...As nation-state malware becomes more common, we will often lack the whole story. And as long as countries are battling it out in cyberspace, some of us will be targets and the rest of us might be unlucky enough to be sitting in the blast radius. Military-grade malware will continue to be elusive.
Right now, antivirus companies are probably sitting on incomplete stories about a dozen more varieties of government-grade malware. But they shouldn't. We want, and need, our antivirus companies to tell us everything they can about these threats as soon as they know them, and not wait until the release of a political story makes it impossible for them to remain silent.
The Chinese Century →
...The latest assessment, released last spring, was more contentious and, in some ways, more momentous than those in previous years. It was more contentious precisely because it was more momentous: the new numbers showed that China would become the world’s largest economy far sooner than anyone had expected—it was on track to do so before the end of 2014.
The source of contention would surprise many Americans, and it says a lot about the differences between China and the U.S.—and about the dangers of projecting onto the Chinese some of our own attitudes. Americans want very much to be No. 1—we enjoy having that status. In contrast, China is not so eager. According to some reports, the Chinese participants even threatened to walk out of the technical discussions. For one thing, China did not want to stick its head above the parapet—being No. 1 comes with a cost. It means paying more to support international bodies such as the United Nations. It could bring pressure to take an enlightened leadership role on issues such as climate change. It might very well prompt ordinary Chinese to wonder if more of the country’s wealth should be spent on them. (The news about China’s change in status was in fact blacked out at home.) There was one more concern, and it was a big one: China understands full well America’s psychological preoccupation with being No. 1—and was deeply worried about what our reaction would be when we no longer were.
TPP & TTIP Are Not Your Grandfather's Trade Agreements →
For example, the deals are likely to limit the sorts of environmental and health and safety restrictions that can be put in place. They will also likely limit the ability of governments to put in place privacy restrictions on the use of personal data. And they will increase patent and copyright protections, likely putting in place rules similar to those that Congress tried to impose through the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). There is almost nothing about the likely provisions of the TPP and TTIP that would become more acceptable to the public due to a stronger economy.
Being a cop showed me just how racist and violent the police are. There’s only one fix. →
Ignoring the provocative title, a good op-ed:
Unfortunately, I don’t think better training alone will reduce police brutality. My fellow officers and I took plenty of classes on racial sensitivity and on limiting the use of force.
The problem is that cops aren’t held accountable for their actions, and they know it. These officers violate rights with impunity. They know there’s a different criminal justice system for civilians and police.
4 New Studies Show Obamacare Is Working Incredibly Well →
What makes this wave of regret — not even taking into account the unmitigated hostility from the political right — so strange is that Obamacare is actually working. Indeed, evidence continues to mount that the law is working extremely, even shockingly, well.
'Economy Adds 321,000 Jobs, Strongest Gain in Almost Three Years' →
Overall, this is a very positive report, but it still must be understood in the context of the hole created by the downturn. It would take two and half years at this growth rate to restore demographically adjusted pre-recession levels of the employment to population ratio.
Abusing Chickens We Eat →
It's good to know our relation to the rest of the animal world, especially the part of it we intentionally raise to slaughter for our consumption.
Perdue’s methods for raising chickens are typical of industrial agriculture. So the conundrum is this. Big Ag has been stunningly successful in producing cheap food — the price of chicken has fallen by three-quarters in real terms since 1930. Yet there are huge external costs, such as antibiotic resistance and water pollution, as well as a routine cruelty that we tolerate only because it is mostly hidden.
Torture a single chicken and you risk arrest. Abuse hundreds of thousands of chickens for their entire lives? That’s agribusiness.
How corruption abroad threatens U.S. national security →
When the militants of Islamic State swept across Iraq last June, they numbered no more than 12,000 and they faced a U.S.-trained, U.S.-equipped Iraqi army that boasted some 200,000 troops.And yet it was the Iraqi army that collapsed.
What happened? It was more than simply incompetence among Iraqi generals and ethnic tensions among the ranks. The hidden factor that gave Islamic State its victory was Iraq's rampant corruption. The Baghdad government's army had 200,000 troops on paper, but many were “ghost soldiers,” fictional troops whose wages went into their officers' pockets. The unfortunate troops who showed up often lacked equipment and ammunition because their officers had sold it on the black market.