Inside Swiss Banks' Tax-Cheating Machinery - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-swiss-banks-tax-cheating-machinery-1445506381 <comment><USER2> "Tax Cheating" is evidently another way of saying "sovereign state". The Swiss can do whatever they want. We don't tax the world. Sadly they capitulated in what was naked Imperial aggression by a foreign power.

The US is free to prosecute US tax dodgers...in the US.

<comment><USER3> What a silly response. Of course the Swiss can do whatever they want. The IRS doesn't have any interest in taxing Swiss people living in Switzerland, earning Swiss francs working in Switzerland.

But people and organizations doing business in the United States, and all US citizens, have legal US tax obligations. If you don't like it, feel free to renounce your citizenship and avoid doing business in any US markets.

<comment><USER4> Legality aside, how do US citizens (loosely defined as people who were born in the US decades ago) who do not live or work in the US have any moral obligation to pay taxes to the US?

<comment><USER3> When they travel, they may take advantage of visa-free entry into many countries, negotiated through treaties with the US. If they get into legal trouble abroad, they enjoy consular protection from the US State Department. They enjoy the right to vote in US elections, and the (at least theoretical) right to move to the US should they fancy it.

If they really aren't interested, it's a pretty straightforward process to walk into the nearest embassy and opt-out: [http://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal- consideratio...](http://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal- considerations/us-citizenship-laws-policies/renunciation-of-citizenship.html)

<comment><USER5> It's not straightforward at all. There are a bunch of financial implications that are very difficult to navigate.

<comment><USER6> What financial implications are there, aside from "The IRS wants to make sure you're not leaving just before an anticipated windfall to avoid taxes?"

<comment><USER5> For example: you have to pay up front, lump sum taxes on things like pensions and retirements, but you still can't withdraw them.

It's _expensive_ to renounce US citizenship.

<comment><USER3> > lump sum taxes on things like pensions and retirements

You mean if they've been living and working for years in the US, and taking advantage of US tax-advantaged retirement accounts?

Now we're talking about a different person than the parent commenter: "(loosely defined as people who were born in the US decades ago) who do not live or work in the US "

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find the response to these articles often very baffling. Everyone seems to want to nail these banksters for dodging taxes using clever loopholes. Then, they rail against government incompetence and praise people who work within a narrow framework while getting results ("hackers"). Obviously, this is a generalization and not _every person_ thinks this way, but I often find this sort of response on places like reddit and even here to some extent.

If the Federal Gov't wants tax money it better start making a strong case with some serious value propositions. Realize, that post-civil war the Federal Income Tax was allowed to expire, even for funding the war it was only 10%. It had been _ruled unconstitutional_.[0]People don't want to give the government money at a corporate or personal level. And if they would stop buying warehouses of hammers and dumping it into the middleeast funding helicopters that will never fly and powerplants that don't work, maybe people would at lease be neutral, instead of downright hostile, about the issues of taxes.

[0][http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/153529/](http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/153529/)

<comment><USER8> Poor rich, they are a persecuted minority.

<comment><USER7> My point, which I didn't explicitly state, is that maybe instead of demonizing the rich for tax evasion we should be doing more to help the poor and middle class achieve these same ends. Obviously, building a strong economy and job creation are much more important, but lowering taxes and allocating the money the government does have, should be important goals going forward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd love more background on why the foreign banks cooperated.

Presumably, the larger ones have US arms to do things like trade on Wall Street. Maybe the American government threatened to penalize Swiss institutions through their US subsidiaries if they didn't cooperate, but I imagine that many of the smaller banks (and the state-owned ones) don't have interests in the US. How can they be penalized for violating the law of a jurisdiction that's literally on the other side of the world?

<comment><USER10> Transactions in USD must be cleared in NYC; the US' position is that banks which don't play ball re: money laundering lose access to the US financial system.

<comment><USER11> Which basically means they would lose their US banking liscense and coudn't trade in USD anymore.

What would be interessting would be to know how some banks could accept these consequences and still survive.

<comment><USER12> BNP did for a few things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For those looking for more background (and open access) to offshore banking and tax shelters, I _highly_ recommend the ICIJ's long-running series of investigative reports on sheltered wealth: [http://www.icij.org/offshore](http://www.icij.org/offshore)

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder when a guy who robs a liquor store can get the same deal as these white-collar tax cheats: steal $500, and avoid criminal charges in exchange for paying $250 restitution.

<comment><USER15> More like: robber has $1000 to his name, robs the liquor store for $500; avoids criminal charges by paying $750 restitution. (The article mentioned half of the account balance, not half of the amount of taxes owed.)

But the real difference is that while robbing a liquor store is universally viewed as unethical; that isn't the case with tax evasion. Many people (including, ironically, the founders of the USA, who seceded from the British over taxation) believe that taxes are unethical, and using every loophole and trick in the book to minimize taxes is both ethical and smart.

<comment><USER7> I totally agree. Just to add, playing the game well and keeping your own money is borderline unethical/illegal depending on where you land on the issue but it is _your money_. Threatening someone else at gunpoint, and taking their money is quite different than simply keeping your own and not paying a fair share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tax Evasion is a Global Problem - every country from UK to Russia to my own country of Bangladesh have rich people hiding their money in foreign countries.

I am happy that the US public is forcing their govt to look into it and hopefully a global system is set up to prevent tax evasion everywhere.

<comment><USER17> Interesting, unsure why you were downvoted here. I completely agree that tax evasion is a global problem. There's a fantasic book called "Treasure Islands"([http://treasureislands.org/](http://treasureislands.org/)) which goes into it in detail. Showing how multinationals and the very rich structure their affairs so as to avoid the bulk of taxation (while not actually living in these offshore jurisdictions)

Is it right? It's reasonably legal (the difference between evasion and avoidance is a very grey thing). According to the book linked above, we give less in aid than countries lose in not being able to tax effectively.

Not quite sure how you fix it, probably fewer laws and more transparency. But it'll be quite the fight, there are more than a few $$'s at stake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For what it's worth to the people saying "we (as in the US or the international community more generally) have no interest in this and shouldn't trample on sovereign nations," I respect your opinion and your disdain for heavyhanded, imperialistic behavior, but don't ignore the evils that these banks perpetuate. They are opportunistic and protect and facilitate some of the worst people on earth, including arms traffickers and dictators who commit atrocities against their own people. Maybe exerting pressure against these banks isn't the right solution, but I have no sympathy for the sort of people who helped the Sudanese commit genocide, and anything that works against them I'm inclined to support.

[http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-20/shh- credit-...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-20/shh-credit- agricole-kept-its-sudan-business-quiet)

<comment><USER19> Except - they also serve as a safehaven for wealth created in countries where its very likely to be confiscated by totalitarian and unstable governments. Think Nazi Germany, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and unfortunately, possibly, hopefully unlikely - China.

<comment><USER13> Most of the wealth "created" in totalitarian states is in fact extracted by kleptocratic rulers. Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, numerous African dictators, Vladimir Putin, current the 3rd richest person in the world.

If you want to create exceptions for financial refugees, that's well and good. But global protection for every drug lord, terrorist, and petty dictator ain't the right way to do it.

<comment><USER20> Even closer in the neighborhood, most of the Greek kleptocrats have their money in Swiss banks too. Some of them are now being prosecuted, with information that only came to light because an employee of HSBC took some account lists home (in violation of Swiss law). The French police later found these in a raid, and turned them over in part to the Greek police [1]. I wouldn't be surprised if Swiss banks are also handling the money from organized crime in Bulgaria and Romania.

I think eventually, like the US has, the EU will succeed in pressuring Switzerland to cooperate more with European police investigations and turn over this kind of information. Despite not being an EU member, Switzerland is too economically entangled in EU treaties like the common market, to entirely ignore what the EU thinks, at least in cases where the EU actually agrees on what it thinks and is willing to make an issue out of it.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagarde_list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagarde_list)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cool new Lobste.rs interface - todd-davies https://lobste.rs/

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have an invite for lobste.rs, please?

<comment><USER2> I'm have an invite. What is you mail?

<comment><AUTHOR> karlmaxxx [at] gmail.com</comment></comment></comment>


Bootstrapping a $60K/Month Online Lending Business - <AUTHOR> https://launchbasket.com/building-a-60k-month-online-lending-business-an-interview-with-fig-loans-co-founder-ceo-jeff-zhou/ <comment><USER2> > Fig takes a leap of faith every time we lend. We give our borrowers an > opportunity to show they're more than their credit score

Reminds me of this company [https://www.destacame.cl](https://www.destacame.cl) which helps consumers and small business owners create a record of all their monthly payments to show that even if they don't have a credit record, they are good payers and deserve (good) credit. It's a pretty cool concept.

</comment><comment><USER3> An interest rate of 190% ? Wow. For those with no credit, I guess 190% APR represents the risk that the lender is taking. I'm sure that 190% rate sucks way less than your typical payday loan rate, but this is why many states have outlawed payday loans.

<comment><USER4> Why would you lend money to someone who accepts a term of 190%? Wouldn't their acceptance imply a lack of financial aptitude or extreme desperation?

