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tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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The Cheshire Cat posted:

They didn't do that because they clearly don't care what those people think.

... now that I think about it... yeah, pretty much this.

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tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:

They have those?

Yes. They're called Dennis Miller.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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coyo7e posted:

Here Are 16.3 MIND-BLOWING Reasons Why I Am Not Clicking That

... and what you did next will melt our hearts.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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Take a map of Italy, turn it upside down... boom. New Zealand.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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On the notion that rounding up or down to the nearest 5¢ is too imprecise to be a feasible solution to the penny problem: let's be honest: it's not like transactions always, or even usually, end up in units of 1/100ths of a dollar currently. That's a result of rounding.

In my town in Illinois, the non-food sales tax is 7.25%. So if I buy something for $7.49, I actually have to pay $8.033025. But I can't pay that because we don't have a .3025¢ piece, or even .0005¢ or .0001¢ pieces which we could use several of to come up to .3025¢. So we round it off: $8.03. See, $7.49 + 7.25% doesn't really equal $8.03. That's just what we go with because over a hundred years ago, we decided not to bother cutting up the dollar into more than 100 units. This was back when you could do something with a penny, it should be noted. I mean, could send a letter or something. But it was something.

So instead of $8.03, it'd be either $8.05 or $8.00. Yes, it's less precise, but it's not going to put anyone in hawk.

Slavish devotion to uselessly small amounts of money that result from messy math almost got Superman killed. Do you want to almost kill Superman? Or make a robot chick who isn't sexy? Because that's what'll happen if we keep the penny.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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IRQ posted:

The only problem I see with that is that prices here are almost always X.99 so it would always round up but it's 1 cent so who loving cares and I use plastic anyway.

You know, not everyone uses $X.99. Some places are $X.97, some $X.96, and so on. I'd imagine that they'd switch to $X.95, which still accomplishes what they are truly doing: tricking your brain by making things appear cheaper on the dollar side of the decimal. That is literally the only reason stuff costs $0.99 instead of $1.00. Hell, gas uses $X.999 for this reason. So they'd either abandon that strategy, something Dollar General and Family Dollar stores have done, or they'd keep it but drop the price to $X.95.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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IRQ posted:

Why stop there? I don't see why we need anything smaller than quarters.

I do. And I have a solution to all of these problems. That solution is: feet are better than meters. gently caress decimals.

The base unit will still be the dollar, and you'll have coins for a half dollar, quarter dollar, eighth dollar, and sixteenth dollar. No more $1.99. Now it's $1 15/16.

Also, we'd have third dollar coins. They're worth a third of a dollar, because gently caress that first 3 for $1 item being $0.34 every time. That's communism.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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Yes, it would certainly be a travesty of Biblical proportions if there were an English word whose spelling made the correct pronunciation ambiguous.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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The whole "it's just a comedy show" defense is technically true: it's a comedy show that uses current events as its fodder for jokes. But sometimes, that defense is too convenient. If you spend half your time mocking a news outlet for their inaccuracy and bias, then if you get caught being inaccurate or biased (especially while pointing out the flaws of the aforementioned news outlet), then it's pretty cheap to just say, "yeah, but we're doing it for laughs" when you were also being at least a little serious.

It's like that kid, Johnny. You know, the one who always made fun of Billy. "Ha, Billy, look at your thrift store clothes! That won't be cool for 20 more years, when people with money see it as retro and ironic!" he said. "Ha! You're so poor, just because your dad died in Desert Storm!! Ha ha ha!" And then another kid says, "Hey Billy, you're wearing lovely clothes too, because your mom is raising your family all by herself since your dad died." Then Billy responds, "Yeah, but my dad didn't get shot in Iraq by some soldier. My dad was killed when he dressed up like Bigfoot and jumped toward a car going down the highway so the guy'd get scared and report a Bigfoot sighting and be laughed at by the whole town! HUGE difference!!"

Well it's not like that, but I've been waiting a long time to work that particular Darwinism into an analogy, and I got sick of waiting for an opportunity.

