July LC thread so PVN will stop posting LAST - Page 48 - Politics and Economics

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July LC thread so PVN will stop posting LAST

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07-28-2017 , 11:16 PM

#1176

uDevil

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 6,941

Idk, politics fetishists may be an underserved community.

07-29-2017 , 12:31 AM

#1177

iron81

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 17,729

That seems tough to do, considering Palin is top 10% in looks among US female politicians.

07-29-2017 , 01:38 AM

#1178

stinkubus

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Jan 2012 Posts: 4,422

There were definitely Palin-themed pornos.

07-29-2017 , 02:05 AM

#1179

suzzer99

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 99,984

It revived Lisa Ann's career. I'll leave you to google in private.

07-29-2017 , 03:48 AM

#1180

AllCowsEatGrass

banned

Join Date: Mar 2017 Posts: 1,839

Quote:

Originally Posted by suzzer99

Oh this is gonna be good

This is some of the most important work that needs to be done in America.

07-29-2017 , 03:50 AM

#1181

AllCowsEatGrass

banned

Join Date: Mar 2017 Posts: 1,839

Quote:

Originally Posted by zikzak

The h4X0r nerd squad has been screaming about how insecure voting machines are for like 20 years now. Ain't nobody ever gonna listen to them.

And look where we are today. Wake up America, there's a whole lot of ones and zeroes that we need to seriously look over, and it's not money.

07-29-2017 , 04:00 AM

#1182

microbet

Solar Powered

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 56,720

In some places, where they actually want peoples' votes to count, things have been done.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=18672642

From 2008

Quote:

California has the most votes at stake on Super Tuesday, but counting those returns could take a lot longer than usual. Electronic voting machines in more than 20 counties have been scrapped because of security concerns.

In the 2000 presidential election, Riverside became the first county in the nation to move entirely to electronic voting.

"We were very, very nervous knowing no one had done it before. On other hand, it was very exciting knowing we were on the cutting edge of technology, deploying this equipment we knew we were going to be able to count votes quicker," says Riverside County Registrar Barbara Dunmore.

Most of Riverside's 3,700 electronic voting units will not be used as planned this year, however.

A study led by UC Berkeley computer scientist David Wagner revealed that e-voting is not as secure and reliable as it should be. As a result, electronic voting machines were decertified across California.

07-29-2017 , 04:16 AM

#1183

AllCowsEatGrass

banned

Join Date: Mar 2017 Posts: 1,839

I wonder if there are any of these still in use in the country.

Quote:

Virginia election officials have decertified an electronic voting system after determining that it was possible for even unskilled people to surreptitiously hack into it and tamper with vote counts.

The AVS WINVote, made by Advanced Voting Solutions, passed necessary voting systems standards and has been used in Virginia and, until recently, in Pennsylvania and Mississippi. It used the easy-to-crack passwords of "admin," "abcde," and "shoup" to lock down its Windows administrator account, Wi-Fi network, and voting results database respectively...

The weak passwords—which are hard-coded and can't be changed—were only one item on a long list of critical defects uncovered by the review. The Wi-Fi network the machines use is encrypted with wired equivalent privacy, an algorithm so weak that it takes as little as 10 minutes for attackers to break a network's encryption key. The shortcomings of WEP have been so well-known that it was banished in 2004 by the IEEE, the world's largest association of technical professionals. What's more, the WINVote runs a version of Windows XP Embedded that hasn't received a security patch since 2004, making it vulnerable to scores of known exploits that completely hijack the underlying machine. Making matters worse, the machine uses no firewall and exposes several important Internet ports.

So how would someone use these vulnerabilities to change an election?

