I've used three apps to slowly teach myself a little Japanese. Human Japanese, Memrise, and Duolingo. And they all offer distinct advantages and disadvantages, and that's frustrating because a combined app would be far superior.
Human Japanese is great for gentle explanations of grammar, but its flashcards are horrible, so one can't get the spaced repetition needed to remember everything it throws at you. Memrise is fantastic for vocabulary with its spaced repetition, but I couldn't string a sentence together, as Memrise (at least the course I did) mostly ignores grammar. Duolingo is great for practicing reading and writing sentences, checking the comments for sanity if the sentence looks fishy. But it doesn't try and teach anything, just get it wrong until you get it right. Does sentence order matter? Why do we use "wa" here and "ga" there? Duolingo doesn't say.
An app that combines actual lessons with spaced practice sessions would make the whole process a lot smoother.
Slower not meaning safer is because a slower driver among faster drivers causes more lane-changes, which are a less-safe maneuver. Everyone travelling the same speed is the safest scenario, with slower then being safer, as impacts occur with less energy.
If everyone strictly obeyed the posted speed limit and treated it as both a minimum and a maximum speed, as driverless cars would likely aim to do, roads would be safer. The interim state of having both driverless and human-driven cars on the road at the same time is where problems may arise.
For me this is an extreme view. If your security demands are that high I'm sure you will find even nowadays CPUs which are in that level of "trustworthyness" you want. One funny example: You can use a Raspberry Pi which is not affected by Meltdown or Spectre ;) https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/why-raspberry-pi-isnt-vulne...
I understand that security is difficult, and that one can never be completely secure.
But is wanting to know what my processor is doing, or wanting it to be free of undocumented, obfuscated, proprietary code that runs at a higher priority than any software, really that extreme a view?
We base so much of human progress on these little wafers of silicon, it shouldn't be extreme to want to know what they do.
>We base so much of human progress on these little wafers of silicon, it shouldn't be extreme to want to know what they do.
Well said. I'll add that security is a threshold, and that computer systems are extremely complex. Every bit of openness -and the verifiability such openness affords- brings us closer to that ideal secure system.
Agreed, but for critical applications it might be appropriate.
> If your security demands are that high I'm sure you will find even nowadays CPUs which are in that level of "trustworthyness" you want. One funny example: You can use a Raspberry Pi which is not affected by Meltdown or Spectre ;)
Having the level of verificability the parent asks for is a lot more than "not affected by Spectre", and the Raspberry Pi is not very open in that regard.
> However a processor with verifiable functionality has value. It's more trustworthy. It can be checked for accidental, or deliberate, security flaws.
Is this tractable for a chip with billions of transistors? I would think the people qualified for this already work at chip companies and are doing the work for a stable salary.
Except in this case the regulation is saying that the ISP must just carry bits. It's not forcing the ISP to do something to be compliant, it's forcing the ISP to not do something. So the costs of compliance are low, if not zero.
There are short-term consumer benefits, in my country we have zero-rated services, where browsing certain sites costs no data. However this completely undermines the concept of the free market. Any competitor to the zero-rated service has a massive hurdle to overcome, either competing with free, or paying the ISP to have the same deal applied to their service.
And there are also cases of abuse. Mobile operators began charging roughly $2 per MB of data for any VOIP traffic, forcing consumers to use standard calls.
By refusing to subject ISPs to regulations, we subject the Internet to the whims of the ISPs.
> So the costs of compliance are low, if not zero.
How could this possibly be zero? If a town's ISP has a bandwidth of 100Gb/s and has a demand of 200Gb/s by their customers, they can:
- prioritize certain bits such as live streaming that can't be slown down without degrading user experience, unlike text (current solution)
- slow down everything as forced by FCC's Net Neutrality (which would make live streaming unwatchable)
- invest in bigger infrastructure and pass the cost down to consumers (which is not zero cost as you claim)
So there you go. Another fun fact, for anyone that has lived through the 80's and 90's, the FCC censored TV and radio to hell with list of words, topics and images that could not be used on public broadcasting as it was considered to be public utility. If the FCC considers the internet public utility in order to impose Net Neutrality, they will be granted the same power as they were on tv. If you think twitter censorship sucks, wait for what's coming when Trump or another administration decides to impose similar rules through the FCC with the excuse that it's now a public utility and that using bad words (against politicians or else) at a certain hour is bad for kids. Don't forget that the boss of the FCC is nominated by Trump. People love asking the government for more regulations even though they always end up paying a high price for it. Just be careful what you ask for is all I'm saying.
