https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-set-up-a-vpn-in-5-minutes-for-free-and-why-you-urgently-need-one-d5cdba361907?gi=dbf32f1f4d25

Tl;DR: Congress passed a law allowing ISPs to sell your internet history and such.

Well... kinda. They passed a bill that bars the FCC from regulating it. ISPs have been able to do this all along until now.

Here's the full text of the bill.



There's nothing here that explicitly authorizes ISPs to do this, and there's nothing stopping federal or state governments from passing laws that specifically prohibit it.

If this seems like minor quibbling, that's because it is. Republicans have been very specifically targeting this FCC decision from multiple angles of attack. I'd expect at some point another bill that explicitly authorizes ISPs to do this in perpetuity.

Isn't this just going back to before what Obama signed late last year?

I think the bigger picture is that we are headed to more of the same kind of feudal walled gardens being jammed down our collective throats by the Youtubes and Facebooks of the world, where publication, audience and platform are all owned by a private entity who has completely sold out to the ad men. I mean, this was happening anyway, but net neutrality's emminent destruction will enhance this transformation even further.

Of course techies have turned a blind eye to Google, 'cause they don't dare criticize a corporation that sucks up all the best researchers and lets them goof off, since this is the kind of work environment they themselves idealize, and for whatever reason assume that amoral braniacs can do no wrong if the bureaucracy that supports them promises not to be actively evil. (Way to set a high bar.)

Without net neutrality, all the shenanigans pulled by Google, et al, wrt privacy invasion and destruction of hypermedia as a platform for high signal to noise ratio creative expression, will be fully embraced also by telecoms.

Tl;dr: Congress is taking the worst parts of existing corporate takeover if the net that are already desicrated by ad men, and extending the feudal structure to include telecoms. I.e., your ISP could start to comlete with Netflix and give bandwidth to their preferred content, while shoving ads at you, and before you know it the whole place looks more like television than hypermedia.

The rule never took effect. The legal situation is exactly the same as it was before.

The good news is, youtubes and facebooks are all on SSL, so as long as the telecoms can't root your devices they won't get any usable information to sell.

oops, lol



A conservative government that supports monopolies and waste at the laser-precision expense of the people who voted for them? uh, what are you talking about?

I always think it's funny when people say **** to defend (government/capitalist) surveillance, like "if you haven't done anything wrong, then you've got nothing to hide".

You tell me, guy who posts on gun forums about how much he hates the government.

At any rate, it was only a matter of time before the net was turned into mass surveillance / entertainment medium. Hypermedia as originally envisioned by people like Bush, McCarthy, Licklider, Engelbart and then designed by Project ARPA, didn't need large numbers of subscribers in order to sustain itself at scale, whereas advertising based media does.

OTOH, when John McCarthy wrote his 1970 paper about "home information terminals", he conceded that "The average citizen is a TV fan and does not read anyway. In the first place, our system does not need so many subscribers to be economical. Secondly, after I have described all the bells and whistles, you will see that even the TV fan will be tempted, and you-oh socially conscious reader-may even want to coerce him into buying one or coerce the government into giving him one for free."

So it's not too surprising that the big push in the 90s to bring "America online" not only resulted in an Eternal September, but also turned the net itself into television.

America, where business surveils its citizenry, since it can't trust them to have their own thoughts to themselves, lest they be sufficiently entertained by their own ideas that they aren't psychologically damaged enough to think that consuming advertising spam is part of a healthy diet.

Well they have done something wrong. By not clicking on ads, they are not on board with capitalism and are against truck drivers drones.

Don't worry, the economy will grow us out of our social problems. Nananananana

lol if you think this ****'s about ads. They want congressional approval because they want to sell your browsing habits to insurance companies and credit agencies.

Your browser history is attached to your SSN now, kids. Enjoy the ride.

