There is no reason that a social media app needs a centralized server farm, or even a single implementing app. Thus, no central organization is needed either.

What we need is an open communications protocol -- a real-time, secure, open, and fully distributed replacement for RSS, SMS, and the whole social media posts/reactions/threads/galleries concept that doesn't rely on people having to know how to set up or join a server and that doesn't involve having to implement dozens of other previous attempts to do similar things (FOAF, etc.).

As for controlling behavior -- this can be done by simply requiring people to be invited by others, and that invitation should have consequences if the invited person ends up being a bad actor (spammer, etc.). Just like in real life -- you trust people based on experience and introductions, and that trust level is inversely proportional to the degrees of separation.

Many times, "annotations" merely mean footnotes, links to related court cases, etc. They are theoretically copyrightable, assuming they meet the standard. This, in and of itself, is not a problem for publishers like PublicResource.

However, in the case of the CGA, part of the issue is that the "annotations" also include the *titles of the sections*. A set of laws without headings at major junction points of the law is basically useless for navigation. FindLaw (owned by Thomson Reuters), for example, also publishes the Code of Georgia, but in unannotated form, so once you get below a "Chapter" in the regulation, you're essentially just looking at a table of contents of numbers. This is the *only* state in the US that includes section titles in the "annotated" content.

Also, the *unannotated* code is not available from the State of Georgia, and the "official" code linked from the State is the *annotated* code, which is hosted by LexisNexis and hidden behind their spider-hostile web site. (California, New York, and Tennessee also have their official publications of laws outsourced to LN or WestLaw.)

Part of my job is maintaining a company-wide system that consumes and analyzes statutes and regulations from hundreds of jurisdictions (from countries down to villages). We look for changes, assign metadata, and use the database to do work for our clients (we don't compete with the "official" publishers). Sites like LexisNexis and WestLaw are purposefully designed to make my job difficult, because they are trying their best to monopolize and monetize publication of public domain laws. They use these annotation copyright claims, along with anti-spider technology and ludicrous TOS, to create virtual fences against anyone else publishing the same laws, annotated or not.

Malware doesn't use the transparent file system encryption tools provided by the OS. It simply overwrites the files with encrypted versions of themselves using its own encryption scheme, silently, until it has enough leverage over the end user to display a message holding the files hostage. The OS can't tell the difference between malware and any other sort of normal write activity.

That said, a smarter OS *could* notice that user files are being read or written at a pace or breadth that is inconsistent with the user's normal activity, and it could then quarantine the processes involved until the user or administrator confirms that the activity is expected. That would of course create the usual issues of needing to whitelist certain processes, and if that is something the user can do, it's also presumably something the malware can do running under the user's privilege.

Honestly, the best *final*-tier protection is the same as it's always been -- good backups. Preferably, backups that are automatic, preserved for some reasonable period of time, and are logged and verified by someone other than the user. The vast majority of these ransomeware attacks did nothing that wouldn't have happened eventually when the users' hard drives wore out.

Gosh darn it, this is politics, you're not supposed to use "math" and "logic"!

As long as it's paid for by higher income taxes, not additional deficits, the UBI is a smoothing algorithm for net income.

But it's not just that. It would be:
- a stable floor of economic activity (poor people are more likely to spend the money);
- a replacement for welfare programs that require far more administrative burden and intrusive oversight;
- a significant help for people who want to go to university or trade school without drowning in loans; and
- a potential source of "bootstrap" funding for millions of people to start a new small business.

Sure, it will result in *some* people leaving the workforce and becoming professional bums, living only on whatever stipend is offered. But that money *also* goes right back into the economy.

And in the worst-case scenario of a recession, it provides a means of injecting new (deficit-funded) money into the economy without just padding the pockets of banks with sweetheart loan rates.

In light of recent events, I am now limiting my MoviePass subscription to $0 / month.

Sad to see it go, I never expected their business model to last long term, but it was a good run... :(

A universal income has a few advantages:

- Reduces personal catastrophic financial risk in starting a new small business or non-profit.
- Supports people obtaining an education.
- Supports people who are not able to work (invalid, disabled, etc.)
- Provides a "floor" of survivability for people who *are* employed but at sub-living-wage.
- Encourages finding a job, because it doesn't go away when you do obtain a job. Said another way, it benefits everyone, not just those who have a job.
- Puts more power in employees' hands when it comes to bargaining for wages, health and safety, etc. The old-school way of handling this is unionizing, which can still work as well, but a UBI improves the employees' negotiating position without the need for collective contracts or mass strikes.
- Done properly, could replace *dozens* of complex, expensive government assistance programs (unemployment, welfare, social security, etc.), improving government efficiency and effectiveness.
- Would encourage legal migration, as only citizens would enjoy the benefits.
- Would support families where one partner wants to leave the workforce (fully or partially) to care for children or elderly relatives.
- A UBI *could* be scaled based on age (making it a better possible replacement for Social Security) or past income history (making it more viable as a replacement for unemployment insurance).

Yes, there *are* people who would never lift a finger again to be useful to society in any way if they could instead survive on a UBI. But I believe the vast majority would use that spare time to improve themselves (education, job skills, etc.), to improve their communities (volunteering, activism), and to hold their ground for the *right* job.

Also, while I don't think it should be means-tested (for the above reasons), a UBI could provide extra financial incentive for people who *are* showing that they are claiming other income during the same month. Or those who are in school and making good grades. Or those who can show time volunteered at a non profit. Or simply based on age.

