I laugh!
Best commentary by olde Patrick Cockburn:
I will probably be accused of being a Wehrkraftzersetzer again because liberal demonization by loud bullshitting is the thing to do nowadays.
16005 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008
Best commentary by olde Patrick Cockburn:
I will probably be accused of being a Wehrkraftzersetzer again because liberal demonization by loud bullshitting is the thing to do nowadays.
Patriotism is a disgusting illness.
So you say. Sounds pretty dogmatic and touchy-feely though.
But what has all of this to do with patriotism in the first place?
Unless you want to awkwardly defend "open border" policy, but that is another problem.
Why is El Reg calling the Carefully Grown Friends of the Obama Administration (so unhumanly/cruelly removed from the premises of East Aleppo as reported by "White Helmets") silly names?
Al-Qaeda is no longer a serious force, he said, both on and offline.
O'Really, Mr. NSA? Last I heard, the US-Saudi Arabia friendship from hell basically handed over Yemen to the Qaeda for no good reason whatsoever except "who doesn't like to do a regime change bombing". The Qaeda is likely to get hotter under the robes of the Saudi regime soon, it's just poetic justice. Boom Boom!
Meanwhile Syrian Rebel Gets Life Sentence for Mass Killing Caught on Video (actually seeking asylum in Sweden). Not "moderate" enough, eh? Fine kettle we got ourselves into here, allowing ourselves to be manipulated by neocons and cut-out politicians. Next target: Iran. (Ceterum censeo Russiam esse delendam is of course the permanent refrain)
I almost rejected this for its sheer stupidity but I'll leave it here for all to see. You're either expertly trolling, or helping to fuel the creeping post-fact neurosis that's threatening to poison the great nation that is America.
So what am I supposed to do? Recant for my reactionary, deplorable views?
I wish to move back to the times to the Moderatrix.
Now it seems thin-skinned teenagers recruited from a liberal hellhole blog are at the moderator's desk, and the sound of "I don't like your opinion, so shut up!" is the new normal. What is one to make of this? Is it over?
MAKE EL REG GREAT AGAIN!
I don't have the time to go into the litany of "scandals", there are angles anywhere. Let's just take:
> Michael Flynn.
You know someone is being lead on a leash when a single name is dropped to light up the semantic network linked to "wast right-wing danger" memes. That someone is probably the reader.
I don't know whether Michael Flynn would be a bigger danger to world peace and sanity than a Chernobyl Mind Controller stitched together from festering leftover pieces of Mesdames Hillary and Powers, but there is NOTHING scandalous in or around Michael Flynn at the present time.
Or, as ex-CIAster Phil Giraldi (always an excellent source of commentary) writes:
To be sure, there are parts of the Flynn tale that just do not make sense. How is it that an experienced intelligence officer would not instinctively know that a long-distance telephone call between a man relaxing at a beach resort in the Dominican Republic and the Russian ambassador in Washington would be intercepted by the National Security Agency? And knowing that, why would anyone lie about it, even if it did include some kind of discussion relating to the current round of sanctions on Russia, which is pretty unsensational material when all is said and done? Flynn certainly had a number of other discussions with foreign-intelligence officers before the Trump inaugural, including those of Israel and most likely Britain, without any scandal being imputed even though the talks must surely have included discussion of substantive issues. The difference is clearly the involvement of Russia.
Yeah?
While the entire US political machinery has been caught up with one Trump-based scandal after another over the past three weeks.
In an article about jesuitisms emitted by TLAs, this doesn't start off too well, as I haven't heard of a single Trump-based scandal. I have heard of chaos, confusion, dangerous doofosity and NYT headlines with a tenuous link to reality, yes. I now know about Evola too, he's a pretty cool guy, he founds esoteric fascist cults to alter reality and doesn't afraid of anything.
In 2001 – after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington – the NSA then persuaded the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that it should be allowed to search using the personal identifiers of US citizens, ie, their telephone numbers or email addresses. This was despite the fact that the law had previously specifically prohibited this sort of "reverse targeting."
This timeline is fishy. After the Saudi-sponsored hit it took a few years for this to take hold (an attack made more dramatic and WMD-relevant by distribution of Anthrax packages by persons still unknown in spite of the apprehension and suicide of an Oswald-like character who is hot for sorority girls). The mass hoovering became profitable when "Big Internet" and "everyone online" started to happen, let's say around Google's IPO in 2004. Or maybe when mobile Internet took off, so around 2007? Additionally, i I understand correctly, reverse targeting is also all about targeting US citizens by declaring collected data "incidentially obtained" during the aboveboard activity of snooping on foreigners, so it's really about the search terms (an irrelevant detail in any case).
For this reason alone, it is vital that vigorous public debate over Section 702 – what it is intended to achieve and how to prevent future abuses of the law – happen as soon as possible.
It's over. The deep state is now pretty deep and cemented by excellent tools while the TV screens are filled with fake reality and clownish pussy riot marchers. As President Redacted (the Republican briefly in charge after Bush Junior, prior to the Trump administration; nobody really rememebers him, it's as if he had been wearing a Scramble Suit the whole time) stated in June 2013, NSA runs "a circumscribed, narrow system directed at us being able to protect our people." Yes, indeed. But who are "our people"?
Do you ever get the feeling that we have been actors in a psychological experiment to see what people will do with their computers?
No, the psychological experiment began with OC bombing and was all about how much crap you can shovel into a fake reality sitcom until somebody sits up and notices.
Results were encouraging.
The next target is Iran.
This is the industry that gave us genius ideas like "software patents" and recently, to the acclaim of internally damaged journalists, "API copyrights".
Getting something right?
Yeah, right!
OTOH, as no-one can be arsed to get software "right" in any case, disaster will continue to strike, hacks will continue to proliferate, and backdoors will stay in code bases . We are heading for the one of those Hieronymus Bosch hell situations.