I guess it's just hard to decide just how much cake we let shows like this have while also letting them eat that same portion. It's a tricky, nebulous balance, and yeah, there's no easy answer.

(And to be fair, Jon Stewart did, on a few occasions, admit a few times that they were factually wrong about something. So he didn't fall back on the comedy excuse every time.)

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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Snowglobe of Doom posted:

[Placeholder post so in a few hours after I've seen S3 E1 and found out whether it's stale or good again I can come back here and edit in a prediction and then post an "I told you so"]

It would take a considerable fool to accidentally thwart this amazing plan. I wish I'd thought of it!

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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Echo Chamber posted:

But saying John Oliver is using the "it's comedy" defense implies he was accused of material harm; that his show was under fire or controversy for something.

When your biggest critic is a discredited FIFA official, it's time to stop calling "I'm a comedian" a "defense"and more like "this is what I do and I love doing it."

Really, that was the only time? I guess I got so used to it happening to The Daily Show that I projected it onto its bastard child by an English tart.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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M_Gargantua posted:

I liked the video of them trying to press buttons like its some twisted game of whack-a-mole. Democracy gone wild.

Well, it's the state legislatures doing what they do. What do you expect? There's a reason Jon Stewart called statehouses "the meth labs of democracy."

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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Oh, I'm not agreeing with the process. It's just another thing that should remind us that there is a huge valley between the statehouse and the Congress of the United States.

As for why no one makes a big deal out of it... well, two things come to mind. One: most people, and I mean the vast majority of people, don't care to look up exactly what their representatives/senators vote on, which way they vote, etc., especially at the state level where legislators commonly run unopposed. And two--none of the legislators complain about it because when Tom votes for Dick and Harry, sooner or later, Dick and Harry return the favor for Tom and each other. Literally everybody does it.

Nobody who steals money out of the tip jar every day goes out of their way to make a stink about people stealing money out of the tip jar.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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Demiurge4 posted:

You're assuming that they aren't doing it maliciously.

No I'm not. I'm pretty sure it sometimes does get done maliciously, in fact. The reason that nobody complains about it in the statehouse is that everyone has done it at some point. It doesn't make it right, it just makes it hard to tattle.

Someone who posted above me indicated that it may not be malicious.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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Getting an ID for my son, who is autistic and was 17 at the time, was almost a huge ordeal.

In Illinois, the requirements for an initial (as opposed to replacement or renewal) state ID (w/ a photo) are the same as the requirements for a driver's license, sans the driving portion. The problem is that some of it isn't very easy to get if you're not the head of a household or something. You need...

One thing from Group A: Written signature. We used his Social Security card for this.
One thing from Group B: DOB. We had his birth certificate.
One thing from Gropu C: SSN. Again, we used his social security card.
Two things from Group D: Residency. This was the tricky one.

I was in a panic, because almost everything from Group D is mail of some kind, and who the gently caress mails a kid anything? Kids don't pay the bills, so there are no bills with kids' names on them. After searching through all of the mail we hadn't thrown away, we got lucky: he had an EOB from our insurance company because of a doctor's visit, and we found a pay check stub from his school/work program that had our address on it.

A lot of people, more than you think, don't have easy, or in some cases any, access to a birth certificate. For some older people, there never was a birth certificate because they were born at home and for whatever reason, their folks didn't register at the courthouse because what's the need? Everyone knows this is Clem Nordermeyer! He's going to work at the mill, just like his pappy. Getting equivalent documents isn't always easy, and sometimes there are no equivalent documents. Yes, this is much less of an issue for younger people or people who are working.

But those aren't the only people who have the right to vote. When you create laws that, as a consequence, remove rights from certain people, there'd better be a really good reason. The crime of voter impersonation isn't a good reason because it all but never happens. When you take that flimsy veil of a reason in the context that these laws tend to disproportionately affect people who tend to vote for one of the two parties in our system, and then add in a dash of "they've accidentally admitted why they're actually doing this on multiple occasions," well, you have a good case against voter ID laws.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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xcore posted:

Isn't this what Social Security numbers are?

