jb613

One has to wonder who the customers this is setup to appease. If something is later found, corporate customers have litigation options - so more likely this is for nation-states.

The more slow-moving government will get involved, the more industry will be pulled towards open source where there is no need to get government approval.

Sure - it won't be easy and will come with other pitfalls, but in some circumstances these may be easier hurdle than waiting months/years for some government to approve your product sale.

"I think you're missing the point."

Ditto. I know exactly what you're saying - tree's take long time to grow, the world is complex and subtly nuanced, once we lose that it's gone, etc. FYI I get all that - or for the purpose of this conversation pretend that I get it and try to look past that and at what I'm saying.

We can either fight change or adapt. Cavemen once complained about demand of caves outstripping supply too. The cost of fighting change is likely far greater than the cost of adapting.

Secondly, if you're going to worry about the Amazon (not saying we shouldn't worry about it) then why aren't you worried about the lost biodiversity once under Silicon Valley? Or NYC? Or Paris? Or Johannesburg? Or Beijing? It just seems we're getting involved in other people's business when we have a lot to cleanup ourselves.

No, Easter island wouldn't have had taro, chickens, goats, pigs WITHOUT the polynesian humans bringing them.

Capitalism may also offer answers. For example, as tree supply diminishes, each tree will become more valuable (assuming wood demand stays stable) thereby incentivizing tree farmers to plant trees over other crops.

The world changes and humans need to along with it. I'm sure cavemen once sat around the fire worrying about how all the good caves were being used up.

"Going to be interesting watching this one play out."

I suspect, access of "14,000 highly confidential and proprietary files shortly before his resignation" will play a major role in swaying the deciders. Experience tells us that not all of those 14k were critical, what if it had be 1 or 2 critical design docs? In a different or future case, we may see that happen. Corps have incentive to reduce competitors, but now may start recognizing the potential leverage they have - "Our network logs show Joe accessed our main design doc 1 week before he left for company doing similar work!".

"It is, however, sad to think that this technology could be set back a few years because of Levandowski's actions."

I am less concerned about one piece of technology and more concerned about the future of employer relations in general. Employers will become increasingly suspicious of employees leaving and will take actions to either prevent this or to stifle the actual knowledge gained to be used elsewhere.

What concerns me is that we are going to see more and more of this in the coming years - corporations concerned over ex-employees taking their knowledge with them and taking legal recourse. In this case, they complain about access of 14k proprietary files - which is pretty damning, but I could see similar damning evidence over accessing a couple of critically important design docs relatively near the end of employment. How do you distinguish between files being accessed merely for the purpose out your work vs theft? How can you ascertain what was in their minds and hearts for accessing for those files - and worse, how little would it take to sway a judge or jury that accessing of such files were deliberate (ie part of the bigger picture)? Courts have been wrong before. Previous generations this didn't come up because they stayed in 1 or 2 jobs their entire lives, at least in this aspect, today's environment is completely different.

There is a difference between weakened and backdoored. Weakened is along the lines what you're saying - that likely others than just the governments can easily access, whereas backdoored (if done properly) means only the govt. Of course, this assumes a perfect world and that there is a proper way to backdoor - in the real world, adversaries simply attack the governments backdoors/keys.

Nonetheless, given your context of "there is no encryption going on at all" I argue does not necessarily hold for a backdoor - or at least not at the outset and if done properly. If the govt backdoor is a key for which huge amount of care is taken to protect and take the extreme example of the govt encrypting the only copy of the key and firing it off in one direction into space - there is a backdoor but this is not necessarily equivalent to "no encryption at all".

"wants to regulate cryptography"??? - I suggest it's already in place. For example, if you wish to create crypto software or hardware (or in some cases even simply importing a crypto library) - for 2 sides to communicate requires sharing either the source, software binaries, or hardware itself - and if 1 of those is outside of the country then obviously export and/or import of the source/sw/hw occurs and therefore crypto controls come into effect.

Given free market indicators such as Bitcoin marketcap and the recent rise of Monero vs zcash - perhaps absolute privacy is not what the market values?

government subsidies cause distortions. Somehow providing basic income to incentivize people to live more in rural areas would only cause those currently living in rural areas to be more costly. The salaries of farmers, oil rig workers, truck drivers, miners, lumberjacks, etc... would rise.

Plug one hole in the dike and others will pop up. Just let the free market work and people choose where they want to live and work.

That's ridiculous. The Wright Brothers changed the world. On par if not exceeding today's equivalent of Marc Andreesen (Netscape), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Brin&Page (Google) - and the last time I checked, people like that DO own big house(s) and CAN afford to travel and do experiments without any worries about rent, food, healthcare.

By today's standards, many people were "poor" back then - it's all relative. Maybe in 100+ years they'll look back and marvel at how "poor" Andreesen/Gates/etc... were too.

You can be poor today and still make it big. You don't need a college degree or the massive debt that entails, you can make up for that with a good idea + hard work + persistence + live as frugal as possible + a little luck. It's not exactly the same - some things are harder and some things are easier, but overall it's still doable.

The reason you will lose that bet is the "any country". In some less developed countries, inflation is out of control (govt sees money printing as the only solution) bitcoin as measured against their currency is rising. Daily. Couple that with the fact that those same places do ironically have high mobile phone usage, and it's only a matter of time until it's surpassed 5%.