There are number of places in the US where it is legal to walk around outside with a drink. New Orleans is the place I'm most familiar with but there are others. Some people forget that the US is not a monoculture.
One of the truly greats. Perhaps my favorite short-story writer along with James Tiptree, Jr. Here are three stories you need to read right now if you haven't: 1. "Repent Harlequin," said the Ticktockman., 2. Jeffty is Five, and 3. I have no mouth and I must scream, which contains one of the most memorable similes that still sticks in my mind: "the sliding cold horror of a razor blade slicing my eyeball." I'm doing this from memory but I think it's pretty close. And Isaac Asimov, who couldn't have been a more different writer from Ellison, really seemed (from his writings) to love the guy.
Although it's classified as French, I think of it as a Spanish movie because of who made it: a 1929 silent surrealist short film by Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí.
It's worth pointing out that "James Tiptree, Jr." was the pseudonym of Alice Sheldon, who adopted a masculine pen name in order to get her work past editors who wouldn't otherwise have accepted/published submissions from a female author.
I remember reading Asimov talking about his early relationship with Ellison. Ellison was the super smart way too young guy always showing up at the sci-fi conventions, hanging out with the grown ups, who everyone knew was gonna make it some day. (That's my recollection from many years back—pretty sure the gist is accurate though.)
He said, "Are you Isaac Asimov?" And in his voice was awe and wonder and amazement.
I was rather pleased, but I struggled hard to retain a modest demeanor. "Yes, I am," I said.
"You're not kidding? You're really Isaac Asimov?" The words have not yet been invented that would describe the ardor and reverence with which his tongue caressed the syllables of my name.
"Well, I think you're—" he began, still in the same tone of voice, and for a split second he paused, while I listened and the audience held its breath. "—a nothing!"
Jeffty is Five was my first exposure to Ellison and I still remember the feeling of mundane horror I got. Such a great story. My other favorite was Eidolons.
My second earliest memory of Ellison was Bruce Willis playing the main character in Shatterday when Twilight Zone got revived!
I wonder if you replaced the abrasive material with a ferrous material could you direct the stream with magnets? I guess the material would first have to be charged. And would the water flow follow the [hypothetically] focused stream of ferrous material? I need some coffee.
Actually I didn't think of that. I was thinking more of a magnetic nozzle. But yeah if you can steer a fluid with embedded magnets you should be able to accelerate a fluid with embedded magnets, right? :) or maybe not. I have no idea.
I don't think this would work because the particles are free to move within the water stream. Say you used something like a magnetic pinch ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinch_(plasma_physics) ) to focus the stream... my hunch is that all you'd achieve is to compress the iron particles with little or no compression of the water since the iron is just floating in the stream.
That would be something of an advantage, no? The metal particles would be mixed with water still, pulling along some of the stream. The tighter the "beam" of metal particles, the better - presumably that allows a more precise cut.
No, because you also need to increase the pressure of the water for it to cut. The nozzle increases the pressure of the water by constricting a constant flow into a smaller area, which increases the kinetic energy of the water and the abrasive particles.
A magnetic pinch would (I expect, I only really covered them a bit in a plasma physics course so I'm not an expert) basically pull all the suspended iron particles out of suspension and compress them into a thin rod, without actually compressing the water very much. My hunch based on semi-informed knowledge is that it just wouldn't do much to actually cut anything, but I could be wrong.
The other problem is that magnetic fields also produce a lot of heat in a conductor. The metal particles that clump up would probably sinter together or even melt. On top of that, it'd take a lot of power to run... pinches aren't super efficient.
What if we used just enough ferrous metal as a kernel inside a grown crystal of garnet that the metal is sufficient to magnetically levitate the grain of abrasive; perhaps even extremely fine metal dust embedded within the grown crystal's matrix. Then could we pass the resulting metal-enhanced garnet abrasive grains through a Gatling rail gun?
