I really wanted to get into mining BTC for awhile now and I see that ETH has a good reward rate relative to BTC. I pay no electricity so there probably is no reason not to, right? Does the GPU get worn down a lot? I have a 980 TI.
The 900 series is not really worth using but since you pay nothing for elect I City you might make a few bucks over the month. All depends on your hash rate and what pool you’re in. My gtx 1080 pulls about 20mhs and at the current price that’s close to 60-70 dollars a month.
1080 isn't as good as the 1060/1070 due to the type of memory used. Excellent for gaming, not quite the best for mining. I can probably get it up a little more if I overclocked but I'd rather not.
For me, I have no idea what Flattr is and trying to read through their .com site gives me no insight really. I see it is supposed to be something that supports content creators and or creatives on the internet, but how and what?
Effectively, you allocate a portion of funds every month to Flattr. Over that month you can click the "flattr" button on any site that has one, and at the end of the month your monthly contribution is split evenly among all of your "flatter" choices. I don't know if they added recurring donations, last I looked at this service was a couple of years ago.
EDIT: Apparently they've made it an extension that tracks your browsing history. That's just ridiculous. It's also a shame -- Peter Sunde used to be quite pro-privacy. But they _did_ say they wanted to liberate the extension.
That was Flattered 1.0. Peter Sunde let his connection to Flattered go to avoid issues with the PirateBay case, else there was the risk that the legal charges could have damaged flattr ... but Flattr 1.0 never managed to be really profitable (too few sites with a Flattr button -> not gaining many active users -> less sites with Flattr button) thus they sold out to those Adblocker Guys ....
First, the $100,000 may not be the full spend, it's just the minimum based on what has been identified as false-flag accounts linked to Russia. There may well have been orders of magnitude more spending that has not been identified as false flag accounts (further, it's not even the total expenditure of resources on the false flag accounts, just the part actually spent buying placement—when comparing to campaign spending numbers, when all the resources spent on content development, etc., and not just placement are counted.)
Second, people may discount messages that are official campaign messages (which have required disclosures to prevent falsifying origin), so there may be a significant influence multiplier for false-flag “astroturf” spending of the kind Russia engaged in.
The $100,000 may well have been a small fraction of what was actually spent, but until we have proof the outrage needs to be kept down. We're in real danger of revisiting yellow journalism and creating an even more polarizing political situation.
No. If a foreign power attempted to influence one of my country's elections for its own gain, I am outraged. The amount of effort or money spent is quite immaterial to me.
This line of questioning comes up a lot as the ultimate gotcha, but the people upset about Russian meddling today are also the ones most likely to be upset about American meddling in the past.
I'm curious about your opinion here. I haven't seen this idea that countries shouldn't try to influence each other's politics until last Fall. Not saying the idea wasn't out there, just never encountered it. I've seen plenty of dissatisfaction with things like American or Russian propaganda, but never anyone saying that it shouldn't be allowed at all.
So what would a world in which countries don't influence each other look like? When people have common interests, it's natural for them to try to push each other one way or the other. So there would have to be strict trade restrictions between countries to isolate their interests. We would probably have to get rid of the UN or any other global entity like the World Bank. We would have to severely restrict immigration so people didn't come to a country and try to influence its politics from the outside. Also we would probably have to end the whole idea of a multinational corporation and ensure that every business inside a country was local. Basically reverse the entire process of globalization that has led to this point.
But most of the people upset about Russian influence are also pro-globalization, so I don't quite get it. They're not complaining about the lack of disclosure but rather the whole idea of foreign influence on politics. How can you move forward with globalization and also stop every country from influencing another's politics?
I think it's not so much the fact of influence, as it was the nature of it.
If, say, RT runs propaganda pieces in favor of candidate X, and against candidate Y, that's fine, because everybody knows that it is Russian propaganda. They can factor that knowledge into their decision making accordingly (and it doesn't need to be negative - e.g. someone who is interested in warmer relations with Russia, for whatever reasons, might actually support the candidates they endorse).
Coincidentally, this is also the kind of involvement that US and other Western countries normally practice overseas. E.g. looking back at the Ukrainian revolution in 2014, it was very obvious and transparent which side was backed by the US government.
In contrast, what we've seen in this past election is covert foreign propaganda, that tries to actively conceal and misrepresent its identity (many of those fake FB accounts and groups pretended to be American). Not only there are obvious ethical issues aside, but - in US, at least - it also runs afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which is a law that has been around for almost 80 years now. So you can hardly say that it's some new thing.