<comment><USER5> Or confidence in their investment</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft built its own custom Linux kernel for its new IoT service - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/16/microsoft-built-its-own-custom-linux-kernel-for-its-new-iot-service/ <comment> castle-bravo Am I paraphrasing this correctly:

> Microsoft-branded ARM microcontrollers running an embedded linux > distribution. Microsoft rolls out security updates over Azure to reduce the > risk of the device becoming part of a botnet.

It sounds great.

<comment><USER2> It does. But, it's also pretty surreal for those of us that worked through the anti-linux Microsoft of the 90's. Windows subsystem for Linux, and initiatives like this are a real confirmation that MS finally "gets it". Right tool for the right job. Good for them.

It's also a big swing for me in that I trust MS more than Google now to do the right thing. I'd have thought that impossible a couple of decades ago.

<comment><USER3> Have you actually used Windows 10?? The spotlight is squarely on Facebook and it's privacy intrusions right now, but the data collection when you own the OS must be several orders of magnitude larger.

Don't be so eager to forgive them. They're not hugging Linux right now because they're a Good Company trying to Do No Evil.

<comment><USER4> Have _you_ used Windows 10 Server Core, or Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB? There's no data collection in either of those, because they're for serious people.

The Home and Pro editions, meanwhile, are effectively "Xbox OS for PCs." They turn your computer into an entertainment appliance run and maintained by Microsoft itself. Of course they collect data, just like there are data- collection agents on all the nodes of your average production system cluster. When Microsoft is the sysadmin, Microsoft needs to collect ops data.

And, personally, I don't think that's a bad thing, per se. It's a choice you make. You can take control of your PC while still running Windows, if you like. (It's just a big hassle, because truly administering a modern Windows system is a big hassle.)

<comment><USER5> >Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB

So tell me, where can I buy that for my personal computer?

>because they're for serious people

No, because those who can get Windows 10 LTSB actually have the power to push back. Imagine telling Dell or HP that everything they type may be sent to MS at any time.

>You can still take control

So how can I permanently end _all_ telemetry, now and forever on my box. I'm even willing to sign a letter that I won't hold them responsible for any viruses that I get because I didn't update in time.

<comment><USER6> I just built a gaming rig, and I tried really hard to get LTSB, because I don't want to use this computer for anything beyond CS:GO. Was impossible.

<comment> ben-schaaf Good news then, because CS:GO runs beautifully on linux and OSX (not that I'd recommend the latter).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Am I missing something here? The custom linux kernel part isn't interesting at all - in fact, Microsoft has pretty much admitted they can't scale down Windows.

What's interesting to me here is Microsoft is building an IoT solution that allows manufacturers to delegate security to Microsoft instead of having to roll their own.

<comment><USER8> "Don't roll your own security" has been the marching drum of an entire sector of IoT companies working within the connectivity "slice of the pie."

The general mindset has been that iot has a couple slices: the "thing" (air conditioner vibration sensor), how that thing is connected (Ethernet plugged directly into a smart vibration sensor, or vibration sensor plugged into a connected data-recording device), the transmission/storage of that data (cloud solution? Servers on site? Internet y/n?), Analysis of that data (Microsoft IoT platform? Rolled solution? Now defunct Autodesk iot platform?), and finally the acting upon data collected (chief engineer scheduling repairs/maintenance, project manager ordering new motors, whatever).

So many companies have tried "rolling their own" because they got it working on a raspberry pi or Arduino in a week, then find out their connectivity is not secure at scale (let alone that the solution can't scale at all).

Let specialists specialize. No reason not to let big daddy Microsoft handle the messy bits.

Disclosure, I work at electric imp, thus considering myself firmly in the "secure connection and transmission" slice of the pie.

Disclosure 2, we're partnered with Microsoft for their new IoT push, lol.

<comment><USER9>
      Let specialists specialize. No reason not to let
      big daddy Microsoft handle the messy bits.

If you're planning to make a product that will last 20 years - a residential thermostat, for example - using a third-party service as the foundation of your product seems naïve to me.

I mean, Microsoft or AWS is at least better than a startup, in that they're less likely to go bankrupt - but even Windows XP, one of most long-lived products out there, was only supported for 12 years even with 'extended support'.

Not to mention the fact whoever provides the cloud services will likely be looking to make recurring revenue over those 20 years.

<comment><USER8> If you go with partners, though, swapping them out may not be too painful. I mean, working on twenty year old cold is always painful, but at least for some of my demo devices, when Autodesk's iot platform was retired, I swapped it to Microsoft's pretty easily. It's just data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article pretends to answer why they're using Linux instead of the NT kernel, but the answer is either incomplete or a non sequitur; it seems to imply that since the devices has very little power, their kernel isn't a good fit. I thought the NT kernel was pretty good at low power, and also has a highly respected internal design?

<comment><USER11> Low power is relative: NT is good at saving battery on laptops, but these are supercomputers compared to IoT hardware. The most minimal NT system that I have seen so far was still 50MB. Not sure if MS was able to shrink that further. But in a world where every byte of flash or RAm saved can lead to essential power savings, this is far too big. With a custom linux kernel with no extra drivers and modules and busybox in userspace, you can get much smaller than 50MB.

<comment><USER12> >The most minimal NT system that I have seen so far was still 50MB.

Well, it depends on what you want to do.

A really minimal XP with minlogon is around 10 Mb (actually around 20 MB that on NTFS compressed volumes are around 10), of which quite a bit is things that could be removed or greatly reduced in size recompiling the programs/dll's if the source was available, that won't do much, while with a decent amount of base tools it comes out at 30-40 MB or so.

Some references to a dedicated project:

[0] [http://mistyprojects.co.uk/minixp/docs/files/index.html](http://mistyprojects.co.uk/minixp/docs/files/index.html)

[1] [http://mistyprojects.co.uk/minixp/docs/files/intro.htm](http://mistyprojects.co.uk/minixp/docs/files/intro.htm)

[2] [http://mistyprojects.co.uk/minixp/docs/files/about.htm](http://mistyprojects.co.uk/minixp/docs/files/about.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The videos seem to show an MT3620 device, seems to be made by MediaTek [1]. Looks like they are targeting a Cortex-A7 + Cortex-M4 chip. First time I've seen an A series core in this type of chip.

It looks like a developer gets to program the A7 and 2xM4F cores whilst the WiFi radio and Microsoft's "secure" Pluton thing run on a Andes N9 and Cortex M4 core respectively. I assume it is those cores which will be auto-updated in an attempt to defend against attack.

[1] [https://www.mediatek.com/products/azureSphere/mt3620](https://www.mediatek.com/products/azureSphere/mt3620)

<comment><USER14> > _The videos seem to show an MT3620 device, seems to be made by MediaTek > [1]._

Indeed. The article agrees with you and even goes as far as linking to the same URL that you did. :-)

<comment><USER13> My bad, didn't see the link in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Still cannot understand the IoT mentality. It is actually the CoT Communication of Things. Internet shouldn't be required to turn your lights on or off nor be the device communication backbone in an industrial enviornment. Internet should always be the last resort for communicating because of the distance.

<comment><USER16> Totally with you. Maybe I'm a pessimist or a luddite or something, but I _really_ don't think IoT devices should be connected directly to the Internet. Most are just too simple, underpowered or cheaply made to adequately defend themselves from attacks. IoT gadgets should always talk to a more powerful/secure hub of some sort, which then is exposed to the Internet. Seriously, my WiFi lightbulb switch just has no business doing anything outside my internal network...

And god help us when all these IoT devices start talking IPv6... With no NAT and anemic firewalls on most routers? Oof.

<comment><USER17> Just because a device supports IPv6 doesn't mean you have to route that prefix to the Internet.

Assign Unique Locals ( ULA ) to untrusted LAN devices and no Internet router will carry them.

Then your laptop or phone can additionally receive a routed prefix. Remember with IPv6 you can assign an arbitrary number of prefixes and addresses to each interface, or just one. It makes for very flexible routing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm confused: they're saying the devices have an ARM A7 chip (presumably they mean Cortex-A7) in them, which is a full 32-bit microprocessor, but they're calling them "microcontrollers"?

I would think Windows could run on a Cortex-A7, no? Perhaps the specific parts they're using have a ridiculously-low clock rate or other painful limitations?

<comment><USER19> You're right, but there is a lot of misunderstanding around this end of the market, mainly because advances have blurred the traditional segmentation. When talking about ARM, the 'M' in Cortex-M means 'microcontroller' whereas the 'A' in Cortex-A means 'application'. Cortex-A systems are often at the centre of 'System-on-Chips' and will run linux, and indeed the NT kernel as well, as they are bundled with enough RAM and fairly modern peripheral interfaces such as HDMI.

Cortex-Ms typically can't run linux (excepting uClinux) as they don't have the RAM and typically don't need to as they address a different need (dedicated function instead of general-purpose compute), and have far fewer peripheral interfaces. It used to be all about power profile, but the recent SoCs are getting pretty competitive there as well.

But as I said the traditional segmentation at this end of the spectrum is being re-cast seemingly every second week, and so terms such as 'microcontroller' are becoming less meaningful all the time. And who the hell can agree on just what 'embedded' means these days?

