salmon
Salmon taken out by too few alewives (overfeeding)
Native species recover, because of no alewifes

The original guy did exactly what he set out to do: destroy alewives with salmon and build a fishing economy. That was pretty successful. After that population crashed they eventually discovered that the original fish came back, due to the lack of alewives.

The unintended consequences in this case are positive - marine biologists were able to learn something totally unexpected by doing experiments on a large scale.

The original goal was never to get the native species back; it was to make the lakes back into a commercial fishery. Is the state today "better" because the native species are back? Who knows. Just because things are status quo ante doesn't mean it's better. That population is just as vulnerable to a die off as it used to be.

That's why it's better to read the article instead of skimming it.

So, Rocket for Android would be called Pocket Rocket?

Government purports to represent voters, but it's unclear whether that's the best solution. In the US, the government represent the concerns of people in a particular area, and that area happens to have voters in it.

The US Senate is designed to give equal representation to states, no matter how big or small. Puny states like MD or RI have as much voting power as NY and CA. Fair? No, if you count "fairness" by "representative based on population."

However, the Senate is fair if you count them as representatives of the States.

Likewise for Congressional districts. A Rep represents a district, and by extension the voters in a district.

By representing by straight vote count you will over-represent urban voters, which is exactly what's happening in most of the states today. That's bad for a number of reasons, the first being that concerns of urban voters are different than concerns of rural voters; the urban voters will always win on a straight up-and-down vote.

While this may seem great to the urbanistas, a bit of reflection should enlighten you as to why this would be a bad idea.

What are the possible choices for farmers?

1. grow crappy crops with free seeds and lots of expensive water,
2. grow good groups with seeds that you need to pay for but use less water?

#2 will make you more money, so the cost of the seeds is a non-factor. #1 will make you poor, because when it doesn't rain your crops die.

So, what exactly is the issue?

I wonder if they're doing their tracking by just sending traffic the servers in question from multiple places and with control over a few exit nodes. They'd basically be sending seismic waves through Tor and timing the responses. After a while and with enough exit nodes you could start figuring out where the other nodes are. With enough traffic analysis from ISPs or whatever you could find out where the TOR nodes actually are. At that point it becomes easier to figure out physically where they are.

This is theoretical, but it would be fun to try.

Hey, where'd the hiatus go? You know, the one they said didn't exist, then it did?