This would obviously only work if the encrypted messages can also be decrypted.
And that's the worrying part. As soon as that mechanism exists, all assumption of data safety goes out the window.
642 karma · joined March 3, 2017
And that's the worrying part. As soon as that mechanism exists, all assumption of data safety goes out the window.
Or the age-old fantasy of being able to see with someone else's vision. The problem here being that you would have to see with their whole brain for it to make a difference, haha.
And how babies for example might perceive the world, as they do not have that much data to fill in the gaps with yet.
Fascinating.
"block-outside-dns"
then run this test:
I pass the extended test with it. Very easy and worth doing.
Windows 10 spying pales in comparison to the theoretical capabilities of the ME.
There was this brief campaign to try to get AMD to let users control or disable their ME equivalent, but it never went anywhere.
I would kill for a modern computing platform without this crap built in. Soon forced DRM will go through it as well.
It's absolutely shocking to see how much control people (and even companies) have surrendered to Intel.
I'd recommend only buying libre / coreboot compatible hardware (or librem, or system76 systems) until users can gain more control over the Intel ME.
I honestly don't understand what these shareholders want.
Same with Facebook.
Are they selling because "user" numbers are down a sliver? (Both Facebook and Twitter coincidentally seem to have experienced a 1 million active user reduction per month in the last month). It feels as though respective drops of 20% and 17% are absolutely disproportionate to that tiny number of users leaving.
So, then, is this the impact of Cambridge Analytica et al? Does money care whether CA helped pave the way for Trump and Brexit? I don't think so. Doesn't seem likely at all.
In fact, I could see "money" / "capital", whatever you want to call it, cheering them on. The rich have nothing to lose from this short term.
So, what is it actually? Is it in fact "the rich" withdrawing their money as part of some sort of punishment for these platforms, as they clean up their act?
It's not like Twitter or Facebook haven't tried absolutely EVERYTHING to avoid doing this. They harbored bots, spam and fake accounts until the very bitter end, when the PR scales just about tipped in favour of cleaning up their acts, because some governments (mostly the EU) started rattling their sabers.
I wish, oh do I wish for this to simply be "they treat their customers like the data-cows that they are, ripe for milking by every shady organisation, government and security agency imaginable, they are confessing to their sins and suffering the consequences rightfully, which will turn society back onto a path of common goals and shared prosperity".
But that's not it. Is it...
"Feelings are such a tricky thing. I was raised to suppress them. Or, well, not even that. Feelings were so thoroughly suppressed in my family, that they never even featured. I must have learned that any expression of emotion gets me nowhere by the age of 0.5
In my 20s, throughout various failed relationships I began to re-examine what feelings are. Why did people (and, anecdotally, women) have so many feelings, of such strength and seemingly of such unpredictability?
It wasn't long until I decided to get therapy. To see what's lurking beneath.
Lo and behold, there were some feelings there. Lots of them surprisingly strong, yet hesitant to surface. It was a bizarre dichotomy to have to deal with. One that affects me to this day. It's like the stronger a feeling within me, the further it is hidden away, leading to this cat and mouse game of 'who am I?'.
Feelings offer a surprisingly absolute way to perceive the world. They are always there and they are always exactly what they are. So long as you allow yourself to feel them.
For the last decade I have been doing nothing but trying to feel more and more. This is still a lot less than most people. At the same time it makes me feel much more 'at home' in the world, it has made me able to connect with people better, it has reduced my stress and anxiety.
It has also lead to some other curious changes within me. I am feeling myself become more and more incompatible with the 'business world'. I know that's a very vague term, but I have found corporate culture and the striving for endless profits, no matter what the human cost, to be incredibly despiccable. Nauseating, icky. Misguided.
I wonder whether feelings and emotions provide a certain common ground for what a human being 'should be' or 'wants to be', which runs counter to capitalist incentive. After all, you want a herd of obedient workers, not uppity individuals causing trouble with their free spirited antics.
I should add that I am of German heritage and I feel there is an entire generation of people who have lived through historical events enabled almost entirely by the suppression and eradication of all feelings (apart from, ironically, hate and fear)."
I was raised to suppress them. Or, well, not even that. Feelings were so thoroughly suppressed in my family, that they never even featured. I must have learned that any expression of emotion gets me nowhere by the age of 0.5
In my 20s, throughout various failed relationships I began to re-examine what feelings are. Why did people (and, anecdotally, women) have so many feelings, of such strength and seemingly of such unpredictability?
It wasn't long until I decided to get therapy. To see what's lurking beneath.
Lo and behold, there were some feelings there. Lots of them surprisingly strong, yet hesitant to surface. It was a bizarre dichotomy to have to deal with. One that affects me to this day. It's like the stronger a feeling within me, the further it is hidden away, leading to this cat and mouse game of 'who am I?'.
