Nov 15, 2019 | Politics
"How do you communicate when the government censors the internet?" asks Forbes Contributor John Koetsier in Hong Kong Protestors Using Mesh Messaging App China Can't Block: Usage Up 3685%. According to Koestsier,
"With a peer-to-peer mesh broadcasting network that doesn't use the internet. That's exactly what Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters are doing now, thanks to San Francisco startup Bridgefy's Bluetooth-based messaging app. The protesters can communicate with each other — and the public — using no persistent managed network."
Government regulates; freedom innovates.
Nov 8, 2019 | Politics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZL-1690jTcWrites Carl Barney on the celebration he hosted:I was honored to host at my home a celebration for my dear friend and mentor, Leonard Peikoff, on the occasion of his 86th birthday. It was a delightful evening. Leonard’s close friends engaged warmly, and a dinner was served in an elegant surrounding.Several guests, including Lisa VanDamme, Andrew Lewis, and myself, expressed our profound gratitude for Leonard, his books, courses, and advice that has impacted our lives so greatly. It was an evening to be remembered.
Video and photographs of the celebration can be viewed here.
Mr. Barney has done much work in advising and funding the spread of Objectivism through his Prometheus Foundation.
Nov 8, 2019 | Business, Politics
In an age with a frenzy of Government antitrust departments going after successful businessines like: Alphabet (Google), Amazon and Facebook, Bill Gates commented in a recent interview that he thinks that Windows would have been dominant in the mobile phone category if not for the DOJ antitrust suit against Microsoft.“There’s no doubt the antitrust lawsuit was bad for Microsoft, and we would have been more focused on creating the phone operating system, and so instead of using Android today, you would be using Windows Mobile if it hadn’t been for the antitrust case” [...] “Oh, we were so close....I was just too distracted. I screwed that up because of the distraction.” He said the company was three months too late with a release Motorola would have used on a phone....Now nobody here has ever heard of Windows Mobile. But oh, well. That’s a few hundred billion here or there...” [Bill Gates: People would use Windows Mobile if not for antitrust case]
This is a damning indictment of how government policy determines winners and losers in the marketplace.(It would be an interesting investigation to see how many government officials and their cronies have profited over Microsoft losing the Mobile category to Google and Apple.)Even worse, reports the article:Gates also said he would not have retired as soon had it not been for the U.S. government case, which began in 1998. Gates started the company with Paul Allen in 1975, then stepped aside as CEO in 2000, letting Steve Ballmer take the reins as the antitrust case was at its peak.
From the archives:Nov 8, 2019 | Business, Politics
From Bill Gates: People would use Windows Mobile if not for antitrust case:
Gates also said he would not have retired as soon had it not been for the U.S. government case, which began in 1998. Gates started the company with Paul Allen in 1975, then stepped aside as CEO in 2000, letting Steve Ballmer take the reins as the antitrust case was at its peak.
Recommended Reading:
Nov 4, 2019 | Politics
Reports the NY Post, on Pregnant Florida mom uses AR-15 to kill home intruder
A pregnant woman is credited with saving the lives of her husband and daughter after she used an AR-15 to fatally gun down a home intruder, a report said. The hero mom sprung into action when two intruders entered the family’s Lithia, Fla. home last week and pistol whipped her husband while violently grabbing their daughter, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. “They came in heavily hooded and masked,” the husband, Jeremy King, told Bay News 9. “As soon as they had got the back door opened, they had a pistol on me and was grabbing my 11-year-old daughter.”[...]“He made it from my back door to roughly 200 feet out in the front ditch before the AR did its thing.” [...] The homeowner said he took a “severe beating,” but credited his wife for saving him. “I’ve got a fractured eye socket, a fractured sinus cavity, a concussion, 20 stitches and three staples in my head,” said King. “Them guys came in with two normal pistols and my AR stopped it. [My wife] evened the playing field and kept them from killing me.”