<comment><USER20> > And who the hell can agree on just what 'embedded' means these days?

FWIW, my personal definition is "doesn't have an MMU"

<comment><USER21> Interesting definition choice, as what constitutes an MMU has also fuzzily shifted over the years. From what I've seen, most of the SoC designs contain what in the microcontroller world of the 90s would be considered more than a minimal MMU, take for instance the classic M68451 [1], and the multi-stage bus pipelines and super-wide buses of these 'embedded' designs easily surpass such early MMUs.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68451](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68451)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Always nice to remember: "If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won." [1]

[1] [http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9810/01/whylinux.idg/](http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9810/01/whylinux.idg/)

<comment><USER23> So, I guess Linus super-wins?

<comment><USER24> There is an 80% chance that you are carrying a Linux kernel powered device in your pocket right now.

I think is a undisputed win.

<comment><USER25> Not for so long tho. Fuchsia is not linux.

<comment><USER26> And how many did Google abandon it's hyped projects?

<comment><USER25> Very doubtful they will abandon this project. This way they have full control over everything googleOS so they can spy more on what you do which is their endgame goal.

<comment><USER24> This is very thin ice. The kernel is far from "spying" a user, unless Google wants to track my syscalls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> After seeing this I think the Amazon AWS/FreeRTOS combo is looking like the better architecture for a node solution. FreeRTOS can run on lowly M3s at 120Mhz, like the LPC2478.

A 500MHz A7 part is way too much silicon for an IoT node. How much external SDRAM and Flash are connected to that MediaTek core?

<comment><USER28> > After seeing this I think the Amazon AWS/FreeRTOS combo is looking like the > better architecture for a node solution. FreeRTOS can run on lowly M3s at > 120Mhz, like the LPC2478

Is that supposed to imply linux can't? Or that linux plus a GNU subsystem can't? I've personally run it on a lot lower end hardware than that seems to be.

<comment><USER27> Oh, it can. I've run ucLinux (MMU-less Linux) on an LPC1788 (Cortex-M3) and it works...okay. Making dynamic libraries work correctly on it is a pain in the ass. It just wasn't worth it at the end and the O/S hogged up most of the processor, RAM, and Flash.

<comment><USER29> Exactly. I think these end up as good PoCs - and it would be amazing to think of a future where we can run one of the Linux derivatives on a something that was designed with FreeRTOS or equivalent in mind - but it's just not going to happen on a commercial scale in my opinion.

<comment><USER27> ARM Linux isn't really slimming down, so the chips need to grow to catch up.

You're starting to see devices like the Renesas RZ/A1H that has 10MiB of SDRAM on the die and can boot Linux out of a single cheap QSPI memory part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Someone has been predicting that Microsoft would in the future produce their own Linux Distro on Slashdot for the last 5 years. I remember thinking it sounded impossible for for the first few years. Seems prophetic now.

<comment><USER31> If you say the same thing long enough one day it'll be true in some way (little or big).

<comment><USER32> Linus is going to write his own Windows distribution

<comment><USER33> close enough? :P

[https://www.winehq.org/](https://www.winehq.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Microsoft has a lot of great engineers that have no religious bias against Linux. This was strictly a Bill Gates/Steve Ballmer thing. The smartest thing Nadella did was get rid of the Windows religion aspect to their work and let their engineers do the best thing, and not be afraid of Linux.

<comment><USER35> where is the office suite for Linux then?

<comment><USER18> I doubt that has much to do with "religion"; they simply don't think a Linux version of Office will bring in enough revenue to be worth the development and support costs... and I probably wouldn't disagree with that assessment.

Linux has large (majority?) market share in the server and IoT markets, but a very tiny market share when it comes to desktop.

<comment><USER35> Yes, but such applications like Office would make it a lot easier for more people to consider Linux as a viable alternative OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Meanwhile, The Linux Foundation decided that Linux isn't suitable and developed Zephyr [1] instead for IoT.

[1] [https://www.zephyrproject.org/](https://www.zephyrproject.org/)

<comment><USER37> But I was under the impression that Linux isn't suitable as a real-time operating system (RTOS)[1] (which Microsoft may very well not require for their IoT systems). So the Linux Foundation providing an alternative free kernel meeting RTOS requirements makes perfect sense.

I'm not as clear on the history, but was Linux _ever_ pitched as capable of being real-time OS? I don't think so. The hard requirements for real-time generally lead to very different systems than general-purpose operating systems.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real- time_operating_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real- time_operating_system)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Windows IoT runs on microprocessor units (MPUs) which have at least 100x the > power of the MCU.

> MediaTek is producing the first set of these new MCUs. These are low- > powered, single-core ARM-A7 systems that run at 500MHz

Er... what kind of hardware is Windows IoT supposed to run on?

<comment><USER39> They seem either confused about what "MCU" means, or intent on changing the commonly accepted meaning.

<comment><USER29> I think its a marketing thing. Engineers wouldn't have let this one slide.

My professors at college taught a simple rule of thumb - if it can't run regular Linux it's probably a MCU. Finer print talked about the presence of a MMU being the key differentiator.

I've stuck to that definition so far. Might have to rewire if this gimmick catches on

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Just curious, how's Microsoft's bogus Linux patents racket doing these days?

<comment><USER41> I think they've moved on from shaking down companies and customers that use Linux to shaking down companies that use Android.

 _SEP 20, 2011 Casio agrees to pay Microsoft an undisclosed sum for a deal that includes Microsoft 's vow not to sue Casio's customers for using its Linux devices_

 _Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez sat down with Fortune recently to map out their strategy for getting FOSS users to pay royalties. Revealing the precise figure for the first time, they state that FOSS infringes on no fewer than 235 Microsoft patents._

 _It 's a breathtaking number. (By comparison, for instance, Verizon's (Charts, Fortune 500) patent suit against Vonage (Charts), which now threatens to bankrupt the latter, was based on just seven patents, of which only three were found to be infringing.) "This is not a case of some accidental, unknowing infringement," Gutierrez asserts. "There is an overwhelming number of patents being infringed."_

<comment><USER40> I vaguely recall Google making noises about taking-on Microsoft's over their patent mafia tactics but it seem nothing came of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> If you didn't know Microsoft used to have its own version of Unix a long time ago: Xenix. Never seen it personally though, my first experience with PC was MSDOS.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix)

<comment><USER43> It was kind of ok.

That is how I learned UNIX back in the day.

As anecdote, given the UNIX prices even for PCs, the teacher would carry a PC with Xenix into our lab and then each group would have about 20 minute turns to test what was already prepared typing on MS-DOS.

This is why getting a C compiler for MS-DOS mattered to many of us, we wanted to maximize our slot as much as possible, it wasn't about its qualities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Maybe driven by

[http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows- kernel-w...](http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-we- are-slower-than-other-oper/) "I Contribute to the Windows Kernel. We Are Slower Than Other ...

</comment><comment><USER45> In my understanding, MCUs are more like ARM M, with 40MHz and 128KB RAM. But this thing is closer to rpi, with 500MHz, so I wonder what is the power consumption.

</comment><comment><USER46> It would have been much better if they had thrown their weight behind Android Things ( [https://developer.android.com/things/index.html](https://developer.android.com/things/index.html)) Maybe build an open foundation around it like Kubernetes CNCF.

Google is surprisingly open to build democratic orgs around its tech.

<comment><USER47> As long as Google is controlling AOSP by all means to lock users in Google services, it can't be trusted to control another fundamental platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Embrace, extend.. and extinguish!

<comment><USER49> This was my first thought based on the history and culture of the company. I'll be watching this development closely. The optimistic side of me hopes embracing Linux marks a real change in Microsoft, but we'll have to wait and see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I would switch to Windows in a heartbeat if they dropped NT and switched to becoming a Linux distro with a Windows emululator for legacy apps.

<comment><USER51> That would be a downgrade.

<comment><USER50> Really?

Even just the file locking would make it an upgrade, since it would allow you to avoid restaring your PC after upgrades like 30 years ago.

What makes Windows internals superior to Unix-based systems?

<comment><USER51> See [http://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.th...](http://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Is this a 'fork' of an ARM/MediaTek chip?

I'm currently on the Espressif platform for our stack.

How does it compare overall and in terms of security?

<comment><USER29> How are you finding the Espressif stack?

<comment><USER52> It's not bad. Pretty stable. It still feels very much for the hobbyist though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Maybe I'm just unable to look at the right places, but where is the source code repository?

</comment><comment><USER54> Current weather in hell: chilly ;)

</comment><comment><USER55> Good choice. Windows is too fat for IoT as is.

<comment><USER51> It's not.

<comment><USER55> Elaborate?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> [deleted]

<comment><USER57> Those were made by Intel.

<comment><USER56> Absolute brainfart by me. Need more coffee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Isn't OSS grand?

</comment><comment><USER59> Microsoft is becoming the cool company once again by embracing open-source technologies and contributing to various other OS projects. They are refocusing their business all around Azure subscriptions.</comment>


Testing at the speed and scale of Google - <AUTHOR> http://google-engtools.blogspot.com/2011/06/testing-at-speed-and-scale-of-google.html

<comment><USER2> Seems like creating and maintaining the dependency graph could be error-prone. If it's a manual process then it can't be very fine-grained, which you would want more of for maximum efficiency.