> How could this possibly be zero? If a town's ISP has a bandwidth of 100Gb/s and has a demand of 200Gb/s by their customers, they can:
IMO, if you're selling more than you can provide, you're already doing it wrong...
It's not acceptable to prioritize some content over another when having the appropriate infrastructure would solve the problem.
> invest in bigger infrastructure and pass the cost down to consumers (which is not zero cost as you claim)
People will be paying for the product anyway, I don't see anything wrong with charging the cost of production/maintenance + profits (altough I suspect their profits might way higher than they should, and not being used to improve the ISP's as they should. I do not live in US though), that's what most other sellers around the world do and I really believe it's the most appropriate model.
> People will be paying for the product anyway, I don't see anything wrong with charging the cost of production/maintenance + profits
Have you ever thought that many people are fine with the deal they're currently getting and don't have the money to pay for more? Maybe that's great for rich people, but for lower income folks, the way ISPs optimize bandwidth right now is fine, they've probably done tons of testing to make it the less noticeable possible while providing the best prices for their customers (market at work). Forcing high bandwidth for all people even those that don't care will leave people out of internet connection at all as they won't be able to pay at all. So people won't be able to pay anymore but at least your principles will be respected, sounds like the classical case of unintended consequences of leftists policies that always end up hurting the poorest while giving good conscience and a good deal to the rich. Not a big fan of that kind of things personally.
Well, if your town has only one ISP it's probably a small town where everything is much cheaper and there is less money to be made. Why would they invest in infrastructure there if they would never recoup the costs? You already get many advantages by living where you live (lower cost of life, probably less air pollution etc). I used to live in a small town in Peru, everything was much cheaper but it was impossible to watch a video on youtube at more than 144p resolution. That's a bargain I was willing to take and never complained about it, life was cheap. If you want better services that costs billions in investment, move to a place where it makes business sense for someone to invest in such infrastructure and don't expect anyone investing free money for you out of their good heart. You wouldn't do it either, why should they? Here's the thing, you will _never_ get better or equal infrastructure and services in a small town than in a big city. Whether it's the diversity of asian food, schools, museums or internet speed. You'll never get it by living in a small town. Want all those fancy things? Move to these big cities and don't ask people to subsidize your small town more than they already do, big cities folks already pay enormous bills each months, they don't need more of it.
A small town can still service two or more ISPs, the lack of competition is what's ruining it and the lack of NN won't make it a bit better.
You should maybe also remind yourself that some people are not in the position to move around the country. You should not equate your own capabilities in life with those of others.
> You should maybe also remind yourself that some people are not in the position to move around the country.
After living years in Syria and then in Peru, I can say that small towns folks most likely to leave to big cities are not the ones that are well off but the poorest one on the contrary in order to find a job to sustain them. So yeah, I would say it's mostly rich people that can afford to stay in small towns, the rest move to bigger places where there is more chance in finding people willing to invest in them even for low skill workers.
Some people cannot move. Period. It may be their monetary situation, or something else.
Suggesting that the situation in Syria and Peru is the same as in the US is also rather disingenuous. It is with high probability not.
And even if it was so, does that mean the ISP gets the automatic right to fuck over everyone left because they didn't move? Does that right extend to other things? Should water utility not be provided to them because they didn't move?
> does that mean the ISP gets the automatic right to fuck over everyone left because they didn't move?
The fact that they refuse to invest money they will never get back doesn't mean they want to "fuck you over". Have you ever thrown money out of the window just for fun? Well now you understand these ISPs' point of view.
> Should water utility not be provided to them because they didn't move?
If there's only one person left in town, should a billion dollar installation still be maintained for that one person? What if it's 5 people or a couple of hundreds? Isn't it selfish too to demand a whole billion service industry (internet, water etc) to invest and work just for you and run their business as a loss just because you refuse to move? Western countries are running with trillions of dollars in debts because of these kinds of "investments", not sure if this is sustainable (surely hope so but doubt it). I would personally love to live in the middle of nowhere in beautiful Peru with high speed internet, clean water and top infrastructure, I would never demand anyone to pay for it for me however.
You don't need to maintain billion dollar installations for 5 people. For 5 people the annual cost of running a simple fiber installation can be well below a couple thousand dollars. I think you just have no idea what realistic costs an ISP actual has.
The ISP equipment usually in deployment is incredibly low maintenance and cost. And then "piping the internet" to the customer is exactly 0 cost.