Three other points:

- Even if someone sat on their butt and collected their UBI for the rest of their life, they would be spending their UBI, which does much more to increase economic activity then a rich guy sticking those same dollars into stock market speculation.

- A "guaranteed job" would be far too expensive to manage for whatever useful output the recipients give in labor. This isn't the 1930s, we don't need a bunch of unskilled government workers building railroads and dams by hand. So we would have them doing something fairly useless, while we would have to also provide all of the oversight to manage the workforce, enforce participation/eligibility, handle health and safety risks, provide training, etc.

- Neither form of assistance makes sense unless it is paired with universal healthcare.

As someone who has been involved in fashion, art, and glamour photography for some time, I find the article's dismissal of cosmetology licensing to be careless and poorly researched.

Applying makeup is a licensed activity because of significant health and safety issues related to hygiene and proper use of certain products (such as latex, for example, as used in the movie and theater industries). You could very literally lose an eye, go into anaphylactic shock, or get a nasty rash because some village idiot decided to play makeup artist and didn't know what they were doing. People doing this really DO need to know what they are doing.

Likewise, bartender licenses are less about memorizing obscure drink recipes and more about properly working within the law around alcoholic drinks and potentially inebriated customers. These licenses are not a burden to obtain (working with a non-profit art gallery, we obtained them for some of our board members so we could legally serve wine at our shows), and they are a serious intervention to help cut down on drunk driving, alcohol poisoning, and underage drinking.

Here in Texas, the licensing agency recently got rid of mandatory licensing of interior designers (my wife is one) and talent/modeling agencies (which, again, I'm familiar with through photography). The result is a total disaster in both fields. To do an effective job, interior designers need to understand building codes, proper construction techniques, when to call in a structural engineer, permitting, blueprints and drawings, special laws around commercial furniture, etc. But without a license, anyone who watches a bunch of HGTV and thinks they are the next Joanna Gaines can go represent themselves as a designer, and homeowners and businesses *don't know what they don't know*. And in the talent agency world, particularly in modeling, there is a HUGE problem of outright scams, not to mention sketchy guys claiming to "manage" models or singers, who act more like wannabe pimps.

So yeah, maybe licensing can be a bit of a protection racket in some industries, but it's way too easy to deride someone else's education from a place of ignorance about the service they are performing and the risks involved in the decisions they make.

(Also, make no mistake, this article isn't about makeup or pints of lager, it's about an ongoing, long-term, well-funded dispute about what the differences should be between a doctor and a nurse practitioner. The arguments about other industries are merely window-dressing.)

Dammit, I'm still trying to get used to Swatch "beat time"...

I started using Vue this year. I evaluated React but I just couldn't enjoy the JSX syntax. Angular 2 had just come out and I found it to be far too obtuse, too far from "the metal." I briefly experimented with Riot, but it was losing IE11 compatibility too fast.

Vue hit the sweet spot for me -- the ramp-up was easy, the code and API have a small but powerful footprint, it works well either interpreted in-browser or compiled via webpack, the Chrome dev tools are great, and I didn't have to learn the entire ecosystem (Vue, Vuex, Axios, etc.) to become productive. Coding single-file components reminds me of the good old days of writing server-side ASP.NET controls -- markup and script are separate, the lifestyle is simple to grok. The framework just does one thing--it handles the DOM update/manipulation details, allowing me to focus on behavior and state. I also like that the vast majority of my Vue code isn't really "vue," it's just plain HTML and JavaScript, so whatever comes next (web components, etc.), the transition will be much less painful than if I were using a more opinionated framework.

beer. Back to my beer.

Why do /. comments strip emoticons, especially important ones like beer?

*sigh*

$ git --version
git version 2.6.3
$ brew update
$ brew upgrade git
$ git --version
git version 2.8.1

Back to my

I read the bill. Disclosure of security threats is completely VOLUNTARY for individuals, private companies, local/state governments, utilities, etc. ("non-Federal entities"). There is no mandate. There are no demands for back doors. There is no provision for unfettered sharing of network traffic, only a mechanism for voluntary sharing of information about detected threats. Even then, they must be careful to strip away any unrelated personal information.

I'm a BIG believer in personal privacy and 4th Amendment protections, but I'm a little disappointed by the "Chicken Little" rhetoric about this bill compared to what is actually contains.

Tax breaks by local or state governments to win construction projects NEVER make sense, and should be outlawed as a form of unfair treatment under the law.

Small businesses hire FAR more employees and put FAR more back into the local economy than large companies who have the political clout to win abatements. Every tax abatement won by a company deciding to do business somewhere is an effective tax INCREASE on every other business and resident of that jurisdiction.

When a company moves into town, they are taking advantage of the roads, sewers, fire and police protection, schools, and other appurtenance of civilization, and they should pay their fair share for that infrastructure.

Speaking specifically about data centers -- they hire relatively few people, take up a large land mass, add stress to the local electrical grid, create buildings that drive down surrounding land values (who wants to live next to a windowless building with huge air conditioners?), etc. etc.

I'm not saying they are "bad" neighbors, but they certainly don't deserve a ticker tape parade, and they should pay their fair taxes like anyone else.

Well said. And while I agree it shouldn't have been done, I'm significantly LESS concerned with the *government* looking at *government* computers used by *government* employees than I am with the government spying on people without probable cause who are *not* their employees and on computers that they do *not* own.

One corollary of Metcalfe's Law is that, since most people are cheap, it is difficult to create suitable network effects based solely on users who are willing to pay a fee to participate.

I would pay for an ad-free, censorship-free Facebook-style service, but most of my friends and family wouldn't.