1. Take your laptop to a polling place, and sit outside in the parking lot.
2. Use a free sniffer to capture the traffic, and use that to figure out the WEP password (which VITA did for us).
3. Connect to the voting machine over WiFi.
4. If asked for a password, the administrator password is “admin” (VITA provided that).
5. Download the Microsoft Access database using Windows Explorer.
6. Use a free tool to extract the hardwired key (“shoup”), which VITA also did for us.
7. Use Microsoft Access to add, delete, or change any of the votes in the database.
8. Upload the modified copy of the Microsoft Access database back to the voting machine.
9. Wait for the election results to be published.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...r-breath-away/

I can't wait to hear the details on the machines being tested in Vegas. It really cannot be overstated how imperative auditing the security of our voting machines is. It absolutely needs to be done in an open way, like what's happening at DefCon. And there needs to be a prohibition on private companies developing voting machines with closed source software. Voting machines should have 100% open hardware and software.

07-29-2017 , 08:52 AM

#1184

mosdef

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 11,290

Quote:

Originally Posted by DVaut1

This is a good post, and it's also, I think -- ideologically provocative. Because the self-esteem culture itself was a byproduct of the Freudian movement and in particular his nephew Edward Bernays that leveraged these ideas to induce mass consumption. That is to say, it has been known for almost 100 years now that wish fulfillment, and fulfilling desires, and treating self-actualization and expression as the highest forms of human thought and achievement (instead of say charity or communal interest or reducing economic privation, or focus on the spiritual side) was highly useful to capitalists but in particular producers of consumer goods. The Freudians then sold all of that accumulated knowledge to companies and marketers to induce people to consume en masse.

Put bluntly, Freud and his family articulated that we had in us these repressed desires, and that modernity and thoughtfulness meant indulging them. That it was a highly moral thing to do, if not an obligation. To be modern and progressive meant losing all inhibitions and focusing on what makes you happy. It's not all to the bad; the sexual revolution of course owes itself to some of the same currents.

But from it you get thinks like the self-esteem and self-confidence movements of the 1970s/80s, which were highly dubious outcroppings of Freud anyway -- but did much to usher in the phenomenon you talk about. Where it only becomes logical to think about others' wants, needs, and fulfillment only when it impacts you personally.

The left talks alot about false consciousness -- that is, how the right might make someone a racist instead of a worker, an investor instead of a feminist. Whatever. But equally damning in the modern world is the lack of any consciousness at all. That it's OK and desirable only to focus on your own wants and needs and it's common sense that fulfilling them is your highest priority, that all other considerations are worthless. Those notions were not always in vogue, not always popular. I've written at length lately about how things like the Social Gospel used to motivate politicians and the public at large in the past. But mass consumption capitalism has little use for the old institutions like the church that might inculcate an aversion to consumption. It has little use for social justice for people outside of our roles as consumers. It has little use for social evils if they don't impact markets.

tl;dr summary: self-esteem culture was just a motivated movement of the mass consumption era, which has had some significant social and political impacts. Minimally it's been highly useful to the political right. Maximally, you could argue they operate in very close conjunction and constitute a form of informal if not highly organized collusion -- the owners of firms that cater to mass consumption fund political movements to ensure they continue unmolested by democratic impulses to control it, which in turn provides more profits to organize more political protection and propaganda. And it's not written about very much or at least coherently although I think we all recognize the inchoate and disorganized complaining about it.

Lots of truth to this and of course it is exaggerated by modern internet culture. It's easier to suppress natural instincts to empathy when you conduct most of your interactions with other through the de-humanizing media of smart phones and laptops, not to mention the ability to just block and content that might challenge your self centered perspective.

07-29-2017 , 09:16 AM

#1185

pvn

Guest

Posts: n/a

the TRUMP threadzilla should be treated like the LC thread, locked at the end of the month and a new one started

07-29-2017 , 12:42 PM

#1186

microbet

Solar Powered

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 56,720

In non-Trump news, Pakistan's PM "resigned" after their supreme court ruled him disqualified because of corruption that came to light through the Panama Papers.

It's not that big a deal though. Of Pakistan's 18 PMs, none have ever served a full term.

07-29-2017 , 01:38 PM

#1187

jalfrezi

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 12,404

Until recently not only have all Pakistan's PMs failed to complete their full term, but each of them was supplanted by the military.

I guess the PM being replaced by his brother is some kind of progress.

