***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[EddieDoyers]

https://www.wired.com/2017/02/despi...s-pentagon-ties-stay-strong/#article-comments

Despite Trump, Silicon Valley’s Pentagon Ties Stay Strong

ON THE SURFACE, left-leaning Silicon Valley and the more conservative US military seem worlds apart. Tech companies favor individual initiative and a “move fast and break things” style. The Pentagon emphasizes a strict chain of command that filters ideas through layers of bureaucracy. But the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Advisory Board continues to bring the two together, even as Silicon Valley leaders face growing public pressure to back away from the Trump administration.

Former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter created the board in March 2016 so that the Pentagon could tap some of the best minds in science and technology. It counts among its members prominent Silicon Valley leaders such as Alphabet’s Eric Schmidt, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Instagram’s Marne Levine and LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman.Despite uncertainty about its future under Trump’s administration, all the board members plan to remain until the end of their terms. They’ve also dodged the public controversy swirling around Silicon Valley leaders who maintain advisory ties to the Trump White House.

“There is a real contrast between the enthusiasm of tech leaders to serve on the Pentagon’s Innovation Board and the positive public atmosphere that surrounds it and the controversy that surrounds Trump’s CEO advisory group, which CEOs from companies such as Uber have bailed from,” says Peter Singer, a defense expert at the New America Foundation and coauthor of the 2014 book “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know.”

The fact that Silicon Valley’s current advisory role to the Pentagon has proven substantially less controversial than its White House parallel is not without irony. “It points to how the Defense Department is now viewed as the bastion of sanity and respect for law and science, versus the White House as a space of controversy,” Singer says.

Calling All Geeks

To date, the board’s “seemingly nonpartisan ideas” have been “well-received within the defense policy community,” Singer says. But he cautioned that ordinary bureaucratic resistance could slow adoption of its recommendations, unless Mattis and senior Pentagon leaders make them a priority.

Still, the Silicon Valley approach has some momentum within the military, particularly around open source initiatives. The Forge.mil program—founded by the Defense Information Systems Agency in 2009—has enabled collaborative work on open source and community source software across the Pentagon. Separately, the Military Open Source Software (Mil-OSS) community has connected developers in the military and civilian worlds since its creation in 2009. Such open source approaches could help the Pentagon move faster and innovate inexpensively, says Joshua Davis, senior research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute and co-founder of the Mil-OSS community.

On Jan. 9, the Defense Innovation Advisory Board voted to approve 11 recommendations that covered issues such as boosting cybersecurity for advanced weapons, and funding new research in artificial intelligence. Outside experts such as Davis and Singer especially lauded the board’s recommendation to make computer science a “core competency,” by creating a specialized career track for military service members and recruiting fresh talent from both the military and civilian worlds. The Pentagon previously announced its commitment to this recommendation during an interim proposal period in Oct. 2016.

“That right there is a multi-decade kind of thing that’s not going to happen overnight,” Davis says. “But it’s probably one of the first things you can do to build a culture to accept innovation happening this way.”

Training a generation of troops on computer science would have outsized impact because many of the other board recommendations will not succeed without it, says David A. Wheeler, an expert on developing secure software, open source software, and software innovation. “The [Department of Defense] already has tracks for lawyers and doctors,” Wheeler says. “Sadly, software expertise is thin within government, even though modern systems are completely controlled by software.”

A Few Good Recs

Other recommendations clarify existing Pentagon practices. For example, the board suggested that the Pentagon “require all systems purpose-built for the military to have their source code available to the Department,” so that the government retains the rights to and can modify the code when needed. That helps ensure military software remains up-to-date and relatively secure. (Davis describes source code as the equivalent to the recipe that the computer “kitchen” relies upon to cook up the executable software.)

Standard contracting clauses for custom-developed military software already give the government such rights, Wheeler says. But he notes that officials sometimes waive those rights because they don’t realize the systems they’re purchasing have custom software, and fail to specify the software as a contract deliverable.

