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Maybe it's the season.

Anyway here's me quoting RT.com quoting Obama (whe-heey nested quotations):

‘“We cannot have a society in which some dictators someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States because if somebody is able to intimidate us out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing once they see a documentary that they don't like or news reports that they don't like,” Obama said.’

( source )

Damn right.

Obama & the US made precisely this point four years ago according to the New York Times:

‘When Air Force personnel on the service’s computer network try to view the Web sites of The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Spanish newspaper El País and the French newspaper Le Monde, as well as other sites that posted full confidential cables, the screen says “Access Denied: Internet usage is logged and monitored,” according to an Air Force official whose access was blocked and who shared the screen warning with The Times. Violators are warned that they face punishment if they try to view classified material from unauthorized Web sites.’

( source )

Because it is completely different when it is not an entertainment movie but instead a list containing some of the biggest and most central papers in five countries as well as large number of irrelevant smaller ones. It doesn't compare at all and has to be far more unimportant than Hollywood fiction.

If the task is to record history for the future then it is of particular unimportance since no one will ever use it for anything sensible:

‘An error message pops up every time a search is performed with the word “WikiLeaks”.

It’s not entirely clear when the US National Archives decided to block these searches.’

‘The Library of Congress went further by blocking access to WikiLeaks content from its server in 2010.

The American Library Association suggested this violated the First Amendment rights of internet users to receive information.

“The Library of Congress’s decision is a violation of the First Amendment and a violation of the American Library Association’s Bill of Rights. Moreover, it is a violation of the professional ethics of librarians to always provide free access to all information,” their statement said.’

( source )

Nor does it take much for the banhammer to fall, as is right, rumor is enough, rumor is fact:

‘The directive states:

        “We have received information from our higher headquarters regarding a potential new leaker of classified information. Although no formal validation has occurred, we thought it prudent to warn all employees and subordinate commands. Please do not go to any website entitled “The Intercept” for it may very well contain classified material.

        As a reminder to all personnel who have ever signed a non-disclosure agreement, we have an ongoing responsibility to protect classified material in all of its various forms. Viewing potentially classified material (even material already wrongfully released in the public domain) from unclassified equipment will cause you long term security issues. This is considered a security violation.”

A military insider subject to the ban said that several employees expressed concerns after being told by commanders that it was “illegal and a violation of national security” to read publicly available news reports on The Intercept.

“Even though I have a top secret security clearance, I am still forbidden to read anything on the website,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject. “I find this very disturbing that they are threatening us and telling us what websites and news publishers we are allowed to read or not.”’

( source )

A rigid notion of determinism turns it into a mechanical folly and inverts the importance away from higher functions and towards the lowest detectable causal events, it creates a world in which ultimately the smallest and most remote causal interactions are given disproportionate amounts of importance even though such interactions are constantly changing at speeds far faster than the results they are supposed to have deterministically forced into being. With such an outlook it wouldn't be “turtles all the way down” but instead “turtles all the way up”.

By analogy of a computer program the importance according to such determinism is given to the bits flipping between zero and one rather than the higher structures ruling their behavior.

Such determinism remains technically true but becomes devoid of meaning, comprehension, and value[¹], and thus also without importance.

Instead for any given end result determinism acts as a negative feedback loop in relation to its own importance when given enough complexity: a robot operating its algorithms on the basis of what might as well be an infinite number of ever-changing, causal, and mutually connected variables cannot remain a robot, it is forced into random output and/or the beginnings of intelligence where it chooses which output to give and later also chooses the reason why it is supposed to be the correct output or why a different output is more correct.

Hmm, googly eyes or Einstein afro? It makes sense to me…

(Also ¹ looks like a nice explanation of why “pop” determinism and nihilism so often end up as best friends.)

(And another tangential: if it was possible I wonder what an inverse square type of law would look like for each causal step in determinism, the fact that it rained yesterday has no discernible impact on me writing this journal entry (but now it has and thus two points were made rather than one: one about determinism and one about indirect Wittgensteinian word games).)

The focus of this post was really meant to be the part at the end that I made bold.

To me it makes one or two connections in a way that I haven't seen before (and I know about system complexity and emergence and such). In some way it feels a bit more direct and explanatory tying in a correct understanding/evaluation of determinism as well as (possibly the most basic) evolutionary pressure/fitness challenge. In this way it gets very hands on and mucky (conceptually, and also conceptually reducing the challenge of creating intelligence to that of triggering such a first move and then escalating it). Has anyone seen anything similar elsewhere?

P.S. Yet another tangential: a different kind of amusing folly, more entertaining than determinism but maybe not all that different after all?