Then there's also the orthogonal aspect where a lot of that propaganda is blatantly false to an unusual degree. We're not talking about spin here, but actually manufacturing entire news stories around events that never happened, and facts that were never true.
But why is it that when Russia engages in covert foreign propaganda, it's bad, but when the US does it it's normal or expected and no one complains? Are you suggesting the US and other countries don't use blatantly, knowingly false propaganda as well?
Of course, from a political standpoint Russia's government needs to be penalized by the US's government. And of course, if there's any evidence of collusion between US politicians and the Russian government, that needs to be investigated.
But why should Russia's government be viewed as particularly monstrous for doing what the US and probably dozens of other nations do?
The actual monstrous stuff is the allegations of Putin murdering journalists and oppressing political enemies, though of course there's no smoking gun for many of those allegations (or at least the murder ones).
This happens for just about every election. Obama spent money attempting to influence elections in Israel, France, all sorts of places. Look at what Clinton did to interfere in Russia's elections as lampooned in the Jeff Goldblum film Spinning Boris. Clinton just about ran Boris Yeltsin's campaign. You're on course for permanent outrage if you deeply research any particular election happening currently on this planet, I feel.
Quite a few people seem hellbent on being permanently outraged. They will even go so far as to invent reasons to be outraged. Outrage is currency in our post-modern society.
Sometimes, the outrage is legitimate. It isn't isolated to one side of the political spectrum. The right was outraged by everything Obama did. The left will be outraged by anything Trump does. Some people are outraged at the idea of transfolk being in their bathroom, some folks are outraged that people are outraged about it. Some people are outraged about speech, some are outraged that they are held accountable for speech.
The media cycles on it, the people thrive on it, and it escalates with each showing more umbrage than the last.
My conclusion is that if you seek umbrage, you will find it.
I'm outraged that the Russian's attempted to influence the election, but I'm not outraged that the Russians 'stole' the election for Trump because there's no proof of that yet. Many of the articles I've read on this topic just today (from CNN,BI and WaPo) seem to take it as a forgone conclusion that this paltry amount of money means that the Russians interfered with the election in a way that amounts to a political crisis.
Bush and Obama both had bogus crisis whipped up in an attempt to delegitimize their elections. This is an incredibly dangerous pattern in a democracy and one that I'm not really excited to see repeated again.
Hm, now I think about it, what exactly are you outraging about? It's not like buying ads on Facebook or influencing people by showing them texts or pictures is illegal.
Hacking attempts, yes, are a big problem. Facebook ads - not a problem at all.
You need to step back for a minute. Think about a scenario where Russia actually did influence our elections. Do you think the response would be this passive?
All of this Russia talk is a farce. If Russia actually interfered with US elections, the US response would be awe inspiring.
So what you're saying is: we shouldn't react to this news, because Russia didn't actually influence our election... and we know Russia didn't actually influence our election, because we didn't react?
A scenario where Russia actually did influence our elections looks exactly like a scenario where Russia is merely accused of influencing our elections, barring irrefutable evidence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Not necessarily. They are doing so on my behalf. I would be outraged if somebody punched me with what I perceive as poor reason, but I would not be outraged if I punched somebody with good reason.
There are times when the US has meddled in other countries' affairs that I don't agree with, but there are others, like covertly slowing nuclear proliferation, that I do agree with.
We are already in an era of yellow journalism, every angle, every sentence, every clip is contorted to reflect a narrative approved by corporate elites for publishing. All of this drama merely drives profits.
> The $100,000 may well have been a small fraction of what was actually spent, but until we have proof the outrage needs to be kept down
The outrage isn't about the amount spent, so why should it be kept down absent evidence of greater amount spent.
> We're in real danger of revisiting yellow journalism and creating an even more polarizing political situation.
I see no evidence of the former (at least not on this subject, though I think there are structural reasons to think that that's unlikely to be a useful reference point more generally), and don't see avoiding polarization at all costs as a goal.
But I can't see any reason to think that Russia would be the main actor in the "false-flag/astroturf space". I mean, it's hard not to think everyone with an interest in the outcome would be pushing here to get their interests served.
Certainly, the DNC emails seemed to demonstrate an interest in underhanded approaches (not that I'd discount a similar interest from the Trump campaign). And PACs that are actually independent would be jumping in the action, etc.