An interim recommendation calling for a new “global and secure” online system that would hold “all or most” of the Pentagon’s data has yet to be approved—and will likely prove very tricky to implement. Many companies in Silicon Valley and other industries already have their own internal systems to collect and share data in a way that boosts efficiency and productivity. But companies typically don’t worry about devastating national security consequences if they get hacked by foreign powers or malicious agents. “Security isn’t just part of the problem, it is the fundamental problem,” Wheeler says.

The best commercial security products can’t protect the Pentagon’s data from determined adversaries backed by foreign governments, Wheeler says. As a result, the Pentagon has intentionally kept its many systems and networks isolated, to limit the damage that can be caused by breaches of security. But the board has discussed using so-called “formal methods” that can mathematically prove a computer system is immune to entire classes of cyberattacks—a promising approach that still requires much more development.

It’s still unclear how Marine Gen. James Mattis, Trump’s Secretary of Defense, will handle the board’s recommendations. He has the final say on whether the Pentagon fully embraces the board’s ideas.

“At the staff level, we have had very productive conversations with the President’s transition team,” says Joshua Marcuse, Executive Director at Defense Innovation Board.

The US military’s mission will likely never be fully compatible with the Silicon Valley culture that Singer describes as “fast, flat in structure, and happy to fail and fail rapidly.” But it’s still refreshing to see a collaboration between government and tech that’s not fraught with controversy, and that may actually yield some positive results. After all, if the military’s going to meet the technological demands of 21st-century warfare, it’s going to need a few good geeks.

 

[moe fab]

http://www.thehill.com/blogs/blog-b...-discussing-sanctions-with-russia-i-dont-know

Trump on report that Flynn talked sanctions with Russia: 'I don't know about that'


This guy is either playing dumb or is really clueless

Is both an option?

Was literally gonna post this

N dead at "u lucky idk u"

 

[boris]

what part of "you can't pack da same amount of energy per volume in some batteries that gasoline currently enjoys" you don't understand?

there's a reason gasoline been da dominant energy source for centuries.

The part where I said you don't need to. You use less  energy because electric motors are more energy efficient. Go take a college level physics course. I wouldn't trust you anywhere near a car. 

Your persistence in being willfully ignorant is offensive.

Boris is right, you're wrong, and that's it.
On a per mile basis, the Tesla uses less energy than a gasoline car, therefore it doesn't need high energy density fuel. Why? Because the Tesla is more efficient

Deal with it.

 

[EddieDoyers]

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-johnson-trump-is-like-x-20170210-story.html

Stop comparing Trump to foreign leaders. He’s a distinctly American phenomenon

English-language media have compared President Trump to more than 120 different people, ideas, things and nonhuman life forms in the last 18 months, according to one rough tally, including the Zika virus, Richard III, a Galaxy Note 7, P.T. Barnum and, of course, Adolf Hitler. For a media struggling to understand Trump’s improbable rise to power, “Trump is like X” has become an exceedingly popular genre.

While many of these comparisons are harmless, and often useful, one iteration of this trend — comparing Trump to Latin American, Middle Eastern and Asian leaders — often does double-duty as a way to bash countries hostile to U.S. interests. Not only that, it contributes to the whitewashing of Trump’s quintessentially American origins.

Over the past year and half, Trump has been compared by the media to Chinese leaders eight times, Iranian leaders nine times, and Venezuelan leaders 30 times. By contrast, Trump has only been compared to contemporary white, Western populists like Pat Buchanan and the United Kingdom’s Nigel Farage four and six times, respectively.

Again, while some comparisons can elucidate, the practice of analogizing Trump to foreign enemies has the effect of veiling Trump’s right-wing agenda. Pundits who engage in it seem more comfortable criticizing “authoritarianism,” a Davos-friendly catchall, than 21st century conservatism.

