But I don't think the competition of the official prize with the black market is relevant at all.

Right now a big proportion of exploits come from security researchers, partially because they're looking for exploits, but also because they do have a strong incentive to find and report vulnerabilities. I don't think a cash prize is going to change their calculation much.

The place a prize could make a difference is in ordinary developers. I suspect a lot of bugs are partially discovered multiple times before they're officially reported. Some developer is working with the software, notices some weird behaviour, but doesn't follow up because they lack the incentive. A cash prize increases the incentive and potentially turns some of those dev hunches into new bug reports.

The way the black market comes into play is the devs are competing against the black market. If the bug discovery rate goes up the price of zero-day exploits goes down (since they're shorter lasting) as does the incentive to discover them (since good devs are competing for the same bugs). So you can significantly impact the black hat market without approaching the black hat rate.

increased rates of those that had poor overall driving techniques (fast acceleration, hard braking, etc.)

Yes, you should definitely make people pay more who are poor drivers.

But the things you list may not be indicative. They could mean someone avoided an accident instead of causing one...

The next time someone behind you is about to hit you, reflect on if they should apply brakes gently or with force.

Yes, because it can help others, you selfish bastard.

People always complain companies are greedy, but they should take a look at individuals who want a piece of the action for EVERYTHING.

What is wrong with you? Seriously? Why is everyone so greedy that a company cannot accidentally or otherwise make one cent off data you willingly contribute for the greater good?

Could you have sold that data anyway? No? Then what the hell man?

There are some that go that far (I am not one). But at least they are logically consistent. If you are not OK with killing babies one second before birth, or one second before the brain activates, you are not logically consistent.

It's OK to not be logically consistent. It's NOT OK to not be so, while claiming others should be. Then you are just a dick.

I think abortion should be allowed twosome degree. But this argument has a problem:

it should be possible for everyone to at least agree that it can't happen before there is brain with some level of function. No brain, no problem!

When you buy a lamp without a bulb, do you throw it away before you plug it in because it's not emitting light?

Or instead is some value placed on the container before it's switched on, because of inherent capability...

And they do. Except on drugs. And media regulation. And pornography. And abortion.

The only one of those things that most people "leaning to the right" I know disagree about ever, is abortion. That's still a hot topic which society has not figured out an answer that pleases everyone, and probably never will.

But all of the other things? Please. Modern libertarians are not not for heavy regulation on anything, much less drugs... I personally think legalizing all drugs is the only sensible thing to do.

A lot of the comments comes from long established accounts that have commented on many other topics which doesn't really seem feasible for an astroturf network (unless they were 3rd party groups that get contracted by different entities). But moreso there's a lot of them who do engage in back and forths for quite a while, that's simply something that doesn't make sense for an astroturf because there's no point in a one-on-one with someone you clearly can't convince.

the Colorado Government is already at it with their right wing propaganda

Colorado is (narrowly) governed by the Democrats, not right wing. The Democratic governor is trying to slow down states from legalizing, despite it being a roaring success for everyone.

In fact what you'll find these days, is that most right-wing people lean libertarian - which is exactly why the people of Colorado (who lead independent/to the right) were perfectly fine legalizing something so many people did all the time anyway.

Look to the Democrats to shut it down... They are the ones that need the massive funds the government gets from the war on drugs to help fund lots of other progressive measures.

You can easily legalize MJ and continue your money-generatin war on all the other drugs. It's like a token gesture to the people to make them think the government has given them something, while at the same time pacifying them even further. Win/Win (for the government).

The US is allegedly a rich country, that your government chooses not to help is the problem.

We choose not to have the government help much, because government is inherently wasteful.

Instead many Americans donate money to charitable organizations that waste far less of the money, so more people obtain help... America by far has the highest rate of donation to charity.

I've always wondered how god-fearing republicans can choose to not the help poor people

That's where you are utterly, terribly wrong - I am an independent, and do not attend church. But I know a lot of "god-fearing republicans" that donate a large amount of charity, plus every church I've every know has lots of missionary work they do to help the poor.

In fact if you look at statistics you'll find that Republicans donate quite a lot more (on average thousands more) than Democrats do - because like you they don't really care about helping the poor, they just want to feel like they are.

First of all, sorry about your not closing the quoting tag you used. I do that sometimes, and it's so sad to see all your hard work obscured under an italic fog... so I thought I would at least respond in detail to help make up for it.

The charging point you make is a great one. There are some powered mounts that you can plug a phone into, but they require more work to fit... I prefer a general mount you can use with separate power so that as I change phones I can maintain the same mount.

A really excellent non powered mount is the FlexPod, if a model exists for your car... it's very sturdy and is not obtrusive when not in use.

If notifications are an issue you can usually set the phone to something like Do Not Disturb mode. But I've never had that really cause issues.

Now about the Garmin device giving great directions - that may be true, dedicated devices have had a while to build good nav systems. I personally use Apple Maps and find the navigation for that works pretty well, it also gives land guidance... (it was better than Google Maps for navigation from Day One).

But, there also exists a Garmin dedicated app with offline maps. You get all of the Garmin benefits you detailed, only it's easier to update,

And you can switch to Waze when not needing navigation (I totally agree with you about Waze navigation not working very well). As you say, nothing beats the Waze Police/Hazard alerts.

If I wanted to describe how you would start WWIII I think this passage would be a good start. Remember Europe actually knows what a real war looks like, even if you could keep it conventional a military confrontation with Russia is going to result in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of deaths. Add nukes to the equation and you really want to get hesitant about calling Russia's bluffs.

Personally my vote is for UN peacekeeping troops in Eastern Ukraine, ideally made up of troops from anywhere except the US (and ideally Europe). It puts a neutral party with a good reputation in the crosshairs, it makes a military invasion by Russia extremely costly, but it doesn't embarrass Putin by being overly pro-West and in the worst case of an invasion it won't escalate into a major war.

I don't think China and Russia being worse is a valid defence for the US. But I do think it's a valid point of criticism for Snowden. It is a bit hypocritical to criticize the US's surveillance activities, and then flee to the only two major powers that are demonstrably worse.

That being said I think he did have understandable motives, he wanted to go to somewhere that wouldn't extradite him to the US. That means a country that is a) not particularly friendly with the US, and b) powerful enough to resist US pressure, that pretty much means China and Russia. As the Evo Morales grounding incident demonstrates Europe was not an option. Maybe Ecuador was but they may not have been big enough and he still had to get there.

It's still unfortunate that he's in Russia, I think the Ukraine incident has revealed that Putin is a bit crazier than anyone anticipated and Snowden's position more tenuous. The Russians may have been threatening to send him back to the US as a concession to ease the sanctions unless he starts cooperating in their propaganda.

The uproar was that with computers long term storage the IRS could do things like make you pay taxes on something your parents did 60 years ago, or use the power of tagging to harass specific organizations based on political leanings. What absurd notions those people of ancient times had!

Chuckle.

What could be worse than food!?

Taco Bell