The people who are afraid of the national ID thing and all that crap get really skittish when it comes to the SSN. Oh, they have one, but they will not give it out.

I had a job as customer service for a health insurance company years ago. The quickest, most common way to find someone's policy was to search by SSN, because you just can't expect people to look at the god drat card with their policy ID on it, because gently caress, gently caress, gently caress! TOO MUCH EFFORT!! So we'd ask for their SSN, and the ones who are all scared of national IDs, one-world-order, number-of-the-beast bullshit? They start asking YOU questions. Why am I asking for that number? Don't I know it?

No, sir. You just called me, your insurance company. I do not know who you are, so clearly I don't know your number. You're aware that Big Insurance Company is more than just one office with three customers whose voices are all distinctive, right?

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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Nostalgia4Butts posted:

in the military our socials are on any document we sign

Funny thing is, I found out many years ago that it's not uncommon for the spouses of military personnel to know their spouses' SSNs while being unaware of their own SSNs. In fact, the people under the age of 21 or so who were most likely to know their own SSNs without having to look it up were either militaryfolk or college students.

I'm not a veteran, but I know that I didn't know my own SSN by rote until after a year or two in college, another place where that number comes in handy a lot.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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meristem posted:

Needless to say, the whole issue is absolutely bizarre to me. Wouldn't it be easier for the Democrats to push for free state ID laws and have those suffice for several years (and also be useful elsewhere) than to register voters regularly? I dunno... probably somebody did a cost/benefit analysis of that somewhere.

Well, many times, there is a free provision written into these laws that we're talking about. It's just nearly impossible to take advantage of it, that's all. But the main problem isn't so much the fee, it's the myriad of documents you need in order to secure the ID--as I demonstrated above, this isn't always easy to do even in circumstances like mine where you're dealing with a young guy whose entire life has been fairly well documented in one way or another. And, then there's the issue of where to go to get the ID. In Illinois, we go to a Secretary of State office (previously the Driver's Service Facility or DSF; most other states call this the DMV), and there really are plenty of them around. The problem is waiting in line, which isn't a huge deal. But in some places, such facilities are few and far between, not open that often, and since state budgets in general have been in a crunch, these are the kinds of places that get chopped when the state needs to save money.

If you live an hour or two away from the only facility that can provide the ID you need, and that facility is only open every now and then, and you have a low-paying wage-earning job where taking off work isn't always easy or possible without repercussions from your managers? Well, this can become quite an ordeal.

It is important to note, though, that in Europe, it makes more sense for everyone to always have an ID. You have sovereign nation-states that are roughly the size of large American states, and they're all connected to each other by land and sea borders, rail, road, etc. In the US, we border two countries, and most people don't live particularly close to those borders. Many, if not most, Americans will never step foot outside the USA, either because of economic reasons or because the US is just so freaking big. For this reason, the need for a national ID just isn't as big here.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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The Cheshire Cat posted:

I've been getting a weird feeling about the discussion in this thread on this issue - I agree with most of what people are saying, but at the same time I feel like we're looking at it from the wrong direction. It's all fine to say "Hollywood is racist", but unless some of us are Hollywood producers, there isn't really anything we can do directly about that. So what CAN we do, from the bottom up? How can we be better consumers, rather than how can they be better creators? I'm asking this as a genuine question; I honestly don't know the answer.

As has been noted, we vote with our wallets. It's the capitalist version of affirmative action: we have to eschew more movies with white male leads and financially support movies with minority and/or female leads. When the dollars start flowing that way, trust me, Hollywood will notice. It is literally the one thing they truly understand. That's why comic book movies, satirical remakes of 1970s/80s TV shows, remakes/reboots, and anything directed by Michael Bay have been so annoyingly popular lately: people pay money to see them regardless of originality and quality. So they'll keep farting it out until we all collectively decide to pay for something else.

If you want to join this crusade, then you can be part of the solution. And I really hope you like Tyler Perry, because that's probably most of what you're going to get for a while.