Often, they prioritize adherence to norms and governing style over ideological goals, precisely because this approach allows them to, at the same time, praise George W. Bush while treating Trump as beyond the pale, despite the fact that the two men share many of the same political objectives, including a bloated military, economic policies that favor Wall Street and the installation of anti-choice judges on the Supreme Court.

The instinct to constantly connect Trump with socialists like former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez reveals the intellectual poverty of this approach — we are told to focus on how they achieved power (style, charisma, railing against “elites”), not whom they serve with that power (the rich and the white versus the poor and the indigenous).

Journalists are not the only guilty party; politicians, too, have picked up on the rhetorical tic of foreign-izing Trump. During the campaign, the Democratic Party released a Spanish-language video equating Trump with Chavez. Last July, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Trump sounded like a “two-bit dictator of some country that you couldn’t find on a map.”

These critiques often descend into racist or orientalist tropes, sometimes with goofy photoshopped images of Trump smoking a Cuban cigar or made up to look Chinese. The recurring impression is that Trump and his vulgar politics can only be explained outside the “normal” U.S. body politic.

The “Trump is like Bad Leader X” take is popular, above all, because it offends no one while indulging American exceptionalism.

And yet, foreign leader analogies notwithstanding, Trump’s agenda is largely the same as the broader Republican Party; his rise, moreover, was the logical manifestation of the xenophobic, “insurgent” tea party movement — funded and supported not by foreign governments, but by entirely domestic billionaires.

There’s a reason why Republican senators from John McCain to Marco Rubio have voted to confirm Trump’s nominees: They basically agree with him. How strange, then, that we have zero hot takes drawing parallels between Trump and McCain or Trump and Rubio, and dozens of hot takes drawing parallels between Trump and Latin American leftists. The foreign leader comparison prioritizes style over policy, personality over material effect.

“Trump is like Bad Leader X” meme-makers may not realize it, but they’re indemnifying the forces that gave us Trump: the GOP establishment, which acquiesces at every turn; NBCUniversal, which ignored Trump’s anti-black racism for years while revitalizing his career; and a corporate press that gave Trump almost $2 billion in free media in 2015 — 2.5 times more than Hillary Clinton.

All of these forces are entirely American. All largely overlooked.

The groundwork for Trump was laid by Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, Fox News and the Drudge Report. All pushed the limits of “post-truth,” all spent years stoking white grievance, demonizing immigrants, spreading “black on white crime” panic.

Trump is a raw, unfiltered expression of American nativism and white grievance. The effort to stop Trump would be better served attacking these threads — and their specific right-wing ideology — than continuing to draw lazy parallels to foreign enemies in bad standing with the U.S. national security establishment.

 

[ninjahood]

umm yeah you would because,


-you still can't pack da same amount of energy in storage to go anywhere far


-charging is still slow.


-battery weight to compares to a tank of gas of comparable energy is laughable right now.

Either you aren't reading or you don't understand what the words "energy" and "density" mean. 

This goes for you and your political views.

what part of "you can't pack da same amount of energy per volume in some batteries that gasoline currently enjoys" you don't understand?

there's a reason gasoline been da dominant energy source for centuries.

Your persistence in being willfully ignorant is offensive.

Boris is right, you're wrong, and that's it.

How energy efficient are electric motors compared to combustion engines?
Using contemporary technology

Brian Feldman
Brian Feldman, visionary entrepreneur - innovation consultant and robotics specialist
Written Oct 25, 2014
To expand upon Nathan Kaemingk's answer and put some numbers to it from a vehicle perspective:

Consider the Tesla Model S, which has an available 85kWh battery and a 265 mile range.

Consider a similar gas-powered car, which gets 35 mpg.

Gasoline contains about 33kwh of energy per gallon.

The Tesla uses 320 Wh/mile of energy (85kWh/265 miles)

The gas powered car uses 940 Wh/mile of energy (33kWh/35 miles)

Once the energy is onboard (not counting the efficiency of the power generation, oil refining, or charging), the Tesla is using only about a third as much energy as the comparable gasoline-powered car.

