Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

This really is a full service blog.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

The revolution will be supervised.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread

Reader Interactions

97Comments

  1. 1.

    I Heart Breitbartbees

    I wonder when Mitch McConnell will finally admit to the world his massive man-crush on Keith Ellison. His desperate cries for his better’s attention are becoming pathetic. I don’t happen to swing that way, but Congressman Ellison is quite the handsome fellow.

  4. 4.

    scav

    Contribution: Giving up coffee to balance the books: how many lattes to financial freedom?

    Cohen found that we’re not spending more on things we don’t need to get through the day. On the contrary, we’re spending less. Between 2004 and 2008, Americans’ spending on clothes fell by 28%; alcohol 12%; tobacco 25%; vehicle purchases 15% and vehicle maintenance 24%. Overall expenditures on food also declined, with spending on in-home meals falling by 8% and restaurant dining by a more modest 3%.

    Where did the money go? Consider your own circumstances, and you’re likely to see the most common increases in spending. During the same period of time, we spent almost 20% more on housing and 32% more on healthcare, which includes a more than 100% rise in the cost of health insurance and 41% of pharmaceuticals. Education? An astonishing 60% increase. Gas went up by 23% and auto insurance by 29%.

  7. 7.

    Mino

    New wrinkle the the healthcare roll out. Yearly caps on out of pocket expenses for policyholders have been delayed because insurance companies could not get the necessary computer programs up and running in four years.

  8. 8.

    scav

    @jeffreyw: Cooking coffee? Does that mean to imply it’s mixed up integrally with the pork or do you just drink it really really strong. I could be intrigued in both directions. Slaw, I’ve got covered.

  10. 10.

    Paul in KY

    @Poopyman: Umm, let me think…

    He gets to say he is ‘married’ (to a live girl) & she stays connected to the Washington DC Republican social/power circuit.

    How’s that?

  11. 11.

    Anoniminous

    Looking like the NSA has erected a major barrier to US companies in and entering the $131 billion/year (estimate) Cloud Computing market. Companies in the EU are legally forbidden to release the kind of information the NSA, et. al., routinely grabs, so there goes $34 billion/year, which is more than enough for SAP to learn the business and jump to dominance.

    IBM must be spitting nails.

  13. 13.

    Belafon

    @Anoniminous: Companies in the EU are legally forbidden. Notice they say nothing of “Companies in the EU are forbidden to use cloud companies that release information to the NSA.”

    Also, what kind of information is the NSA getting from cloud computing companies?

  15. 15.

    Keith G

    @RaflW: Your policy may continue that behavior at the underwriter’s discretion for 2014. Then the regulations will kick in…hopefully.

  16. 16.

    Belafon

    @Belafon: I should also add that I’m pretty sure IBM has a pretty good presence in Europe. I doubt it’s too worried about following one set of laws there and another set here.

  17. 17.

    Botsplainer

    My two greatest fears about cloud computing:

    1. Sudden company shutdown, whether business based or based upon the seizure of servers due to criminal activity, thereby depriving me of access to necessary data for either a lengthy period of time or forever.

    2. Haxx0rs getting in and destroying my shit, that concern accelerated and heightened when just about any employee of the cloud company leaves under less than wonderful circumstances.

    Never have figured out how outsourcing storage was such a brilliant idea.

  18. 18.

    gene108

    @Mino:

    I don’t get the freak out.

    There are expected teething pains in getting Obamacare implemented. The government’s already said they won’t bother with parts of the law, like requiring businesses to issue 1099’s for every damn thing they hire someone to do.

    Obamacare Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum plans are all high deductible plans, with co-insurance after the annual deductible is met.

    I think Bronze plans have 60% co-insurance and Platinum plans are 90% co-insurance.

    The plans that are coming out will not be like traditional insurance plans, where the insurance paid the first dollar after a $20 co-pay.

    Insurance pricing seems like it will vary between states as some states try to do the best things for their citizens under Obamacare, while others try to make its implementation as hard as possible. Trying to determine anything about the cost to consumer under Obamacare right now will be difficult to gauge, because it’s all speculation.

    If you can get a bronze plan with a $2,000 deductible and 60% co-insurance up to say a $10,000 annual maximum or whatever insurance rolls out, it’s still better than being on the hook for a $100,000 hospital bill.

    The two biggest things that will drive people to opt for insurance instead of the penalty will be the premium support and no rejection for pre-existing conditions.

    Obamacare was never intended to turn us into a Scandinavian socialist paradise in one fell swoop. It was meant to make things better within the current healthcare system, which it does even without this being fully implemented.