We're talking clean water, electricity, internet and just about any other public utility, for 5 people. Like if I want to have fibre and all the other utilities here https://www.google.com/maps/@-16.2099526,-73.027656,8.94z, you think it would be cheap? If so I highly recommend starting your own business providing high quality infrastructure service as a service anywhere anytime :)
For the record, Net Neautraility does not and is not a legal framework for telling ISPs about how to manage their bandwidth. In its most simplistic terms:
Net neutrality is simply tha concept of treating access to the network (in this example the ISP and the greater internet it connects to) where it does not prioritize one set of bits and simultaneously and purposefully (and typically for the exchange of money) slow down access to something else.
Bandwidth management, or the idea of prioritizing on the fly to ensure quality service, does not inheritantly violate those principals. What does is if the video people paid th ISP money for faster bits and to slow down competitors and/or the ISP slowing down competitors to promote its own services.
Notice it also has no legal framework for specific types of access or information, simply that the pipe should be neutral and non-interfered. In fact, net neutrality laws can help improve privacy and gives more standing for companies to fight back against gov surveillance
Managing bandwidth based on a paid fee is a type of a bandwidth management. In analogous fields, we accept paid prioritization. Pricing/auctioning is a commonly used method for assigning resources efficiently.
If my ISP is hitting peak throughput at 8pm on monday night, it makes sense for high priority traffic to pay for priority (streaming, telephony, etc), while low priority traffic (bittorrnet, dropbox updates, etc) slow down because they are unwilling to pay.
I don't think outright blocking is justified or even purposeful slowing down (rather than speeding other stuff up). But i don't think treating everything the same is economically justified.
Net neutrality in its purist form definitely means every packet is treated equal. The whole discussion started because ISPs wanted to charge more for streaming content because it's an increased load on their network.
Your argument is usually what I tell people when they ask about NN. It's a lot more complicated than treating every packet equal because at capacity networks want to manage bandwidth.
You could also think of it this way, why should the general user be required to subsidize a heavy BitTorrent user's traffic? Now maybe ISPs shouldn't oversell in the first place, but the operating state of a network is congestion.
Your argument is very moderate and is not NN, but it's close. I would tend to agree and prefer what you describe: content neutral bandwidth management. But that's pretty much an oxymoron.
I think what the parent comment was referring to in regards to government censorship is the fact that the legislation in question (the one the current government is trying to repeal) is the classification of ISPs as "common carriers" under Title II of the communications act of 1934.
This has the effect of enforcing net neutrality, which is why everyone is in favour of it. However it also gives the FCC the power to censor content, like they did with television and radio in the past.
>Upgrading your infrastructure to meet the demand your customers place on it isn't a cost of regulatory compliance. It's the cost of doing business.
No, that's not how business work. If customers are not happy with a service they can shop elsewhere. The business is not forced by government to improve its infrastructure, just by customers pressure. The fact that some places only have one ISP is because government over-regulate right to pass and install fiber.
> Where in the network neutrality order did the FCC impose censorship on the Internet?
Once you turn the internet into a public utility, it gives the power to the FCC to censor it anyway it wants, just like TV or radio. Of course it won't be done overnight. Just wait for a big nazi/antifa/pedophile/terrorist internet scandal that would lead to a tragic death, than people will rush in a bill that says "sorry folks but we can't allow people to publish anything they want, think of the children" just like they did with public broadcasting on tv and radio. Making the internet a public utility is a requirement to pass these censorship laws, it's a first step. Censorship always happens in small steps. Think of the patriot act, if you give the government the power to take your rights away, they eventually will. Although to be fair they already have that power, but this will basically give them even more justification and power.
I'd rather have the status quo than giving full censorship power to a government agency. Not to mention that fiber is getting to more places each day with most of the densest cities covered now. Looks like the problems Net Neutrality was supposed to protect us from are not as grave as they used to be and that the market kind of sorted itself out. Why give the FCC/Trump full censorship power now and force ISPs to jack up their prices just because progress is not happening as fast as some elitists say it should? You think adding more regulations will make fiber be deployed faster?
> No one is talking about adding complex new regulation here but you.
If you follow a bit about what happened the past 100 years of new government agencies rules is that they have _always_ yes, _always_ grown into thousands and thousands of regulations each year. But yeah, I'm sure this time it won't happen...