On a per mile basis, the Tesla uses less energy than a gasoline car, therefore it doesn't need high energy density fuel. Why? Because the Tesla is more efficient

Deal with it.

it doesn't matter if da engine is more efficient when it CAN'T STORE ENOUGH ENERGY to use to be more efficient

why do u think Telsa is investing on a network of charging stations? [emoji]129300[/emoji]

 

[handullz]

LOL @ people in here lowkey caping for that imbecile. There are two type of ignorami in Trump's America...the "low key" ones who are racist but hate the stigma and the open bigots. I am very straightfoward about my beliefs, these cowards are hiding behind coded language they don't think we understand. I have a BS. MS and MD....I am not your negro.

My g...

You have a ******* MD and Ninjahood sends you spiraling.

Think about that for a second.

The man can't even read and people are entertaining his arguments against physics.

I don't know how the literacy but it's comical at this point.

I'm starting to think the Hood actually enjoys sending all you smart folks spinning...

Some of y'all need to seriously wash your faces.

 

[EddieDoyers]

^some people in here pay ninja too much attention

 

[AZwildcats]

^some people in here pay ninja too much attention

I have been guilty of this a few times. 

 

[rexanglorum]

I have to disagree with the LA Times' belief that Trump is a uniquely American authoritarian.

In some ways, yes, he is a an extension of our centuries' old white supremacist political culture. In some ways he is the logical end point of the conservative movement, the bastard child of libertarian plutocracy and white supremacy. Decades of demonizing government, praising private sector actors and blaming all economic problems on marginalized groups have gives us Trump.

That is all true but Trump is also part of this world wide recoil from liberal democracy. Donald Trump attacked finance, free trade, foreign intervention and global defense alliances like NATO. He is now president and he attacks the independent judiciary and the media in ways that past American, Republican Presidents simply did not.

So is Trump the "flowering" of 50 years of the "conservative movement" but his Presidency would still have been impossible in 1987 or 1997, when liberal Democracy seemed to be the unquestionable norm across bigger and bigger swaths of the globe.

 

[EddieDoyers]

^some people in here pay ninja too much attention

I have been guilty of this a few times. 

We all learned our lesson eventually.

 

[EddieDoyers]

I have to disagree with the LA Times' belief that Trump is a uniquely American authoritarian.

In some ways, yes, he is a an extension of our centuries' old white supremacist political culture. In some ways he is the logical end point of the conservative movement, the bastard child of libertarian plutocracy and white supremacy. Decades of demonizing government, praising private sector actors and blaming all economic problems on marginalized groups have gives us Trump.

That is all true but Trump is also part of this world wide recoil from liberal democracy. Donald Trump attacked finance, free trade, foreign intervention and global defense alliances like NATO. He is now president and he attacks the independent judiciary and the media in ways that past American, Republican Presidents simply did not.

So is Trump the "flowering" of 50 years of the "conservative movement" but his Presidency would still have been impossible in 1987 or 1997, when liberal Democracy seemed to be the unquestionable norm across bigger and bigger swaths of the globe.

I can see your point of how Trump is viewed compared to the last 50 years of our history.
I will say that Trump resembles Andrew Jackson the most if we were to talk about an authoritarian ruler in the whole American history imo.

 

[rexanglorum]

Based on his campaign and his still very young Presidency Jackson and Trump do have much in common.

They both seem to have the Scotch-Irish belief that taking care of their political family (which means fellow Countrymen or those who voted for him or both) is what matters the most and if it involves violating the human or civil rights of others, so be it. He also used fake news against John Q. Adams. He felt more comfortable consulting family members or close associates rather than experts or his Cabinet.

Of course some things are quite different. Andrew Jackson actually was an economic populist and he was the voice of the people, as defined by who was allowed to vote in his day.

Jon Meacham throw some of the best shade when he said that Jackson won mjaorities among an expanding electorate. That expanding electorate was white men who did not own land. Meanwhile Trump get into office using the EC, which Jackson damned in 1824 and 1825. Jackson shut down the Second Bank of the US, Trump appointed several people who benefits greatly from a financial services sector that gets rich at everyone else's expense.

