DaftDank

It takes a lot of patience, and good IPM, but living soil has been awesome to me. We often say we grow soil, rather than plants, because of the fact a healthy living soil will provide all the nutrients the plant needs, and all you have to do is water essentially. Speaking strictly from a marijuana perspective (the limit of my experience with living soil), it makes the marijuana taste better and have a better smell. I've seen two different growers, starting with the same clones from the same mother planet, where one grows in soil using bottled nutes, and the other does living soil. The living soil definitely was superior.

With that said, living soil is not practical for everyone. Trying to do it indoors where you also live could create issues if you do not have a good IPM strategy, and fully understand the soil food web. "Teaming with Microbes" by Jeff Lowenfels is an excellent book to learn about how the soil food web works.

Ok, so I assume you are saying it's good crypto is having bad news. May I ask why?

I live in a fairly rural, but affluent, part of Michigan now, and at one of the township board meetings, they were discussing a proposed bike lane. The reason they didn't want it? Only one person (on the board) really said anything at all, and his reasoning was that he imagined a scenario in which there would be some sort of biking event where lots of people would be biking the trail, and his driveway could somehow end up getting blocked. Keep in mind, this is a rural area where most properties sit on 5-10+ acres at least, and the driveways are very far apart generally.

It didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but I just got the impression that for whatever reason, they were deeply opposed to the idea of people being able to safely bike down country roads. After living in San Francisco and Indianapolis in the years before, it was definitely weird seeing people being opposed to bike paths, especially when it would not interfere with their country life almost at all. Maybe they thought it would start them down a path of changing their way of life? I don't know.

What is good?

Cool, thanks for the link.

I wonder if this would work for my hospital CT scans I've had in the last ~5 years. They all come on a CD, with a software program loaded onto it with the scans to view it in. It would be cool to be able to 3d visualize it all

"They wanted to expand surveillance while telling us they were protecting us."

The issue is that they (i.e. government) have always done this. I'm only 35, but I remember this being very clear immediately after 9/11. You just say the boogeyman is terrorism, and that is used to justify end-runs around the constitution via the "PATRIOT" Act, etc. etc. Before terrorism, the excuse was communism. Maybe I'm just cynical now or read too much "1984" as a teenager, but I feel like there will always be a new boogeyman that they use to justify more authority, more powers, and all the while saying it's for our own good and to 'protect' us.

FT is one of the few papers online that I feel is worth paying for. I agree they are good on macro issues for sure.

I don't know why, but NordVPN has always made me wonder if it might be a honey pot. Just the way they came on the scene, had so much advertising money, made sure to bill themselves as the "no logs" option you heard the most about etc. But that's just pure speculation on my part

How do these programs impact China collection, if at all? Are they able to collect Chinese SIGINT of any significance through these cables, or does the 'Golden Shield Project' and 'Great Firewall' prevent info from going out?

I've noticed I can see the Milky Way best when I observe off-center. As soon as I try to focus directly on it, it's not as clear. Bortle sky 4 probably, SQM about 21

Haha this is great.

The "Talk" page for that article fleshes out a lot of things as well.

There's a scene in "True Detective" season 1, where one of sheriff's in the show is driving a Maserati to the country club he golfs at, and says he, "Seized it off some good old boy last year." I'd been aware of civil forfeiture for years before seeing that show, but just the way it was presented really stuck with me for some reason; just how much the system can be abused by "bad actors."

Thanks for that link. I had read parts of the Mueller report before, and learned some of the TTP's that the Russians used during the 2016 campaign/election, but this lays it out more clearly.

Yes, the judge I was referring to was a district court judge in the US (I believe in the state of Virginia but not positive) who hears terrorism cases and makes decisions on whether the classified evidence the prosecution wants to withhold is actually worthy of being withheld -- i.e. if it's actually a threat to national security to disclose, and whether that national security risk outweighs the need for the defendant to be presented with all the evidence used against him to mount a defense. Also, if there is any way to present the evidence with redactions so that the defense can see it, but not reveal sources/methods etc.

Prosecuting cases that depend on classified national security material is nothing new really when it comes to the federal courts. There is a system in place to do so. The military tribunals are an entirely different beast, although some might say different sides of the same coin. I'm inclined to go with the latter, although I don't think the federal courts are quite as bad as the military tribunals in terms of fairness to defendants.

