Little tip:

Be careful in your wording:

story: "Greece's Former Finance Minister Explains"
you say: "taking advice from Greece"

How would you like your statement read?
    - "Taking advice from Greece..." (as if the advice came from the nation of Greece, not a Greek citizen -- which is false - as it came from a citizen, not the state)
    - "Taking advice from Greece..." (as in advice from ANYBODY Greek - as if the Greek nationality was a guarantee that it's bullshit? -- which could be considered racist; or incitement to racial hatred)

Personally, I don't support UBI - but not because I don't think it wouldn't work -- but that I think UBI _alone_ isn't enough. (And - no, I'm not a communist either, nor do I believe that everyone should have exactly the same; ...) UBI just has a couple of small flaws in it, that I gather will make it unsustainable.

How much will the EU taxpayers have to cough up in tax money to make up for lost money on greek government debt?
You might not want to pay the Greek government - but banks who have given money to Greece will certainly recuperate that money - either through charges levied against their customers, or through more government bail-outs.

In the meantime, it doesn't help us non-Greeks either, if Greece gets driven into a default without helping them to get to a place where they can repay the money.

Historical hint: Think of the Marshall plan that helped build up Germany after WW-II. Now Germany is one of the richest nations - but without the Marshall plan it would likely not have managed to grow effectively -- with another war the most likely outcome. (Just like war reparations after WW-I gave rise to an atmosphere that allowed Hitler to gain power).

So, if one cannot find work, he should get sterilized - because if you can't find work, it is _proven_ that your offspring must be equally "worthless" to society?

If that were so - how come we could progress to the current state? Surely, 100 years ago, no-one had the kind of computer skills we have now? So, right now, people with computer skills are in existence, that are the offspring of people that didn't have these skills.

You're forgetting something - 2-3 centuries ago, that would have been easily possible - as long as you find a little plot of land somewhere (even if in the middle of a forest) then you would have a good chance of a means to support yourself.

Now - find a place, where you are allowed to plant something of your own - at first, you'd need to find a plot of land that doesn't belong to anyone - and that, by now, in Europe is almost impossible. If land is arable, it is owned by someone. If it's a forest, it's owned by someone. The times where you could make a living for yourself without being "dependent" on someone else - namely, someone who is willing to pay for your services.

So, what will the future hold for the "lower qualified" jobs that robots eat up? They can't _force_ a company (or _any_ company) to hire them to work for a living wage.

But, before you try your line "live and die by your own efforts, not mine" - before you go as far as declaring whose lives are worth being kept or allowed to starve - just think about how secure your own job will be 10-20 years down the line. I've seen my net "middle-class" income being reduced over the last 12 years (through cut-downs by some employers - and other employers not willing to pay as much as the previous ones -- even though they make more profits; so it's not a cost necessity to go through the cuts -- it's just that it's possible, as there is a lot more competition from outsourcing jobs to lower-wage countries).

Another thing you should think about is the implications of what you're saying - "living and dying by your own efforts", this sounds "natural" in the most basic sense - it's what happens in the animal kingdom, but do remember that this is also what drives conflict in nature (the fight for survival). While your sentence seems to imply "either earn your living or go die quietly somewhere away from me" - rest assured, that it will rather create MORE violence, not less. (all the while also foregoing those "low-earners" as customers for your businesses - which might also be a chance for growth.

The current system of capitalism is too transfixed on "optimizing" (think: economies of scale; automation; ...) - and at the same time leaving governments unable to really care for their citizens, as more high paying jobs (and hence high income tax payers) get eroded, while at the same time, profits are being moved across the globe so that the companies also don't pay taxes that would make up for the shortfall from the eroding income tax base.

Your "fight for yourself" approach has only a very short term usefulness - so it's a great model as far as people in their 80s are concerned: the kind of people who do not need to care whether the whole system will break down 10 years down the line -- because they most likely be gone by then.

Sure, I guess the Mexicans won't care too much about how thick an ice sheet is covering the US, as long as you stay north of the wonderful and lovely Trump wall...

So, basically google now says, that Apple's "single App Store" is the better model?

Strange logic you use: you refer to "the hordes of neanderthals coming our way here", but the Neanderthals were an ancient race of human named after a find IN GERMANY! So, from the German perspective, isn't "the hordes of neanderthals coming our way" more like a descriptions of Germans streaming into the country?