A Tyler Perry Production

of a Tyler Perry film

A Tyler Perry is

A Tyler Perry in

Tyler Perry: the Kanye West Story

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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Kevyn posted:

Raise your hand if you thought that "ghost government! That's the shittiest idea for a ghost story ever. Except of course for..." was going to lead to a slam on Ghostbusters 2016.

My hand is half-up. I thought he was going to say Ghostbusters, wait a beat, and then to the chorus of boos and cheers add, "Two," and then admonish the crowd for being so sexist.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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computer parts posted:

The idea behind special districts is that there might be some service that transcends the ability of the current local government, but it's not major enough to consolidate the existing governments. One example might be a rural hospital - it's expensive enough that no single county can pay for it, and multiple counties intend to use it. So what they do is create a special district for building that hospital, and pool some money to build it.

Yes. While this episode did make them seem next to useless and prone to corruption, they do make sense more often than not. Especially in suburban and rural areas.

A fire district might cover several municipalities in a metropolitan community when neither the individual governments nor the county as a whole could adequately do so. And there's no reason to expect that district to coincide exactly with, say, a sewer district, or a hospital district, so naturally the borders overlap and you have situations where two houses in the same sewer district happen to be in different fire districts.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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Also, with the state budgets being what they are, do you really want someone from Chicago deciding that they could use another coat of asphalt on Rich rear end in a top hat Terrace Drive Lane Boulevard by using the money culled from the totally unnecessary mosquito abatement funds for downstate Illinois?

States tend to do things that make the highest concentrations of voters the happiest. In states like Illinois, that means money for downstate services would get re-purposed for poo poo in the Chicago metropolitan area. But, for the handful of states where population isn't heavily concentrated in a handful of urban areas, that wouldn't be a problem, I guess.

So have at it, Wyoming and Alaska.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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Vodos posted:

I still don't understand, do you get a tax bill from those 2 mosquito guys or does the municipal government give them a part of their tax income?

In general, these appear as line items on your property tax. Taxing districts are almost always based on geographical areas that may not precisely coincide with more obvious political boundaries, like city or county borders.

Municipal sales taxes are also a thing, but they're different in that they are not tied to properties but instead to commerse, and in general they are applied within a recognized geotraphic area like a city or county.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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How terrified his tiny, untrustworthy hands are, you mean.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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I'm not convinced that the FBI or NSA can crack that phone. If they could do it, they almost certainly would have in this case, as these are actual terrorists who are now deceased and can't exactly hire a lawyer to defend their rights. Sure, this case will set a precedent, but that could be done with almost any other case--like a case where there is more moral ambiguity and a less urgent need to obtain as much info as possible about the crimes in question.

Honestly, everyone's insistence that the FBI or NSA could get into that phone if they wanted reminds me of a segment of some show I saw long ago where people were just assuming that it was possible to get into a locked phone just because... well, of no supporting argument other than "they're the NSA/FBI" and "we put a man on the moon, therefore we can do this other totally unrelated thing!" And by "some show I saw long ago" I mean the very episode of this show that we're discussing now.

One thing I really liked about this segment was that it actually did present this issue as less of a cardboard-cutout, black-and-white thing. Fact of the matter is, if there is a warrant, the authorities have the right to look in your wallet, in your house, into your phone calls (recording them even), in your computer, in your safe, in your back yard under 4 feet of dirt, hell--even in your butthole. And until recently, almost all digital devices were open to them. Now, we're getting into a situation where they can't get into a locked phone, even if there is a warrant that legally allows them the right to do so, and that's not necessarily a good thing. I mean, in NYC, there were, what, over 100 phones that potentially had evidence that can't be obtained because of the encryption?

The laws have to catch up to the technology, and decisions have to be made. If nothing else good comes out of the current battle between Apple and the FBI, we will at least find out if a 200+ year old law can be used to make a computer company write the software equivalent of a master key.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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bull3964 posted:

No slight intended to anyone here who's said it, but I find the "the laws have to catch up with the technology" to be an evasion.

