It's working fine for me in FF 32.0.3 and Chrome 37.0.2062.120 (64-bit)
165 karma · joined May 14, 2014
I decided to fire up Tor and have a look at the places mentioned in the article, having previously browsed (but never used) Silk Road before it was busted out of similar curiosity.
They're basically as described. It's fairly disturbing that these exist. I don't mind people buying and selling drugs, as people are going to do that, but on these same market places people are selling identities, fraud equipment (POS and ATM skimmers), stolen credit card details, funds from hacked accounts and, most disturbingly, weapons.
The weapons are by far the worst aspect of it. There's listings for everything from 3D printed guns through to modified AK47s that are now fully automatic. Worst of all, there is materials listed for making explosives, as well as components like fuses and switches.
I hate to think of whose hands these things end up in.
1. http://www.cnet.com/news/nsa-likely-targets-anybody-whos-tor...
PM is €3-€4 for a standard package, so what I'll regularly encounter is things on Amazon that are free delivery to the UK but quite a bit more expensive than PM to be delivered to Ireland.
Things also seem to ship through PM drastically faster than through the normal postal service.
However when you're talking about recreational / party drugs like marijuana, MDMA, etc., these come through large distribution networks with an inherent level of trust and common cause to minimize risk inbuilt. If you, for example, wanted to get some marijuana, you'd probably go to a friend that you know smokes it, because he clearly has a source for it.
You'll go to someone you feel you can place some level of trust and confidence in, and likewise they will go to, or direct you toward, someone they place a level of trust and confidence in.
Every actor in that scenario is seeking to minimize their risk. The consumer will use caution in who they deal with and likewise the middlemen or distributors will use caution in who they deal with.
This will be underlined by the fact that low level recreational drugs dealing isn't a massively profitable activity. Only further up the distribution chain, far away from the end user, will profit rise and with it, risk.
I personally cannot fathom buying drugs from someone totally unconnected online. The odds of you ending up buying drugs from a police officer when you go to a friend of a friend, versus when you're buying them from a faceless entity online are incredibly different.
However, for recreational consumer use, you're talking quantities that absolutely could not justify such an operation. The value in such an operation through a traditional drug dealing network would be that the person caught could serve up information on who they got it from. When you're talking about buying drugs anonymously online, none of that information will be available.
Also, admitting that you were looking at offer letters when you should have known straight away from first glance that it was none of your business could bring some heat on you and your career that you certainly won't appreciate.
Mind your own business.
I'm surprised that you've been downvoted for this, because it's absolutely true.
The complete inaction in reaction to the scandals that have broken over the past decade or so, and I'm not going to just confine this to the US as it has happened in Europe and elsewhere, showed that people feel disconnected and completely powerless to what has gone on.
If not simply orchestrate the whole thing themselves, as the US and the UK did in Iran in 1953.
And as for bringing about a change that would see future incidents causing them to be held accountable? I think the average person, and therefore the population, feels entirely powerless in that regard. I mean the US voted for a supposedly liberal, progressive President who even has it on his campaign website [1] that he would "Protect Whistleblowers", who has then gone on to prosecute more whistleblowers than all other President's combined [2].
So it's no wonder why people feel powerless, and it's no wonder why any change to these situations is certainly not coming in the visible future.
1. http://change.gov/agenda/ethics_agenda/
2. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/05/obama-c...
I think you'd see a variety of political arguments against this that would amount to such an action helping terrorism, those supporting it are trying to undermine America's security, or that placing the fear of prison over an officer's actions amongst the force would prevent them from doing their job properly.
>Otherwise upstanding policemen are being pushing into violating the law by their superiors
They already are in many ways. There were leaks from the NYPD where the officers involved exposed that they were subject to mandatory stop-and-frisk quotas and that racial profiling was highly used in doing so. Likewise, drug busts provide huge income to local police forces [1]. There is therefore an incentive to bend the law because it brings their force income, getting these busts looks good on an officer's record and having a cash flush precinct means there won't be any holding back on giving out overtime.
1. http://www.wfsb.com/story/22078253/what-happens-to-all-the-m...
I think the perception of corruption is interesting, because overall the West is far lower than elsewhere. Link for those interested: http://www.transparency.org/cpi2013/results
While when you actually talk to people, corruption in the West is pretty widely acknowledged and even outright accepted. For example, when the NSA stories first broke the reaction on Reddit was largely a mix of:
"Duh, this is confirming what we already know"
and
"Well, it's not like other countries aren't doing it too" (even though, at that time, only the NSA was being highlighted and there was little/no news about their European, Canadian, Australian etc. counterparts.