<comment><USER3> You have to maintain the dependency graph anyway to build the system. And no, maintaining the dependency graph is not _entirely_ manual.</comment></comment>


How Much Developers Make Per City, and Tech Stacks (Infographic) - <AUTHOR> https://grouptalent.com/blog/how-much-developers-make-per-city

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, I just want to clear up some confusion that we didn't see coming - The infographic was meant to represent the developers using GroupTalent back in July. I think folks got a little confused when we started drawing comparisons to the industry as a whole.

Sorry about that! We've removed the misleading parts to avoid any further confusion. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Sorry for the off-topic. I was rejected by your review process more than 14 days ago. I've then sent you an email asking on clarification and my reasons why I think I should be approved. But I haven't got anything back from you guys. Do you have any guidelines I could read on what you expect from freelancers?

I'm just confused as I have plenty of experience under my belt and I could tackle almost any problem you throw at me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Senior Developers: "Most use backbone.js"

Junior Developers: "Learning their way around Javascript and Rails of Python"

... is this a joke?

 _edit_ \- Written before superKinz explanation below. It makes sense when placed in the proper context.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wasn't a joke, just a miscommunication internally. =)

Thanks for calling it out early.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure what you based your $209k number on, since you don't cite an average hourly rate. However, its not terribly surprising. Full cost of an employee is usually estimated at 2-2.5x salary, so on an average of $93k salary, the hourly rate must be about what one would expect.

Full cost of employee means salary, benefits, physical space, equipment, social security, etc. Also worth noting that its unusual for developers to work more than 48 weeks out of the year; not sure if you took this into account.

</comment><comment><USER5> "all mobile developers are mid-level developers."

uhhh... what?

</comment><comment><USER6> People that use average to describe the middle of non-symmetric distributions are dumb.

<comment><USER7> I hope you realise the distribution need not be symmetric for the average value to be in the middle.

<comment> e-dard Yes, but elchief's point is obviously that if the data has a positive or negative skew, the median is going to be more helpful than the mean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I use backbone.js, underscore.js etc.. heavily in my work. I primarily code in front end but I have only a year of mainstream experience. Where does that place me in this stack. I think this is the misconception recruiters are not picking me for junior/mid level positions and I get calls for senior level positions and then they drop me cause of less experience. backbone.js ! = more experience

<comment><USER9> The tech stack and level of seniority comparison reflect correlation not causality.

To your point, I think you experience is relevant whether is mainstream or not. You are pointing to a problem with mainstream recruiters, ie that they only consider "mainstream" work as useful experience - whereas in the freelance market all experience is relevant and affects your rate. hope this helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ruby used by 14% of _all_ developers. Yeah right.

I'm guessing this is highly oriented towards web developers. Not all developers make iPhone apps and web sites. Your demography (what kind of developers are included in this survey) is not clearly stated here.

</comment><comment><USER11> Your website took forever to load from my phone. Granted, i was in a 3G zone and not 4G but that happens. It was the text which took a good long while followed by the info graphic i didn't bother to wait for. Just a heads up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yikes, ok we'll take a look at that. Seems like we've got a lot of testing to do on this. Thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Typo at <https://grouptalent.com/learn/employers/> "Our Fee All cost estimates inlcude our 20% fee."

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel like I should be paying you guys for helping us out so much. =)

Thanks for finding that, fix being deployed right now!

<comment><USER12> $120 / hour based on some rates I saw on website, now should I charge at 15 minute or hour long intervals.. :)

<comment><USER13> Don't you read anything that patio11 or tptacek write? You're supposed to charge by the day! :-)

<comment><USER14> *week

<comment><USER12> I like this..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This site is broken on an iPad...scrolling doesn't work at all

<comment><USER16> It's also extraordinarily difficult to read in Chrome/Windows. <http://i.imgur.com/RL9gB.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out. We switched over to Middleman from Wordpress and we're slowly building it out custom as we go. We get in a little work here and there in our spare time, but I think you've pointed out that we've got a ways to go before it works well all around.

Thanks for the heads up!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> These comments are hilarious.

People just nit pick on the details without discussing the trends the post talks about. Cmmon guys!

</comment><comment><USER18> What about Chicago or Dallas. Surely not all programmers live in four cities on the coasts

</comment><comment><USER19> Vertical scrolling is broken on this site with Firefox for Android.

</comment><comment><USER20> there appears to be an error in the charts for salary by city.

the bottom two salaries are both 50k, it seems like the second one should be 60k</comment>


Run Chrome Apps on mobile using Apache Cordova - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chromium.org/2014/01/run-chrome-apps-on-mobile-using-apache.html <comment><USER2> Can we classify this as Chrome and Android merging yet? At least we can use simple HTML/CSS/JS to develop native apps.

<comment><USER3> You can already do that with Cordova.

This is still too early. "Note also that IndexedDB is not supported prior to Android 4.4, since it is not supported on the old Android WebView." This makes this pretty useless (at this time), especially since chrome apps don't support websql.</comment></comment>


Amazon leads $575M investment in Deliveroo - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/16/amazon-takes-a-bite-into-deliveroo/ <comment><USER2> I hope to god Deliveroo takes some of Amazon's customer service tips/experience. Deliveroo's customer service is the absolute worst of any company i've ever experienced. So much so that they've had news articles[1] published in the UK about how much they try and screw people over.

Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Just Eat also (again, speaking for the UK) do not list restaurants' food safety/hygienic ratings, which is a requirement to run a restaurant in the UK[2]. This has lead to people like a comedian here (Joe Lycett) making a restaurant in a skip (a big industrial waste disposal unit) and getting food delivered to himself to see if it would work[3]...and it did.

If that wasn't bad enough, in London, Deliveroo actively masks restaurants' locations. For example, you order from "my 5 star restaurant" but the food might not actually come from the restaurant, instead it comes from a metal shipping container, under a bridge, next to a train track. These, are made by Deliveroo and, again, have no safety ratings/hygienic information.[4]

[1] (example) [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/deliveroo- food-o...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/deliveroo-food-order- refund-customer-support-asks-for-forgiveness-a7530486.html)

[2] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45888709](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45888709)

[3] [https://twitter.com/joelycett/status/1085924299339452420?lan...](https://twitter.com/joelycett/status/1085924299339452420?lang=en)

[4] [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/28/deliveroo-d...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/oct/28/deliveroo- dark-kitchens-pop-up-feeding-the-city-london)

This has been my experience, several times, it really isn't a unique experience. Their policy seems to be to cut corners and hold on to money as much as physically possible. Don't get me wrong, i love the idea, and convenience of it all and use all 3 apps pretty regularly. Given the amount of money they make they should all seriously step up their game in terms of just not being shady bastards.

<comment><USER3> This hasn't been my experience. Any problems with an order, they refund immediately no questions asked and add an extra £5 as an apology. Over the years, this has been consistent.

Uber Eats customer service is like pulling teeth. Never had a refund after several incidents and we try not to use them any more.

<comment><USER4> Not my experience with Eats at all. Refunds always, no questions except during a brief stint I was asking for a lot of refunds in a short time. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With the speed that delivery services are growing, I am under the impression that I soon won't need to leave my chair to have everything I need at my doorstep in less than a few hours.

I have recently had to use a grocery delivery service so I can't complain. The time saved does add up if you're busy.

<comment><USER6> This been the case for London for a while now.

That said I'm not sure it's a good thing.

<comment><USER7> why? because something forces you to move?

<comment><USER8> The resources needed to transport stuff are not free, and they usually involve petrol instead of legs.

<comment><USER9> It is not that easy. One delivery truck delivering to multiple people can be more efficient over them driving individually.

A warehouse can be more efficiently cooled and enlighted than a shop for individuals.

A big kitchen preparing menu after menu can be more efficient than heating up the oven for a single use. A restaurant using larger supply packs can be more efficient than household sizes in packaging and transport.

It's a case by case thing, but average for a few domains might not be that bad.

<comment><USER10> Cooking meals at home probably takes fewer resources and creates less waste overall.

However, assuming that there's driving involved in either case, I wouldn't think having an order delivered from a big facility is much different from you going to a restaurant and picking up takeout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I work for a competitor of Deliveroo and in asia you already have these all encompassing delivery apps that started with food and now deliver almost anything. Some also started as Uber competitors branching out into delivery like Uber does with UberEats. Grab, Go-Jek in Asia or Rappi in South America are moving fast into this direction.

<comment><USER12> In Germany there was a consolidation this year. Lieferando bought some competitors. Didn't even know Deliveroo was a big thing, thought this was some Berlin only thing.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, Lieferando (takeaway.com) bought the german business of Delivery Hero (Lieferheld, pizza.de, Foodora) for close to a billion. They had a long fight in Europe but DH is now focusing on Asia, but they still have a considerable share in takeaway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> has there ever been a delivery service that is food focused rather than food- vendor focused? i just want to order a good burrito, i don't care who makes it. or i'm having a party and we want to order a few burritos, couple pizzas and some sushi - we don't want to make separate orders for all of that. which vendor executed the order can be than rated and future vendors selected by rating and personal preferences.

is this even viable?