If you mean to say "the hordes of primitives", then may be have a chat with some of them and find out who and what they are, instead of just following Pegida hate-speech about people you most likely haven't even met.

As for what happened in Cologne on December 31st - you're right, it was disgusting, and we need to put a stop to it - and crimes committed that night need to be investigated and the culprits punished -- just the same way, as if they were just run-of-the-mill German criminals.
But - are you really trying to imply that the number of rapes on that night would be disproportionately higher than rapes of German women by Germans? How many charges of *rape* have been filed?
(Note: be clear: you speak of those that "raped" in Cologne - how many was that?)

Besides - if you really think you have any serious point to make, why do you hide under "Anonymous Coward"?

On social media I see that a lot of people just send connection requests everywhere, but rarely follow up with actual conversation. (this particularly goes for job agents on linkedin - who will spam you with "would like to connect" queries without ever having heard of you, having anything like a job opportunity that might be right for you, or even asking for more information about you. Seems the only thing they're really after is having "more connections".

So, is having more facebook "friends" really an indication of more connectedness?

If so, if we're all more connected, why is there a rising partisanship among people?

If we're more connected, why do we have so much trouble helping refugees from warzones? And - not just in the US, but in Europe, too -- Germany has taken on a huge number of refugees in the last year - but at the same time, we've also experienced a strong rise in anti-immigration sentiment. I'm feeling ashamed seeing the rise of "anti-islam" (or more generally just plain xenophobic) Pegida movement in Germany - rising from one of the states with the lowest percentage of foreigners...

Yes, connectedness truly seems on the rise.

I had given facebook a try a few years back, but dropped back out of it and asked for my account to be deleted a few months later -- good riddance.
I just don't know why they think that by counting how many people you have as "friends" on facebook is a good indicator for how connected we are...

Ever thought that the sharing of information isn't the problem, but other things the Internet enabled?

Say, you can find qualified people in other countries with lower wages and have them work for you over the Internet - thereby adding downward pressure on the very same jobs in your own country. At the same time, somewhat unsurprisingly, there doesn't seem to be downward pressure on CEO jobs - even though I'd bet you could find qualified MBAs in "cheaper labour force" countries...

Nonsense - it will be here "real soon now"!

Does that also go for your choice of quantity (2 m in Demming) as opposed to quality (His name was Deming - 1 m)? ;-)

So, if I were by far the most intelligent man on the planet, you wouldn't mind me stealing the election and running the country just to benefit my friends and myself?

Don't mistake intelligence alone for an automatically benign and positive thing for everyone else involved - there are seriously smart people you might want in charge, but there are also seriously smart psychopaths you might not want to run the country or even have a bigger say in the decision on who does.

Well, I would think it depends on how they do it - in Switzerland, Cablecom does the same - as a subscriber you get one of their routers, and apart from your own connection (which you get at the full advertised speed), there is another channel using which they turn your modem into a "free" wifi hotspot.

The catch in this case comes with the word "free" - it is free to their paying subscribers: i.e. at home I have my own connection, but everywherelse in Switzerland, within wifi distance from any of their other customer's cable routers, I can access the internet through wifi at no extra cost.

Non-subscribers do not get access to this wifi...

In this case, my "reason to pay" them is for the (better) access I have for myself at home but it also includes the convenience of having free wifi across many places in Switzerland...

Sorry, the pre-announcement does have a point - if the security hole is major, then you want admins to be ready to patch their systems pretty much immediately.

If you just released the "fixed" version together with a description of the vulnerability - it might give extra time to potential attackers to figure out how to exploit the problem before an admin becomes aware that there even IS a new version.

In this case, the certificate verification might not have sounded like a big thing to you - but think where client certificates are being used - not that many places, but usually "important" ones, and often ones that have real economic consequences for the parties involved if they were to be broken (like many VPNs between businesses; or protected services that require client certificates for authentication. If it were "easy" to forge one, the protection would be harder to maintain (if it were even still possible to maintain).

Love my fiber connection, too - in our town implemented by the city's utility companies (in St. Gallen, Switzerland) - and ISPs can offer data access over the city's fiber.

Promised 100MBit/s up / 100MBit/s down; 1 static IPv4 address; IPv6 support - all working absolutely fine...

A new provider has started offering 1GBit/s up+down for a reasonable rate - but I'll wait and see how happy people will be with them - for now, 100MBit/s up+down is plenty for me...