- I said I was going to de-focus on bad news and its attendant blogistic knee-jerking. But once in a while the reality checks are too stunning to ignore. Here’s how bad it’s getting: The U.S. Department of Education sends a S.W.A.T team to kick down a door and terrorize a family — for defaulted student loans. (NOTE: Original link is now 404. Thanks to dsd in the comments, here’s another link, with photos. Check his other links, too.)
- Facebook is at it again. Keep your photos OUT of Facebook, guys. How you’re going to prevent Granny or your best buddy from posting photos of you is another thing. But this is creepy and the opt-out instructions don’t address the basic facial-recognition problem.
- “The Internet Wakes Up” (short-short fiction). You go, Kent. Good one.
- How ’bout a personal Evil Plan, rather than a political one?
- 🙂 Waving at the bus. (And the Wave at the Bus blog.) Gotta love this family.
- Turning the tables on an abusive bank. Second time at least that this has happened.
- After getting burned by e-gold, I’m not trusting any online currency until it’s well proven. And I’m uber-suspicious of any money generated out of thin air. Or so complicated that only geeks can grok it. OTOH, if Bitcoin has enemies like Schumer (more), it’s worth taking another look …
i’d wave at my kids, but we home school (faux sigh)
on the ‘blow your brains out’ front
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/death-debt/58941
not feeling any more optimistic after ‘evil plan’ Claire …
In 20-30 yrs from now Rain will have an entirely different perspective on this…..and his Dad probably might not be around to witness that…..
That was the first “Evil Plan” I’ve read about that didn’t involve shooting and blood everywhere……
naturegirl — on Rain, I agree. In fact, though no doubt he’s terribly embarrassed on one level, he seems to be laughing right along with the rest of the kids on another. He seems like a good kid from an enviably loving family.
On Evil Plans — just to forestall the inevitable complaint (not from you), there’s lots in that article I don’t agree with. OTOH, dontcha think that Evil Plans are something Freedom Outlaws should excel at? 🙂
Glad you liked my little story, Claire.
Rain probably was ok with it once he realized the other kids got a kick out of it….you know how it goes, LOL…….
Evil, maybe, but SMART Plans definitely come from Freedom Outlaws……and Plans B, C, D……
I can’t figure out if bitcoin is a bubble or a fad or an emerging currency. It seems to be a practical joke wrapped around a scheme to crowd-source innovation in solving massively parallel problems.
W’pedia says that the bitcoin “cluster” has the capacity of 42 PFLOPS (PetaFLOPS I assume) which is over five times the computational power of the next largest volunteer distributed computing project. This is what happens when you mix the potential to earn cash and a project like folding@home together.
I also figure out why innovations in bitcoin mining seem to be shared so freely. While the problems get harder to solve on a schedule, giving your neighbor your speed secrets seems to directly take earning potential out of your own pocket.
People have 12 computers in their basement running 3 graphics cards each and have already paid off the equipment, paid the electric bill and are making a profit based on selling the bitcoins that they “mined”, and the current exchange rate of bitcoins to dollars (today, it’s about $30 to 1 bitcoin)
s/I also figure out why/I also can’t figure out why
There’s also a huge shortage in graphics card hardware, and it’s not because of anything like “war-crack”
I’ve wondered if the Internet couldn’t wake up some day. The old school of thought was one brain cell equals one transistor(or vacuum tube)-making a intelligent mainframe maybe not all that difficult. Now, it seems one brain cell is equal to an old Timex-Sinclair computer..making things more difficult,but if you consider all the zillions of things connected to the Internet at any one time, it could equal a human brain,and wake up sometime…
The internet is probably awake right now…it’s just too busy reading blogs and watching weird porn to ever bother anybody.
As for that raid…nothing to say that already hasn’t been said. However I will say that it was very unprofessional and executed extremely poorly even by the standards of normal grab-ass swat raids.