07-29-2017 , 02:45 PM

#1188

DudeImBetter

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Feb 2012 Posts: 10,664

You guys remember the XXX section of Blockbuster in the back, behind a black curtain? That might have been my first exposure to the concept of human reproduction.

07-29-2017 , 04:20 PM

#1189

jt217

veteran

Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 2,020

So like, there's no way these guys raise the debt ceiling, right? What happens when we hit it? Shouldn't this be talked about way more than it is?

07-29-2017 , 04:32 PM

#1190

will1530

self-banned

Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 5,773

There is no way they don't raise the debt ceiling. That is not a fight the congressional majority gets into when the President is in their own party.

07-29-2017 , 04:46 PM

#1191

FlyWf

It's the other way

Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 58,097

Quote:

Originally Posted by jt217

So like, there's no way these guys raise the debt ceiling, right? What happens when we hit it? Shouldn't this be talked about way more than it is?

Quote:

Originally Posted by will1530

There is no way they don't raise the debt ceiling. That is not a fight the congressional majority gets into when the President is in their own party.

Oh, will, you sweet summer child

07-29-2017 , 05:14 PM

#1192

ecriture d'adulte

Pooh-Bah

Join Date: Jan 2017 Posts: 5,924

Quote:

Originally Posted by jt217

So like, there's no way these guys raise the debt ceiling, right? What happens when we hit it? Shouldn't this be talked about way more than it is?

This should be bipartisan enough to pass. Healthcare was so hard because no dem would ever dream of voting for it and there is such a gulf between freedom caucus and the left most republicans, but some dems and republicans can raise the debt ceiling without Rand Paul or whoever.

07-29-2017 , 07:11 PM

#1193

zikzak

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 22,198

Quote:

Originally Posted by DudeImBetter

You guys remember the XXX section of Blockbuster in the back, behind a black curtain? That might have been my first exposure to the concept of human reproduction.

I definitely do not remember Blockbuster having a porn section, unless you are using "Blockbuster" as a generic trademark to refer to all video stores. IIRC they wouldn't even carry NC-17 movies.

07-29-2017 , 09:29 PM

#1194

suzzer99

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World

Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 99,984

I remember having to be buzzed into the XXX section with the weirdos. Sometimes a guy would come over from the gay section and stand very close to you for no reason. Then you bring out your boxes and one clerk yells across the room to the other to ask what shelf Buttwoman's Anal Desires is on. And then you quickly scuttle to your car hoping no one you know drives by.

In my day we had to suffer for our porn dammit.

07-29-2017 , 09:34 PM

#1195

zikzak

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 22,198

Porn theaters were where it was at. That was a fascinating world to visit.

I mean, from what I heard. From other people. Who I barely even knew, really.

07-29-2017 , 10:58 PM

#1196

DVaut1

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 30,005

Quote:

Originally Posted by FlyWf

"It happened to me" is one of those articles that, when you're done, you should sit back and think "oh wait, everyone is a person just like me, this **** makes me seem like a myopic tool"

Related, I use Saturday night to get caught up on some long form stuff I don't have time for during the week.

From that Michael Lewis article about all the stuff the DOE does that right-wing bozos are clueless about and want to gut funding for, despite the fact they are either incredibly critical to our collective well-being or potentially life changing:

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/...-michael-lewis

Quote:

There is a telling example of this Trumpian impulse—the desire not to know—in a small D.O.E. program that goes by its acronym, ARPA-E. ARPA-E was conceived during the George W. Bush administration as an energy equivalent of DARPA—the Defense Department’s research-grant program that had funded the creation of G.P.S. and the Internet, among other things. Even in the D.O.E. budget the program was trivial—$300 million a year. It made small grants to researchers who had scientifically plausible, wildly creative ideas that might change the world.

Quote:

The man who ran the place when it opened was Arun Majumdar. He grew up in India, finished at the top of his engineering class, moved to the United States, and became a world-class materials scientist. He now teaches at Stanford University but could walk into any university in America and get a job. Invited to run ARPA-E, he took a leave from teaching, moved to Washington, D.C., and went to work for the D.O.E.

