HackingTeam unbeknownst to us until after their breach was clearly selling their technology to questionable parties, including but not limited to parties known for human rights violations."

So would that include the US government and its allies? The Washington gang certainly falls under "parties known for human rights violations" (including torture)

You'd like to think that, wouldn't you?! You've beaten my giant, which means you're exceptionally strong, so you could've put the poison in your own goblet, trusting on your strength to save you, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you! But, you've also bested my Spaniard, which means you must have studied, and in studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so you would have put the poison as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me!

I think you are missing some serious possibilities for your over-analyse :)

What if the hackers in question simply do not take as nuanced of a view as you and are just throwing shit against the wall in order to justify their actions and stir up some publicity?

Perhaps, they were paid by a rival site or, are even an ex-employee?

> My guess would be that it is more about attacking the site operator than about the users specifically; it is pretty common for at least a person or two to end up suitably embittered during the course of business.

Well there are only so many glasses the powder can be in right? Sounds about right, personal grudge or even rival corp. Hell, I almost got involved with a contract to do some cleanup a while back because someone had found out his developer in India was abusing the company servers to run his own side business and fired him..... to which he responded by logging in to their hosting service and turning off machines; I could see a more vindictive person doing something like this.

People making twisted ethical arguments in order to justify what they want to do is not really anything new though so it is hard to rule out people who just wanted to pick a target to hack and are justifying a target that wont get a ton of sympathy. It can also be a little of A and a little of B.

The only thing really clear is they don't seem to have done this for money, though, who knows if they have another angle. Maybe they are contacting individuals who look like they might be able to afford to keep their info out of the dump? I bet you there are more than a few who would pay up.

But remember, we live in a world where people actually say things like "If I find he is sleeping with someone else I am going to beat her bloody"....like the third party is the one who did wrong. These are matters that evoke passions that, for many people, shine far brighter than ethics and reason.

Its so much easier when they just demand a ransom or something. Who benefits from the site shutdown? Even a rival site would likely see reputational fallout from this. In fact, the only parties I can think of who really would benefit here are divorce lawyers and the traditional dating sites who may see a slight bump, but its hard to see how they would see this as worth it when there is so much competition for desperation already.

Couple of things:

> There's more wrong than that. The creators of the protocol are of the shared mentality that any inflation is bad, thus bitcoins have a fixed supply.

Mentality is not really relevant. You could say that of any fixed supply instrument. Once the last gold nugget is mined gold is deflationary. Now, if you told me gold is a terrible basis for a currency....I would AGREE with you. However, that doesn't mean it is useless as an economic instrument. Not everything is liquid currency or needs to fill the niche it does.

Gold is a terrible basis for a currency that lubricates the economy; however, its a great instrument for hedging against inflation.

Bitcoin fits into an odd space where it tries to be gold and cash at the same time. Its an odd ecological niche, but I think, a real one, since it allows value to be transmitted electronically.

One of the values, beyond what we discuss is the decentralization. Now its not perfect, as we know, but, compared to what? Look at our current system where its clearly an old boys club who are bilking the whole economy for their own gain.

You can look at inflation of the money supply as a form of wealth redistribution, you devalue the currency by creating more value, and flow it into the economy. Its not a bad thing per se. Its economic lubricant, it gives people incentive to invest money rather than hoard it....its good.

However, the current redistribution is patently unfair. Just look at the grab for TARP money where wall street execs were, quite literally, putting their wives in charge of companies just to receive the new money in the form of no-recourse loans.

Its wealth redistribution from everyone....right into the pockets of the already wealthy! Is it any wonder there are enough people fed up with it to create little niche markets like bitcoin?

Block both sides and it prevents annoying calls, and provides privacy at the airport.

Though for the latter I always just wanted to get the little lead letters they used to use for marking x-rays and sew messages like "private area" or "get a real job" into my pants.

> Why does it always come back to this? A reasonable person doesn't care how someone else expresses themself when it's not an impediment.

Um... I wish I knew but sadly, there is a significant portion of the population who don't seem to understand this concept and couple that with their own ignorance into some rather toxic opinions that get parroted quite a bit.

> For practical and scientific purposes, biological sex is still an important and largely immutable categorization.

Yes but those purposes have little to no real bearing on most situations and are largely irrelevant unless you are involved in medicine or sexual relations. Yet, some people seem to like bringing them up as if they are some sort of gospel that tells an entire story rather than simply an imperfect map.

Except this is actually admission of an abuse: This research could have saved lives. Civilian lives, American lives, even children's lives. There was really no excuse for keeping this sort of information secret for any length of time.

Screw that, lets boycott the UK over such arcane use of the English language as "Abstracting Electricity". Fucking call it stealing like any normal person and move on from there. Then realize the amount "stolen" is so insignificant as to only be discussable as an abstract concept, and fuck off entirely.