Feelings offer a surprisingly absolute way to perceive the world. They are always there and they are always exactly what they are. So long as you allow yourself to feel them.
For the last decade I have been doing nothing but trying to feel more and more. This is still a lot less than most people. At the same time it makes me feel much more 'at home' in the world, it has made me able to connect with people better, it has reduced my stress and anxiety.
It has also lead to some other curious changes within me. I am feeling myself become more and more incompatible with the 'business world'. I know that's a very vague term, but I have found corporate culture and the striving for endless profits, no matter what the human cost, to be incredibly despiccable. Nauseating, icky. Misguided.
I wonder whether feelings and emotions provide a certain common ground for what a human being 'should be' or 'wants to be', which runs counter to capitalist incentive. After all, you want a herd of obedient workers, not uppity individuals causing trouble with their free spirited antics.
I should add that I am of German heritage and I feel there is an entire generation of people who have lived through historical events enabled almost entirely by the suppression and eradication of all feelings (apart from, ironically, hate and fear).
I would love to go back to an internet that's harder to access, with a higher ratio of noobs to more experienced technology users. Everything was so much more fun back then.
I have in fact begun to resent the internet over the last 10 years or so...and my usage has dropped to like one or two websites that could be called communities. This being one of them.
The rest is now purely utilitarian. Online banking and courses.
Does it not make far more sense to finally realise that there are people who work for money, in exchange for freedom (directly that. time, freedom, agency. that is what you exchange for money) and then there are people who use the work of others to ensure they never lose their own freedom? With blatant disregard for the wellbeing of those workers?
If that is where the dividing line was, things might finally change.
Here in the UK people will cling to being part of their class as though their life depends on it.
Middle class people had rather die than be called 'working class'. The working class hates the middle class with an intense passion, thinking they all eat kale, basically live at Starbucks and try to turn England into a communist utopia.
Class divisions just play into the hands of the one and only class that's different from the people who work for money: Those who do not have to.
If society was nicely split into "those who work for money and those who do not", I believe it would very quickly become clear who is acting in whose interest.
But so long as the veil of "working vs. middle, vs. upper middle" shrouds our collective ability to see who is truly ruining it for everyone, nothing will change.
I guess there is this strange notion that Capitalism is this "all or nothing" system, where you either get a free market with its invisible hand or nothing. This sort of "Everything else is communism" thinking.
We all know that this is not true. Capitalist societies have all sorts of schemes that are "un-capitalistic". Take public healthcare. In some ways that's a very socialist idea. At the same time, you could argue it supports the capitalist system by taking various burdens off the workforce, enabling them to spend more time generating more money than it cost to implement the socialist health care.
My theory is that concentration of wealth is incredibly dangerous to society because it gives disproportionate power to very few individuals. The control these people exert over policy, their workers, our entire culture leaves us at their whim. This results in things like Brexit and the insane clusterfuck that's the current US government and the populist right-wing uprising in Europe.
I don't care whether someone has tons of money so they can wank themselves to sleep over their financial portfolio. I do care when society as a whole, human progress, everyone's actions are filtered through the lens of a few rich people's actions and desires.
I hate this notion that the population-at-large is just a sideshow on this rich-people's playground we call earth. It is sickening. The wealth that these people amass does not trickle down and is not used for more useful things than it would be if this wealth was somehow capped and re-distributed for the benefit of society. (And believe me, I know that on the flipside this would be a breeding ground for bloated institution wasting money with their inefficiency. This would also not be a 'perfect' system by any means, but I do believe it would be better than whatever it is we are currently steering towards.)
To quickly touch on people being lifted out of poverty. I am all for it. But under what conditions? Is a Foxconn factory worker someone who was lifted out of poverty? Is a quasi-slave working on the Qatari football stadium lifted out of poverty? In exchange for what?
Is the ever-decreasing quality of life people on disability benefits in the UK, being harassed by the DWP 24/7 and stripped of all agency and freedom worth it, because they are not considered "below the red line poor"?
Would the reinvigoration of public services by capping wealth (or introducing profit sharing in companies, or 20:1 pay ratios / stock option ratios for companies) be so devastating to all of society that it would indeed be worse than the current destruction of democracy by your Murdochs, Kochs, Zuckerbergs, Bezoses, Rothchilds and whomever else super-rich acting in their own interests?
If it could realistically be capped at, say, $10mil or something, why not?
Nobody needs more than that. Yes, you could say the same for one million or a hundred, but you have to start somewhere. It makes me sick that this is the society we live in.
This pathetic striving for maximum wealth, in an eternal competition over who has a bigger ficitious number attached to their family emblem, no matter what the societal, ethical and global consequences, is close to the root of all evil in my opinion.
yes, a configurable item can cost you a range of money O_o
In my opinion, these projects are one of the last great human efforts to inspire generations with things that are not just about making more profit. But it's not about this project or that. It's about far more.