Even Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and one of Mozilla's founders – who was later forced out of the company after it came out that he had donated money to support anti-gay rights legislation in California
"reinstating a ban on same-sex marriage" is now "anti-gay legislation". The newspeak dictionary says so.
Well, I am saddened to say that I have zero hope for companies that cave in to the professionally offended bloggers and sundry Guardianistas at the drop of a hat. Vegetables exhibit more decision power.
> Puts up a large (well large-ish) salary number
If you think you can hire cheap IT Security personnel that actually knows its way around (as opposed to recycled MBAs and incompetent glitzy narcissists out for a quick buck), you will soon learn otherwise.
Companies expecting "off the shelf" security or exchangeable hires are doomed anyway, milk them, then let them be reaped.
Maybe I can still change specialization, there is life in this here "deplorable" yet.
Not a chance.
(and I don't know what "self applicability" means)
In fact, the problems solvable by a Quantum Computer in Polynomial Time (i.e. BQP) does not even cover NP-complete problems.
The universe continues to suck in a profound way (i.e. there always seems to be nearly a shortcut around hard work, but in the end, Mother Nature says no).
Number 0: The Talk (Scott Aaronson)
Number 1: QM since that Laughing Classical Greek Guy (Scott Aaronson)
Number 2: Quantum Theory From Five Reasonable Axioms (Lucien Hardy)
Number 3: Quantum Algorithms via Linear Algebra: A Primer MIT Press Book
Number 4: Quantum Picturalism (sorry, I don't get this yet, maybe ever)
> @Mage, Windows 10 is perfectly fine for business.
No it isn't.
Most "business" can be done (and is better done) by a pared-down terminal with locked-down applications.
Windows is overshit, I mean overkill, a solution in search of a problem. It keeps sysadmins busy and empties the budget. Fuck it.
The liburls are really reaching.
Statue of Liberty was originally Muslim woman: February 4, 2017, 3:15 PM: One of the most persistent symbols of American life, the Statue of Liberty, began as a Muslim woman. CBSN's Reena Ninan has the backstory on Lady Liberty.
So "Lady Liberty" has always secretly been "Lady Muslim Immigrant" (in a convoluted way) and no-one actually suspected! Holy Predator-pursued cow, Batman!
I wonder how a travel ban on immigration, however ill-advised, can cause such painful clenching of the anal sphincter? This goes beyong "Freedom Fries" retardation, by far.
TWENTY-TWO MILLION emails that went missing from Dubbya's private email server?
Well, I sure hope he didn't intend to read them.
Funny, I seem to remember there used to be a "president" between Dubya and Trump, I forget his name. He was all about "looking forward, not back" and was always finding "red lines" in other people's backyards. Yeah, probably another republican.
I seriously doubt this can be kept rejected. It's not like the constitution is saying much about immigration, for obvious reasons.
And if good old Saint Democrat FDR could put US citizens into concentration camps legally, well...
> the engineers knew both accidents were going to happen, management did the equivalent of putting their fingers in their ears and going lalalala.
That's opposing "the engineers" and "management" which is utter bullshit.
In the end "the engineers" were ALSO going lalalala. Though they didn't realize it.
Why signing "changes the binaries"?
It really sounds like some is reaching here.
Also, we have 25 million pieces of "malware that appear trusted because they are legitimately signed by valued code-signing certificates" (it appears that the adjective "valued" no longer has the meaning that it used to have). How does signature revocation happen? I hope someone knows.
...one of the biggest "hacks" of "democracy" was the invasion and abrasion of a couple of countries that had scant to do with either 9/11 or with "weapons of mass destruction". The perps of this are still free, appearing on TV or writing from think-tanks instead of getting their just deserts. Adding the Lybian adventure and the Syrian democracy enhancement to the list would provide for "equal opportunity" in the court visitation department, too. Not entirely unsurpisingly, Russia seems to have nothing to do with any of those instrumentations. Fancy that.
Also, what happened to the story about “Taking Down” British Officials? Memoryholded, too?
Hot on the heels of "GCHQ cyber-chief slams security outfits peddling 'medieval witchcraft'"
At the Enigma 2017 conference this week, Dr Ian Levy said world-plus-dog were trying to flog security defenses to tackle "advanced persistent threats," usually using photos of hoodie-cloaked blokes poised over a keyboard with Matrix-style green lettering in the background. But such figures – seen as untouchable, unbeatable, and untraceable – are chimeras, and it’s just “adequate pernicious toe-rags” who are doing the hacking, he argued.
Do they want to drive us crazy by cognitive dissonance?
Tell you what, whenever a western worthy is mouthing off about "the democracy" (especially one "threatened by Putin"), democratic process is being hollowed out behind the scenes and there sure is somebody who is going to be shafted soon (generally people recruited into "activism" with unclear objectives). First a little color revolution (currently "pink" seem to be the next color of choice), "our guy" getting installed because of his/her extreme democratic potentialhaving been an insider of the hourse of cards for a long time, then the well-connected consultants move in to seize or sell off assets while the the specter of an external enemy is kept alive ... Sorted!
You can't just go any copy high tech without a long-term investment in the very idiosyncratic "production network" and "latent knowledge". These ain't the times of cruisers-with-steam-boilers any more. I don't understand why the chinese don't get this.
Also, I though Russia and China were looking for réapprochment? Seems to be going badly, then.
Actually, I'm seeing Idris (compiles to Haskell) Dependently-Typed Programming Language and this seems to be a good incremental advancement in the state of the art. Fancy AI hype not needed, just theorem proving over the type system.
Problem is for old curmudgeon deplorables like me who have started with Pascal and never really been in the ML lineage it's nearly Alien Technology.