<comment><USER6> As long as you can convince different restaurants to produce the same thing exactly sure it can work but thats rather a tall task.

Most people I know would select the place they want to get food from first since there is a huge variance in quality and personal tastes.

<comment><USER14> I don't think you need to convince them to produce the same thing. The delivery company would just have single preferred suppliers for each different kind of meal.

Curiously another post on the frontpage is about the success of Aldi, which has a similar model as a grocery store (very limited selection of good quality products). I could see the Aldi of meal delivery working.

<comment><USER6> Aldi isn't a high quality grocery store it's a discount supermarket it's in house brands are god awful when compared to the likes of M&S and Waitrose.

<comment><USER14> Comparisons are irrelevant; Aldi products are of quality enough that a very large swathe of the population shop there, not just poor people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does this increase the reputation of Uber? In the past people contrasted amazon reinvestment of profits to uber's expenses. Now Amazon is following uber eats...

</comment><comment><USER16> Deliveroo have the ambition to own food, so it's no surprise this appeals to Amazon. Delivery is just their first tactic in a far larger strategy.</comment>


Marching band pays tribute to Nintendo - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CyMaM32lsU

<comment><USER2> This is a show that you can buy everything from the charts, drill and sound effects. There's nothing particularly interesting about this since every large Uni and their mom has done this exact show</comment>


The Importance of Keeping Game Scope Small - <AUTHOR> https://www.foundat.io/n/game-dev-on-the-importance-of-keeping-game-scope-small/ <comment><USER2> > I released it as a paid game with no ads, and absolutely no micro- > transactions of any kind. I love video games and I respect them as a medium, > and I miss the simple model of "Here's some money, and in exchange I expect > a fully playable and complete game."

I'm a bit curious how the George Lucas model (kill it on the merchandising) has worked out for video games? How much can you net versus milking people for power ups?

<comment><USER3> Traditional merch takes a higher level of capex. Part of the appeal of microtransactions - and increasingly the preferred model when looking at newer multiplayer hits like Fortnite - is that you can get in that business for cheaper by selling in-game cosmetics, and that only distorts the game's aesthetics, not its core ruleset. Fortnite has done very well with the model of letting the game change radically and frequently while herding along the same playerbase with new cosmetics that complement game changes, while in contrast, Rocket League has changed essentially nothing since launch and has a smaller but very dedicated group of competitive players, who also get cosmetics each season. Both are viable in different ways.

Hits still end up with tie-ins, so you will see toys for hits with broad appeal like Minecraft, Fortnite, Angry Birds, slither.io, etc. But you usually don't see new IP placing their bets on this stuff early nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://web.archive.org/web/20190702201620/https://www.found...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190702201620/https://www.foundat.io/n/game- dev-on-the-importance-of-keeping-game-scope-small/)

</comment><comment><USER5> ...While Godot Indie Game Developer Talks Importance of Going Insane with Your Scope.

The original title doesn't mention Unity at all - why did you think it's important enough to add into the title?</comment>


Star Trek as a purely symbolic artifact of past times - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/02/shitsiskosays.html <comment><USER2> The observation about nobody wasting time in Star Trek made me think of the Culture - where 99.9999% of the human population are effectively doing nothing other than "wasting time" - having a jolly good time along the way, of course.

Then I saw a comment that explains it:

"Star Trek and the Federation actually depict a Space Amish splinter group from the Culture."

<comment><USER3> Plausible, but the Aubrey/Maturin LARP seems even more likely.

<comment><USER4> This seems to apply -- as most of the episodes show earth citizens goofing off all day or working hobby jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My favorite comment on there:

 _What, no mention of the Borg? They have constant awareness of each other and consider it jarring when someone "drops off the grid"... they suffer real problems with an environment that fosters "epistemic closure"... better analog for social networking than the Great Link, IMHO._

I think we might be heading more to being like the Borg.. :-)

<comment><USER6> It has its advantages -- I could use nano upgrades for quite a few things.

But there is a key difference between the internet and the Borg technology. Borg tech was based on voice (e.g the episode in which the first officer of Voyager is temporarily connected to some subgroup of borgs) whereas the internet is based on text (we have video, but even on Facebook, most of what people share is text-based) and where the Borg is synchronous, we are mostly asynchronous. In both cases this helps us to scale the networks better.

<comment><USER7> Internet is based on the transmission of thought.

The reason text is used for thought encoding right now is that at the current level of technology text offers very good price/performance for ease of production, delivery and retaining and at same time provides reasonable accuracy and information density.

At the era of brain implants when you will "look" at the website, you'll "see" thoughts, ideas and memories, not text, pictures and video.

<comment><USER8> text, pictures, and video _constitute_ thoughts, ideas, and memories.

;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article says no one wastes time and just kicks back and watches videos all day and how unrealistic that is. I think there was a character that did that, though. Lt. Barclay (sp?) or something like that got addicted to the holodeck to the degree where it interfered with his work.

Additionally, it's a very different world. Didn't they get rid of money in the federation, for example? Surely living in a no money environment where everyone has their basic needs covered for free would change how people behave.

Also having super smart computers. Maybe no one posts on Facebook because they can just talk outloud to a computer or a badge and it will get deliver to the recipient as text, newsfeed, or voice - whatever their preference. I already know people who prefer I always call them instead of text. If they are there we can have a conversation with some back and forth, if not, Google Voice transcribes the message and it is the same as a text message anyway.

Lastly, being in the tech industry and the US I tend to run into some blindingly smart immigrants. I think part of why they are that way is that they already had the money or education or talent to be able to get to the US when they wanted to. Many people are too poor to leave their home. So the people we mainly see in Star Trek could be similar, they are the people who had all the opportunities or talent to let them go out into the universe or become super well known politicians or doctors on the planets we visit, etc.. Making assumptions about everyday live based on the people we usually see might be like making assumptions about everyday life in the real world by only looking at Wall Street.

<comment><USER10> I am hoping that addiction is too big and important a problem to persist much longer, at least within wealthy societies.

There will, perhaps even within the next 20 years, be treatments that quickly and reliably improve executive function (indeed, there are already such therapies, but they are slow, time consuming, and expensive).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> SF shouldn't see itself as being in the business of predicting anything; or if it does so, then that's a niche subcategory of minority interest. I don't want to read about SF predicting Facebook, and nor do I want to watch compelling dramas played out on comment threads.

SF is always an artifact of the time in which it was written. It's not about the future. It's about the present with a frame shift, and what that tells us about ourselves here and now, from a different perspective. Prognostication - especially about the future - is a fool's game. A compelling story should relate to the reader / viewer here and now, not in 20 or 40 years on the haphazard chance that a bunch of predictions play out.

<comment><USER12> SF isn't about predicting the future, it's about predicting our reactions to possible futures.

A book that predicted Facebook would be interesting as a coincidence; a book that predicted Facebook and accurately showed some of the advantages and pitfalls that it presented would have been a worthwhile thing to read.

<comment><USER11> All fiction (not just SF) is about predicting reactions of a set of characters to set of circumstances. There are really only two kinds of drama: ordinary things happen to extraordinary people, or extraordinary things happen to ordinary people. (And for extra comic-book style bombast, I guess you could include extraordinary things and people.)

The way Philip K Dick put it, in SF the ideas (or circumstances) are the main character(s), rather than the people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> People are wasting time in Star Trek all the time, more so in the Next Generation spinoffs than in the Original Series. DS9 probably showed the most time wasting of them all.

Quarks Bar? Those aren't business meetings. Those holodeck/holosuite episodes? They weren't there for training. Picard is always reading or trying to read a book, Sisco does baseball and Janeway paints and whatnot with Da Vinci.

Its just that it is also a TV series. It's just not interesting watching Keiko tweet that O'Brien's favorite food is horribly unhealthy and she hates eating it.

Keeping the show interesting is basically the most important thing for the writers, so its probably best not too look too deeply at what is portrayed as if it is some realistic situation.

<comment><USER14> The first season of TOS had an episode, "Shore Leave," where the Enterprise makes a stop over at a planet for the sole purpose of wasting time and relaxing.

I think you're right, though. It's not so much that there's no time wasting, but the show was about the adventures of the Enterprise and its crew. For all we know the crew in TOS spent 99% of the time screwing around, and the show was about the 1% of the time they spent working.

<comment><USER15> The only reason "Shore Leave" was even an episode is because something went very awry on the shore leave planet and action and adventure ensued!

Which goes to show--really, the reason they don't show anyone goofing off on Star Trek is because goofing off isn't very entertaining to watch and because it's an action-adventure show about action and adventure, and not a show about people's everyday lives. At least by DS9 they realized it would be entertaining to show the crew trying to get into each other's pants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Battle re-enactments are eminently useful for military officers

But what good are they for a doctor and an engineer? To paraphrase Ender's Game, how do you apply the lessons learned at The Alamo, or on the fields of ancient Ireland to three-dimensional warfare (not even thinking about the wormhole at this point) in space?