I disagree. The law must at least try to catch up with technology. Saying so isn't an evasion; it's a concession that our current laws regarding information gathering are outdated given the difference between the state of technology when the laws were written and the state of technology now. When the 200+ year old law the FBI is trying to use was written, the state of technology was "write it down and lock it in a box." It's slightly more complicated than that now, which is why there is this disagreement between Apple and the government.

quote:

We've already seen where NSA backdoors backfire and seriously compromise the public good (juniper). It's not a matter of lawmaking to fix that issue. If you intentionally engineer a weakness into a technology, it will be exploited by those that it wasn't designed for. Full stop.

It also ignores the fact that US law can't regulate every coder out there. You break or backdoor the encryption mechanisms built into these products, then the nefarious types will use technologies that AREN'T built into the device, bypassing US law entirely. So, now you have to regulate what can be installed on the phone and make sure that only approved and properly broken encryption technologies are capable of being used on the OS. Even if you somehow managed to pull that off, the individuals involved can go back to an old-school cipher and purely use the devices as a communications link.

The law can't catch up with technology. This is the new normal that we have to live in and adapt to. Law enforcement isn't going to be able to obtain all digital information anymore than they can retrieve a note that was tossed in a fireplace. It's not even a choice at this point. You can whittle away consumer protections all you want, but the tech is always still there, available to be used, in ways that cannot be regulated.

... so it's hard and complicated; therefore, let's do nothing. This isn't an evasion how? Do you think that wire fraud was written into the criminal code in the 1700s? That's just one of many examples where the law has been changed, amended, or created to deal with changes in technology. It happens, and it's necessary.

Nobody is suggesting that it's possible to solve all the problems with one perfect piece of legislation and accompanying regulation. But we do have a new problem that we didn't have 20 years ago, much less 200 years ago, and the whole reason that this is an issue right now is that nobody has brought the laws up-to-date. It's why it's hard to prosecute men who share x-rated videos they made with their girlfriends before they broke up, it's why some kids sexting each other are getting arrested for distributing child porn, and it's why bad guys currently have no fear of storing evidence that would lock them up for life on a handheld computer that can be confiscated but never deciphered.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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bull3964 posted:

They will never have fear if they have a inkling of knowing what they are doing. There isn't a law that can be written that can change that.

My point is that... well, here's an example: say you have some mobster in Chicago, and it's Prohibition, and he's boozin' up Cook County something fierce. Get your hands on his ledger, and you can put this bad guy away. Now, put his ledger in a magical box that only the bad guy can open, and let's pretend for a moment that the bad guy doesn't want to open it because he knows that if he does, he'll go to an island prison and eventually get released to die of syphilis some day. Since that isn't something he feels like doing with the rest of his life, he just lets you keep the magical box containing the ledger and... well, you let him go, because you really don't have evidence.

Maybe a new law will specify that you can't force a company to circumvent its own trade secrets in order to comply with a warrant. Maybe it'll be the opposite. The point is, we need a standard, and if nothing else, we'll get one when this goes before a judge.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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The Cheshire Cat posted:

Something he didn't bring up in the segment but is also worth considering: if the FBI is able to compel Apple to deliberately weaken the encryption on their products for the purpose of law enforcement, that's going to affect more than just US Citizens. People all over the world use Apple products - should the US have the ability to set laws that affect the privacy rights outside of their national jurisdiction? Apple is an American company so they do legally have the right to dictate manufacturing standards like those set by the FCC, but even those only apply to phones that are sold within the US (as other countries have their own standards and thus have their own versions of the hardware that conforms to those standards). This kind of touches on the much larger issue of the international nature of corporations/commerce vs. the national nature of governments and laws, but it's definitely a question that should be considered and something that we're going to have to figure out how to handle, in general, at some point.

Agreed.

I will say, though, that I want US lawmakers and judges shaping regulations for US companies according to our standards, and not the standards of other countries. If they're going to try to set a limit on encryption systems used and installed on devices made for sale in the US (the uselessness of such efforts notwithstanding), I don't want the FCC sitting back and thinking, "Hmmmm... what would Italy think about this?" Writing regulations that would satisfy the citizens of every country in the world would truly be a fool's errand.