Now where Trump is pure Jackson, at least thus far, has been his raging contempt for the Judiciary. As strangeas it is to hear a President call a a judge a "so called judge." We must remember that to this day, Andrew Jackson's actions towards the Cherokee Nation were the only time that a President emphatically ignored a Supreme Court order.

 

[johnnyredstorm]

umm yeah you would because,


-you still can't pack da same amount of energy in storage to go anywhere far


-charging is still slow.


-battery weight to compares to a tank of gas of comparable energy is laughable right now.

Either you aren't reading or you don't understand what the words "energy" and "density" mean. 

This goes for you and your political views.

what part of "you can't pack da same amount of energy per volume in some batteries that gasoline currently enjoys" you don't understand?

there's a reason gasoline been da dominant energy source for centuries.

Your persistence in being willfully ignorant is offensive.

Boris is right, you're wrong, and that's it.

How energy efficient are electric motors compared to combustion engines?
Using contemporary technology

Brian Feldman
Brian Feldman, visionary entrepreneur - innovation consultant and robotics specialist
Written Oct 25, 2014
To expand upon Nathan Kaemingk's answer and put some numbers to it from a vehicle perspective:

Consider the Tesla Model S, which has an available 85kWh battery and a 265 mile range.

Consider a similar gas-powered car, which gets 35 mpg.

Gasoline contains about 33kwh of energy per gallon.

The Tesla uses 320 Wh/mile of energy (85kWh/265 miles)

The gas powered car uses 940 Wh/mile of energy (33kWh/35 miles)

Once the energy is onboard (not counting the efficiency of the power generation, oil refining, or charging), the Tesla is using only about a third as much energy as the comparable gasoline-powered car.

On a per mile basis, the Tesla uses less energy than a gasoline car, therefore it doesn't need high energy density fuel. Why? Because the Tesla is more efficient

Deal with it.

it doesn't matter if da engine is more efficient when it CAN'T STORE ENOUGH ENERGY to use to be more efficient

why do u think Telsa is investing on a network of charging stations? [emoji]129300[/emoji]

Same reason you have gas stations? What kind of rhetorical question was that b?

 

[rustlenomics]

nobody is going to tell trump a damn thing, 

democrats are cowards and the republicans are lil bia's, 

hes the reason they have anything right now, and they got it by being trash.

after his term he will get richer from dealings he made while in office and he will seek asylum in russia.

his cabinet bought positions, im done with media until it actually messes with my money.

i will be buying body armor and an assault rifle this weekend just in case he creates a very possible civil war.

 

[rustlenomics]

I was just reading aome breitbart comments, a guilty pleasure at times, and jesus christ are those people ******* sick.

glad to know im not the only one who does this..

that site is pure AIDS sprinkled with cancer.

 

[gry60]

umm yeah you would because,


-you still can't pack da same amount of energy in storage to go anywhere far


-charging is still slow.


-battery weight to compares to a tank of gas of comparable energy is laughable right now.

Either you aren't reading or you don't understand what the words "energy" and "density" mean. 

This goes for you and your political views.

what part of "you can't pack da same amount of energy per volume in some batteries that gasoline currently enjoys" you don't understand?

there's a reason gasoline been da dominant energy source for centuries.

Your persistence in being willfully ignorant is offensive.

Boris is right, you're wrong, and that's it.

How energy efficient are electric motors compared to combustion engines?
Using contemporary technology

Brian Feldman
Brian Feldman, visionary entrepreneur - innovation consultant and robotics specialist
Written Oct 25, 2014
To expand upon Nathan Kaemingk's answer and put some numbers to it from a vehicle perspective:

Consider the Tesla Model S, which has an available 85kWh battery and a 265 mile range.

Consider a similar gas-powered car, which gets 35 mpg.

Gasoline contains about 33kwh of energy per gallon.