People are stupid. Including people on the gun forums. The problem is that a lot of people pigeon-hole themselves into supporting a party because of a few issues. Republicans are pro-gun and democrats are not, so those that are pro-gun must vote republican otherwise they will lose access to the thing that they love (see the "assault rifle" ban, bans on "high capacity" magazines, "universal" background checks, bans on "transfer" of firearms [like how I can't legally hand my gun to my friend to even look at anymore]). So they find themselves put into these positions where they have to defend a party doing awful **** because they agree with the party doing some **** they actually agree with. You know what, *******s? Give me some democrats that will pledge, in writing, to God or whoever they believe in, that they will stop voting in more worthless gun control laws and maybe some of the nuts on the gun forums will start voting for them. Do you not see that those gun nuts are the ones that love the outdoors? They love the national forests, the parks, the trees, the environment? Half of them probably take advantage of the government programs the republicans want to take away. But you stupid democrats are always trying to take away the one thing that's most important to them, and instead of trying to understand why it's important and instead of using your damn brain to realize that gun control laws aren't actually helping anything, you just keep focusing on it and driving away the voters that could tip the scales in your favor. They're so focused on "guns are wrong" that they don't stop to think, no "murder is wrong."

They're going to pick up a lot of noise in that data, so I'm not sure what kind of ****ty algorithms they plan to use to try to guess what it actually means, except maybe to try to guess what race you are.

I mean, what is the ISP going to think if I run a web crawler out if my home.

This person went to Stormfront once, so we can't risk hiring him.

I can see that. Anybody here who has ever applied for a low skilled job at a large corporation with lots of stupid questionnaires and background checks in the application, knows that they are mostly trying to filter out bad candidates than to search for good ones. Serving coffee isn't so hard that being able to do so competently would ever be a great proxy for ensuring you won't lash out at the customers or shoot them etc.

At the other end of the spectrum, lashing out at people and much worse seems to be no problem at all in the hiring practices of Uber management.

I still think the data is going to be mostly useless, but it's not to say they won't try to use it.

OTOH the data will be astonishingly lucrative for hackers and blackmailers.

No, they wouldn't. They would vote Republican anyway. Polling in 2016 showed that single issue voters are essentially gone.

Just... honestly, consider yourself for example. Just from what you've recently said. Obviously there are going to be some core issues where you agree with Democrats, and some core issues where you disagree with Republicans, but overall you are most aligned with the Republican party. Over the past few months you've expressed an opinion that initiatives like walkable cities are a waste of time, that most tax money spent on social programs is wasted, and that abortions are icky. You obviously aren't going to change your vote just because the Democrats promise not to pass gun control laws. The Republicans have already made that promise, and they sound like a better fit for you besides that.

It won't be. For example, I bet you anything that people who use Facebook the most are at greatest risk of suicide. Twitter users at the greatest risk of heart attack and stroke. 4chan users at the greatest risk of infected swastika tattoo.

Yes, but enough about the credit bureaus.

Another party the ISPs could sell the data to would be copyright holders of media being pirated, since there are potentially big payouts there. Plus, the ISP can use the data to link which offending customers are wealthy and likely to represent nice pockets of wealth to go for in a large civil suit.

You have it backwards. They won't target rich people because they can afford to hire good lawyers. They target poor people en masse, which is essentially what surveillance capitalism is all about anyway.

That seems like a good point, especially now that I remember how the RIAA would send out all those threatening letters trying to scare people into sending them checks instead of going to court, where the RIAA had a good chance of losing.

The more I think about it, imagining Republican suits (who talk about needing to fight regulation etc. so that patriotic working conservatives can eat) as Goodfellas seems more and more fair a comparison to me. They are both extracting rent from the political system for narrow goals based on a perverse usage of the concept of property.

On the plus side, mass proliferation of surveillance products is impossible unless we're really-for-sure in the middle of terminal-stage capitalism. Customer surveillance is pretty much the tar sands of marketing; it's low-margin, low-quality, high-liability stuff. Companies can't/won't deal in it unless all traditional paths toward market growth have become impossible.

