That wasn't an insult. Jonathan Ive is a brilliant designer, and Microsoft is smart to create a public image if they have an equally brilliant designer.
If that's the worst case scenario we're doing pretty OK. The nationalist networks will presumably be like the PSTN in the 90s: ubiquitous, reliable, safe but perceived as safer than it is, overpriced, limited, behind. All the interesting stuff will happen over tunnels to the Internet Internet.
Well, it depends how they do it, right? If they just block DNS, yeah, people who care can simply tunnel out. It still hurts, as the average non-caring citizen's knowledge is stunted. But not as badly.
If they block IPs, and closely monitor outgoing tunnels? Then it's a lot harder to get out.
I suspect you're right, they'll probably just block DNS and the worst IPs. It's easier, and DNS gets the 99%. Even The Great Firewall only blocks the 'worst' IPs (like Twitter).
I actually like this future more and more as it implies the opportunity to rebuild a new internet on top of the old internet with all the lessons learned from the first internet. It's not that the first will cease to exist. There are too many vested commercial interests for that to happen. The second internet will have the opportunity to develop separate from these commercial and government interests and will hopefully be better designed to protect against the shortcomings that left the first internet vulnerable to government meddling. Even if it takes us 10-20 years to get there, it will be worth it.
Right. It also does DNS poisoning, URL word analysing, deep packet inspection, and VPN identification & blocking. I meant it only directly blocks the worst IPs, as opposed to directly blocking all external IPs.
I do wonder whether a US Firewall will be worse or better than China's. On one hand, the US is presumably less autocratic. On the other, we have 10x the defense resources.
My little theory is that this can help Europe to become a player in the Internet. The point is that individual European countries cannot create their own internet - they are too small and too much interconnected (especially if they are in the European Union) - but on the other hand they are separate countries. The effect I would like to see is that they develop ways how to be trustworthy and also how to check if your partner is reliable. First between themselves - then their solutions will be attractive to the whole world. Which router would you trust - one from China, one from the USA or one from Germany - when you know that Germany also exports the routers to France and UK and they check them?
As an American, I wish news agencies would stop conflating the US with the CIA. It suggests US citizens generally approve of their actions.
The "US" did not bug Merkel's phone. An agency under the Executive branch, which is above the Rule of Law, which is drunk with power and paranoia, who considers American citizens the enemy as much as foreigners, bugged Merkel's phone.
It would be like saying "Syria uses chemical weapons." The Syrian people had little to do with it, and the American people have little to do with this.
The US is a two-party system. First Past The Post voting ensures a vote for a third party is wasted. No significant percentage of people will ever vote for a third party (excluding transition periods between party systems).
The current ruling party is widely recognized as less warmongering and less surveillance-state than the other party.
Americans aren't completely inculpable. Our societal inability to work together (see: Prisoner's Dilemma), combined with our unwillingness to risk contentment, contributes.
But I fail to see how American citizens have any real say in the government. We present a "democracy," but the two-party system is a thinly veiled autocracy.
As a non-American, I have no rights in your country and my views no not count for diddly-squat. In fact, the NSA surveillance are specifically supposed to target at me as a non-American.
So as an America, if you do not approve of their actions then you need to do something about it. You succeeded in one revolution, maybe it is time for another.
I'm not sure whether I agree. I don't generally believe in violence.
But the average American won't rebel unless they are actually starving, no matter how much they're repressed. As long as they have their McDonald's and Reality TV, they aren't willing to die over a little warrantless wiretapping.
"Bread and Circuses" is far older than America.
Personally, I simply can't afford it. I have to work 9 hours a day, and even if I had the time, a trip to march on Washington DC is very expensive. I suspect most Americans that care are the same.
It's too easy to claim that citizens are not involved in what the government is doing. One reason these agencies are so bold is because Americans themselves are completely dismissive of the rights of foreigners, thanks to the old manifest destiny attitude.
> Recognize that BMW/Daimler/et al really don't want true self driving cars.
They don't have a passion to, but they must. Capitalism forces companies to adapt to competition, even when it isn't in their individual self-interest. BMW has to, because if they don't, Toyota will.
Companies make necessary self-defeating choices all the time. Newspaper companies have websites. Barnes & Noble sells e-books. The Empire made the Death Star.
I think Capitalism is a pretty broken concept, but I think this particular facet of it tends to work.
It should have read "Competition forces companies to adapt to market demand". Fortunately, there's a lot of competition in the automotive industry; less so in the production of LCD panels.
Well, they could start shoveling money over to politicians and lobbyists in order to create regulatory barriers to new entrants. Not exactly 'capitalism' in the truest sense of the definition, but certainly a common practice in our version of it.
Innovation does emerge from the competitive forces in capitalism, but it doesn't have to come from the old companies (and usually doesn't). B&N sells e-books, but it was a new market entrant, Amazon, that brought the innovations in e-books and readers
I don't know how common my sentiment is, but I'd be far more inclined to eat crickets than cockroaches. I psychologically associate roaches with disease. Crickets are just another insect.
I realize this is irrational, and that fauna which feed on garbage like rats and roaches can be farm-raised in sanitary conditions. I'm still not going to eat a roach.
If this takes off, it will be interesting to see what the shells are used for. Could they become a fuel, building material, or fertilizer? Food production is pretty good at avoiding waste.