    For the rest of us, who have employer based coverage, there won’t be any major changes unless the employer makes a major change.

    Also, too insurance companies have to be more transparent about what they will cover, so you won’t get plans that will deny you coverage when you get sick.

  19. 19.

    kdaug

    @Belafon:

    Also, what kind of information is the NSA getting from cloud computing companies?

    My new proprietary market-killing widget design?

    Who gives a fuck? The issue is trust. Fuck it, burn it to a CD and put in the safe. Sorry, cloud computing.

  20. 20.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Botsplainer:

    Never have figured out how outsourcing storage was such a brilliant idea.

    Probably some benefit for the short term bottom line…the only bottom line the MBA trained middle management type concerns itself with.

  22. 22.

    Mnemosyne

    @Anoniminous:

    US companies that do business in the EU are currently required to follow the EU’s compliance rules. We get training on that every other year here at the Giant Evil (Multinational) Corporation. So it will probably mostly affect small companies that aren’t already complying with EU rules.

  23. 23.

    Mnemosyne

    @Botsplainer:

    Never have figured out how outsourcing storage was such a brilliant idea.

    Mobile computing. Once people wanted to access the same data on their desktop, laptop, and iPhone, the cloud became inevitable.

    I don’t keep much in the cloud because I have the same worries you do, but it’s definitely been annoying sometimes to realize that an email I want is on my desktop and I can’t access it because I’m at Starbucks with my iPhone.

  24. 24.

    WereBear

    @Botsplainer: Never have figured out how outsourcing storage was such a brilliant idea.

    With so many workers mobile, “the cloud” is the New Server.

    It combines “remote” and “backup” in a way people don’t have to understand because the right app or program just does it for them. Trust me, people never think about backing up. EVER.

    It implements cheap workstations, like the Chromebook I’m typing this on. It could get run over by a truck and I just pick up another $200 keyboard/flatscreen combo and pick up where I left off.

  26. 26.

    kdaug

    @raven: Or a granite tablet.

    You get two chisels, see, one shaped like a zero, the other shaped like a one.

    Point stands, though. The issue is trust.

    (Neg on Blu Ray. Why? Shouldn’t be an issue. A burn software query?)

  27. 27.

    Violet

    @Botsplainer:

    Never have figured out how outsourcing storage was such a brilliant idea.

    People have outsourced storage for a long time. Safe deposit boxes at banks are outsourced storage. If the bank gets taken over by the FDIC, whatever is in your safe deposit box is no longer available to you. It’s part of the settlement with the bank.

    And then there are the ever-mushrooming storage units for all the crap we supposedly need but can’t fit into our houses.

  28. 28.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @Botsplainer:

    Never have figured out how outsourcing storage was such a brilliant idea.

    I’m puzzled why the giant leap of faith implied here gets ignored by most people. Do they really trust a big computing company (or a small, new one) to take all of their bits, move them somewhere undefined and keep them safe and accessible forever? Or are they just not thinking about that.
    I was in corporate IT for 13 years. We put our backups on tape and stored them in a different time zone under lock and key.

  31. 31.

    Roger Moore

    @Botsplainer:
    There’s a difference between cloud storage and cloud processing. I can definitely see the advantages of cloud processing, especially if there are some fairly standardized platforms (e.g. I can get my favorite flavor of Linux from more than one vendor). The worst you’d lose in the event of a company shutting down is whatever was in the queue at the time of the failure. I’m not as easily sold on cloud storage. I can see some uses- serving public documents, encrypted backups, etc.- but I agree that it only makes sense as your primary medium if you trust the cloud provider more than your own IT department.

  33. 33.

    Xantar

    Cloud storage is fine by me. I store essential files locally anyhow.

    What I’ve never understood is all the push for cloud applications. Oh I can understand the appeal in theory. You don’t have to worry about the specs for your computer being able to run the newest game/word processor/graphic design program. You just remotely connect to a server and live stream it.

    But in the world is that going to be technically or economically feasible? The bandwidth requirements would be enormous, and the server farms to run these things would have to be orders of magnitude more powerful than they are right now. Even supposing that ever happens, how is that ever going to be economically competitive? I don’t understand how any company can ever make a business out of such a model.

  34. 34.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @Mnemosyne:

    it’s definitely been annoying sometimes to realize that an email I want is on my desktop and I can’t access it because I’m at Starbucks with my iPhone.

    I broke down and accepted an iPhone for work specifically because I can get my personal and work email accounts on it. I travel 5 days (or more) a week and need at least 3 ways to access corporate data.
    We use secure servers for email and a docs database. Laptop + VPN = office on the road.
    And I back up my devices to an external HDD that’s kept physically separate from them. No cloud, decent security.