Another thing that struck me is that perhaps nobody wastes time because of the culture the Federation has become. They don't have money, either, and don't seem to particularly miss it. Perhaps Star Trek depicts a humanity that has finally decided to better itself consistently, on a mass and individual level.

Or perhaps when anything is accessible via subspace radio, holodecks and replicators, the only thing that truly brings peace and a sense of accomplishment is actually accomplishing something instead of clicking on cows.

<comment><USER16> "three-dimensional warfare (not even thinking about the wormhole at this point) in space?"

... well... if you take Star Trek seriously, for some mysterious reason, space battle in their universe isn't actually 3 dimensional. At best it's 2.5, taking place on a two-dimensional plane with a few hundred meters of play in the third. Also, _everything_ takes place at what would, even with modern military hardware, be considered point-blank range. Not only is Star Trek combat modeled on naval warfare, it's modeled on 17th century naval warfare.

To your next paragraph, I would point out that we are following the elite of the elite. Sisko is the officer, out of all the presumably billions-if-not- trillions of people in the Federation, who is considered most suitable to be in charge of an incredibly strategic station. Odds are he's not a typical sample of humanity, nor any other officers there. I suspect our best officers today similarly do not "waste" much time either.

Otherwise... I'm a big fan of taking canon "seriously" and trying to work out how it could actually be working. I particularly enjoy playing this game with Futurama, something you're not "supposed" to do that with. But having spent some time on Star Trek, I find it's really, really hard to square the stated philosophy of the Federation with what seems to be the reality of the Federation. It just doesn't make sense. Even such old chestnuts like "Why did the Enterprise actually carry families?" are old chestnuts precisely because it really, honestly doesn't make sense. Starships are blowing up all the time in Star Trek, usually not even due to hostile action (or at least, conventional hostile military action). And I just find that in the end, there's no practical way to actually put together the pieces into anything like a coherent whole.

Almost as if Star Trek was written over the course of decades by dozens upon dozens of writers mostly focused on how the current episode will turn out.

<comment><USER12> Warfare deserves its own comment.

You can fucking reproduce historical figures with incredible fidelity, but you can't have a swarm of tiny battleships piloted by equivalent AI? Instead, you send your best people in a small warship right into the enemy lines, where they can be picked off at leisure?

Why aren't you people just firing a solid wall of torpedoes at the enemy? Why aren't you flinging black holes around like birdshot? Considering how many ships are lost per battle, why aren't you just launching cloaked warp cores at the enemy and decloaking & detonating when they're in their midst?

Did they completely forget about the self-replicating mines? Ignoring where they get the energy, why not fire a wall of _those_ at the enemy? Right before the first wave hits, it should replicate another wall right behind them, and so on and so forth.

<comment><USER16> Yes, sort of expanding on cstross' point, real-world military technology is also rapidly advancing well past what Star Trek has ever considered. The 1960s heritage shines through here too. In the original series, hooking up a Big Honking Computer that gives the Enterprise some sort of drone-like control possibility was a Big Deal, the focus of an entire episode. And they had to actually bring in new hardware, it wasn't just a software patch.

I've seen a moderately serious treatment that suggests that in a fight between our modern military and the Enterprise, the modern military might very well win. The Enterprise does have the ability to slag its choice of ground target, and we'd have a hard time retaliating as long as it stayed in orbit, but that is pretty much all they could do. It seems it would be trivial to block their transporter, shuttles may be shielded but they seem to be slow and one imagine we could wear them down even with conventional weaponry, and Federation ground troops are laughably incompetent by real military doctrine standards, armed with a single line-of-vision ray weapon that immediately gives away their position every time they use it, somehow no air support, and their use of this weapon is also incompetent. Any modern military would chew them up on the ground, to say nothing of the elite ones.

Also it seems like any ol' script kiddie from real modern Earth would be able to penetrate their computer security by accident. The Federation seems to be incapable of writing a login screen without a cross-site scripting arbitrary code execution attack built right in and easily accessible in seconds from the keyboard.

<comment><USER17> _I've seen a moderately serious treatment that suggests that in a fight between our modern military and the Enterprise, the modern military might very well win._

Seems the Reddit-originated movie-bound story _Rome Sweet Rome_ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Sweet_Rome> has a similar issue with the Roman military vs well-equipped (but no resupply) Marines gone back to that age. Modernity works up to a point, but eventually it takes "boots on the ground" with massive resupply chains to win.

<comment><USER18> Also see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Countdown_%28film%29>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Star Trek is an interesting example of Science Fiction, as it's actually only quasi science fictional, but in a very fascinating way.

The foundation of speculative fiction is exploring the implications of certain ideas that represent deviations from the way the world works today. (Aside: also, the difference between fantasy and scifi is that the former is teleological while the latter is mechanistic, but that doesn't bear on this discussion.) However, Star Trek is rarely about exploring the implications of the _setting_ of Star Trek. This is because that's not what Star Trek is about. Instead, Star Trek is about creating a setting with certain character archetypes that we grow to care about, a familiar setting, and a world where almost anything can happen. This allows Star Trek to dedicate each episode to vignettes where different individual premises _are_ explored in true scifi fashion.

In short, Star Trek is not a scifi series per se it's more of a scifi anthology. The constant aspects of Star Trek (the world, the crew, the ship, and the associated technology) are just stage setting that enable and make more meaningful individual stories from the anthology.

</comment><comment><USER20> I /just/ finished re-watching "Past Tense" last night - a two-episode arc where Sisko, Dax, and Bashir get stuck in 2024 San Francisco.

Everyone poor is isolated into ghettos - those without ID, those with no job, those with mental illness. They aren't allowed to leave, and thugs rob people of their ration cards all the time.

It's hard (but possible) to see this kind of future in the US. What struck me about the arc was the complete lack of mention of the constitution - had it been suspended? why? I mean, this is only set 29 years after it aired.

All communication is semi-internet, but done over channels - like cable tv. The user interface for it looks like the graphics used in "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?". The internet wasn't quite commercialized, yet - that would come the year after air. But we already had BBS' and other connectivity. Surely the writers worked on some sort of network at their office.

We also already had user interfaces more interactive than what they showed - giant desk-size consoles, a 5" monochrome screen and a series of menu options. Is this what people thought of computers, even in 1994?

The entire premise seemed to be 24th-century Federation, but regressed ~200 years -- instead of present-day, progressed 30 years.

<comment><USER21> Keep this in mind too: Star Trek, while originally attempting to portray humanity in the future, inevitably created canon. Thus, there is a world war 3 in the star trek universe that occurs around 1999 (I can't remember the exact time frame). So It makes sense that 20 years after the world "ended", people would be pretty scared and do anything to try to right civilization.

In the end, as the original post implies, Star Trek is no longer a vision of the future, but rather a sandbox to put humanity into and see how they react.

<comment><USER13> The Eugenics Wars ran from 1996-1999. World War III was sometime in the mid-2000's with First Contact with Vulcans occurring in 2063.

Personally I don't remember Khan being launched into space, but it is kinda funny when you look back and think that they sort of thought that was going to be possible in the late '60s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I always assumed this was because in the Star Trek universe people were freed from a lot of the drudgery by the systems, and used the time to go do the interesting things that they wanted to do.

I suppose it's because I see reddit and facebook as a weird form of escapism from reality. I know that when I don't have any pressing issues I'm much more likely to sit down and read. reddit/hn is for when I need a quick "don't think about work" break, never for when I have the whole weekend stretching out in front of me.

The utopian dream of Star Trek is a never-ending weekend where _you_ get to decide what's important without being overly concerned that you'll starve to death on Monday.

<comment><USER23> Star Trek, especially TOS, are _all about_ drudgery. As I recall, they had to _manually_ place torpedoes on the launch racks, and firing the phasers involved Kirk giving the order to fire, which is relayed by the weapons officer to a poor schmuck sitting in the phaser room, who then presses a button. Even in the more recent episodes, you constantly had people hauling around those little pads in order to give information to somebody, rather than transmitting it via the (presumably) incredibly advanced computer which is linked to and controlling the entire ship.

<comment><USER24> If I email you my report, you can ignore it. If I hand you a pad locked on the report till you acknowledge that you read it, your attention has been put to the task at hand. If I were putting together the social organization scheme for running a space ship, I might take advantage of that. In TOS, pads were first used by the captains for reviewing and acknowledging that they had seen various reports.

<comment><USER23> I think that was the entire purpose of Yeoman Rand, well, that and the short skirts (this is TOS, after all).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I agree with the author that the social subtext on DS9 (and Star Trek in general) was very old fashioned (i.e. no gay crewmen). But to it's credit, DS9 had a very modern political subtext.

DS9 was a show set in space dealing with an occupied peoples that suffered decades of repression and were trying to regain their sovereignty. The show was filmed as the first Intifada and Oslo peace process happened in the real world, and I feel the a major part of the series arc is about Israel/Palestine. I have not seen a show on TV since that attempts to have a smart political discussion about this issue.

<comment><USER26> I'd rather think that outside of episodes devoted to gay issues that many characters could be interpreted as gay or straight. Essentially that it was a non issue in the future.

