I don't have the reference handy, but I recall an article from this past Summer that said the designers of the site had put security on the back-burner. Their plan was to get the system working and worry about security afterwards.
That really alarmed me. Being more than a little involved with security implementations over the last decade, the #1 rule is that you can't tack-on security afterwards. If you try, it will be fragile and ultimately ineffective. You absolutely must design with security as a major requirement from the start.
So, I am not surprised to see this report, it lines up exactly with what I've been expecting since Summer.
The article mentions the State Secrets Privilege as a reason the government can get away without judicial oversight by claiming national security interests.
It is worth noting that the case which established the judicial concept of the state secrets privilege after a ruling by the SCOTUS turned out to be 100% corrupt. When the documents were declassified 40 years later it was discovered that they did contain evidence of wrong-doing by the military but had only the most tenuous claim to national security ("an aircraft capable of dropping bombs").
So the entire doctrine in use here has been one big fraud from the very start.
Do you know why your submissions are all marked [dead]?
Mine started to do that a couple of days ago and I'm trying to figure out why. Looking at your submission history it looks like it is permanent for you.
Really? That's a bit unnerving, and I can't understand why. It would certainly account for a lack of traction, and the fact that the same stuff gets submitted later and attracts comments....
So to answer your question: I didn't know and I have no idea.
Just looking at your submissions, they are not marked Dead as far as I can see....
http://imgur.com/na2DuiK
It has been widely speculated that the customs form that they pass out on the airplane en route to the USA is not about stopping bad guys but about getting them to lie on official paperwork so that there is a documented crime to cite as a reason to deport/jail them.
The ones here in Uruguay and especially Argentina are mostly concerned about illegally entering or withdrawing cash (US Dollars mostly).
You have to declare cash above a certain amount, and I believe excess cash can be confiscated.
There are also other questions (for example: if you're bringing animal products - we had very damaging outbreaks of foot and mouth disease, the mad cow scare, etc)
The I-94 form asks such questions as "have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage; or in terrorist activities; or genocide; or between 1933 and 1945 were involved, in any way, in persecutions associated with Nazi Germany or its allies", "have you... procured or attempted to procure a visa or entry into the U.S. by fraud or misrepresentation?", and "are you seeking entry to engage in criminal activities?"
Yes, I know. I'm fairly confident it's the form
tedunangst referred to, and to travellers, the distinction is mostly academic, since they're both handed in at customs.
With the 39" Seiki 4K "tv" at less than $500 shipped, the $3,500 pricing level on the Dells seems excessive. I'm certain the Dells are better monitors, but are they 700% better? If Seiki revs their model line-up to include display-port, all these official monitors will really be in trouble.
I was a little floored by the Seiki price drop. When it happened, I Tweeted at Seiki to ask if this is a precursor to a replacement unit that functions more as a monitor (60Hz, HDMI 2, no splash screen, DPMI on, no speakers, matte surface). That's wishful thinking, of course. The tweet was mostly just to put the demand in front of them. :)
4K at 24" is really interesting, however. Not necessarily because I want to use a small monitor again, but rather because it's a sign that we are slowly inching toward high-DPI large form-factor displays. And I've been waiting for that to happen for a decade.
Next would be extending that pixel density to 30" (~6K) and larger (~8K). Then I will celebrate a bit.
There's some price discrimination going on here, yes, but keep in mind that a) the PQ on that Seiki will be horrible; 2) at 39" it's way too large; and iii) as you note, it does not have a useful way to get a signal into it.
The win with a ~200dpi 24" 4k will be OS X-style Retina upscaling, not simply screen real estate.
(A) Horrible is a vast overstatement. Unless you need calibrated color, it is fine.
(2) Being too large is relative, my 30" 2560x1600 quickly became normal sized. For the additional pixels the additional inches of a 39" seems about right.
(iii) HDMI at 30Hz is just fine for anything but gaming. I used to have an IBM T221 that also ran at 30Hz and it was no problem at all for text and video. Some people expect there will be mouse lag, there wasn't.
Your monitor's electronics may be doing more processing at 30Hz (like frame-doubling) than at 60Hz thus adding latency that is not inherent in the lower refresh rate.
I used the T221 at 30Hz in a multi-monitor system with the other two monitors at 60Hz. I could drag a window so it straddled the 30Hz monitor and a 60Hz monitor. The DPI was severely mismatched so it wasn't very useful to straddle like that, but movement across the monitors was not obnoxious, not terribly fluid, but not annoying either.
I'm sure different people have different tolerances for latency, but I tend to think my tolerance is pretty low.
a) Not really. Obviously, Seiki isn't setting a benchmark for build quality. But it's also not "horrible." My wife's Seiki has zero dead pixels and is crisp and clear. Brightness isn't even around the edges, but "horrible" is going too far. It's far less horrible than a TN panel, for instance.