Furthermore, since garnet has specific refractive properties different from other materials, could we pass all ferrous grains through an extremely high-speed discriminating chamber that looks for these properties in each grain, and magnetically directs the garnet grains back to the abrasive holding bin to vastly increase the recycling, while all other ferrous material goes a separate bin (for waste or other recycling purposes)?
I kind of wonder what problem this would be solving? It sounds magnificently cool, but also expensive. In the long run, I have great hope for fiber lasers becoming cheap enough for a home-version. Maybe a home-grade 1kw. Seems more practical than worrying about recycling sand.
I do love the idea of a Rail gun cutter, though - just not sure how it could really help cut things.
I'm thinking in terms of resource-constrained use cases, like on an aircraft carrier or further out, deep space exploration. Until this thread, I had always assumed a laser cutter would be just as good, but didn't realize some of the unique advantages of a waterjet cutter.
Interesting idea. If the water were conductive -- say salt water -- then I don't see why you couldn't steer it with magnets. The trick would be to keep an electrical current running through the jet.
At normal fluid pressures -- the classic example being peeing on an electric fence -- it's hard to get much current flowing since there's so much empty space between droplets. But at thousands of PSI, is that still true?
Water is dipolar (the oxygen atom 'pulls' harder on the electrons it's sharing with the hydrogen atoms, so the middle is negative and the ends are positive). It can be controlled by both electrostatic and magnetic fields, no salt needed.
The hardness of the material is critical. Ferrous material sounds like metal, which could just melt/spatter on impact. Probably not make a good cutting medium.
Here's an actual chat transcript of me trying to cancel my membership. Yes I sound like a dick robot, but I become a dick robot when I'm forced to contact the company--instead of just clicking a button--to cancel my membership:
info: Hi, we are currently helping other customers in line ahead of you. We'll be with you as soon as possible.
While you wait, you can try our community forums where experts are online 24/7.
info: You are now chatting with 'Mahesh'
Mahesh: Hello! Welcome to Adobe Customer Service.
Mahesh: Hi there.
jalanco: Cancel my membership.
jalanco: Are you there? Cancel my membership.
info: Your chat transcript will be sent to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx at the end of your chat.
Mahesh: I will check and help you.
Mahesh: I see that you have the Creative Cloud plan (one-year) annual commitment subscription with the monthly payment option under your account.
Mahesh: I am really sorry to see you go.
Mahesh: May I ask why you are choosing not to maintain your membership?
jalanco: Please cancel my membership. I don't have a lot of time.
Mahesh: An annual subscription requires a commitment for the full year and monthly payments.
Mahesh: If you decide to end a one-year membership before the 12-month period is over, you are charged 50% of the remaining amount left on your commitment.
Mahesh: In this case, if you are willing to cancel your annual subscription now, you will be charged an early termination fee of USD 250.00.
Mahesh: Is that fine with you?
jalanco: No it is not fine with me. Cancel my membership.
Mahesh: I see that you've purchased a subscription with an annual commitment with a monthly payment. Since you wish to cancel the subscription before the end of one year period, you will be billed 50% of your monthly rate for the remaining months in your annual commitment.
jalanco: Cancel my membership.
Mahesh: Okay, do you wish me to cancel the subscirption with the early termination fee of USD 250.00?
jalanco: No. Cancel my membership. I didn't agree to that.
Mahesh: Please view the above link to see the terms of the annual commitment subscription that you have under your account.
Mahesh: I understand that you would like to cancel your membership, and I will take care of that for you. However, would you be willing to maintain your membership through your annual commitment & avoid the early termination fee if I offer you the next month of your membership for free?
jalanco: No. Cancel my membership immediately.
Mahesh: I can understand your concern, please allow me a moment while I check for any exception for you.
Mahesh: I am happy that I was able to make an exception for you. I have successfully canceled your Creative Cloud membership (one-year) annual commitment subscription without any early termination fee of USD 250.00 as an one time exception only for you as goodwill gesture.
Mahesh: However this exception will not be done again for you.
Mahesh: Is there anything else I can help you with?
jalanco: Thank you. Nothing else.