I believe the number of voters in key districts needed to swing the electoral college to Clinton was in the tens of thousands. If it was targeted perfectly (which of course is impossible), that's almost two dollars a person that needed to be influenced. How many Facebook ads impressions does that buy per person? While I think it's unlikely that anyone could have accurately targeted to that degree, it does put into perspective just how important targeted advertising might be to something like this.
Additionally (and I think more likely), the advertising might have been been used more as an agitation device, and to reduce the trust in traditional information through highly effective misinformation. If you can start viral memes, it doesn't matter how many impressions you paid for, what's important is how far the meme spreads in the end. A single shared article can lead to tens of millions of views and re-shares. In this case, money is purely a way to help get critical mass for your specially crafted meme, so it doesn't necessarily compare to candidate spending directly, which needs to both educate and counteract opponent messaging. Targeted disinformation can just ignore failed meme campaigns and counteractions to them and move onto the next meme, since it's effectively anonymous.
Did you change your vote based on memes or fake news?
So far, everyone I've asked has told me that they didn't. I can't find one person who admits they were influenced by memes or the click bait articles.
I'm sure a few people did have their views changed by them, but I suspect the number was vanishingly small. It's nice to find an easy reason and shuffle the blame elsewhere, but I think the election results can be squarely blamed on America.
Really, ask around. I've tried all sorts of variations on the question, and wasn't usually as blunt as I was when I asked you. It's not even really gerrymandering, at least for POTUS. Those are pretty straight districts.
No, we are pretty much entirely responsible for our election results. A good portion of the country still feels this is a good thing. If it helps, I did not vote for the winning candidate.
Well someone changed their vote based on news, right? From a source they trusted. But it wasn't fake news, it was real. Fake news is what they used to read back before they were enlightened.
> Did you change your vote based on memes or fake news?
No, but I'm not in a swing state, nor was I close to undecided.
> So far, everyone I've asked has told me that they didn't. I can't find one person who admits they were influenced by memes or the click bait articles.
That's not surprising. Do you know which stories you saw were fake? Are you sure you know them all? Does it matter that you intellectually know now that some might have been fake, or is the emotional response to them originally still present? How many people that were influenced are unconsciously using self self justification[1] to think they were unaffected (I'm sure we all want to think our news sources were unaffected)?
> Really, ask around. I've tried all sorts of variations on the question, and wasn't usually as blunt as I was when I asked you. It's not even really gerrymandering, at least for POTUS. Those are pretty straight districts.
I think all you can say from that is that you were self-selecting for people that think they were targeted and influenced by fake news, and by people self reporting, which is known to be a horrible way to get accurate data from people.[2] Additionally, unless you travel quite a bit and attempt to ask this question of a wide subset of people, you might find that your area is not a targeted population. Even if oyu did travel a lot to get an accurate subset of the population, and even if you get get perfectly accurate self reported answers, you would have to ask 70 people in a perfectly representative sample of those that voted to have a better than even chance of finding someone answering affirmative if it change the voted of 1 million people, and that's far more than actually needed to be influenced. Thus, I'm not entirely convinced be some ad-hoc surveying unless you put some real time and effort into it and are significantly underplaying that.
> No, we are pretty much entirely responsible for our election results. ... If it helps, I did not vote for the winning candidate.
I'm not making some case that this did change anything. I'm just trying to express that there's a lot of ways it could have, and it's not very simple to tease out the how or the affects that resulted. This isn't a Democrat/Republican or Trump/Anti-Trump thing to me, this is about the future of democracy, free-will, and how to navigate in a future where trustworthy information so much harder to come by (not that it was perfect before).
At this point, I look to CNN for the general politics headlines (which I'm under the impression is (was?) one of the less biased organizations, but I pull up Fox News' website occasionally to see the other take on the news (and what is and isn't being considered a story on each). I tried Breitbart the same way. Once. The extreme pandering and fear-mongering was hard to stomach. I'm disheartened by what I see as cheap shots at and purposefully disingenuous interpretations of Trump, and this comes as someone who is definitely not a fan of that man. I just think it's slowly eroding my trust to see the bias exposed occasionally (and in obvious and petty ways). Put simply, I recognize that pandering as well, and am left wondering if this is the best we've got right now?
To revisit your first question, no, I didn't change my vote, but maybe it did nudge my opinion of people, or of their personalities. At this point, I don't even remember everything I read during election season. I'm sure it affected my emotional base response as I took in more input though, so who's to say how much I was affected?
Oh, it's hardly scientific and only useful for speculation. I'm well aware of the inherent biases, though I have tried to ask people from every persuasion.