Quote:

The Heritage Foundation even created its own budget plan back in 2011 that eliminated ARPA-E. American politics was alien to the Indian immigrant; he couldn’t fathom the tribal warfare. “Democrat, Republican—what is this?,” as he put it. “Also, why don’t people vote? In India people stand in line in 40 degrees Celsius to vote.” He phoned up the guys who had written the Heritage budget and invited them over to see what they’d be destroying. They invited him to lunch. “They were very gracious,” said Majumdar, “but they didn’t know anything. They were not scientists in any sense. They were ideologues. Their point was: the market should take care of everything. I said, ‘I can tell you that the market does not go into the lab and work on something that might or might not work.’ ”

Present at lunch was a woman who, Majumdar learned, helped to pay the bills at the Heritage Foundation. After he’d explained ARPA-E—and some of the life-changing ideas that the free market had failed to fund in their infancy—she perked up and said, “Are you guys like DARPA?” Yes, he said. “Well, I’m a big fan of DARPA,” she said. It turned out her son had fought in Iraq. His life was saved by a Kevlar vest. The early research to create the Kevlar vest was done by DARPA.

The guys at Heritage declined the invitation to actually visit the D.O.E. and see what ARPA-E was up to. But in their next faux budget they restored the funding for ARPA-E.

I realize it's just some faux budget white paper blue sky stuff out of the Heritage Foundation but "oh you do a thing I actually have a personal connection to, turns out yours is the type of government funding that has utility" is Peak Modern Right Wing Ideology: all government monies are bad unless I'm aware of what you're up to, in which case oh that's clever let's keep doing that.

Sometimes we all laugh when Fly suggests that, for instance, all David Sklansky desperately needs is a newspaper subscription but you read stuff like this and start to wonder how many people are simply lacking knowledge, not smarts. I'm confident there's plenty of malevolence in the world, I mean the Heritage Foundation cultivates it, and Michael Lewis is nothing if not gifted as spinning these little life affirming anecdotes that flatter technocracy. And yet one wonders if we really, truly sometimes are literally just getting bad at transferring institutional knowledge. And so the right is filling it in with hilarious superstitions.

Anyway, obviously:

Quote:

As I drove out of Hanford the Trump administration unveiled its budget for the Department of Energy. ARPA-E had since won the praise of business leaders from Bill Gates to Lee Scott, the former C.E.O. of Walmart, to Fred Smith, the Republican founder of FedEx, who has said that “pound for pound, dollar for dollar, activity for activity, it’s hard to find a more effective thing government has done than ARPA-E.” Trump’s budget eliminates ARPA-E altogether.

07-29-2017 , 11:06 PM

#1197

microbet

Solar Powered

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 56,720

A n00b shipped that Vanity Fair article in the Trump thread via the Pony Express a few days ago. The whole thing was a good read if you want to be horrified by a bunch of completely unsurprising stuff.

07-29-2017 , 11:07 PM

#1198

Loki

binary duo

Join Date: Nov 2015 Posts: 12,772

Quote:

Originally Posted by zikzak

Porn theaters were where it was at. That was a fascinating world to visit.

I mean, from what I heard. From other people. Who I barely even knew, really.

Eh, there was an adult video store where I lived, you could rentals for pretty cheap. Was nice for variety.

07-29-2017 , 11:11 PM

#1199

campfirewest

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 9,940

Quote:

Originally Posted by zikzak

Porn theaters were where it was at. That was a fascinating world to visit.

I mean, from what I heard. From other people. Who I barely even knew, really.

Hi Pee Wee.

07-29-2017 , 11:19 PM

#1200

microbet

Solar Powered

Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 56,720

The whole thing about private industry solving big problems is such an absurd position. I don't know if there's one of these out there, but this seems like a slam dunk case for a documentary.

Just googling I come up with this book:

American Amnesia: How the war on government led us to forget what made America prosper

https://news.yale.edu/2016/04/13/cri...n-jacob-hacker

Anyone heard of it? I put it on hold at the library and will probably report back at some point in the book review thread.

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