Mahesh: Thank you for contacting Adobe. We are available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Goodbye!
Reading this made me think about the hard problem of "removing" yourself from the internet. I don't think it is possible. But I do think there might be an opportunity for a service that creates so much conflicting and false information about a person that it is not possible to know the truth about them: false addresses, phone numbers, credit histories, you name it. Just a thought.
Having lots of false information is (very) worse in many cases. People don't know it's false and will assume it is true and about you. So, for instance if this "False info Service" created an account (probably several) on AM, you'd probably be unhappy now. Or posts on some nasty 4Chan that prospective employers find. Or puts up false past address that happened to be the real address of sex offender and now your name shows up next to it on OMFGAMCGTBR.com. Or uses alias of some known criminal and a prosecutor subpoenas "False info Service" to find the real name/address of this criminal, you.
The only ways to not be embarrassed by what is online about you are. [And I understand embarrassment is not the only reason to be anonymous, but if people are honest with themselves it is 90% of the reason they care.]
1. don't give a shit / don't be embarrassed / don't live by other's standards or norms (this seems easiest to me but I'm sort of anti-social amoral and have not been giving a shit what others values as they apply to me from a young age, YMMV)
2. Don't do embarrassing things. Sort of corollary of #1 (as in the less you are embarrassed by the easier it is to not to embarrassing things.
3. Don't live in modern society. Get born some place with no electricity and kill (optionally eat) all the scientist who come to study/photograph you.
To further go with this, I have a simple email I scored when gmail first opened. Basically it's a single name with no extra characters. Anyways tons of people sign up for things under that email, and that email is of course in the Ashley Madison leak. It's also part of a ton of other leaks but it's never me. Someone even has a facebook account under it that they won't let me delete. People have used it for AT&T, Verizon, AllState, Honda. Hell even FarmersOnly.com.
I had to stop using that email because of all this over the years. It's unfortunate but this email address is tied to me, I've tried to erase my name from it as much as I can on the Internet tying it to me over the years.
Mostly I just laugh it off, it's annoying. At least my wife knows I wouldn't be on farmersonly.com.
Yeah, I have a firstinitialverycommonlastname@gmail.com address which is full of misdirected email. I don't use it either, though it is my default throwaway email for access walls (enter your email to read this article!) and the like. Someone opened a facebook account with it, an instagram account with it, etc.
I get cell phone bills which you can't unsubscribe from, since the auth is actually tied to the phone. I get tons of email newsletters. For a good chunk of them the unsubscribe flow doesn't actually work, so I wind up marking them as spam.
Apparently people signing up to gmail with bogus secondary recovery account emails that Google has a whole flow for "disavow this email from your account". I wind up using that flow 2-3 times a week.
You're assuming the false data has to be some kind of "white noise composite" of all internet content, including the bad stuff.
I would think it would be trivial to collect relatively innocent concepts and flood the net with them. Such that the nym "VLM" would now and forever be associated solely with thousands, perhaps millions, of facebook posts of cute kitten memes. That would be easy to filter, but its not like world wide civilization has any shortage of blandly familiar inoffensive fluff to use as a source.
Meanwhile build a worldwide black list, so no religious commentary at all, no alcohol / tobacco / other drug use, no political commentary.
It seems like a reasonable startup opportunity.
Meanwhile working the other side, another startup can work on filtering bland stuff from social media. Maybe with a secret back channel to the flooders. I would imagine, unfortunately, if you crossed off all the inane posts from most social media users, the end result would be many totally legit people having no record at all!
"Innocent concepts" are in the eye of the beholder.
And don't forget the True you will still be online. A service that only works if you yourself are limited to no religious commentary at all, no alcohol / tobacco / other drug use, no political commentary. Is really no service at all.
> false data has to be some kind of "white noise composite" of all internet content,
It probably does or will be easily detected and machine filterable. There's already algo's that make good guess if some texts were written by same person.
You are facing divorce cause you cheated on your spouse.