What had been previously relegated by the mass populace as conspiracy theory nonsense was very quickly accepted, and then very quickly relegated to acceptance.
What this would lead me personally to believe, from just watching these things unfold, watching the mass reaction to it and then talking with others about it, is that we in the West widely acknowledge corruption here but out of a combination of a feeling of powerlessness (what am I, Joe Bloggs, going to be able to do about it), being removed from it (this doesn't affect I, Joe Bloggs, all that much) and probably an inherent sense of nationalism (well, it's probably much worse over there in that other country) we actively downplay the level of corruption in our societies, and I believe that this probably ends up being reflected in these surveys.
I've no doubt that the above is conjecture, but it's just what I've formed from my own experiences. There is a very marked feeling of powerlessness though, and the little action taken, even political action, over the things that have been exposed in the West would solidify that opinion somewhat more.
Which promotes those who can pay the most to advertise, not the best in their field or even a given user's area/feasible options.
Why is anyone cynical of such an activity deemed a "hater"? Because they don't conform and align with your own views on the subject?
Why not go on step further into common internet vitriol and just label them "trolls" for said disagreement?
I've no issue with Google producing such a product and me buying it, even at a relatively high cost, if the benefits are there. What I don't want is to pay a significant chunk of money for said product AND still have to hand over biochemical data to Google, an advertising firm, to use the thing.
Why should an advertising company get access to this data in the first place? What do they intend on doing with it?
Selling us adverts based on a combination of our biochemical data, or the state of our health, coupled with our search terms that might indicate we have concern over one area or another?
Being able to help the medical sales industry target us more efficiently? As in "X user has Y indicators in their health data, therefore they would be a prudent market to advertise Z to"?
I'm surprised that posts containing not even outright cynicism, but merely questioning where this data may end up and for what uses, are being downvoted to the extent they are.
If we're simply going to be unquestioning fanboys of Google et al. then why bother opening such topics for discussion? To slap backs and shout a mutual "hurrah"?
Well, I suppose at least in their case it has a high probability of being detected within 6-12 months.
If Google's scanner tells you that it has detected the formation of cancer in your body and is incorrect, putting someone through this could well be life altering in the short term.
Similarly, if you believe Google's scanner to be accurate and it fails to detect the formation of cancer, what then? If you get beyond the beneficial stages of early detection of this disease because your Google scanner tells you you're fine, how does that play out and who pays for it?
What if the device is compromised and someone can essentially have what they like reported to you?
Obviously I support any and all efforts to tackle cancer, but putting cancer detection into the hands of the end user has many potentially chaotic scenarios, and this is without mentioning the significant privacy issues that would surround such a device.
Absolutely. Imagine if Air Force 1 were even prevented from taking off from a foreign country to return to the US or similar, and the host country demanded to search it for X person or object. There would be massive diplomatic implications.
This is spot on. When you use your power to ground another President's flight in the hope of catching a whistleblower from your own country on it, there is something very wrong.
I agree.
> Its by doing diligent hiring, looking hard for the good candidates of minority descent
This contradicts your first point in a way. If we essentially overlook say white or Asian candidates in favour of recruiting from potentially worse schools with a lower quality of student, simply for the sake of introducing diversity in our workplace, then not only are we consciously trying to fill a quota (i.e. there are not enough X minority here, instead of going to MIT and looking for candidates, we'll overlook them and go to X community college or whatever) but we're being racist in doing so.
>And since there won't be enough to go around (that's the premise after all) then agitating at the secondary school level to get Everybody included in the tech revolution.
Absolutely.
I mean it's an interesting and complex issue. Much of the disparities in the tech industry come from a place of somewhat fortunate circumstances - many of us are from middle class or higher backgrounds, with fathers who were engineers or similar, and so had access to better schools who provided their students with access to computers, along with having computers in the home at a time where many wouldn't have.
But it also comes from luck and being in the right place at the right time. Being into technology not so long ago was relegated to a status of being for nerds, geeks and other supposedly anti-social labels. The people who were into it pursued it, despite its stigma, and as luck would have it the skills they developed in doing so turned out to be very valuable today.
As such, I absolutely do not support overlooking these people when hiring simply to fill a perceived void pushed by the mainstream media these days.
We now live in a different era, where even lower social or economic classes have widespread access to technology. To address the perceived disparity, the focus should be on getting these people to pursue technology from a young age, as you said. It should not be addressed by attempting to shame companies into overlooking what are the best candidates in favour of others simply because they've a different skin colour, a different set of genitals, etc.
It's only a problem if you believe that these places are being favoured over others with merit being thrown to the way side, and I'd be interested to see any evidence of such a thing.
