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Comment Re:Just imagine (Score 5, Informative) 201

They all do this

NONE of them have done this, not in 250 years. Not until Trump. Presidents make a lot of money after they leave office, yes, especially in recent decades. They command incredible speaking fees (Obama famously got $400k for one speech), they write books that make millions, etc. There are lots of people who are willing to give them money to get close to them, get their advice, etc.

But until Trump, none of them has used the office of the president to make money. No one else has sold pardons. No one else has set up a public stock and a memecoin to facilitate billions of dollars in bribes. No one else has brazenly sold insider secrets to stock traders.

Trump's corruption isn't just new in scale, it's a completely new thing that the United States of America has never before seen. We've seen plenty of corruption elsewhere in government, at all levels, but never in the oval office.

Comment Re: Let them choose (Score 5, Informative) 163

Why not let the people who were first on the land choose? Europeans decimated indigenous Americans with disease and war..

Right, the land rightfully belongs to whoever owned it second-to-last! Not to the people the second-to-last owners forcibly ejected from it, of course, and not to the people who own it now, only to the second-to-last.

</sarcasm>

I think we should have more respect than we do for the indigenous peoples, but pretending that there was no war and no forcible land grabs before the Europeans arrived is not just ahistorical but ignorant of human nature. Polynesian history, which includes the Hawaiians, is incredibly bloody. The Europeans dominated when they arrived not because they were more violent -- there's a good case to be made that they were less, though it's a question of degrees, not kind -- but because the Enlightenment gave them much better tools. And, of course, because centuries of city living had bred up a bunch of diseases, but that's part of the same story.

Did European arms and power make it "right" that the natives were conquered? No. But it wasn't "right" that the natives conquered each other, either. Humanity -- also as a result of the Enlightenment and the long, slow development of humanism -- has become more moral and less violent, and we now have more respect for other cultures and other peoples. And that's a good thing! But it doesn't make sense to project our own moral views back in time, and it definitely doesn't make sense to do so selectively, demonizing the winners and lionizing the losers.

The only thing that really makes sense is to apply our improved (though still very imperfect) morality to the situation we have now, messy, complicated and conflicted as it is. It's nice to give the native Hawaiian culture some respect, but it's wrong to give it more respect than that of Hawaii today.

Comment Re:Not going to change humans... (Score 1) 100

"We're not going to change humans, and humans make bad decisions," Langley said. "What we can do is make sure that they know if you use this tool, you will be held accountable...."

Wow he's right,

So maybe what we could do instead is to outlaw mass surveillance and warrantless surveillance, whether government-owned or corporate, across the country.

We could even have a constitutional amendment! Let's call it #4. The OLD 4th amendment doesn't seem to be doing anything; we can call this one '4th-Prime'.

To be clear, the language would have to change if you wanted it to outlaw corporate surveillance, because the existing one applies only to government. And I suppose the new one would also have to explain "corporate" and how that's different from other kinds of organizations or surveillance by individuals.

Comment Re:Why so negative? (Score 1) 47

I don't think CIP is going to be successful at keeping 10 year-old kernel versions secure. If you need 10 years, you should either plan to do the work necessary to upgrade to new kernel versions periodically

The world is full of critical systems that are certified via an extensive (reads: expensive) process for a specific OS version which have an estimated useful life far longer than 10 years. One does not simply upgrade it, and typically the end user may not even be allowed to upgrade it.

Everyone has to make their own decisions. I would discourage people from believing that SLTS kernels will be anything like secure by the end of their lifecycle. If that doesn't matter for some application, then fine. If it does matter then arguing that the SLTS kernel must be secure because recertifying is expensive is... not really an argument.

FWIW, in my day job I'm making this same point to people building cars with an expected 20-year lifespan. I think the right conclusion is "Don't use Linux". If you need long-term assurance, use something smaller, simpler, with much less attack surface. And then buy an ironclad long-term support contract for that.

Comment Re:Why so negative? (Score 1) 47

Backporting patches into LTS is pretty thankless but absolutely necessary.

It's thankless, yes. Necessary, or even a good idea? I think that's debatable. Actually LTS is probably a good idea... but I'm very skeptical of SLTS. I don't think CIP is going to be successful at keeping 10 year-old kernel versions secure. If you need 10 years, you should either plan to do the work necessary to upgrade to new kernel versions periodically or you should assume that it's just going to be insecure and isolate it or otherwise shield it from attack.

Comment not really (Score 1) 84

I'm fairly sure at least one entire department at MS is tasked with making sure people don't switch to other formats, that despite on-paper "open" XML it remains incompatible and no competitor software can flawlessly read and write it.

So no, unless you can hire a dozen people full-time to counter that, you don't have a chance to break through that.

Comment Re:The high cost of training police (Score 1) 100

Qualified immunity is a reasonable concept that I agree is needed for police work.

It's just being completely overdone, used to cover up clear abuse. The basic idea of "when in doubt, police still needs to be able to act" is sound. The actual practice "unless you can prove to criminal standards and beyond, that the police officer knew at that exact moment, that what they were doing was totally definitely illegal and they intentionally decided to break a law. That's quite a bit too much of "err on the side of caution".

Comment No ??!? (Score 1) 100

What a complete and utter surprise... to the three people who are so high their brain stopped working but miraculously didn't kill them.

For everyone else, this was literally the first thing we thought about, right? Please tell me I'm not the last sane person on planet Earth. Nobody expected that this would NOT be abused in such ways, right?

Comment Re:Well yeah (Score 1) 143

A circuit is typically only allowed to be continuously loaded to about 80% by code

You're confusing the breaker sizing with the wire sizing. Code requires the breaker to be about 80% of the safe capacity of the wiring to maintain this safety margin. Breakers allow the rated capacity, continuously -- and even allow a little more for short periods.

Comment Re:Well yeah (Score 1) 143

Seriously, though, it looks like your standard outlets are fused for 10 A current

Standard US outlets are 15A @ 120V. But, yeah, based on his numbers it looks like he was only getting a little over 8A. I charged my car on a US outlet for a few years and I got more like 5-6 miles (8-9.5 km) her hour of charging, which is pretty much what the math predicts for 15A @ 120V.

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