Despite not cheating, your name is on list. Your spouse is still divorcing you because there were other issues and it was coming name on list or not. Or, they're psyco (can't understand name on list is not cheating) and good riddance.
That's fine. I'm not arguing against any of that. Whatever the reasons, if your facing a divorce as a consequence of being associated with a naming-and-shaming campaign, this is more than merely embarrassing.
I do not think spam accounts are ever deleted, just flagged. Maybe those created in some absurd numbers. After all they make a valuable training data for spam detection algorithms.
I've been thinking about this a lot. But the problem is that such a service would have to violate EULAs of many popular services like facebook and twitter.
EULAs are never legally binding, and especially not for someone who is 1) not currently a consenting user, and 2) invoking a right.
So in the EU, if current legislation projects bear fruit, a case could probably be made for implementing this under the protection of the right to be forgotten, and there would be very little those services could do to prevent it.
A EULA can never bind you into a legal contract that has consequences beyond those already provided for by a law or the ability of the copyright holder of the software to deny use of the license.
The EULA is itself purely informal, but informal speech can serve in the provisions of certain laws that look at it to determine the intentions of the two parties. If a law exists that considers whether a user agreed to something in the determination of whether that user must be held to that thing they agreed to, then accepting a EULA is obviously valid under that provision -- but so would an email stating as much.
EULAs are just a list of statements the copyright holder and the user are throwing at each other in bulk format in order to cover those provisions where laws take such statements into account, along with a conditional authorization to use the software. If a EULA does anything else, it will be ignored, as there is generally no law that says "You must do what it says in the EULA". Unless you have one where you live, in which case ouch.
I can say whatever I want in an EULA, but it's going to be worth nothing in court if the user stopped using the license unless I was saying something that directly ties into an existing law. And if they do continue to use the license after doing things I forbid in the EULA, they are committing the specific crime of unauthorized use, since I'm no longer authorizing them.
As much as some EULA writers might get a kick out of writing that you will be tried according to whichever court's law they want, and that you'll be held responsible for XYZ humongous damages if you breach even the tiniest provision even up to two years after you cease using the software... yeah, nope, you'll still get convicted for unauthorized use, not the rest of that crap they listed.
Mind you, I'm repeating what a canadian lawyer explained to me. YMMV and some places may indeed hold the EULA against you.
What is the difference between a fake profile and a pseudonymous profile? Is it really fraud to use something other than your real name in non-financial settings? What about other-than-real data? People have been using fake names and fake data since the dawn of the net; why would this be any different?
Isn't the right to be forgotten a can of worms already? In theory it's about individuals and their privacy, but in practice it's about fraudsters hiding their fraudlent behaviour so that they can continue being fraudsters.
You're basically making the case that, if you have nothing to fear, you should have nothing to hide. But, replacing "fraudsters" with "terrorists" or "online weed dealers" in your comment states the law enforcement and intelligence community case against personal privacy pretty clearly.
I think that, in practice, it's about whether or not social media sites and search engines should be forced to maintain a market on personal data to serve as a crowdsourced proxy for state-sponsored surveillance.
I see a difference between privacy (preventing information about you from getting out) and rewriting history after the fact. Historical data is a public good, it's much bigger than an individual and his affairs, whether legit or not.
>I see a difference between privacy (preventing information about you from getting out) and rewriting history after the fact.
I don't, in this case. Search engines and social media sites were never intended to serve as arbiters of historical truth. Is it really a good idea to suddenly pretend they are, and insist they act like it?
Search engines weren't intended to be anything, they weren't designed up front by committee. They just ended up what they are. Twitter also wasn't intended to be the channel for officials to communicate with the public, nor Facebook the ultimate Yellow Pages, nor was Google Maps commissioned to become the world's most popular GIS.
You could argue that preserving public goods is the task for the government and yes, we shouldn't insist that private companies do their job for them. But here, we have a company that wants to do that job out of its own will, and the governments insist they stop.
Aren't their financial valuations based on account numbers and made up metrics like that?