I don't think many changed their vote based on the propaganda. I strongly suspect that the dishonest media increased the resolve of those already going to vote Ina certain direction.
It wasn't exclusive to one side, though we're discussing the external influence. I saw quotes taken out of context and wild, untrue, accusations made by the internal media as well.
Now, as for me?
I can tell you that I'm 100% certain I was not influenced by the media - at all.
Really...
I voted Green. I didn't want Stein to win, no. No, she's insane. I voted for her because the Green Party needed a certain number of votes to remain on the ballot, as opposed to write-in, and to get matching funding. I voted Green because I want to encourage third party candidates to run in my State. I've held this position for years. In fact, I'm nearly sixty and I've only voted for one major party presidential candidate, ever.
It was also mathematically impossible for my vote to change the outcome. If every single third party voter had voted, in my entire Statem had voted for one candidate or the other, it would have not changed the outcome one iota.
On the other hand, Green is automatically eligible, assuming enough signatures, to be on the next ballot and to get some matching funding - though that applies only to local candidates.
So, the narrative and rhetoric changed my vote exactly zero. It's unlikely to change any of my future votes.
Either way, I'm still not sure that it had any meaningful effect. I do wish there were a way to find this out scientifically, but I'm not sure how we can rid the system of bias.
I get to claim some imperviousness to it all. I've never had anyone who represented my ideals as a serious candidate or elected at the national level. I default to third party, even if just to give encouragement. If third party isn't in the ballot, I research to see who is the write-in candidate. Man, I have voted for some lunatics over the years. I mean that, too. I've voted for people who probably shouldn't even be the dog catcher. But, at least I'm voting for something,
I was only noting that perfect targeting was impossible. By perfect targeting I meant that it was only shown to those that would need to be flipped to change the result, so some 50k people in specific districts, and only those that would actually flip. That's of course impossible, but was just meant to establish a bound.
Targeting ads to play on deep seated racial issues using the fruits of an unprecedented data mining operation, combined with targeting to swing states can have a very high ROI considering the rust belt and some midwest states were going to be razor close regardless.
US Law (specifically the Federal Election Campaign Act) generally tries to prohibit foreign nationals from donating to political campaigns.
It seems like that act has some pretty broad restrictions: "The Act prohibits knowingly soliciting, accepting or receiving contributions or donations from foreign nationals. In this context, "knowingly" means that a person:
...
Is aware of facts that would lead a reasonable person to inquire whether the source of the funds solicited, accepted or received is a foreign national."
So a candidate could be taking a legal risk if he took a large donation from a foreigner and his excuse was that he didn't realize who the donation was from and wasn't interested enough to find out who was making the donation.
But I don't really think the US has decent enough disclosure laws for political donations or enforcement of current laws to adequately prevent or prosecute foreigners donating to political campaigns.
well to get around that one well known campaign simply made sure the donations from "unknown" sources were sufficiently small and diversified in identifying data so they would not be reported/flagged.
the current political parties set up the donation game so they could work it to their advantage and eliminate possibility of a 3rd or more parties.
Is it actually illegal for the actual Russian government to buy advertising on Facebook/Google linking to influential material? Not being condescending but actually asking this. Facebook can easily terminate the ads but does the US gov’t have this as illegal?
Can you actually explain how it doesn't benefit USA? All the studies I read explained the economic impact it will have on the states it goes through after completion.
Sure, it'll benefit executives at Energy Transfer Partners, Phillips 66, etc. since they'll have an easy way to transfer oil to be shipped overseas. The states as a whole? Please. The number of permanent jobs this pipeline will create are pathetically low, a couple of people to man an oil field and a couple dozen to deal with the pipeline itself.
Eventually there's going to be less reliance on the USA for refined petrol as more nations move towards renewable energy sources, so the market will eventually correct itself I suppose - but I don't see any reason to help the oil companies make one last push to milk it for all they can before the money dries up.
I would bet you will still be able to attend soon. If you read the draft of the executive order you'd see that it is a temporary ban until they can start the improved vetting process. Your hopes should be way higher!
On his efforts to undermine a free press, just a couple that come to mind:
- he threatened legal action against the NYT [1]
- he said he would 'open up those libel laws' [2]
- he lies about falling subscription numbers at the 'failing NYT' [3]
- in his first press conference in the White House he attacked a reporter as 'fake news', and refused to answer questions by CNN [4]
- he tweets [5] incorrect ratings numbers about Fox vs CNN, calling CNN 'fake news'.
