Except that in a first-past-the-post voting system, voting for a third party is the same as throwing your vote away, it's called Duverger's Law

There's a YouTube video on how to circumvent the DRM.

In other words, 3D printer DRM is: pretty much anything that makes the product worth buying

Also, if sysadmins would implement sha512 hashes with a 5,000 round PBKDF2, it would make brute-force dictionary attacks a lot harder to accomplish. Instead a lot of websites, even e-commerce sites, still use MD5.

Having carriers be in charge of updating smartphone firmware negates any benefit you might get from having a device that often costs more than $500. This is specific to Android, since Apple made sure they had complete control of the OS and the update process on their phones.

Just to name one: security issues are constantly cropping-up in Android, and Google is constantly patching things. Except good luck getting AT&T or Verizon to provide the updates OTA. And if you're stuck with an older phone, says > 1 year. Good luck getting any update at all.

As far as the carrier is concerned, in order to update the firmware, buy a new phone. Except you've now deliberately left millions of people vulnerable to having their accounts compromised because you were too cheap/lazy to provide an update (which Google makes available, btw).

Either Google should unify Android, meaning make one version for all models (or at least models newer than 3 years) and make it available OTA or by download, or license Android to carriers on the strict condition that they provide updates to existing models at least every 6 moths.

And even then, knowing how to solve a problem, or having "extra intelligence" at our disposal doesn't mean anything unless there's political and moral will to implement the solutions. All you have to do is look at the actions of the European Central Bank in responding to the financial crisis, as an example.

You have economists who studied crises for decades saying that the ECB should cut interest rates and allow higher inflation, what do the brilliant technocrats in Brussels do? Raise interest rates leading to double-digit unemployment in large swaths of Europe.

In other words, when implementing the solution to hard-problems is politically or morally untenable, even the greatest intelligence isn't going to help you

You're right, other than the fact that a program could determine that an overpopulated Earth is anathema to its own self-interest, and act accordingly. Or that it should begin stockpiling energy reserves for itself, thus driving up the price of oil, etc.

That's the problem with assuming that all technological progress is beneficial, or at least benign. You can't anticipate the consequences of a new technology, let alone something as problematic as an artificial intelligence.

Really?! What about culture, art, literature, music, which for an artificial intelligence lacking in emotion would mean nothing. You're so ready to throw-out the cultural history of humanity? When the cyborg army comes for you, I'll remember this.

Every. Time! Most governing in the US is done at the local level. Last time I checked, the cop that gives you a parking ticket works for the city or county where you live, not the federal government. Same goes for building inspectors, sewage, roads, schools--funded and operated by the school district or county--building permits, real-estate transactions, etc. It's all controlled at the city/local level.

Just how is the federal government in your face on a daily basis again?

But why would you assume that this is the case? Why is this kind of "progress"--a completely self-replicating artificial intelligence--inevitable? What evidence points to that?

Human beings don't even have a cure for cancer, billions of people lack clean water. Yet somehow (almost by magic or wishful thinking) we're supposed to assume that the human race will develop this technology in the next 100 years, and certainly in the next 500. What if it takes another 1,000 years?

Except by that point, the oil would have run out, and all the major cities are 30 feet under water. To believe that these technologies (AI, asteroid mining, fusion, nanotech) will see the light of day, you have to believe that we can undertake another Moon Landing when electricity is $10 kw/hr and the government doesn't have the money to repair a 50 year-old bridge.

This still doesn't explain why Facebook is worth $208 billion. That's more than AT&T which has paying customers, Toyota, which makes cars, and Pfizer, which makes drugs. How does Facebook make their money, or enough to justify it being more valuable than Toyota?

all the 2nd amendment says is "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..." Not about being secure in your person.

I'm a bit of a DB n00b, but know my way around MySQL. What's the difference between Oracle and MySQL for example. In my experience Oracle DBs tend to be a lot faster, than open source implementations. But is this inherently true, or is it all in the implementation, are there things you can do in Oracle that you can't do in MySQL, or MSSQL?

Except that Ulbricht actually did use an email or username that they traced back to him when he set up the onion server, and on top of that they caught him accessing the admin section of Silk Road when he got arrested in a library.

It's a mix of hubris and carelessness that brings these people down. If he'd paid more attention to OpSec, he'd be a free man.

The government can already do what you're claiming to be so worried about. Happens every day. Shit, you could be driving to your mom's house and get pulled over. The cop thinks you might have drugs in the car, so they confiscate it, and take your cash while your at it. Good luck getting all that back without hiring an expensive attorney.

So in other words, the Constitution doesn't mean anything when you don't have the means to actually claim your constitutional rights. There are a million things the government does already that are blatantly unconstitutional, but because they have a patina of cooperation between the two parties, it gets away with--illegal wiretaps, spying, drone strikes, etc.

Another amendment wouldn't actually do anything. If politicians and their appointees have no fear when violating your civil rights, they're going to keep doing it. The only thing that will actually change that behavior is jail time for government officials who break the law.

Instead what happens, the people who go to jail are the ones who leak information about the illegal behavior.