Surveillance partner for NSA PRISM program, with Condoleeza Rice on its board.
Stopped using DropBox due to ethical concerns years ago.
Readit NewsI'm surprised how often people are starting to carelessly refer to Russia as "enemy". I think "adversary" is a more accurate term, on the same level as China.
The governments of both sides say they want cooperation but are are annoyed at each other's behavior and actions. However I don't think the people of either country treat the other as "enemy", like they did during the cold war. Back then each side was afraid that the other one may attack them preemptively out of ideological reasons.
You are completely right. Adversary is the correct term.
Rather than discussion about technical aspects, we get a spew of how innocent Russia is and how America deserves it.
If the west now can't even defend its technical discussion forums from totalitarian disruption, heaven help it.
It's a knee-jerk reaction to totalitarian domestic propaganda.
Has a tendency to breed confused, alarmist, emotional and untechnical conversation.
Here's the truth: Russia isn't evil. Neither is the United States. But they are enemies. The people are getting caught in a propaganda war, which has shifted conversation from the venue of technical to ideological. (Propaganda, in practice, breeds ideological self-affirming thinking.)
The breakdown of conversation isn't the fault of the "traitors who support the evil Russians" or the fault of the "domestic saboteurs who support the US mass propaganda apparatus" but the fact that the two countries can't get their shit straight and work toward a post-Cold War without throwing acid at each other.
(I'm rewriting the last sentence of this over and over because I realize its going to attract ever-yet more comments of the form "but Russia's evil and they started it and you can't really compare the US and Russia - can you?". Screw it.)
Is there seriously some new cold war going on?
I read in other media how some new American weapons can fight certain Russian tanks etc, and now I read about Putin bragging about his new weapons.
My prediction for the post-Sovjet area was that the US and Russia would just leave each other in peace.
The post-Soviet era is and was not the end of history. Geopolitical competition exists as a human condition.
Much of the "communist versus capitalist" competition that "justified" the Cold War, was actually just a result of two powers that were going to compete anyway pushing competing views of global economic-political organization.
The competition was not itself about economic philosophies. Rather competition of economic philosophies was the result of conflict.
The United States today is a waning power relative to the rest of the world. However, it's still the de facto superpower.
The American strategy is to keep its foot on Russia's neck and while containing the possible rise of China's power (seeking to keep it to a regional, rather than global setting).
Yes, the Cold War is still going. There's less of a chance of an immediate nuclear exchange, but the US and Russia continue proxy warfare (e.g. Syria, Ukraine, Iran) and propaganda warfare (e.g. US and Russia's interference in one another's elections)
jwtadvice commented on Amazon will stop selling Nest smart home devices businessinsider.com/amazo... · Posted by u/doener
They also don't/won't sell Chromecast product.
This is the danger of vertical integration. Once upon a time the US government did built and used antitrust and antimonopoly legislation.
jwtadvice commented on Project Gutenberg blocks access from Germany cand.pglaf.org/germany/in... · Posted by u/jwildeboer
Seems punitive to me, rather than 'fair'. US copyright law has no jurisdiction the same as German copyright law, other than by coincidence of geography/volunteer base. I think Project Gutenberg is doing the best thing it can for itself. I associate the project with doing the best thing it can for people.
In general, we're going to run into increasing numbers of cases like this.
jwtadvice commented on World Leaders on Twitter blog.twitter.com/official... · Posted by u/minimaxir
Except that they block world leaders (and other globally important actors) as requested by the US security/power community.
PR. No thanks.
jwtadvice commented on SNAP: Stanford Network Analysis Project snap.stanford.edu/index.h... · Posted by u/indescions_2017
Military funded (DARPA's Social Media in Strategic Communication program) to develop the research necessary for running highly automated global-scale social network propaganda campaigns.
Coworker at Fortune 500 does this. Old housemate at different Fortune 500 did basically this (slept on the floor, only owned cardboard boxes, one week of clothes and a car).
Both of these people are incredibly rich. One came from parents with oil and financial sector money. The other has multiple real estate properties. Both have six figure incomes.
Other people I know in the tech sector are less extreme, but nonetheless have various plans for exiting the corporate world so that they can feel financially independent enough to retire early and then work on problems they find enriching/bring value to people rather than shareholders/etc.
Though one of them was obsessed with immortality and saving up for when cryogenics and Kurzweil's singularity were figured out. So I guess it's not all about the rat race for everybody.
> The Tesla brand name takes this seriously. Question the headlines, opinions, etc.
> You are safe using Tesla. What happened to this person won't happen to you.
> The driver made some questionable decisions; the blame isn't uniquely Tesla's. Other safety mechanisms not under Tesla's control also failed.
> Statistically, Tesla Autopilot is safer than not using Autopilot.
> We accept that we will not be able to prevent all deaths. You need to too. Telsa has saved lives in addition to taking them. Focus on this please.
> We care about safety.