Oct 29, 2019 | Education
Haaretz has an interview with Sayragul Sauytbay, a teacher who escaped from China and was granted asylum in Sweden:
Twenty prisoners live in one small room. They are handcuffed, their heads shaved, every move is monitored by ceiling cameras. A bucket in the corner of the room is their toilet. The daily routine begins at 6 A.M. They are learning Chinese, memorizing propaganda songs and confessing to invented sins. They range in age from teenagers to elderly. Their meals are meager: cloudy soup and a slice of bread. Torture – metal nails, fingernails pulled out, electric shocks – takes place in the “black room.” Punishment is a constant. The prisoners are forced to take pills and get injections. It’s for disease prevention, the staff tell them, but in reality they are the human subjects of medical experiments. Many of the inmates suffer from cognitive decline. Some of the men become sterile. Women are routinely raped. Such is life in China’s reeducation camps, as reported in rare testimony provided by Sayragul Sauytbay (pronounced: Say-ra-gul Saut-bay, as in “bye”), a teacher who escaped from China and was granted asylum in Sweden. Few prisoners have succeeded in getting out of the camps and telling their story. Sauytbay’s testimony is even more extraordinary, because during her incarceration she was compelled to be a teacher in the camp. China wants to market its camps to the world as places of educational programs and vocational retraining, but Sauytbay is one of the few people who can offer credible, firsthand testimony about what really goes on in the camps.
The article also posts the official Chinese response to Sauytbay's claims:
In Xinjiang in recent years, [responds the Chinese embassy in Sweden], “China has been under serious threats of ethnic separatism, religious extremism and violent terrorism. The vocational education and training centers have been established in accordance with the law to eradicate extremism, which is not ‘prison camp.’” As a result of the centers, according to the Chinese, “there has been no terrorist incident in Xinjiang for more than three years. The vocational education and training work in Xinjiang has won the support of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang and positive comments from many countries across the world.”
None of the countries are listed, but one NBA billionare who is "educated on the situation at hand" on China agrees.Read the full article: A million people are jailed at China's gulags. I managed to escape. Here's what really goes on inside
Oct 29, 2019 | Politics
The Mathusian is quoted in the Daily Mail Online:
Prince William has warned that the future of wildlife is under threat from rapid population growth, as he prepares to welcome his third child.
Oct 16, 2019 | Politics
From CLP Files Amicus Brief in United States v. Facebook:
Should an individual lose the protection of our Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement simply because he or she shares information, for a limited purpose, on Facebook? Today the Center for the Legalization of Privacy filed its first amicus brief, in United States v. Facebook, currently pending before Federal District Court in the District of Columbia. The case concerns whether the Court should approve a settlement reached between Facebook and the Federal Trade Commission, embodied in this stipulated order.
You can read the entire brief and support Amy Peikoff's work at Legalize Privacy.
Oct 14, 2019 | Politics
From How the EU created a cadre of loyal academics - CapX
EU positivity is moulded from years of association born not simply of certification, but of financing. The EU is a massive donor and awarder of grants, even if it is not of course handing out its own money. But the association of grant and grantee, in fields and subjects chosen by the EU’s civil service, under systems run by its fellow travellers, encourages the recruitment, the development, and the progression of a pro-EU cadre – whether they are fully aware of it or not. This is particularly clear with respect to academics, from whom over October we can expect to hear a great deal as they are drafted in to act as commentators.
The problems arising from the EU funding academic research are several.
Firstly, the bidding system and scale of money available inevitably risks skewing academic research along the EU’s pro-integration priorities. Secondly, the selection points and networking system heavily risks openly pushing bids and bidders themselves along pro-EU lines. Thirdly, the nature of the inducements generates an elite of EU-specialists, whose starting point is one of explaining rather than challenging the process, and who are self-recruited from pro-EU academics. It also then supports the career progression of those professionals, bridging academia, thinktanks, governance, and the private sector. Finally, can only encourage a measure of professional hostility to Euroscepticism.
In other words, the mass funding scheme supports the creation of a pro-EU elite that has, to varying degrees, bought into supporting the system and professionally engaging with it – which to be fair is precisely why the funding streams were originally set up.