I don't know any more clear way to state that this regulation isn't new. But I don't think it matters, because I get the vibe that you're super into one of those ideologies that provides a handy, concise, internally consistent answer to any question with which you might find yourself confronted, and it's just a shame that reality so often disagrees. Enjoy your ancap or Randianism or whatever you happen to call it. I'll be over here wishing reality was less complicated than I've consistently observed it to be.
"On 26 February 2015, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled in favor of net neutrality by reclassifying broadband access as a telecommunications service and thus applying Title II (common carrier) of the Communications Act of 1934 as well as section 706 of the Telecommunications act of 1996[92] to Internet service providers.[93][94][95][96][97][98] On 12 March 2015, the FCC released the specific details of its new net neutrality rule.[99][100][101] And on 13 April 2015, the FCC published the final rule on its new regulations.[102][103] The rule took effect on June 12, 2015."
A core design principle of the Internet since the beginning has been the "end-to-end principle", which was that the job of the network was to distribute the bits between end points. FCC rules concerning network data go back to the 1960s.
The FCC began rule-making on network neutrality in the mid-2000s, in direct response to various ISPs blocking traffic.
When I was backpacking, I entered Germany without a definite exit date and with no onward travel booked. Upon hearing this, the immigration official gave me a hard stare, and let me sweat for what felt like ages. He then cracked a smile and told me to visit the Foreigners Office if I wanted to stay for longer, or look for work. While I doubt that's the normal experience, including finding an immigration official with a sense of humour, I found Germany to be pretty flexible in this regard.
My daughter was born 8 weeks premature in Germany. She was considered an extremely unproblematic case (though without medical attention, she probably wouldn't have made it).
On the same ward, we had at least one 700 gram baby that was doing fine, and several that were close to that. So agree, the parent's claim is definitely way too broad.
Hang on, as much as I disagree with the man, this is not why.
The man realised, during the course of his relationship, that he was unhappy with his life. So he made a change that made him happier. At the same time he deposits the bulk of his paycheck into his wife's account and considers it his ethical duty to see his kids three to four times a week. All things considered, the man made the change in a rather respectable manner.
The alternative is to remain in the relationship, discontent, for the rest of his life. Is that what is expected of people? In the best case, one person is miserable. In the worst case, his unhappiness manifests in the relationships with his wife and kids. It seems reasonable that he steps aside before that can happen, leaving him and his family to pursue happiness elsewhere.
I disagree with him because of his premise that complete information creates a level playing field between people. Rather, the people who fall closer to the perceived "normal" gain power over those who are closer to the tails of the bell-curve.
In this particular instance though, according to the article, some negotiation was done between the two governments to reach a no-spy agreement.
As no agreement could be reached, an American company cannot offer the service required by the German government. Thus is it not reasonable for the contract to be cancelled?
This is not a shot at an innocent third party, this is the third party being constrained by American laws to the extent that it cannot offer a required service. Sure, it is unfortunate that a third party is adversely affected by this, but it cannot be portrayed as a deliberate act against them by the German government.
I thought jay-walking was specifically crossing against the lights at a controlled intersection. If there are no lights (within ~20 metres) it isn't jay-walking...[0]
[0] I could be completely wrong, and given the international audience I am probable both right and wrong.
As with most regulations like this, in the US it depends on the state. In Georgia, for example, you cannot cross the street outside of a crosswalk anywhere between two light-controlled intersections, but everywhere else is pretty much fine [1]. These laws have led me to act in such bizarre ways as crossing the street against the signal once all the traffic has passed but walking a couple feet outside of the crosswalk so that I'm not breaking the law.
In Toronto you can more or less cross where you want, as long as you're not interfering with lawful traffic. If you step in front of a car moving at the speed limit and get hit, it's your fault. If you make a car slow down even a little bit to avoid hitting you, you're at fault.
If there's a big enough gap that no cars have to slow down as you cross, you're good to go!
Human Japanese is great for gentle explanations of grammar, but its flashcards are horrible, so one can't get the spaced repetition needed to remember everything it throws at you. Memrise is fantastic for vocabulary with its spaced repetition, but I couldn't string a sentence together, as Memrise (at least the course I did) mostly ignores grammar. Duolingo is great for practicing reading and writing sentences, checking the comments for sanity if the sentence looks fishy. But it doesn't try and teach anything, just get it wrong until you get it right. Does sentence order matter? Why do we use "wa" here and "ga" there? Duolingo doesn't say.
An app that combines actual lessons with spaced practice sessions would make the whole process a lot smoother.