So deleting this fraudulent account will cause a measurable, definable, actionable, $0.0001 decrease in shareholder value, ignoring it will have no effect on shareholder value, what is my fiduciary responsibility here?
You are not a fiduciary in this context so would not have fiduciary responsibility to the owners (public or private). Essentially your relationship is with the company as a user/buyer of their product or services and is governed by user agreement - which may be a blanket EULA and may or may not be enforceable.
It's been years since I've read it but "On Writing" is still one of my favorite books of all time. It's worth reading whether you write much or not. His description of the time he was struck by a van (and nearly killed) while walking down the road near his home with his head in a paperback book is alone worth the read. He said the guy driving the van was reaching into a box of raw meat and tossing chunks to a dog in the back of the van and didn't see him walking on the side of the road. He said it was like a scene from one of his novels. I recall that he also goes into some detail about how he struggled through a long period of near poverty with his wife Tabitha always supporting him and staying by his side. So she deserves tremendous credit for his success. For me the book was more about persevering through the struggle to create in general.
> He said it was like a scene from one of his novels.
Incidentally, Stephen King ended up actually putting that scene into one of his novels, the seventh book of the Dark Tower. This was fitting, I thought, since the idea of the Dark Tower is that it contains all worlds, real and fictional, including our own.
I see "On Writing" as a very interesting insight into the life and method of Stephen King and a limited, and in some respects possibly even counterproductive guide to actually being a successful novelist. I do remember a good passage on how to make a scene-setting description hone in on interesting details, but I also recall an extended rant on the subject of adverbs that basically boiled down to "don't use them".
And counterproductive? King's approach to plotting is described as essentially thinking his characters into difficult situations and then figuring out the details of how they'll extricate themselves as he goes along. This works very well for Stephen King, but certainly isn't the only way successful authors approach plotting, and some of the meticulous planners are extremely good and successful writers too. It's people that don't have an innate flair for structuring novel length texts as they go along that are most likely to pick up books with titles like "on writing" though...
As an autobiography and homage to his passion, it's brief and very readable though.
Loved that book, and I'm not even remotely interested in writing.
Funny thing is, the two elements I remember the most from what I learned inside are at what could be considered both extreme of the "importance spectrum": double the s (the kids's toys) and don't write adjectives to give feelings and emotions when your task is to create them (if something is awesome, don't write "it's awesome", make it read/feel/look awesome).
Bonus content from the article: "In 2010, residents who lived near the facility complained that their garage doors were randomly opening. The NSA issued a statement acknowledging that an antenna it was using interfered with garage door openers."
Watergate was about a group of powerful political elites targeting a rival group of powerful political elites. The present IRS scandal is about powerful political elites targeting nearly powerless regular citizens who were trying to organize, and in many cases prevented, or very significantly delayed, from doing so. So yeah, the IRS scandal is worse than Watergate.
1. The IRS thing is completely separate from the NSA stuff, and the comment I responded to was discussing the NSA.
2. The IRS stuff is also way more complicated than it seems. They're supposed to target political organizations, because they don't qualify for the tax-exempt status. And there was really only one large political movement forming new organizations in that time frame. I haven't seen any actual ( as opposed to speculative) connection to the "political elites" yet. Everything I've read points to institutional laziness rather than a politically instigated targeting.
Now, I'm not saying these things shouldn't be investigated! But claiming that they should currently be as big a scandal as Watergate doesn't sit right with me. It diminishes just how fucked up Watergate was.
"They're supposed to target political organizations, because they don't qualify for the tax-exempt status."
This is untrue given that the former Obama campaign organization converted (and was approved) to change to a 501(c)4 and has the mission of advocating his 2nd term agenda.
This was political targeting just like what FDR did many years ago. Who actually approved it is the question.
The "nearly powerless regular citizens" in question are, for the most part, political groups looking to use a tax loophole to gather and funnel institutional money to their causes. Not only weren't they "in many cases prevented" -- they were all approved, and able to proceed with their political activities flouting the letter and intent of a law designed to encourage "social welfare".