I partly agree with your second point. I think the Cardassians are clearly the Nazis and the Bajorans as the oppressed Jews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> At some point, there will be a generation whose entire life history, from cradle to grave, will be documented online.

Soon thereafter, the archives containing all of that data will be made public.

At that point, I think it's plausible that people will adopt radically different attitudes towards online sharing. By the 23rd century personal logs would tend to stay more personal, parents would think more carefully about putting their child's life-story into the public domain, and willfully living in social silos may come to be seen as pathetically parochial.

<comment><USER15> > At that point, I think it's plausible that people will adopt radically > different attitudes towards online sharing.

That's a fairly tame prediction. Most of the benefit we get from keeping secrets is either temporary (I don't want my boss to know I'm looking for another job; I don't want my wife to know I'm having an affair) or only benefits us if everyone else keeps the same secrets so it becomes a taboo (I'm gay; I don't believe in God; I have embarrassing sexual fetishes; I have fringe political beliefs). The first kind we don't care about keeping after death unless we're especially vain and famous enough people would care, and the second kind is only work keeping secret if everyone else keeps it secret.

I can't imagine a huge backlash against sharing and social networking once it becomes culturally engrained; instead, insistence on privacy will be seen as suspicious and eccentric.

<comment><USER27> I only have anecdotal evidence but my observation has been that the set of things people decide to share is motivated by the facade they want to create. Once all that stuff gets analyzed in the aggregate, future historians will be able to paint a more complete picture of people's lives. My prediction depends on how ugly that picture turns out to be.

<comment><USER15> Ugly is culturally relative. Fifty years ago, people would be horrified to find out how many people were gay. Today, we're horrified to find out that gay people felt the need to stay in the closet.

<comment><USER27> Agreed, 'ugly' is culturally relative. I'm interested in what happens when cultural norms change a lot in the span of 20 years yet everyone's _real_ history is public domain.

<comment><USER15> That real history will itself affect the cultural norms.

<comment><USER27> Maybe. But by "real history" I'm referring to the stuff that historians produce, not popular history/myth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the main point to remember is that Star Trek, even DS9, mostly portrays the lives of idealized people in, effectively, the military. When I think of the most talented and driven people I know (and surely it takes driven and talented people to make it in Starfleet), I think of people who work long hours, spend much of their spare time cultivating their talents, and generally don't waste much time. One such person whom I know actually watches Shakespeare productions for entertainment. Some particular examples strike true--O'Brien's always tinkering with things when he isn't drinking and carousing with Bashir, Bashir has an endless supply of research projects to work on when he isn't drinking and carousing with O'Brien, Odo is an introverted workaholic.

The prevalence of things like Shakespeare and classical music is mostly a writing conceit--it always comes off as contrived and awkward when Star Trek writers either invent futuristic forms of art or awkwardly shoehorn in the 20th century.

I would posit that the world of Star Trek eliminates the alienation of everyday life on Earth that leads one to social networking in the first place. Furthermore, and this is admittedly handwavy, but any analog to the internet would either only cover the station itself (in which case why bother, because the whole station hangs out at the bar anyway) or require subspace radio to communicate with thousands of planets at once, which is very plausibly impractical if not outright prevented by security requirements.

More nitpicks:

> 90s! YOU WERE THE BEST! With your adorable WE ARE SO DARK plots that seem > like Strawberry Shortcake Goes to Space by today's standards.

Well, compared to BSG I guess there's no on-camera rape scenes, but all the rest, torture and genocide included, is there. It isn't portrayed with the same realism, granted.

> In fact, the war correspondence he so longs to write--and he believes he is > the only one who can write it--would be one of many, many voices escaping > from occupied DS9 in the post Arab Spring networked news hivemind.

Well they evacuated nearly all the civilians. Jake is quite possibly the only civilian left who doesn't have anything better to do than to be a war correspondent. Quark has his bar, Rom has his undercover mission, and the Bajoran crew are still military officers who have to run the station and pretend to collaborate with the Dominion.

To the point that "nobody blogs", the actual crew all keep "personal logs", and while they're classified and not shared to the world (more on that later), it's not that far off.

> Can you imagine the subreddit for the station? How many atheists would tear > down Sisko the messiah, how every decision would be questioned, mocked, > dissected where the actors and the acted upon could see it?

Who, exactly? The crew? No, that would be insubordination. The crew's families? Not technically insubordination but still awkward. The business owners on the Promenade? Right, Quark and the owner of the Klingon restaurant are going to openly criticize the one thing that makes DS9 a tourist destination for Bajoran pilgrims.

> Because of this, and because of the lack of a social network, it is possible > to be alone in the Star Trek world in a way which I would have to > deliberately take action to achieve in my world. Even when we are alone, > most of us check a number of communication vectors and leave them live-- > Twitter, email, text messages, Facebook, our blogs, Reddit, news feeds. We > are a baby hivemind spinning our training wheels. To be alone as profoundly > (to me) as Sisko, Kira, and the rest often are, I would have to make a > decision to shut down all of those streams.

These people are living in _space_. Only the highest ranking officers have their own quarters, and the unmarried ones seem to spend half their leisure time dating or hanging out in the bar. Even the station commander's son has to have a roommate when he moves out of his dad's quarters. There's even a scene where Worf and Odo, the introverted loners of the cast, discuss their respective strategies for getting away from it all to finally spend some time alone.

EDIT: Come to think of it, the station does have a network. Quark is constantly hacking into it, probably with Rom's help. In one amusing scene, he does it to spam everybody with poorly produced advertisements for his bar: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-9tw2mx_gE>

<comment><USER28> >I would posit that the world of Star Trek eliminates the alienation of everyday life on Earth that leads one to social networking in the first place. Furthermore, and this is admittedly handwavy, but any analog to the internet would either only cover the station itself (in which case why bother, because the whole station hangs out at the bar anyway) or require subspace radio to communicate with thousands of planets at once, which is very plausibly impractical if not outright prevented by security requirements.

This goes directly against how Facebook got started on college campuses. Campuses are already hypersocial places, are self-contained to some extent, and you constantly run into everyone you know - but this environment proved to be the most fertile ground for social networking.

<comment><USER29> People always seem to ignore one of the big factors of social networking - it's better. It's not just another way to get the same thing done, it is fundamentally BETTER. When you meet someone in person, and speak with them, you are severely restricted. You can't talk to 5 other people at once. You can't talk to anyone who is not geographically close to you. You can't stop and think about your reply. You can't check the validity of something you're thinking before you say it. You can't bring other people into the conversation unless they are geographically close by.

There are many, many, many very real limitations to communication that face- to-face communication introduces. Even most of the 'advantages' that (usually older or hipster) people claim are actually disadvantages. 'You can tell more what someone is feeling'. Bullshit. We know this. When you talk to someone, you think you know what they are thinking. And you are wrong. Even the ability of decades-experienced police officers who SWEAR they can read people only perform as well as random chance. 50% of the time, when you think you know what someone is feeling or thinking, you are wrong. 50% of the time you are right, of course, but that's not much to recommend it. You are far more likely to be mislead (not necessarily intentionally!) in person. The brain has real biological limitations. Our technology is designed to help us work around these limitations. There is no grace or honor in foregoing the 'assistance' of technology any more than it is cowardice to take a vaccine.

If you want to communicate effectively with someone - do it electronically. There's a learning curve, sure, and there are certainly social considerations (like you don't want to propose marriage over SMS) but in the vast majority of situations, doing it electronically will be faster, more effective, and enable every participant to get more out of the time spent communicating.

<comment><USER30> You're using a subjective definition of "better" and waving off anyone with a different definition as being either old or a hipster. Body language, tone of voice, word emphasis, etc. is not about being able to predict what someone is thinking or feeling, but about communicating meta-text, for which the electronic stand-ins (lol, emoticons, caps, italics, etc.) are severely lacking and really quite lame. Talking to someone in person even just one time, so that you can hear their voice when you read their text adds a lot of richness to electronic communication. If electronic communication really is better in every way, as your first two paragraphs claim (pretty offensively - "Bullshit", "no grace", "cowardice", "vaccine"), then why _wouldn't_ you want to propose marriage over SMS? In-person communication is _good_. Electronic communication is _also good_ , but in different ways, and for different things. All this "BETTER" stuff is nonsense - if you have a short missive to fire off, use a text, if you haven't talked to a friend or loved one for awhile, pick up a phone or get on a plane!

Or maybe I'm just a hipster (I don't _think_ I'm old yet...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> War is what I found more anachronistic in most sci-fi. And I believe it works as a justification: showing advanced civilizations at war makes us forget the shame that we're still primitive enough to kill one another in highly organized ways. It's always been like that, it always will. Really?

<comment><USER15> Well _Earth_ has been at peace for centuries, it's just those damn aliens that start it, who are either warrior races or fascist imperialists or Borg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Presumably the new Star Trek universe introduced with the Abrams film can allow for some of this cruft to be broken off.

I still think it's kinda charming that people read the classics in the future though. I mean, I don't always read high falutin' books, but I try to read something from the English cannon every once in a while.

Also, you have to consider that since they have replicators, why not read on a real book? You can just toss it in the replicator whenever you want and get a fresh copy when you sit down to read.

