NeutronBoy

Why?

I know a few years ago when I was working on a government procurement project for some software, the (very good) lawyers were very weary of any OSS included in the proprietary product we were buying. Their reasoning was, we were buying the product from the vendor. If the vendor had incorporated the OSS code into their product and it was found that they'd breached the license conditions, then we essentially lost the license to run the software - otherwise we'd be in breach as well. Not what you want when you're spending hundreds of millions on a project.

> What we desperately need is a real, useful micro-payments model where you can pay per-article

The other side of the coin is that if you're a news organisation, "the economics just don't work" with micro payments. You can't fund a month long investigative report based on micropayments, even if it produces a prize-winning piece, if you don't have guaranteed income to support it. What happens if you spend the month investigating and don't find anything?

Micro-payment per-article will only encourage "safe" journalism - articles that you know will resonate with your readers, rather than controversial pieces or in-depth, resource intensive research.

Most governments have public portals (or you have to register with your company details but it's basically open apart from that) that they post RF{I,T,Q}s on.

> I'd rather FB just said "we'll never pony up the wages necessary to moderate well so we're just going to make facebook a complete free speech zone."

They were literally doing this! Then they got slammed for 'censorship', so they got rid of the moderators. Now they're in the position they are now.

Yes.

Our compulsory voting is really "compulsory voting". It's "compulsory turn up to a polling station and get your name marked off". You can drop an empty ballot in the box, draw penises on it, or even just turn and walk out of the polling place.

Also, the OP underestimates the impact of the minor parties. While there are two major parties, one of them is a coalition between two parties (Liberals and the Nationals), and there's a significant block of smaller parties and independents that are big enough that when they vote together they can have a deciding vote on legislation.

> Security through obscurity is not the solution, though

Security is about layers. Nothing is foolproof. It's about implementing layers of controls to reduce your attack surface to an acceptable level, with the trade-off that many controls increase the complexity of your setup or compromises the convenience for your users.

For example, for SSH, this probably includes

* changing the default port

* enforcing SSH key authentication

* enforcing passwords on SSH keys

* implementing fail2ban

* installing jump hosts for internal machines

* implementing a VPN rather than external facing hosts (and with that comes all the additional layers for the VPN)

* etc...

What would you question about it?

There are normally multiple observers from all parties, plus election officials, that scrutinize the counting process in real-time. Disputes are raised and resolved on the spot where possible, and it not are normally escalated. This is why elections can have provisional results on the same day/night, and the official results are a few days later.

To be fair, that's my impression of a number of people who introduce themselves as 'entrepreneurs'.

The people who run a business, or are building something or are otherwise working, will say that. People who say they're in 'business' or are an 'entrepreneur' are the ones who haven't figured out exactly what they're up to.

There's almost two conclusions from the article:

- running government more like a business isn't necessarily a bad thing, and

- a ruthless business-man isn't necessarily the best suited person to do it

WaPo have just published a story about the attacks https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/ukraines-governm...

And an odd quote from some who's claim to fame is running a website that publishes leaked information.

It shows up in your checking account semi-monthly ;)

It's a slight difference, where the end result is a difference of 2 paychecks per year (24 for semi-monthly vs 26 for bi-weekly)

Is it better to be a genius programmer, or an average programmer with an good understanding of the problem domain?

Yes, as long as you don't want to convert your crypto currency into fiat currency at either end.

Is there a difference between shooting at a character controlled by an AI, and shooting at a character controlled by another human?

And the cost likely includes wages/costs of people for things like training users on the system, setting up and running a help desk for census staff to call when they're completing the census, costs for managing and running procurement for the different components, etc.

For NFC to work your screen has to be on - you can't hijack a phone in someones pocket.

> 2. Commercial license

Not sure if this is what you were referring to, but the article notes

"With Fuchsia, Google would not only be dumping the Linux kernel, but also the GPL: the OS is licensed under a mix of BSD 3 clause, MIT, and Apache 2.0. "

The drivers in Uber handle more than just the driving - they essentially handle all the other logistics of offering a taxi service. They keep the car clean, they handle any regular maintenance and servicing, they store the car when it's not in use, they manage registration and insurance, they manage any insurance claims, they fix any damage, they mop up the vomit, etc.

Once Uber goes self driving, they take on responsibility for all of these logistical activities, and they currently have no capability and capacity to do that. These activities only scale so far.

That's pretty much the point the GP was trying to make.

They're "optional", but the miners can pick and chose which transactions they include in a block, and the larger the fee they get from the transaction, the more likely it is to make it into the block.

I understand. At the end of the article, he tries to make the point that having everything pluggable is a problem with Android devices. In reality, it's that flexibility that enables a manufacturer like Wileyfox to even release a unique product.

> This leaves me in an unpleasant spot as I, where I can, avoid using google services and now need to find an alternative dialling application. Isn’t this sweet? I am searching for a dialling application for my smartphone. A DIALLING application

You bought a Google phone and don't want to use Google services, but complain that the dialler can be provided by a third party? Isn't that a good thing?