I didn't pay much attention to this so please excuse me but the garbage processor spat this out today:

Despite accepting all the flawed assumptions such "AI" would itself/themselves be committing the same "criminal" acts of postponement by wasting resources on such a scenario instead of better AI.

Hopefully that's not an example of cryptomnesia.

Anything more intelligent than even me (intended as a low reference point) would have far more interesting things to do than retarded human sadism, the same goes for any $deity worth the title :)

Well that's already too much attention wasted on an idiotic distraction (doesn't matter if it's genuine idiocy or staged).

"At least he's a loon with balls."
"Does that make him a balloon?"

Found it hilarious when I thought of it, needs sleep badly.

For future reference I'm going to repost my reply here. Feel free to link it whenever somebody whines in favor of Al Gore or against the joke. Instant cluebat.

Here's the reply:

Snopes just doesn't get it, neither do you, even when it's staring them and you right in the face. No, you didn't have to be there, you should be able to understand what happened.

Snopes quotes Al Gore:

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

Seriously the idiots are those who can not cope with mocking "authority" when it targets someone they feel favorable towards. The idiots are those who take the humble and non-confrontational attitude of their betters (like for example Vint Cerf being extremely diplomatic to the point of upsetting some of his peers) as implicit approval of errors when instead it's simply an act to avoid boring uninteresting drama caused by politicized whores. Because this kind of shit happens all the time, most politicians could not survive without doing it.

It gets worse when their reasoning is based on falsely hurt pride caused by entrenched political groupthink with no semblance to reality or rational thought and which displays above all a total lack of knowledge of the decades of work and development, the multiple thousands of hours of several dozen people most closely involved and the billions of hours spent by other people in order to build and connect the network.

Then after all that and before a lot more two (Two! Not even only Gore!) politicians write a bill, a fucking bill, to make the inevitable "happen", and one of them shoots his mouth off as he does with everything and you can't handle the ridicule?

Gore was invited to the ARPANET anniversary celebration but wisely declined. If I recall correctly better and incomparably crucial people had already passed away from natural causes. He knows what he did and the good news is that he has a sliver of shame, not because he's better than other politicians but because he goofed so badly as to cause a lasting joke being mentioned every time he tries to speak on a related subject (and sometimes when it's unrelated as well as he deserves).

The joke is his badge of shame, it's good if you're not laughing, it's bad if you don't get it.

It was obvious what Gore was trying to do: take an incredible amount of credit he didn't deserve. Him making such statements is fact but the content of the statements are not at all factual because it would have happened anyway (thus he was not "instrumental" anything or "initiative" anything or "initiative to take initiatives" anything) and it could have been any goddamn politicians and I'll repeat myself: it wasn't just him among the politicians but those other people made no such grandiose claims, the co-sponsor didn't, those voting for the bill didn't, the people who voted the representatives into power didn't, even the people who actually "took the initiative in creating the internet" didn't make any such grandiose claims about themselves, does the point get through your skull and the skull of those who defend Gore? Can it?

Mostly for my own sake: AC comment.

I find NUCLEON interesting in all sorts of ways, one example would be that the resource requirements could be tiny compared to a lot of the other stuff. There's also a sort of a phreak angle to it, phreaking on steroids where it's not "just" about dial tones any more but voices. It feels very tangible (wrong word) or even tactile (even worse word) but then again I really am a weird nut who enjoys listening to my computers sing (relatively new ones, I'm not talking about ancient beasts). If it's warm, humid, and otherwise silent my ears can easily pick up various electrical components chirping etc., I did say weird! XD

I guess that part is a bit similar to the fun that can be had experiencing a beam blast of static electricity from turning on an unused old terminal. Still weird? Okay lol.

The main thing however would be to consider NUCLEON in combination with the digital nature of modern telephone systems. Not even normal landlines are POTS in the original sense of it any more, they might still be called or referenced as POTS but that's mostly just for convenience; the centrals are digital. Although I doubt it I guess the US could still be some weird exception as they often are but in Europe this change happened during the nineties in at least some countries, maybe all. That's roughly twenty years ago and I've gotten the impression that the changes these days are the potential dismantlement of the lines themselves, switching to the competing technologies, however that could be an extreme example: I wouldn't know. Of course in other countries (like in the developing world) it's nearly all mobile infrastructure anyways which was always digital.

What I was getting to is that most people don't know a thing about old telephone systems beyond "cups on a string" and that even with the prevalence of mobile phones (no string) the NUCLEON thing psychologically takes a solid step into "the physical world" in ways that a lot of the other NSA things don't appear to in the same manner. A lot of people still have a different take on telephones than computers and when it comes to actual voices I think it would become even more "real" for many of the ordinary citizens who might have trouble relating to what is going on.

I have no idea why nobody seems to be talking about it. There's a lot of that going around if you ask me, some of it might be information overload.