Or better, yet, realize that anyone in the station is a paying customer, and good customer service says you don't make a scene over a few pennies, and make an ass of yourself and your employer over it.

The actual transit officials seem much more reasonable as they point out that the system may not be safe for use with these devices.

Honestly we need only come back to the US and look at airports to see why people with police powers make terrible security. Airport security was at exactly the level it needed to be back before the TSA existed, it was very lax, and pretty polite. Police powers and independent authority from the customer service business end really fucked the whole thing up.

> Yet, many social sciences teach that self-identification should be the only factor and to suggest anything else is discrimination.

I don't think that is an accurate characterization when there has been some evidence found for a biological role in some aspects of gender identification. In fact, a specific region of the brain in transsexuals has been found to be typical of their identified gender rather than the one their chromosomes would predict. Additionally its even been found female to male transsexuals experience "phantom limb syndrome" for the penis they never had.

So really, evidence points to, we are actually talking about people with what appears to be a congenital birth defect, in the one organ we are pretty shit at tampering with directly....the brain. So yah, I would say that expecting them to express the same gender identification as someone without their condition is about as discriminatory as asking a man in a wheelchair why his lazy ass can't walk up the stairs.

Have you seen this: https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_...

I watched it the other day, and its interesting to think how we might enhance our existing biology. However, if what really makes us so unique is just a paper thin membrane of newly evolved tissue, then.....

It seems even more amazing would be to liberate that membrane from its lizard brain substrate entirely.

I remember being new; I was in a class for Unix administration where the instructor pulled me aside and asked "why are you in this class when you know this stuff already?", well, two reasons... one of them was the reason I gave him then, I had no way to prove I knew anything and to get my foot in the door.... I was self taught from running my own boxes.

Now I realize there was a second reason, I had no idea what I knew, or where that would put me in the ranks of newbie admins. Turns out I was ahead of the game compared to many, but how did I know that? (and how did I know 15 years later I would still occasionally come across a tool thats been around longer than I have been alive that could have saved me time in the past, like...I just last year learned about the disown command.... do you know how many times I wanted that? )

Sometimes you need the boost in confidence and a little help past the keyword searchs to the interview. Its all about the interview, which makes it a good bit about being confident in the chair. Hell, I have seen some pretty incompetent people interview well and get jobs....because it turns out, its not just about confidence and knowledge but about problem solving.

Hell the best group I ever worked for would ask interview questions looking for answers like "I would google it" because, they didn't care what you knew, but whether you could solve problems that come your way.

I think once you are in the industry, or if you want to change your focus, certs/classes etc can be good for getting in the door, but once you have the experience, unless your jobs will be requiring it (and willing to pay to maintain it) then, I doubt they are worth it...especially some of them.

Yup, but now, its the privately owned swat teams who "know best".

We finally got the numbers here in MA from the ones who tried to deny FOIA requests and the numbers show why, out of over 60 incidents, there was 1 clearly within the bounds of what swat is for, 10 that are pretty arguable (a "barricaded person" really requires swat? You can't even credibly say armed?).

Its not even a matter of a significant minority or simple majority. 2 out of 3 times they are called in is outside of their claimed scope, and 10 our of 11 of those remaining barely justify them at all.

The only thing this attitude is good for is their bottom line.

I heard my mother getting nasty with them on the phone.... "Windows doesn't call people!"

So I stopped her, and said "You know how you annoy me by asking vague questions? why don't you do it to them, just, pretend to be following their instructions and keep claiming its not working".

We used to work at the same company, one day the head of the helpdesk called me up and said "I just got off the phone with your mother"

He then told me how he spent an inordinate amount of time, and had to send a tech out, because he couldn't get her to plug the ethernet back into the wall.

He just fell silent when I asked the one question: "So, did she even bother to tell you she is practically blind?" Guessing she didn't.

I haven't checked in on it but, I do hope she has turned her power to good.

Everyone is so stuck on the maximum ratio. I think the point is the mechanism has interesting properties and is quite small. Looking at his materials, he lists several gearing configuratios including output reductions of ~2, 87, 1000

That plus its ability to hold its output load, and do it all so compactly with so few parts makes for a more intetesting device than just the maximum output set he printed.

I tried it, not with a proper standing desk but simulating one the best I could one day.

I did like it a lot, and would spend a good bit of my day standing with the option but, it wasn't something I found I could jump right into. I don't simply stand all day, so I am just not used to it and it was painful after a while. I found myself needing to sit.

That said, I did feel that if it was part of my normal work environment, that I could transition from seated to standing, I think I would use it frequently.

Do you have any idea how much better shape we would be in if this was actually true? The 1%ers are the middle management who work for the people that this government actually works for. More like the 1%ers of the 1%ers.