(Trade liberalization was a pretty good sign too, FYI)

And they both prefer to intimidate people less powerful than themselves. And this is enough for them to maintain a grip on them, so they don't need the support of the educated or independently wealthy, just a truce.

I dunno. Amazon is pretty effective at guessing what people want to buy (at least it often is for me). I can imagine telecoms merging with the kind of recommendation systems that power that site, along with the purse strings behind which shows get produced. (Amazon does shows now too, like Netflix, and is a big part of their push to go to a subscription model, just like Netflix or the cable companies.)

Amazon's only effective at guessing what people want to buy because people buy a lot of **** on Amazon. They are the Wal-Mart of the internet.

If you buy everything in cash at local stores, and all you buy on Amazon is a single purple dragon dildo, they're probably not going to guess that you're really into Transformers. Probably.

In all honesty I don't see the telecoms doing anything too intelligent / visionary with survailled data. They strike me as too conservative and shady to not be lazy and corrupt. Plus they have existing revenue sources and have entrenched company culture.

Right. There's no point, because they're already monopolies. They aren't going to grow any more. There's nothing useful they can use your customer data to accomplish.

That's why they're going to sell it. They're going to sell subscriptions for specific customer information to companies like credit bureaus, insurance companies, and background check services.

That's also why they've been waiting for congressional sign-off. Nobody would care if they were only going to use it for internal marketing purposes.

They won't do anything because their goal isn't innovation, it's to rip off poor saps with useless marketing data.

Either you're not fully reading my posts or I'm a complete failure at writing. Walkable cities sound great. For actual cities. Trying to turn every little podunk half-city into a "walkable" paradise is a silly pipe dream waste of money and is just driving people away from the "urban core" (defined that way by the "growth management act" around here at least) which is having the exact opposite effect they were expecting.

Pointing out specific failures of social programs and suggesting we don't start new ones until we weed out the old ones doesn't mean I'm against social programs. There are plenty of them that are working well and should be continued. I'll give you an example of one I like and contrast it with one I don't like. There's a low-income housing program here where the government will help you purchase a house provided you meet income requirements. You must have a steady job and there are minimum and maximum income requirements. If you qualify they subsidize the down payment and the loan payments over the life of the loan. In addition, they generally help you buy a "fixer-upper" and you are required to put in actual labor to help fix up the house before you can move in. The government pays local contractors to do the work a new homeowner can't be expected to do and to supervise you doing the work you can be expected to do. Sometimes it takes a couple of months to get everything done before you move in. I know one person who is taking advantage of this program. She's a single mom and works her ass off and we of course offered to go help her on the weekends so she could move in sooner.

Contrast that to the city-run welfare programs where if you make less than $N they just give you a free apartment. (or they pay ~90% of your rent) They built nice new complexes and after only a year they look like run down ****holes because those *******s living there are drug addicts and losers who don't give a **** about anyone or anything. They have no sense of ownership and no pride in anything and they just trashed the place. We had a family friend who moved in when they were new and she was really excited to live there but we didn't even feel safe parking in the lot after the first few months. She was happy to move out not because of any problem with the facilities but rather because of all the ******* neighbors that live there.

Republicans are morons. Democrats are morons. I only agree with about 20% of each of them. Saying that I'm a better fit for republican because I'm pro-gun-for-everyone-who-wants-one-and-is-not-a-murderer (and I don't consider killing someone in self-defense murder) is a little silly. Likewise, saying I'm a better fit for republican because I'm uncomfortable with abortions and because I suggested we as a society should do everything we can to support and encourage women to a) not get pregnant in the first place (yes that means "free" birth control for everyone), and b) seriously consider every other option before getting an abortion is also silly. It seems like that's actually more in line with democrats. It's just that I'm not "pro-abortion" right? The fact that I hate it and I wish people would stop? That makes you uncomfortable?