As insinuated by the author of this article, by overlooking the best and brightest at the country's top universities in favour of pulling in more non-white people and women into engineering roles.
Sure, it might be extremely unfair to those who've been into technology since a young age and worked their arse off to get into the best universities, the best internships, etc. and come out the otherside as the best candidates, but they're most likely white men, and in today's tech journalism narrative, being a white man is wrong.
They're saying that hiring based on merit, from the top universities in the US, which happens to result in a lot of white male employees, is bad and that Google et al. should be essentially watering down their talent pool in favour of diversity.
It's a narrative that has polluted the tech industry over the last few years - mainly pushed by people not even in the industry and who are just writing about it - and I'm really growing weary of it.
Yes, we get it, tech is cool and has status now and everyone wants a part of it. Well sorry, to get into the best tech companies you've to be the best, and unfortunately for a lot of people that will be the generation of young white guys who were at home tinkering with their computers from a very young age and who pursued it through third level, over people who saw the salaries in technology when they were graduating HS and decided that CS was for them.
I would disagree but apply the caveat that there has to be heavy filtering of what is being analysed to derive anything of value from it.
A tweet like:
"“@BarkhamTaylor: #beatcameronathisowngame @aliceehoughton” let's get it trending #adrian"
Has no value for sentiment analysis, yet is lumped in with the rest of them, while something like:
"Sunny day in London :) @ Green Park http://t.co/S71RQR2luU"
Clearly has value regarding sentiment analysis. The current problem being that all of the junk gets marked as "average" or similar because sentiment can't be derived from it, which in the overall set skews things greatly.
One suggestion I would have is some sort of filtering based on the content of the tweets. This tweet returned "feeling good":
"New post featuring: @NewLookPRTeam @nextofficial @Matalan @hmunitedkingdom @uoeurope @Accessorize @ASOS http://t.co/nGsFj306xT #fbloggers"
This one returned "feeling average":
"@dannykobe17 @DanielRacheter @Khuds_ @shangambling @Umar_Wilshere19 @_mikenewell_ @BlueKay10 is that ollie?"
Whereas there's absolutely no real sentiment to derive from this sort of thing.
Drugs are extremely popular today.
Using the two above, I made the assumption that people will be using narcotics so long as our species continues, unless their effects can be explicitly replicated and induced by technology at some stage in the future, although I wouldn't necessarily say that such an act would not be doing drugs.
Drugs are a fact of life, they've been used since the dawn of man and will be used likely until the end of man. They're not going away.
It's abhorrent that in order to access drugs, you've to essentially send money down the chain to people carrying out such acts...but people are going to do drugs, and in the face of no alternatives, this is where they're going to get them.
The people buying these drugs, generating the income for these cartels, are so removed from the reality behind them that it may as well be totally unconnected as far as all are concerned. We, first world Westerners, are generally very disconnected from the realities surrounding many of the products we buy, from legitimate products like those manufactured by Nestle, to cheap clothing manufactured in terrible conditions in the East, through to illicit substances such as cocaine which are manufactured in South America and whose trade fuels a bloody war there.
Indeed, many of our tech products that we all here use are manufactured by Foxconn, a company whose working practices are so bad that they had issues with people killing themselves on the job and tackled it by installing suicide nets around the back of the buildings and in the stairwells.
As such, there is a lot of inherent immorality associated with a lot of the consumerism we here fuel, but the reality for us is that we are extremely disconnected from these issues.
But what are the alternatives? Go even harder on those found with drugs, while continuing to let Western consumerism promote without any interference terrible working conditions for our manufacturers in the East?
One potential solution to all these issues is to apply a similar approach to all - manufacture these in the 1st world under regulations and subsidize their sale so that the consumer points towards these regulated manufacturers rather than using products manufactured abroad.
Unfortunately, while this may be the solution, it itself raises so many other issues. If we took coke production out of the hands of South America and made it in the US, for example, what in hell's name is going to happen when the vast numbers of not just cartel members, but relatively innocent coco farmers in South America can no longer derive anywhere near the same income from them?
Manufacturing these things ourselves would also, if not greatly subsidized for promotion, drive prices for the consumer up and thus have them pointing in the wrong direction again.
It's a complex issue and personally I'm not sure of what the best potential solution may be, but I find it hard to sit here and criticize those using coke in the US from a product containing FoxConn parts where people are miserable and ending their lives because of what our demand for the products being made there is doing to them.
I sincerely hope for America's sake that there's no substance to the claims that the CIA are working with these cartels.
You're right. Rapid change without direction only causes destabilization, and destabilization, whether it's politically or economically, is not something the US or EU could withstand well currently, and would potentially drastically weaken our joint position in the short-medium term internationally.