Macross8299

But the article doesn't even say that they heard the investigators say that. At best it's hearsay and gossip of n-th degree, at worst it's outright misrepresentation of the facts.

Look at the weasel words: "according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations."

Who are government officials in this usage? And what qualifies someone as "familiar" with the matter? How many people work as a government official in some capacity and could claim some vague familiarity with the Mueller report? Does a park ranger in Wyoming who follows political news qualify? It wouldn't be technically lying to cite them as a "government official familiar with the matter", right?

It doesn't even have to come down to bad intentions or journalists intentionally lying about their anonymous sources, it's the fact that I have no way of reasonably knowing whether the NYT got tricked or lied to. Maybe their so-called "anonymous source" is just taking credulous journalists for a ride. I'm expected to just put blind faith in their opaque verification process and accept that anonymous sources are equally as valid as someone going on record?

Interestingly enough, the credibility (or lack thereof) of anonymous sources is an easily tractable problem that could be easily solvable with ring-signature cryptography [0] if there was the will to do so. And the trustless nature of that solution does not require journalists to be deemed the anointed arbiters of The Truth(tm). Alas, the social and cultural factors are just not there such that every government official, business leader, etc has a public crypto key.

[0]: https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/RST01.pdf

The Supermicro """backdoor""" story of late last year, where Bloomberg alleged that the company had surreptitiously placed small microchips on nearly all their products on behalf of China without anyone noticing

Well, yes. As far as immigration goes, the policy of most non-US western countries is primarily merit-based or if you have money to invest in the country. If you aren't educated and productive and you're not a legitimate refugee, why should a country let you in? How does the country benefit?

Canada has a generous welfare system and social safety net that that would likely be unsustainable if it let in sufficient number of people unable to support their own benefits. Even if you hold the view that drug use ought to be a public health matter and not a criminal matter, there's a limited amount of immigration that can be sustained without overburdening these services and why let in a drug user when you can let in a doctor or engineer?

In the case of tourism, it's just about limiting risk of someone overstaying their visa.

Well, yeah, entering the US as a non-citizen is a privilege granted at the discretion of the US federal government. Border control is an essential function of a sovereign state.

>I also find it a bit disturbing how easily you apply law & order in the name of a country that was not involved in deciding the validity of that decision or the circumstances behind it.

It's disturbing to not want criminal elements freely entering your country? If they're a not refugee and they can't follow the law in their country of origin, why should any other country be obligated to let them in?

Not a bug, working as intended. Entering a country that you aren't a citizen of isn't some inalienable human right, especially if you're a convicted criminal.

I think it's important not to undersell the universal utility of focus. Even if you ignore the obvious physical advantages afforded by PED-stimulant drugs, like decreased reaction time or increased endurance.

If you model decision making in a zero-sum adverserial context like football or chess as an OODA loop[1], then a drug that decreases your processing time and decision making time is going to grant you an advantage by shortening that OODA loop.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

FYI, the NFL considers amphetamines and substituted amphetamines to be performance-enhancing drugs. As does the International Olympic Committee.

So why the hate for deadlines? Software engineering does not exist in vacuum separated from business constraints like runway or annual budgets. To demand deadlines of your employer but to not be willing to even try to meet deadlines in deliverables seems to me to be a bit unprofessional and disconnected from the underlying business reality. A whole company that wants to shrug off this underlying business reality seems even worse. A series B startup that doesn't meet deadlines might not even be in business in 6 months.

Not a definitive combat record of all modern jets by any means and one could argue that many of the losses of MiGs from export client states were due to poor training, poor maintenance, outdated/inferior export models or having to fight Israelis constantly ;) But then again, when Russian and Israeli pilots went head to head [1] the Russian fighter planes did not really hold their own there either.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rimon_20

[0]: https://boingboing.net/2015/03/26/australia-outlaws-warrant-...

Jeez man, Arizona isn't that bad, I wouldn't call it third world [1]

Jokes aside, you are correct that Facebook does have lots of third-party contractors that do moderation located in underdeveloped countries and Facebook seems to exploit a lot of their contractor labor, regardless of where that labor is located.

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo...

edit: Furthermore, what other Chinese company owns a dating site used frequently by westerners?

Simple explanation that likely explains the security panel's reasoning behind their statements.

Also explains why a phone number as an identity token is a horrible idea.

There are still the monetary policy trust issues that Bitcoin resolves (not having to trust a central bank) if you are particularly libertarian or whatever, but I don't think that's really a driving cause for any sort of adoption in any other countries other than Venezuela and maybe Cyprus 5 years ago?

I wouldn't go that far. This is much more related to Bitcoin's relative "newness" and lack of mature AML tools than anything inherent in the protocol. There are a number of startups that offer blockchain tracking and forensic analysis capable of tracking the kind of money flows you describe. Your statement seems much more applicable to something like Monero or other obfuscated ledger intentionally designed for privacy.

It is an open ledger, after all.

I guess you could make the argument that not wanting a statue of Robert E Lee removed inherently makes you a neo-Nazi, but I don't think that necessarily follows.

>"I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me," Trump said. "You also had some very fine people on both sides,"

I can't even read this as him saying there are fine white nationalists, let alone him saying that white nationalist terrorists are fine.

[0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/trump-d...

The terrifying thought is that this might be a product of scale more than anything else.

Because of the bullshit asymmetry principle, it's easier to produce propaganda than debunk it and "call it what it is," so any sufficiently large and scaled platform will almost certainly eventually be flooded with propaganda bullshit.

I don't recall of any incident where the President congratulated a white nationalist terrorist or said anything that could even be conceived as such, do you have a source for this?

I don't think so. One wants a caliphate, one wants an ethnostate. The end result is the same for anyone who isn't part of the extremist in-group.

The SPLC considers some black nationalist groups (including offshoots/successors of the Black Panthers, which is relevant because there is no actual modern day "Black Panther Party") to be hate groups all the same.

In the decision[0], they cite three distinct tests used in previous cases to determine if the company acted as the state by asking if its activities are "state action" (i.e. meaning that removal of speech constitutes a violation of first amendment rights)

1. Is Facebook exercising the exclusive prerogative of the state in its activities?

2. Is Facebook acting with the help of or in concert with a state official?

3. Did the government insinuate itself into a position of interdependence with Facebook to assert itself as a joint participant?

All of these hold for the Marsh v. Alabama ruling, but the argument that these tests pass for Facebook's daily business activities is less convincing.

[0] https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...