  35. 35.

    Suffern ACE

    @Botsplainer:

    Never have figured out how outsourcing storage was such a brilliant idea.

    All of the servers will be in four locations, generating tremendous heat which will be used to create tornados to run vortex generators that will spare us from the need to build new power plants as long as the tornados behave.

  36. 36.

    jeffreyw

    @scav: Coffee beans come to me all the way from Costa Rica, but they travel and keep best when green. Cooking makes those green beans suitable for making coffee to drink. The pork does well with just a minimal rub of salt and spices, none of which are coffee. I got the slaw right here.

  37. 37.

    max

    I’m not as easily sold on cloud storage. I can see some uses- serving public documents, encrypted backups, etc.- but I agree that it only makes sense as your primary medium if you trust the cloud provider more than your own IT department.

    Ja. The big selling point is convenience so you don’t have to maintain storage, but in practice you still have to maintain storage, so you’re dumping data from your storage unit to someone else’s storage unit and hoping it doesn’t go poof one day. (With the added problem that anybody, black hats, NSA, FBI, FSB, the Chinese, cloud company admins, random people hitting a bug or pit bulls will wind up pwning your data.) It’s a large niche product for companies with lots of stuff that can be duped quickly.

    @Belafon: I doubt it’s too worried about following one set of laws there and another set here.

    The problem stems from the fact that being based in the US might result in their being required to cough up data from everything they own everywhere else in the world. In practice, this won’t prevent IBM/whatever from operating in the EU – it will mean that lots of people in the EU won’t trust IBM (correctly) and will use other providers.

    max
    [‘That is not happy making for people pimping the miracles of the cloud.’]

  39. 39.

    fuckwit

    @Mnemosyne: Encrypt the data. My not-very-secure cloud data is encrypted with a built in system in my S3 client that’s good enough to keep Amazon from casually snooping it. My more secure data is PGP’ed. My really secure data (i.e., the keys for the above PGP) is on a CD-ROM in a safe.

  40. 40.

    jeffreyw

    @raven: I burned a few hundred gigabytes of photos but found it to be a bother. I keep everything on hard drives in multiple locations these days Real time folder sync between a pair of Synology NAS servers, an automatic backup to a raid array everynight, and I also keep iterations on several other machines and external drives that are updated with SyncToy on a “when I think about it” schedule.

  42. 42.

    replicnt6

    @jeffreyw:

    Cooking makes those green beans suitable for making coffee to drink.

    What do you use for roasting? I have a Gene Cafe, and I like it.

  44. 44.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @schrodinger’s cat: Via Krugthulu, google did a poll, 47% think the deficit has increased “a lot” since 2010, less than 20% think it’s gone down.

    I’d like to know what percentage of that 47% (heh) could actually define “the deficit” without clues from a poll question.

  48. 48.

    scav

    @jeffreyw: Aah, green beans, so what I’ve seen called roasting. Do you do yours in a corn popper or ??? Once added strong coffee to a beef stew as the liquid on a whim (no wine and the spices didn’t seem robust enough). Turned out well, but I was less sure about pork. And that is a nicely different slaw, I suddenly want to add sesame oil and some sort of ricey noodle. Or is the whole point a more traditional light vinaigrette not getting in the way of things?

  50. 50.

    Mandalay

    This is what Obama said in his press confererence last Friday:

    “…we’re forming a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies.

    So I am tasking this independent group to step back and review our capabilities — particularly our surveillance technologies. And they’ll consider how we can maintain the trust of the people, how we can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how these surveillance technologies are used…”

    And who is selecting that “independent group” that will “maintain the trust of the people”? None other that James “lying ack of shit” Clapper.

    Clapper lied to Congress, yet Obama selects him to pick a panel to report on maintaining the trust of the people. Obama’s a good guy and all that, but what the fuck is he up to here?

  52. 52.

    James E. Powell

    @Yatsuno:

    It’s not about the debt or the deficit. Those are just code words for giving free money to [insert racist epithet] and other undeserving moochers.

  53. 53.

    rikyrah

    FOR KAY:

    Deja news: Obama wins Ohio, Republicans try to make voting harder

    By Laura Conaway
    Tue Aug 13, 2013 12:35 PM EDT

    The last time Ohio Republicans tried to make voting harder, they ended up having to repeal their own bill. That 2011 measure, HB 194, would’ve cut early voting days by half. State voters forced a referendum to overturn the law, and Ohio Republicans decided to take it off the books themselves rather than place it before voters in 2012. In repealing HB 194, lawmakers left in place a new ban on early voting for the weekend before the election, only to have a court order the state to put those days back.