Until maybe a decade ago, the most common source of red food dye was ground up cochineal bugs which look like ticks. Even today, if the food claims to be made from all natural ingredients, any red coloring is bugs rather than something from a lab.
> To prepare carmine, the powdered scale insect bodies are boiled in ammonia or a sodium carbonate solution, the insoluble matter is removed by filtering, and alum is added to the clear salt solution of carminic acid to precipitate the red aluminium salt, called "carmine lake" or "crimson lake."
That's simply because of our culture. Some years ago I was offered fried grasshoppers and ants in Zambia and my initial reation was repulsion. Then a thought similar to the last sentence in the cockroach article went through my mind: »You will regret your whole life not trying them.« Turned out the hoppers and the ants were both delicious.
I think that was the point of the comment: I would stay away from it because of my culture.
Now, technically I wouldn't, but I grew up considering, slugs, frogs, hedgehogs, rabbits and mixed small birds as great food. No bugs.
Yet, even though I tried bugs, I wouldn't want to eat them daily.
If you can eat something once, the "cool story bro" mechanics kick in, but it's not the same as accepting something as integral part of your diet.
From my experience you can pretty much teach your pallette to like foods. I didn't like green tea, olives or whisky the first time I tried them. Now I love them.
In southern Ontario, rabbit is pretty much a niche food for upscale dining. I must admit my taste for braised rabbit increased quite a bit after I started gardening and had to contend with rabbits clearcutting my greens.
Rabbit is good food, though a bit on the expensive side. We're sometimes giving it to kids, as it's supposed to be healthier for very young kids than, say, beef with all the antibiotics and stuff.
And regarding cuteness - around here in farmers markets they are sold with the furry feet attached; It's a tradition so that people know that they're not getting cheated and getting a cat instead, but if cuteness matters then the sight might be a bit harsh :)
I have no idea. But animal feed in the UK used to be poorly regulated until the BSE scandal. Where it transpired that cattle offal was being fed back to cattle. I couldn't quite get why a ruminent herbivore was being fed meat in the first place. But it seems they were being fed loads of crap. I remember reading that even cement dust was being used to give them more weight. There was a recent TV program that was trying to push for waste foods like canteen waste to be fed to pigs - but the regulation was so tight it wasn't possible. Clean regulated insect feeds could help there (maybe..)
Would you feel the same if they make "insect butter" instead of selling fried roaches ? I guess most of the psychological repulsion comes from the appearance...
> I've tried chocolate covered crickets and they were like nothing I've ever ate before.
Can you describe what it was like ?
By the way, I wonder if there are people who feel the same level of disgust when eating shrimps. Shrimps are not insects per se, but it's not very far from that either, and most people consider them to be a delicacy and have no problem eating them...
Shrimp, crab, lobster: shudder. They are bugs!!!! (cue mental shrieking) I can handle eating processed crab for some reason I cannot understand. But to watch somebody breaking down and eating a lobster at the table is almost more than I can take.
Probably the thing that wigs me out with insects is the thought of eating their guts - digestive track and such. I know it is irrational, but there it is. Just the general ooze that is inside them - ughh. On the other hand, the idea of eating a tiny steak taken from the leg of a grasshopper seems perfectly fine and palatable to me. Eating a lobster claw? Not so much. I know none of that is rational.
> who feel the same level of disgust when eating shrimps
Yes. I forced myself to try and they don't taste bad at all, but I will not get close to them again. They'd be quite close to spiders if I had to order potential food by how repulsive it looks.
This was about 10 years ago, but I still have a vivid recollection of eating them. I think I had the Hotlix brand; they came in a little box like this with 3 or 4 white chocolate-covered crickets:
For the first one, I popped the entire thing in my mouth; the chocolate tasted terrible (like really cheap, stale, Advent calendar chocolate) and overpowered the taste of the cricket. I swallowed it after a few bites, so the texture didn't really bother me.
For the second one I wanted to see what it'd be like without the chocolate, so I sucked it all off until I was left with just the cricket itself. You can see here what it might have looked like:
It was the real deal; wings, legs, the abdomen, and the head. It was fairly dried out, so it was a bit flaky, feeling like it'd turn to dust if you overhandled it. I started with the head, which was kind of weird; it sort of...popped, like a grape does when you bite into it. Chewing it broke it down into a sort of powder that got stuck in my teeth. I hated the wings, which reminded me of eating wood shavings, and the legs were pretty gritty. The abdomen was kind of soft and chewy, which wasn't so bad, but it left even more little pieces in my teeth (they weren't as bad as eating fig seeds, which in my opinion is like chewing on sand, but I didn't like the texture at all).
The taste was actually quite plain; I definitely wouldn't compare it to meat. I don't even know how to describe it, because there was barely anything there. To me, the main thing that sticks out is the texture. Maybe it had something to do with the way the product was stored, or that the chocolate coating dried it out or something; given the opportunity I think I might try something fresher.
I actually really like shrimp, crab, and lobster, but the thing about them is that they're a lot more uniform; the parts that you eat all have the same texture, and aren't broken up into a bunch of little pieces (except for crab I guess). Maybe Hotlix should take a cue from seafood, and serve crickets with melted butter?
I'm pretty open minded, so I think I'd try eating almost any insect; well, except for spiders or these cheddar cheese "Larvettes":