(This doesn't apply to all laws, though. When writing rules about blowing people up with drones, I'd prefer the government to put some thought into how the people who aren't getting blown up in Yemen feel about all the people who are getting blown up, and why they're getting blown up.)

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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That's a good question.

It bears mentioning, though, that just because Apple is a US company and it makes things that are sold in the US and in other countries, that doesn't mean that it produces exactly one standard of product for all markets.

If Mozambique required that all phones sold in the country use numeric dial pads that are in base-13 and broadcast at a specific frequency, you can bet your butt that they'd produce a phone for that market that met the local standards. And maybe all Apple phones sold in Russia can only legally be sold with the lone encryption approved by the government, called "Igpay Atinlay," which converts all words to Pig Latin. Well, Apple can comply with that. If a Russian decides to purchase a black-market iPhone that was made in China for the American market so they can enjoy better encryption, that's on them, not Apple.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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I went with "magical box" because it takes less time to type than "cryptographic algorithm that only he had the key too" and carries the same meaning.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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Can someone tell me why we're assuming it's a 4-digit number?

My Galaxy Tab 4 lets me set PINs with more numbers. My current one is 8 numbers, that way it reinforces the PIN I have to remember for work (with my RSA token).

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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I think the point is that with a warrant, they can force you to hand over that locked box. Now, you might have destroyed the only key, and if it's a combination lock they can compel you to tell them the combination but if you refuse, other than locking you up, there's poo poo-all they can do about it. With this iPhone situation, they can't get in without the cooperation of the suspect, who is dead.

It's just more complicated now. As discussed in the program, you can create a special key to break into one particular lock or door that probably won't work in any other lock or door unless that other lock and/or door just happens to share the same key, and the odds on that are remote. The type of backdoor that the government wants Apple to create would work on any Apple iPhone, and if it is created, it's not like that physical key that the locksmith made that someone would have to steal before it got destroyed. Hackers from outside of Apple or saboteurs from inside Apple could distribute the software and threaten the security of anyone's iPhone, and that's assuming Apple isn't required to hand the software over to the government, where, again, it could be stolen from and distributed.

There isn't a perfect solution, but there probably is a better one than just hoping that our laws, some of which haven't changed in 200 years, can still be applied given the drastic advances in technology we've enjoyed over, hell, just the last 20 years or so.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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Baronash posted:

Police are able to cut a lock or get a locksmith to open your locked box if they have a warrant.

Right. That was kind-of my point. I edited out a sentence that made it more clear, apparently. See, they can tell you that you have to open it for them, but if you refuse, they can't actually make you do it because you're a human with free will. But, they can cut it open or get someone else to do it.

That's not the case with the iPhone situation we've got here.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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thefncrow posted:

Even in the best case scenario, where Apple could theoretically create this thing in house, unlock this one phone, and then destroy any trace of the crack they created, all the backups, and mindwipe the knowledge out of all of their engineers, the only thing a court could ever get as an assurance is a "Apple did it and certifies that it's all on the up and up". But that's not good enough for legal scrutiny, especially when you're talking about a process that was specially created for this particular case. In order to defend it in court, the methods of the crack will necessarily have to be divulged, and if Apple were to somehow erase all that information, then the crack may well have been for naught in the case because none of the evidence derived from the crack can be used in court.

The issue is, though, that realistically, that would not happen. I mean, Apple isn't stupid. They know that if they comply with this request, even if they manage to do it to just this one phone, there is a 0% chance that they won't be asked again. That's what precedent is, after all. And there's no way they're going to have a bunch of engineers do this from scratch every single time.

So it'll obviously be stored somewhere. And that means it's vulnerable to outside hackers and inside saboteurs.