There are plenty of federal prosecutors and judges who know how to handle classified evidence in court. I can't remember his name off the top of my head anymore, but I recall when I deep-dived into the Gitmo suspects and military tribunals a long time ago, there was a judge's name who constantly kept popping up in the paperwork of related terrorism cases. Seemed like he was one of the designated "terrorism judges" who had the clearance and authority to review classified intel and info and make determinations on what can be used and presented. I believe he is from the Virginia district courts possibly

Hah, yeah I suppose it's relative. I guess a really small town I would think of having less than maybe 1,000 people, but 30,000 is about the smallest sized town I'd ever want to live in personally.

The south's money/economy was dependent upon slavery, that is true. But every single southern state listed the right to own slaves as one of their reasons for secession.

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...

From my own personal, subjective experiences, I've found this to be the big one. I've lived in 8 states now, in all regions except the Northeast, from big cities to smaller towns (SF to towns of ~30,000) and the rural vs. urban divide seems to be the most pronounced to me.

There's always been two Americas, if not more. We've just tried to fool ourselves into believing otherwise for a long time.

Reading about this saga in Ben Buchanan's book "The Hacker and the State" made me realize how every government agency (NIST in this case) seems to be always second fiddle to the "needs" of the NSA/national security apparatus. It seems clear from the book that there was a point in time when they essentially just left it in the NSA's hands to develop, knowing it was probably not secure. Not exactly some huge revelation that the national security apparatus can exert power and leverage over other government groups, or even private companies, but the extent to which it happens was surprising.

I can't remember which department, but I remember the local SF/Bay news many years ago talking about some supervisor at that department somehow making $1.5 million the year before (or something insane like that.) They explained how it was all possible, which to me seemed like he had just been with them for so long, he knew exactly the optimal way to play the system and exploit all the loopholes in it.

As for your second part, I guess it would seem unlikely for some positions, but I know a doctor who made like 3x his base salary each year through all sorts of absolutely legal, ethical, and hospital-sanctioned means. Taking every single weekend he could on call (even offering to "relieve" other doctors who had been assigned that weekend) for example allowed him to make much more than you would ever think possible.

This is a decent summary of court cases related to the dogs: https://www.nlrg.com/criminal-law-legal-research/bid/84670/C...

I think this part is pretty key, and has always been a big open question in my mind:

"The court further recognized a potential problem in assessing reliability related to handler cuing, as even well-trained dogs could respond to subconscious cues from their handlers. For this reason, the court determined that a critical factor in determining reliability is the record of false positive alerts made by the dog."

The subconscious cues, or even deliberate cues that only the handler and dog know, could allow an officer with ill intentions to make some kind of signal only known to him and the dog, which causes the dog to make an "alert", giving the cop probable cause.

I started reading "Amazon Unbound" by Brad Stone, and in the part where he discusses the development of Alexa, my laymen self had never considered how difficult it would be to train that thing. I think the term was "far-field" speech recognition, and all the problems that come up when adding in real world variables. People talking from across the room while others are talking, or the TV is going, or as you said, reflections and other materials in the room.

I agree that it is disturbing they tried to use this as evidence.

Sorry for the off-topic question, but I've been wondering for a while and have been too afraid to ask: what does the green name signify here?

Right, I understand that. I guess my question was more of a general one on whether people think Apple in particular would cooperate with the government in that way? Obviously the San Bernardino shooter case comes to mind as an example of Apple not just folding to the government pressure.

Is there a possibility that this could be some kind of Dual_EC type of backdoor they are trying to insert under the guise of something "positive" -- i.e. CSAM? As others have said elsewhere, it seems so out of the blue like they were pressured from somewhere, which I guess I default to assuming government. After reading "The Hacker and the State" by Ben Buchanan, it made me even more aware of how much depth and penetration there is of the private-government partnership in the US.

Can someone explain to me how PoS is not centralized? The whole point of crypto and the blockchain is decentralization, no? I feel like crypto/blockchain will end up looking nothing like how it was intended, and be regulated to the point that it's just the next iteration of the traditional banking system, where the current power holders continue holding the power. Maybe I was naive to ever think it would be any different.

I don't think it's crazy at all. We (i.e. the US) use our SIGINT abilities to spy on allies all the time, or at least according to numerous books and leaks. With that said, I'm not sure that the US government considers China an ally.