The Tesla uses 320 Wh/mile of energy (85kWh/265 miles)

The gas powered car uses 940 Wh/mile of energy (33kWh/35 miles)

Once the energy is onboard (not counting the efficiency of the power generation, oil refining, or charging), the Tesla is using only about a third as much energy as the comparable gasoline-powered car.

On a per mile basis, the Tesla uses less energy than a gasoline car, therefore it doesn't need high energy density fuel. Why? Because the Tesla is more efficient

Deal with it.

it doesn't matter if da engine is more efficient when it CAN'T STORE ENOUGH ENERGY to use to be more efficient

why do u think Telsa is investing on a network of charging stations? [emoji]129300[/emoji]

For the same reason gas stations exist?

Bruh, do you buy your cars with a 10 year supply of gas in the tank already?

 

[ksteezy]

For the same reason gas stations exist?

Bruh, do you buy your cars with a 10 year supply of gas in the tank already?

That man so simple minded

 

[everysingletime]

 

[gry60]

^Is it theta males or the tamales?

Anyway,

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...f-home-items-removed-from-k-mart-sears-report

Time to collect Trump stuff. ****'s about to be deadstock yo.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/mike-flynn-nsa-aide-trump-234923

A top deputy to National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was rejected for a critical security clearance, effectively ending his tenure on the National Security Council and escalating tensions between Flynn and the intelligence community.

https://m.phys.org/news/2017-02-mexico-border-wall-decline-american.html

In 2015, the Pew Research Center released the largest study of American religious identity ever done in the United States of America, called "America's Changing Religious Landscape." The big discovery was that the number of American Christians had declined by 7.8 percent since the previous survey in 2007, while the number of Americans religiously unaffiliated had increased by 6.7 percent to 22.8 percent of the national population.



The only bright spot for Christianity was that, even though evangelical Christianity had declined as a percentage of the national population (down 0.9 percent), it had grown in real numbers by 2.4 million adherents.

There was a second important trend buried in the numbers and completely missed at the time. Hispanic immigration has propped up this declining American Christianity. The loss of Christian adherents would have been worse if it had not been for Hispanic immigration

The second trend is that none of the three types of Christianity can sustain its numbers by generational replacement. That is, the children of these adherents are fewer than the number of adults.

The third trend is that nearly 80 percent of the replacements for the losses in these types of Christianity come from Hispanics.

Talk about unintended consequences...

 

[everysingletime]

Idk if reporting him and saying posts like 'u lucky idk u' is exactly sonning him lmao

 

[deleted]

[emoji]128513[/emoji] anton stay getting sonned by ninja even in front of your liberal brethren, go wash ya face clown

Who is this?

 

[AEA18]

[emoji]128513[/emoji] anton stay getting sonned by ninja even in front of your liberal brethren, go wash ya face clown

Who is this?

Could be any of the trumpettes who have been banned recently or someone that doesn't want their main account exposed.

 

[everysingletime]

Ninja doesn't read man. If he did, he wouldn't still be arguing about physics lmao. I haven't done a physics equation in forever. I'm not a car person. But after reading that article I understand what Gry60 and Boric are tryna say. If the amount of miles a Tesla can get before recharging, and the amount of miles a gas powered car can get before refilling the tank are equal, if you do the equation, the tesla will have used less energy overall. Therefore it's more efficient.

Why is there an argument. Lmao

 

[AEA18]

Ninja doesn't read man. If he did, he wouldn't still be arguing about physics lmao. I haven't done a physics equation in forever. I'm not a car person. But after reading that article I understand why Gry60 and Boric are tryna say. Why doesn't ninja? Lol

Da liberals can't be right about anything. They didn't correctly predict the election results so whatever they say is wrong.

 

[gry60]

I understand why people wouldn't engage NH, but it's important to not let ignorance stand, especially on topics that have easily verifiable answers.

After all, "[insert fact] is just, like, your opinion dude" is how we ended up with Trump and his cult.