Now, it is possible to overstate the danger this would pose. After all, this could still end up being something that can't be updated remotely; someone might still have to physically posses your phone, and then they'd have to be savvy enough to upload the patch and then they'd have to do the brute force attack, all while preventing any remote ultra-lockdown of the phone once the owner sees that it's missing. But at the same time... poo poo like that happens, and hackers are resourceful. Sooner or later, it'll be another one of those trojan horse virus wurm things that Apple products never get (until they suddenly do).

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

Am I a... bad person?
Am I???
Fun Shoe

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

If Trump becomes the actual GOP nominee, we should all be celebrating because he's basically guaranteed to lose the general election.

Trump is using a sort-of high-octane version of the Southern Strategy--playing to the basal tendencies of his target constituency in order to gain their support, even though he knows it'll cost him support from moderates, because he believes that the people who are sympathetic to his xenophobic, racist, creedist, and outright loony positions will outnumber the moderates. And among the Republican voting bloc, that has turned out to be much more true than most Republicans would have ever cared to admit.

The idea that I hear all the time, both from my fellow Goons and from my Facebook friends who don't have stairs in their houses, is that this kind of insanity won't play on the big stage, because too many people are too moderate, or at least sensible, to vote for him in large enough numbers. But here's the thing--everyone said the exact same thing about his chances in the primary! The same logic and reasoning that led many people to assume Trump would be laughed out of the primary very early in the race is now being used to predict that he doesn't stand a chance in the election, even while it should be clear and fresh in everyone's minds that his brand of poop is currently winning him droves of supporters who will literally beat up people they don't like in public at his rallies.

It's like saying that the match won't light when struck against the box because the box of matches got wet. So you let them dry and you strike the match, and it lights. Then you keep doing it, because that first one was a fluke, because everyone knows that water destroys matches. After a couple dozen matches, each of which lights, you have to stop assuming that the next match won't light, don't you? Or was Jon Stewart was right when he said that learning curves are for pussies? Here's what I can see happening: Republicans who hate Trump, hate what he says, hate what he represents, and hate what he made clear about the kinds of people who fill the rank and file of the Republican party, from its leadership to its constituency? Those people? They're going to vote for Trump because he's a Republican. Maybe they'll hate doing it, but they will do it, because the alternative is a Democrat.

tarlibone fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Mar 22, 2016

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

Am I a... bad person?
Am I???
Fun Shoe

... OK, so I'm going to be "that guy" and just throw this out there: he didn't mention 9/11. I mean, I don't like being the guy who brings up 9/11, but when recapping the events of the last 17 years, that's one that I'm pretty sure you'd want to at least mention.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

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Am I???
Fun Shoe

Thank goodness! (And I like how within moments of hearing the old news for the first time, some cicadas were becoming truthers.)

See, folks? You can make a lighthearted comment or two about 9/11 when setting the comment in the framework of a humorous news update for 17-year cicadas who have missed a few rather big historical events. For one thing, the cicadas might wonder why there were so many more American flags on display than there were a while back.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

Am I a... bad person?
Am I???
Fun Shoe

bobkatt013 posted:

Also confederate

True.

The US certainly is a flaggier place than it was back in 1999. And I should know, because unlike some of you whippersnappers, I was well into my 20s back then. I remember not long after bin Laden went all jet fuel on those steel beams, there were stories in the news about how flag manufacturers and retailers were having serious trouble keeping up with demand.

tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

Am I a... bad person?
Am I???
Fun Shoe

sbaldrick posted:

I was sure John was going to use the "Hitler man of the Year" time cover.

That's what I told my wife was about to happen--she was about to see Hitler: Time's Man of the Year cover. Then, it wasn't.

That's a swing and a miss, Mr. Oliver.

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tarlibone
Aug 1, 2014

Am I a... bad person?
Am I???
Fun Shoe
Maybe I have more discerning friends, because the few IFLS links I tend to see are usually debunking the pseudo-science that you pick up on clickbait articles talking about one of these meaningless studies. Hell, I've seen more than a few IFLS articles spend time debunking anti-GMO, anti-vaccine, and pro-Dr. Oz nonsense.

I'm not saying the other stuff doesn't exist. I just don't see it in my timeline.

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