I didn't say you were a better fit for Republican just because you're pro-gun. In fact, I literally said the opposite.

Whether you feel you have been mischaracterized or not (and nothing in ^ has convinced me you aren't generally a better match for the Republican platform) has no bearing on my overall point, which is that polls show single-issue voters are basically gone, and that people legitimately are polarized between the two parties on multiple issues (but obviously not every single issue).

Pledging not to act on single issues, like abortion, or gun control, or taxes, isn't going to shift people between parties, because in order to attract any number of voters that way you'd need to compromise on so many core ideas that there literally would not be a difference between the two parties anymore.

Not that there is anyway. lol corporate welfare neoliberalism, am I right?

Heh. You're right of course, in 2017. But I am amused that you picked the word 'innovation', which, if we are talking about information technology and applied physics, is a term that was heavily used by AT&T marketing, and is legitimately just about a perfect word to describe what actually went on at Bell Labs under AT&T's government granted monopoly for a big chunk of the 20th century.

Most of the important tech innovations in telecom are done by now, I guess, although I am certain that AT&T Lucent Alcatel Nokia Bell Labs does research in quantum communication (but then again so do lots of other places, and what's left of Bell Labs is a fraction of its original size)

If you're curious why I think your stated views are a better match for movement conservatism, maybe I can explain.

I can't comment on specific Washington legislation, because I don't live there and I don't understand the details of it. What I can say is that the gentrification of actual cities is not at all the goal of densification movements. The whole point is to turn "every little podunk half-city" into an economically sensible mix of medium density residential, commercial, and light industry. The inner city is already dense, so why would you work to make it more dense? The suburbs are the problem!

I respect the fact that you have thought about this problem, and you have specific complaints about a government policy that isn't working the way you think it should. The thing is, progressives are generally in favor of densification, even if it takes some experimentation to get the policies right. And unfortunately, there's a very strong cultural movement among conservatives, a get-your-hands-off-my-recreational-F350, rolling coal, anti-bike, anti-walkability, anti-densification deal, so if you're opposed to densification for any reason, you're pretty much stuck voting for politicians who are pandering to those folks.

It's absolutely wonderful that your friend was able to take advantage of this program. Sincere congratulations on her good fortune.

That said, what you described sounds horrific to me. This program sounds like workfare crossed with a bank hand-out.

Someone who can meet a minimum income requirement, and has enough free time to repair a home, shouldn't need housing assistance. And that assistance definitely shouldn't come in the form of an artificially reduced down payment and debt service rate, which is jet fuel to a housing market's steel beams. And the effect on local contractor markets? Yikes!

Progressives would say, the fact that your hard-working, single-mom friend can't afford a house by her own accord, is a huge problem by itself that should be tackled directly. Making it easier for her to get a bank loan really isn't the right answer. In aggregate I think this is hurting a lot more people than it's helping.

Yup, that's why progressives want every building and neighborhood to include a mix of high and low income housing, rather than boarding it all up in one big ghetto. Research has shown that outcomes improve for everybody when disadvantaged and marginalized people are removed from destructive environments and integrated into higher-income communities.

But, well, uh, some people don't want certain other people living near them.

The thing that makes me uncomfortable is a government deciding when it is and is not appropriate to undergo a medical procedure. There are American women who die today because Republican state governments have made it too difficult to get a timely abortion of a non-viable fetus. There are American women who are forced to carry their rapists' babies to term today, even though we know that propensity to commit rape is influenced by genetics. That is what makes me uncomfortable.