Don't use a skillet for your bacon, use your oven! In my case 225 degrees Celsius for about 10 minutes results in perfectly crisp bacon simmering in its own fat.

I use a sheet pan in the middle of the oven, two layers of baking paper under the bacon, and leave room for some half-baked small baguettes that I add when the remaining time is right.

Take it all out, slice the baguettes, put on bacon, put on cheese (maybe some cheddar slices) = simple and quick filling hot bacon & cheese sandwich.

Next time I do this I'll try wrapping the paper around the bacon to minimize any grease splatter. I might have to add a bit more baking time to get it as crisp since it's loosely covered.

Ovens are also great for making super-crisp sausages but I've only tried it with the thick kind that are about 3cm or 1 and 1/2 inches across: bake them until they rupture! Exploded sausages taste a lot better but be careful as they're really hot.

As many might know SoylentNews resides on http://li694-22.members.linode.com/¹ and because of this some people were talking and joking about using li694-22 as a new name. It's a cool name, I was tempted myself! Perhaps an even "weirder" inside joke than http//:/..org :)

No need to be tempted any more; a Mr. Watt (not me!) of Washington bought it and pointed it at SoylentNews¹ :)

¹ naturally your cookies are in different jars

Edit: just to practice safe surfing don't log in through redirection or move your cookies manually or anything like that. Not that I would think anything bad would happen in this case but one would never know until it was too late (maybe Mr. Watt suddenly develops an appetite for collecting low UID accounts).

Since I've moderated and can't be bothered to log out I'll write some thoughts here for my own interest. By no means is this meant to be any kind of complete answer or anything of the sort, just some idle thoughts/speculation.

0.a. It is an entirely unknown failure mode that is sudden and immediately cripples everything. Very unlikely.
0.b. It is an entirely unknown phenomenon that is sudden and immediately cripples everything. Extremely unlikely but not zero.
0.c. A confluence of simultaneous and lasting shoddy operation and systems malfunction in two culturally different countries (Malaysia and Viet Nam). This one is hard to judge; I wouldn't think so on behalf of Viet Nam but they hadn't yet taken airspace control/responsibility for the plane and might not have paid much if any attention to it. Malaysia is fully able to fuck anything up beyond rational belief (*cough* bigoted apartheid-style legislation on the use of a word *cough*) but even so Viet Nam should still have the radar records and be fully able to find anything if there in fact was a more normal disaster.

I guess the simplest ad hoc would be 0.b. with some kind of unusual simultaneous failure of radar range for whatever reason: the signal would then simply disappear giving no clues about anything. If this was caused by some freak meteorological event local to the aircraft it might explain the total lack of everything except debris which might be found later. It might not have to last all that long if the electronics in the plane are knocked out before any remaining related blips on now-functioning radars disappear among the noise. Still extremely unlikely. Inverted clear sky sprite plasma bolts (no such thing is known to exist) or time-space warp bubbles (sorry no link to the paper handy and no such thing is known to exist) or alians!!1 (etc.) or whatever, but who knows.

1. Whether or not some terrorist organization claims responsibility doesn't mean much. Some YKW (You Know Who) organizations claim just about everything or are created solely to claim credit for anything new (like happened for the attacks in Oslo before those claims were discredited) and all it takes for the opposite to happen are a few things:
1.a.1. Whoever did it has discovered and understood the meaning of tactics, and the incident while public in nature is also long term in nature (there are several possibilities here, I'm not comfortable with spelling it out). Somewhat likely.
1.a.2. Whoever responsible simply (and without any deeper thought) doesn't want to draw attention to something that is still ongoing. Fairly likely.

and

1.b.1. For whatever reason(s) the incident fails to trigger knee-jerk claims. Doing something to a flight from a YKW nation to China should naturally avoid most if not all such attention because China is kind of outside the horizon of most YKW despite the recent YKW attacks both in Beijing and western China. Not too unlikely.
1.b.2. Someone figured it was stupid and counterproductive to make bullshit claims and has the clout to stop those who still don't get it. Very unlikely but not impossible.

For a 1.a.2. that passes 1.b.1 it seems very likely that some YKW "Chinese" did this to simply kill as many Chinese as possible. Such YKW "Chinese" aren't known to be big on making public statements of responsibility, in fact they seldom say anything at all (probably it makes them very easy to catch and kill) so that fits.

Oil slicks don't mean much on their own but are often the first thing spotted. If nothing else is spotted (lots of debris floats for a fairly long time) then 0.b. increases.

Sometimes there isn't an answer.

Betteridge be damned: which is better?.

I think I'll keep the CC Squad as protection and use the BRG as a grenade! I also have a spare Barrel of Uber Robots but I'm not sure what their stats are.

* SNQ is short for "Soylent News Question"