You say this money should go to hungry people instead. Let's say it's not just starving children in Africa, but maybe even a project to feed the homeless or help under-privileged children get an education...even in that case, do you actually think that if all that money was freed up, this would actually happen?
Of course it wouldn't. It would go to line even more pockets of some faceless international organisation / corporation / hedge fund / military investment buddies of some regime.
There is no way in hell that any poor or under-privileged person would benefit from the abandonment of these projects. No chance whatsoever. What little money there is, is all concentrated in the hands of a few people who have absolutely no other mission in life other than accumulating more money and power.
They have made most science happen for private sector profit-reaping already. This is some of the last stuff done for all mankind. We'd be making a huge mistake abandoning it.
Again, the people in charge will not help the poor or homeless. If you wanted to do that, you should tax multinational corporations and get rid of tax havens.
There is a kind of money hidden away in tax loopholes all over the globe that would make the LHC, HBP, heck, the ISS look like chump change.
Look there first.
Socialism is a completely different topic. I wouldn't even know how to define it, considering how many wildly different definitions of it there are. I think the regulated markets, like Germany and Scandinavian countries have a nice model, but even the crazy American model would be fine, if the rules were the same for everyone.
Again, I was not talking about socialism or how to fund it.
By the way, you mentioned that this consumption tax is not how you fund socialism. How do you fund socialism? I'd be very interested to hear your perspective :)
I believe what the EU has realised, is, that trying to tax the profits of corporations that will simply move them around and declare them wherever they don't have to pay taxes on them, is a game of cat and mouse the EU can't win. So, they decided to go a different route.
When Google decided they could negotiate the tax they had to pay in the UK with George Osborne, the public outcry was massive (think: "Why can't I get an appointment with HMRC to negotiate what I owe in taxes?").
The EU needs to show that the social contract is non-negotiable, lest it face further disenfranchisement of the populace.
This is a good first step in the right direction, in my opinion. Whether it's tech companies, or any other big industrial conglomerate, tax avoidance is not acceptable.
I do not know what the point of the European Single Market was. In fact, I'd be interested to hear someone with the know-how tell me. Was it to create a trading zone where the same rules applied to everyone? Or was it just supposed to ease trade across borders by creating some kind of customs framework and abolishing tariffs, etc.?
Now the point I was making wasn't specifically about Ireland. I could have said Italy as well. I just wanted to point out that paying taxes is a huge deal. Not just for filling the coffers of the European Union, but as a symbol of everyone paying into the social contract.
If people see nothing but giant corporations exploiting the legal systems of countries to dodge taxes, people think they could do so, too. It disenfranchises the populace and just ends up giving more rise to populism, which is possibly the biggest scourge on society at this moment in time. Populism leads to fascism. The whole tax malarkey plays into this. It's not the root cause of populism (not sure there is one) and it's certainly not Ireland's fault that they managed to attract business through favourable business tax rates, but something needs to be done about the blatant tax avoidance by these international players and I think this is a good first step, which will surely see some refinement down the line.
So, again, I think you make a valid point, but I also believe that my original point stands also.
By the way, there's one country that was afraid enough of tax regulation that they fooled a sufficiently large proportion of their populace into voting for one of the most insane political decisions of the last decades. In a non-binding referendum, which is somehow, miraculously, being implemented with a kind of fervour and passion not seen since the Apollo program. (While actually important societal issues would never be put up to a referendum and even then, if people voted the wrong way (aka, against short term financial gain, or archaic doctrine), would simply go ignored. Hmmmm....)
Multiple speculative causes:
- Social pressure. The bosses want to be able to say "look at how hard I can make my workers work", probably without comparing productivity in any way
- Social pressure. People competing with each other for how hard working they are. This seems prevalent in many cultures. "Oh I am so tired / stressed". When you claim those things, you can stop worrying about other issues, like doing good work. I have always noticed that the busier I appear, the less people would hold me to account for problems. Ridiculous.
- A tired / overworked populace doesn't have the energy to get any revolutionary ideas. The status quo is maintained, no matter what the cost. This suits almost nobody, other than a select few. But, we do it to ourselves. Like the herd of bison running from the lion, we do not realise our power and instead accept whatever the oppressors (companies) force on us. So, we made our bed and are lying in it. No point complaining unless we are willing to do something about it. See points 1 and 2, this has never been about productivity.
The Intel Management Engine will make a lot of tinfoil hats tingle: http://hackaday.com/2016/11/28/neutralizing-intels-managemen...
Libre-boot and coreboot promote a kind of transparency where you know what your system is booting and why.
It's much better than having this proprietary walled garden with astounding amounts of power/control inaccessible to anyone but Intel in your machine.
Intel would of course argue that this is necessary for good crypto and it's for the users, not against them. Which may hold true a little bit....until it's compromised by someone.