    So that went well, right? Last week the folks at Plunderbund noted that an Ohio lawmaker is now working on a bill to cut early voting days in half and final weekend voting, again. In an August 5 memo seeking co-sponsors, Representative John Becker (R), wrote, “This bill would reduce the length of time for absent voting from 35 days before Election Day to 17 days; limiting early voting to two weeks prior to the election concluding on the Friday before the election.”

    It appears that Becker has company.

    ——————————————————————————–

    The Toledo Blade reports that the old repealed HB 194 is making a comeback, only not as a single measure:

    A variety of bills this session have been introduced or are in the early stages of seeking co-sponsorship that would, among other things, restrict absentee and early voting hours, require photo identification at the polls, eliminate the February and August special elections typically used for local property tax levies, and permit online voter registration*.

    All of these, at least at some point, were part of the debate over House Bill 194, even if they didn’t necessarily make the final law

    http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/08/13/20006970-deja-news-obama-wins-ohio-republicans-try-to-make-voting-harder?lite

  54. 54.

    jeffreyw

    @raven: I had a home made NAS (a FreeNAS device) that blew a motherboard. I had all the data on two external hard drives. I’m a believer in multiple redundant backup copies on different machine devices that all have copies of my copies copies to multiple hard drives with redundancy and hot spares that have spares themselves.

  55. 55.

    scav

    @schrodinger’s cat: I assume this is an errant click as I’ve no Homer to report on. I can nevertheless contribute that the squeaky gerbil I’m feeding is experimenting with drumming techniques and media, hasn’t chewed on me to the point of blood in days and shared some timothy hay nicely with a teeny rescued bunny down the street. Cat has decided to yowl at odd moments to remind me I am NOT the right person but otherwise continues friendly if increasingly needy and accusing. Frogs are Frogs — still eating.

  59. 59.

    Another Holocene Human

    @scav: No wonder all those restaurants went under after the Big Crash. Massive new openings of chain restaurants with new housing developments with only 3% sector growth over four years? Ouch.

  60. 60.

    Mino

    @gene108: From the NY Times…..”The limit on out-of-pocket costs, including deductibles and co-payments, was not supposed to exceed $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for a family. But under a little-noticed ruling, federal officials have granted a one-year grace period to some insurers, allowing them to set higher limits, or no limit at all on some costs, in 2014.
    The grace period has been outlined on the Labor Department’s Web site since February, but was obscured in a maze of legal and bureaucratic language that went largely unnoticed. When asked in recent days about the language — which appeared as an answer to one of 137 “frequently asked questions about Affordable Care Act implementation” — department officials confirmed the policy.”

    If you have an acute illness, you might win. Chronic or normal usage, you have pricey insurance you may not be able to access, especially as regards high drug costs. There won’t be any federal subsidies for out of pocket, guys.

  61. 61.

    jeffreyw

    @schrodinger’s cat: If Homer is with scav he is being a very bad kitteh, indeed. Mrs J assures me that Homer is still here and the Feliway refills are starting to alleviate his manic behaviors. He is merely obnoxious at the moment.

  62. 62.

    burnspbesq

    @Botsplainer:

    Never put anything in the cloud for which you don’t have a physical backup within arm’s length.

    I use Wuala to give me access on my home computer to work-related stuff that is stored on my work computer. The work computer is backed up twice, once to a physical hard drive in my office and once to a USB drive that resides on my keychain.

    Putting my 2.6Tb music library in the cloud is just out of the question; it’s too expensive. It’s backed up to a physical hard drive in the home office, and the original CDs and vinyl are in storage.

  64. 64.

    burnspbesq

    @Anoniminous:

    Apparently you missed the recent reports that virtually every major Western intelligence service is engaged in the same sort of hoovering up of information as the NSA.

  67. 67.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @James E. Powell:

    Those are just code words for giving free money to [insert racist epithet] and other undeserving moochers.

    As opposed to giving money to deserving moochers, aka banksters.

  69. 69.

    ? Martin

    @Belafon:

    Also, what kind of information is the NSA getting from cloud computing companies?

    This is an interesting question in a different way. Cloud data tends to get replicated all around the world through one mechanism or another. So how does an EU company protect their data from a US warrant while still delivering that data to the US? Seems like more of a problem for EU companies than for US ones – how many of them are willing to write off the US market entirely?