2) 39" is not way too large. I want 50" on my desktop.
iii) Yeah, HDMI 1.4 is limiting, but 30Hz makes it still usable for non-gaming. DisplayPort? I guess I won't balk at it, but just give me HDMI 2.
I am critical of the monitor for other reasons: a) it doesn't power up on DPMI on and has a splash screen, 2) it has a semi-glossy screen and professional monitors should be matte, and iii) it's HDMI 1.4.
Seiki is still HDMI/1.x and doesn't support 60FPS. Nor will it help gaming at it's limit refresh rate. The good is that they're putting pressure on the big brands. If it was HDMI/2.0, I'd be all over it.
Your point about the importance of pixel density is a good one, but the pedantry is misplaced. Resolution in the context of display resolution has referred to pixel count, not pixel density, for decades.
I have a Seiki 39in that I use as a second monitor for my rMBP - the PPI (110) is the same as the Apple 27in Thunderbolt and they have roughly the same picture quality once you calibrate the Seiki. 39 Inches of uninterrupted space is awesome the only downside I've noticed is some mouse lag under OSX which can be fixed with some quartz settings that then cause screen tearing, I've read it's not present under windows so maybe it's something that can be worked out with a software fix.
It's not a choice you are given for proprietary desktops. New features are almost always the domain of point releases. The linux distros have just decoupled that so you know what you are missing if you wait.
The clearest finding was that the more diverse the area, the less people trusted each other.
I grew up in Hawaii, arguably one of the most racially and culturally diverse populations in the world. As an adult I've lived in 10-15 cities on the mainland and none of them had as much warmth and acceptance in the culture as Hawaii does. If I had to pick one reason for that, I'd say it is because Hawaii has less correlation between race and wealth than most places in the US. Still not completely egalitarian, but closer.
If I had to pick one reason for that, I'd say it was because Hawaii is an island. Island cultures are notoriously laid back and friendly around the world.
The power to strike is no help when you depend on your paycheck to survive
Well managed unions maintain a strike fund so that their members can survive the economic hardship of a strike.
After googling a little I think you are talking about Graduate Students United - their dues are only $5/year, which means they aren't even in the same league as the serious blue collar labor unions.
Actually I was talking about the organization that represents low-paid university workers, like janitors and cafeteria workers. I reworded my post to clarify.
Graduate students are a whole 'nother basket of beans.
farm workers have the UFW but being a farm worker remains one of the most intensely miserable jobs in the US, with constant rule-breaking by the employers, and a lot of unrepresented workers.
I don't think it is fair to blame the large number of unrepresented workers on the union itself. I'm sure the UFW wants to increase their membership past the paltry ~5,000 it has.
I see it as a yin-yang situation. Corporations are a way to organize capital for the benefit of the capital owners, unions are a way to organize labor for the benefit of the labor "owners." In a healthy capitalist system, both are necessary in order to maintain balance.
That's the ideal. In the real world, both types of organizations will seek ways to exploit any advantage in their favor. But that's life.
Corporations and labor unions are not really equivalent.
If you view them purely from the point of view of market power, then yes, they are the same thing. Both create an oligopoly in the market for buying/selling labor.
But corporations also are the way that both capital and labor are organized to produce an actual product. There is no analogous role for unions, except some special unions that play a large role in management.
I'm not sure what you mean by "livable working conditions"
If you are referring to total compensation and hours, this comes under what I referred to as "oligopoly". That is, labor unions can create market power on the side of labor, in order to raise pay.
However, this doesn't benefit society as a whole, and so it is only reasonable when there is market power on the other side. In my industry, there did seem to be an attempt to form a cartel of employer, but Mark Zuckerberg seems to have broken that cartel.
If you are referring to actual working conditions, like workplace safety, I already mentioned that when I talked about special unions that are involved with management. E.g. in very dangerous professions, unions might be part of the "deal" where management and workers agree on how to, as you say, organize labor and capital.
In general, however, and especially in IT, there is no need for unions because the market for labor is competitive, and working conditions can be negotiated between the worker and the corporation.
I agree IT unions aren't very necessary. We have it easy; we're well paid, we're fairly flexible, and if one employer sucks, we can easily can a better job elsewhere.
But plenty of industries don't have that advantage. Many workers are very dependent on a single employer. This is especially the case with workers that have highly specific training and experience that doesn't translate well to other jobs. If they're exploited or otherwise unhappy, they can't simply quit and get a similar job elsewhere, whereas the employer can afford to lose a single employee and train a new one, which makes the employer-employee relationship an unequal one. There, unions can provide a lot of value to keep employers honest.
That really alarmed me. Being more than a little involved with security implementations over the last decade, the #1 rule is that you can't tack-on security afterwards. If you try, it will be fragile and ultimately ineffective. You absolutely must design with security as a major requirement from the start.
So, I am not surprised to see this report, it lines up exactly with what I've been expecting since Summer.