thoth

US Agencies don't need a Constitutional Amendment to come into existence - the usual method is simply a law that Congress passes that the President then signs. E.g. Dept of Energy, Dept of Education, Dept of Homeland Security, Dept of Housing and Urban Development, etc. going way back to the Dept of Foreign Affairs (precursor to Dept of State).

Obamacare (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) was also created by Congress - bill passed in both houses, signed by the President, upheld by the Supreme Court. That's basically a textbook example of how the system is supposed to work.

I'm not sure why the EPA (and others, like FEMA) were created by Executive Order instead.

As far as why Congress hasn't declared war since WW2, they've basically rolled up their say into the War Powers Act and the War Powers Resolution which provides for them being informed and issuing continuing approvals. They can then support the President (as Commander in Chief) but not officially declare war.

Huh? Stocks (shares) were invented to raise capital for businesses.

There probably are beneficial areas to reduce grocery plastic, but some of that plastic packaging is how/why food stays fresh on shelves longer. Cutting that back means increasing preservatives, throwing stuff out more often, shopping more often, etc.

Getting rid of plastic bags and other low hanging fruit (like straws) might not make a huge difference. On the other hand part of the battle is changing human behavior so starting with low hanging fruit is a good way to get people used to looking for plastic alternatives.

Someone with a masters in education may or may not have the knowledge required for a particular subject, say a math or science. Or another way, just because someone has a masters in education doesn’t mean they can teach any specific class. Their background could be in counseling, administration, school psychology, or education methodology... not, for instance, typical high school subjects.

Well, the more difficult/specialized the subject, the fewer available teachers. Plus, someone that knows calculus well enough to teach it likely has other job prospects (competitive pay).

I switched from UE to ST entirely because of UE's licensing/activation model.

Maybe it is different now, but UE used to require an internet connection for the registration... or you had to email your info for offline codes.

I have a bunch of isolated machines at work, physical and virtual, and got tired of dealing with UE and its registration requirements. Especially when ST gave a license key file I could copy around as needed.

So I switched. But yeah, I remember UE was a really good editor. Now I'm happy with ST.

Same here. I'm on Facebook because of events.

Years ago, a club I was in was using Yahoo Groups, and over time more and more events were posted to Facebook. People complained, and eventually the organizer wrote back "I've been using Facebook because it lets me schedule an event, track RVSP's, link to the location/map, add members, post pics, and help advertise/recruit for more members. Anybody that wants to help or takeover any or all of this, let me know".

Total silence for a day or two before about 50 of us joined Facebook.

That was 8 years ago. I moved away but now I'm in at least 4 clubs that actively use Facebook for events... now it's typical for friends to schedule birthday parties, housewarmings, plain old get-togethers via Facebook private events. Also alumni groups, community events and so on that keep in touch or advertise things to do that way.

The only thing I'm tired of is people that constantly mention how they quit Facebook. I don't care. It serves a useful purpose for me. It's like that Onion article about the guy who doesn't own a TV and mentions that as often as possible - Onion should do an update starring Facebook quitters.

And before anybody suggests it, Meetup isn't a good alternative. (I'm an organizer of a Meetup group as well; I like Meetup but fills a different niche.)

Their budget is sizeable but less than the annual profits of Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. And NSA pays for tons of stuff that those corporations don't have to deal with like having thousands of linguists.

Where is the responsibility of corporations in all of this? They have a cash pile that dwarfs the entire intel budget and ought to be the FIRST entities that invest in fixing their OWN products, right?

Defense may be the only game worth playing, but how will that work? Unlike the real military where civilians simply don't own the hardware, in computer security they do.

NSA isn't a hardware or software vendor, and the corporations that are don't have much of a profit motive to heavily invest in security. They aren't actually liable for problems unlike say a car manufacturer that releases a faulty product, which leaves what exactly... reputation that takes a hit? But every vendor has bugs and security issues and the market isn't really punishing anyone.

Is the future effectively an enormous government subsidy to profitable corporations (i.e. NSA and other US government agencies basically become extensions of corporate America's QA department)? Is the future heavy regulations to create the proper financial incentives and/or penalties so corporations start seriously spending on security?

It's easy to say "the government should do something!!" but what exactly will that look like?

Whatever logic currently used to print the 'Use quit() or Ctrl-Z plus Return to exit' message could also... quit the REPL in the first place, right?

I don't program Python much but do its users constantly type "quit" but not actually want to quit such that the REPL special cases this situation?

No kidding. What about US customers that want "to manage all telemetry and updates"?

You could say the same thing about chat apps (What's App) and picture sharing (Instagram)...

>Is there much left?

You might want to look at the Netflix tech blog - lots of interesting posts covering all kinds of topics.