I don't know exactly where you fall on the spectrum, but I'm guessing if you had to choose between legal abortions forever, and banning abortions forever, you'd choose the latter. So, yes, I would say you are more likely to vote Republican on this issue.

lol

That's exactly what this was. But it didn't take long for all the "regular" people to say **** the free housing, I'm out of this ****hole because of the drug-addict neighbors who ruined the place. It's not low income that's the problem, it's no income, which, I think, is the reason for the other programs minimum income requirements. You have to have a job to qualify for the program. It wasn't a high minimum; I don't think she's earning much more than minimum wage (although I'm not certain). Backing up a bit, I honestly don't know all the nitty gritty details. I don't know if the people in those new apartments were required to have jobs. I don't know if all the people living there and screwing up the place were actually authorized to be living there or if they were just friends. There are too many units. But they absolutely started as mixed-income but nobody wants to live there now except the people that can't go anywhere else. I don't care what your studies say, it didn't work in practice. Maybe the ****ty democrats in charge screwed it up (like they screw everything else up) by not following the formula, I have no idea. All I know is that it's more tax money down the drain. I think it works better when people work for what they have and take an ownership stake. It sounds like you think it's too much to ask to ask someone to work weekends for a couple of months and then they end up owning a house for about the same price as renting an apartment. Seems like a win-win to me.

Every time abortion comes up you or people like you immediately throw up rape, incest, and "non-viable fetus." I have never once in my life ever stated that any woman should ever be forced to carry to term a baby that she doesn't want. Under any circumstances. I keep telling you over and over that I think we as a society can do better. We can use education, health care, and peer pressure (yeah, just like they did with smoking) to teach people that using abortions as a form of birth control is wrong and that if you're mature enough to have sex you're mature enough to use birth control. I'm not going to tell anyone what to do in any circumstances, but especially if they are the victim of rape or incest. But for some reason you just keep thinking I'm some gun-toting republican that wants to outlaw abortions. No, I want people to voluntarily stop having abortions. I want it to be easier for people to not need them in the first place. And I want people like you to stop pretending that rape and incest and non-viable fetuses are the primary reason people get abortions.

This is another problem I have with democrats. Rapists and people who use guns to commit crimes should be put away for a long time, if not forever. They should not be let out early for good behavior. They should not be pardoned or have their sentences commuted. It's asinine to spend years trying to pass gun control laws but then let violent criminals who used guns to get out of jail after only a year or two. Or just months in some cases! It's asinine to let child molesters and rapists out of jail after a couple of years when their victims have to live with it forever. Let those ****ers rot. But you ******* democrats always want to give everyone another chance and let them out early so they can go commit more crimes, rape more women, molest more kids, and steal more guns. Or worse, like here in WA, they always plea bargain the violent offenders down to something lesser so the gun charges are never even recorded! It makes me sick. Maybe it's not like that everywhere, but it's certainly like that here in WA.

Based on what you described, it sounds like far too much of the housing was low-income, and not nearly enough of it was high-income. (Was any of it high-income? You didn't say.)

When these kinds of mobility programs are actually implemented correctly, the disadvantaged people make up a very small minority of the community in which they were integrated. That's not like what you described, which is more like a ghetto.

Besides the fact that the working poor do not have weekends they can spend on home repair, and being able to afford to take the occasional weekend off to putter around the house is already a step up from the kinds of people who actually need help from social programs, that isn't even my main criticism with the housing scheme you described.

I want people like you to stop pretending that you're blameless for the extreme positions of the politicians you elect.

You're conflating three or four totally separate problems that progressive people find just as objectionable as you do.

It's pretty ****in adorable how you keep calling a Canadian socialist a Democrat, though. You silly yanks and your one dimensional politics.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fcc-data-idUSKBN1722D6

Are these just a bunch of lies from Comcast, or is Congress really more authoritarian than the businesses that supposedly want to project their authoritarianism onto it by lobbying?

As an aside, a couple I know from weekly board game night live in low-income housing, with their little apartment's rent subsidized by the government. I've visited their place a few times. They keep it up nicely, and the area in general looks nice. I saw kids running around and playing while I was there. The couple themselves have spoken a time or two of how they were afraid it would be one of those places with drug dealers and stuff, but apparently it's the opposite: very family friendly.

I don't know how much that applies to low-income housing in general, but at least in this one instance, it seems to have worked.