- he's been singling out and attacking/mocking individual reporters [6], [7]
All these actions are efforts to undermine and discredit the free press. They should be alarming to anybody who cares about the US democracy.
[2] Talk is cheap. Honestly, what do you think is going to happen? And in 4 years when we look back, if it doesn't happen - what will you think?
[3] How is it a lie?
> is losing thousands of subscribers
You interpret this as net subscriber count to suit your narrative.
Now if the NYT lost subscribers during the election which they almost certainly did then the first part of the statement is literally correct.
Now the "because" phrase implies causation of "poor coverage". This would be difficult to work out unless the NYT had an exit survey and that data was public.
Without information, Trump is inferring that this is a reason. So if 1000 people left because of poor coverage, his statement is still literally correct.
So I do not understand how you can say it is a "lie" when the statement is "literally" correct.
If you wanted to say that it is "incorrect" then you must argue for your interpretation based on relevance.
If you wanted to say "vague" then you can also say that.
It seems very common place to call everything a "lie" these days, when there is never enough information to evaluate the factuality of it.
Modern "fact-checking" is a scary thing because depending on how you want to define things, you can "prove" any statement true or false how you like. This is a very scary thing.
> [2] Talk is cheap. Honestly, what do you think is going to happen? And in 4 years when we look back, if it doesn't happen - what will you think?
You think it is ok for a presidential candidate to make those statements? Do you know of any other democratically elected leaders making those statements? You do not think this could have a chilling effect on the free press?
> So if 1000 people left because of poor coverage, his statement is still literally correct.
> So I do not understand how you can say it is a "lie" when the statement is "literally" correct.
You assume it is literally correct, after admitting that there is no evidence for it.
A literally correct statement can still be a lie. From Merriam-Webster:
Definition of lie
1 to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive <She was lying when she said she didn't break the vase.> <He lied about his past experience.>
2 to create a false or misleading impression <Statistics sometimes lie.> <The mirror never lies.>
Can you agree that saying the NYT is losing thousands of subscribers without saying they are at the same time gaining 41,000 net new subscribers is misleading?
In some of the other tweets in that article he is claiming readership is way down, and they are failing. I can not find any evidence for that, quite the contrary: their digital subscribers are way up and even though profits are down, they still aren't losing money.
> You do not think this could have a chilling effect on the free press?
I personally do not think it will. And I don't think anyone can make that argument that is has as of yet.
But if it does, what objective measures can we point to, to say that it has?
> You assume it is literally correct, after admitting that there is no evidence for it.
No hard evidence. But are you going to make the argument that 1000 ppl did not leave NYT over the course of the campaign. No, its a pretty reasonable churn rate for a newspaper.
Did they leave because of poor coverage? I personally noticed the coverage deteriorate, and tracking the sentiment against the NYT from Twitter, Reddit, etc. I believe this statement to be true. Am I certain of it. No. But do we need hard evidence of everything we say? No. Only if it matters. And this, simply does not matter. The question is would you hold a similar statement by Hillary or Obama with to the same standard. Depends what side of politics you are on.
> A literally correct statement can still be a lie.
If you had 100% proof (voice recording) that someone knew something, and then they stated publicly that they didn't, what do you call this? I would call it a lie.
Calling everything else a lie that cannot be proved is like the boy crying wolf. The word loses its meaning and is less effective at pointing out proven lies which both sides of politics could agree on. The left likes to cry wolf a lot over sexism, racism, etc. These words are almost meaningless now - whilst there are still proper racists in the world.
> Can you agree that saying the NYT is losing thousands of subscribers without saying they are at the same time gaining 41,000 net new subscribers is misleading?
They could be gaining 41K left wing supporters while losing moderates. Personally, I feel that they are losing a lot of moderates and republicans, and accruing a new base of progressive leftists because the paper has headlines that they agree with and don't want to question. So I don't think its misleading. It can be read as saying that the Times reader base is shifting, and the people who are reading it now are just looking for something to confirm their narrative. So in this scenario, net numbers don't matter so much. You can agree or disagree with that, but all I am arguing is that using lie is too strong and if you call everything a lie it has no meaning anymore.
One example of Trump acting against free press was his refusal to answer a CNN reporter's question because he didn't like their coverage of the golden showers thing.
That said, parent didn't say Trump is already doing all these things; they said that people fear he will, based on his actions and statements so far.
Why are you ignoring the second part of the sentence? He even clarified that he was saying total number of viewership (in person, TV, streaming). There is way more access to watching the Inauguration today than 4 years ago.