  70. 70.

    scav

    @Another Holocene Human: Worse, remember a fair number of those developments were built for phantom demand — lots of school districts overbuilt assuming actual people with kids were going to show up in structures built to flip. Vapor owners eat even less than 3% growth.

  71. 71.

    The Moar You Know

    Anyone use Blu Ray for data storage?

    @raven: Fuck no.

    Any burnable optical disk can suffer from catastrophic failure at any time. I have discs from ten years ago that work fine. I have discs burned two weeks ago that are unrecoverable. You just don’t know. Can’t have that kind of uncertainty with my backups. Raid 0+1 is where it’s at if you can afford four hard drives. 1+0 if speed is a factor and you can live with a little bit less redundancy.

  75. 75.

    Randy P

    @replicnt6: I’ve never decided whether home-roasting was worth it, but there’s a cafe I used to hang out at in Tarrytown, NY with a big roaster in the middle, and man did that place smell good on roasting days.

  77. 77.

    Not Adding Much To The Community

    @Villago Delenda Est: “Never have figured out how outsourcing storage was such a brilliant idea.”

    Cloud computing is about more than storage; it’s cloud -computing-; processes are running on the network, most likely on virtualized hardware, and then returning the results, the final data “product” back to the customer.

  79. 79.

    Gene108

    @Mino:

    Again, from what I have gathered about the plans going up on exchanges* there will be mostly high deductible plans. The days of copays are ending. Obamacare’s “Cadillac tax” is pushing this along, as well as the rise in health care costs.

    Even with the 6k annual max you would still have out of pocket costs for drugs, labs,etc. till you hit the deductible. After that there is co-insurance till the annual limit.

    I do not know what annual out if pocket max will be offered in 2014 and how much it will deviate from 6k for a single. It is not an insurmountable deal breaker.

    As long as preventive care is still free, you get premium support and insurance has to pay claims, this is still a net win because of Obamacare.

    *unless you are on the exchanges the impact of Obamacare for most folks may not even be noticeable; it is the impact on exchanges that is being debated.

  81. 81.

    JCT

    Damn, TBogg is hanging it up – I am going to miss him, even if it was often the cause of spit coffee all over my monitor….

  82. 82.

    ? Martin

    AB 1266 was signed by the governor:

    This bill would require that a pupil be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.

    Some states move backward, others forward…

  83. 83.

    BGK

    I missed the earlier thread about cats in cat trees. Mine use the much-worn one I have all the time.
    Jack in the cat tree

    Rizzo

    Sophia, even.

    I’d show you more but I’m out of links. The only one who doesn’t use it is Angus, as his legs are on the short side for effective climbing.

  87. 87.

    Anoniminous

    @Belafon:
    @Mnemosyne:

    Talking to people in the business in the EU, it’s as much – if not more – about perception, rather than reality. They have gotten more RFIs and RFPs in the past month than in the first quarter of 2013.

  89. 89.

    Seanly

    @burnspbesq:

    2.6TB of music? I thought my 61 GB music from over 400 albums was big…

    After a couple of HDD failures, I’ve learned my lesson and have a continuous physical backup as well as personal archives for photos plus a handful of thumbdrives for a few critical items. Backups paid for themselves when my Windows install went south and I had to reinstall everything. Reminds me that I need to burn a few DVDs of photo archives.

  93. 93.

    burnspbesq

    @Seanly:

    2.6TB of music?

    About 4,500 albums, and lots of hi-res downloads and vinyl rips. At 192/24, a typical album is 4-5 gigs.

  94. 94.

    Jebediah

    I just saw this at BoingBoing about a chain that is underselling Walmart while treating its employees quite well.
    Maybe my dream of seeing Walmart driven out of existence will one day come true…

  96. 96.

    tybee

    @The Moar You Know:

    raid 0 is useless. lose one, you lose it all. sure, speed is better on a striped volume but you’d best have a good backup system at hand.

    now raid 5 +1 is nifty shit.

  97. 97.

    J R in WV

    At work (before I retired) the DBA did a backup every night to optical disk, and it went out in the internal mail to a branch office about 1800 feet higher and 80 miles SE of the HQ facility. There it (they were) was kept in a fireproof cabinet.

    We never actually had to recover from a remote dataset, but they were where a dam burst or tornado wouldn’t kill us off.

    Personally, I have several external hard-drives and multiple workstations that share copies of the music and photos. I will confess that the catalog for my serious collection has gone astray… so sad. Someday I’ll redo that work, but no hurry.

    But putting core information on someone else’s storage is just stupid. Illegal too, in many cases.

Comments are closed.