<comment><USER33> I actually prefer the physical form of an ebook reader, most of the time. It's lightweight and always lies flat, even when held at a weird angle that I would never even attempt with a dead-tree book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> You could argue that a lot of sci-fi isn't really meant to be a description of events in the future: instead it's often a thinly-disguised morality play set in the then-present.

</comment><comment><USER35> > _All of the episodes involving Jake's incipient writer-hood (besides being > pretty weaksauce in general)..._

The most critically acclaimed episode of the entire 7 seasons and my personal favorite was about Jake becoming a writer.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visitor_%28Star_Trek:_Deep_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Visitor_%28Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine%29)

</comment><comment><USER36> I read "Star Trek" and thought of the show with female aliens wearing push-up bras and a computer with large blinking lights.

Man, I'm feeling old.

<comment><USER12> Turns out, it hasn't changed all that much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Has any (mainstream) sci-fi besides Wall-E shown a future where laziness and preoccupation with the mundane is the norm?

<comment><USER33> How mainstream are you looking for? The Culture is pretty lazy, for the most part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> All Science Fiction writers miss big trends. Asimov missed computers. Whoops! This makes it all the more impressive when they do hit it. And the greatest science fiction renders technology irrelevant. When Star Trek broke racial stereotypes and attacked bigotry - that was a cultural message.

<comment><USER39> Uh, what? Asimov writes a _lot_ about U.S. Robots and positronic brains amongst other things. He's exploring the idea of increasingly powerful computers in 'The Last Question'.

And those are just off the top of my head. I really don't see how you can claim Asimov missed computers///

<comment><USER40> The robots in Asimov's stories don't much resemble computers as we know them-- they're more like characters. His computers tend to be massive centralized things, as computers were in his day. Compare to the pocket computers in The Mote in God's Eye, which are eerily similar to today's smartphones. Niven apparently thought the idea was one of the most fantastical aspects of the book.

<comment><USER39> Unless I'm mistaken, at the very least "The End of Eternity" features pocket computers, too.

And to say robot brains don't count because their AI is so advanced that they are more like characters is kind of disingenuous :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Star Trek was always a very fascist dictatorship-esque vision of the future. What you wear is dictated by a central authority. "Primitive" cultures are deemed too inferior to be permitted to decide their own future, so it is decided for them by the Federation. Most of the worst anti-human flaws of current time are not simply maintained, they are amplified and made so oppressively constant that they disappear unless you're looking for them. And, as is actually said directly several times, humanity has 'improved' to the point where they are perfectly happy to live with extreme restrictions on even the most mundane freedoms, so long as they are handed down by a militaristic hierarchical power structure.

There is a degree of limitation imposed on anyone trying to create popular entertainment. You can't be too imaginative. There are many aspects of human society that modern people believe are 'natural' and endemic to human nature, even though even cursory glances at history show those exact things to not only be 'not natural', but exceedingly bizarre. If you line up the social mores and values and the like of every culture that we know has ever existed, you can spot things which are common to all cultures, and you can spot things that are strange aberrations that emerged and eventually went away. And, you can see several aspects of our culture that are so diametrically opposed to the common components of every culture ever that it's very foolish to imagine that our wholly unique take on the matter will endure for long.

Science Fiction is fascinating, but often disappointing when presented for a popular audience. For a popular audience, you can't question their basic assumptions. You would not get too far presenting a decentralized society which understands that centralized control of power is a guarantee of abuse and tragedy. You can't show a society where sex is used as a basic social interaction. And a society where eating is treated as stigmatized and for- marriage-only as many see sex today would simply be confusing (even though there are tribes which adopted exactly this practice, believing eating around others to be inherently extremely shameful, something only to be shared with someone you are married to).

And, if the creators look at history and they see the aesthetic of military organizations doing a lot, it makes sense that they would presume that in the future all of the 'important' stuff would be handed over to militaristic agencies. That smacks of a complete lack of understanding of WHY military agencies are structured in the way they are. The military does not adhere to rigorous discipline because that is an effective way to accomplish general human endeavors. They do it because committing violence against other human beings is extremely difficult to get human beings to do. And when they do it, they are torn apart with post-traumatic stress disorders, depression, anxiety, and all sorts of negative effects. In order to be able to overcome the conscious brains prohibition on violence, soldiers must be trained so that their muscle memory can kill before their conscious mind can prevent them from doing it. And sticking to a simple routine with no allowance for individual diversity and the like makes it easiest to continue functioning in traumatic situations. These techniques don't work in any other human endeavor at all. They are exclusively useful for the purpose of getting human beings to kill other human beings. That is certainly an arguably useful thing (another topic entirely), but the techniques do not extend to non-soldiers.

Humans function very poorly in situations where their freedom is significantly hindered. This is why there has never been a successful dictatorship or fascist regime that lasted. People naturally, even subconsciously, resist being controlled. And people put in control of others suffer just as many negative psychological effects as those they dominate. The reasoning, or sensibility, of the rules do not seem to matter. Whether you are preventing someone from drinking a bottle of poison, or forbidding them from considering an alternative political ideology, the result is the same. On the societal scale, restriction leads to self destructive behavior, gang behavior, and eventually revolution. We see this in prisons, we see it in restrictive nations, etc. The same pattern repeats over and over again, and mostly people take away 'oh well, that wouldn't happen if the people involved were better people' or 'that wouldn't happen if the rules were better'. It would. It always would. No system, no matter how complex, can possibly account for human behavior.

Anyhow, older scifi is at least slightly better than modern. Watch a modern scifi show. See how many episodes follow this pattern: 'Smart' character has idea. 'Not smart' but intuitive character warns that the idea might be dangerous. 'Smart' character ignores the warning, and leads everyone into lethal danger. A character, usually military, follows his gut and saves the day.

You'll find it difficult to find any modern scifi that does not fit this formula. The hero is always the person who is "reasonable" by ignoring reason, and who refuses to carefully consider the situation, just going with their gut. And, of course, pretty much every single scifi show presents the military as the savior of all humanity. I especially loved watching the first episode of that new terrible show 'Terra Nova'. They go back in time to 'start over' and right all the wrong choices humanity made. This time they're not going to screw it up. Oh, and how is this announced? By an unelected military god-king who controls every facet of the lives of every person there. Right, off to a roaring start, throwing away all that 'democracy' hoo-ha and giving all control to people whose training was designed solely to teach them to kill most effectively when needed.

<comment><USER41> > "Primitive" cultures are deemed too inferior to be permitted to decide their > own future, so it is decided for them by the Federation

That seems like the exact opposite of the prime directive.

<comment><USER42> Yeah, the Prime Directive seems to be more "we don't want to completely fuck up a less developed culture by accident" than anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> When it comes to retro-futurism, I'm having a hard time finding a more uncannily accurate past prediction than this one by Andy Warhol: " _In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes._ "</comment>


Obama Was Wrong: NSA Employees Have Deliberately "Abused" Their Power - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/23/bloomberg_report_nsa_employees_have_deliberately_abused_their_power.html

<comment><USER2> >an average of one case of intentional abuse per year has been documented in internal reports [...] the number of reported deliberate abuses is small

According to the WSJ, these were caught mostly through self-reporting by the people who did them [1]. Relying on self-reporting doesn't seem like such a great safeguard, and it appears likely that there would be more non-self- reported cases than self-reported.

[1] [http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/23/nsa-officers- someti...](http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/23/nsa-officers-sometimes- spy-on-love-interests/?KEYWORDS=NSA)

</comment><comment><USER3> >An anonymous official attributed the abuses to "overzealous NSA employees or contractors" eager to prevent another 9/11 attack.

I find this incredibly funny. "Sure we broke the law, but it's because we love our country _too_ much"

</comment><comment><USER4> NPR coverage of the same:

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo- way/2013/08/23/214917391/nsa...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo- way/2013/08/23/214917391/nsa-says-some-analysts-willfully-violated-spying- authority)

So we go from '0' to 'some'. Let's hope that's not a trend. Human nature being what it is I have a hard time believing discipline is so tight there that only one person per year on average transcended their authority.

<comment><USER5> First it's "never abused their power". Then it's "never abused their power _intentionally_ " (those tens of thousands of spying "errors" every year don't count apparently), then it's "only a few" intentional ones. Then it's a lot more - "but you should trust them anyway".

I wonder what Obama will say at his next conference on this. I think we can predict pretty well what he's going to say, though. He'll tell us _exactly what we want to hear_ (how civil liberties are important for them and so on), but without mentioning any specific ways to stop the abuses, or if he does, the people he will put in charge to fix it will be all insiders who were leading those same abuses before, too.

But nobody should trust Obama until Clapper and Alexander get fired. Heck, I'd say impeach Obama, too, and send a very strong message to every future president that will assume the role this _century_ that spying on own citizens, and even abusive spying against any and all foreign citizens (even abroad, spying should be done on specific _targets_ , not everyone en mass) - that such spying is not acceptable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Being a little generous to say "Wrong", I believe it was a blatant lie.

<comment><USER7> I have no problem believing that there is a mutually beneficial don't ask don't tell policy going on between the president and the internal workings of the NSA.</comment></comment>