GVIrish

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241.
by GVIrish 7y ago
Thing is, that by stealing and releasing documents he did not read (by his own admission) he could not have known what collateral damage he would've done to US and allied intelligence capabilities. One might argue that any damage to in
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by GVIrish 7y ago
And Snowden was stealing files months before that happened. Maybe Snowden was on the fence about leaking and Clapper's lie pushed him over the edge. Or maybe it was what convinced him he was right. But he had already been taking docu
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by GVIrish 7y ago
What we're starting to see is that enough major global markets have committed to banning combustion engines in cars in the next 10-20 years, that it will make economic sense for global auto manufacturers to focus their product developm
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by GVIrish 7y ago
> Once voters realize that this would take personal cost for benefits they won't see in their lifetime, I can't see them willfully voting for any substantial reversal. Luckily renewable energy is getting to the point where it a
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by GVIrish 7y ago
I agree, there's no way Snowden would have gotten away with a 5 year sentence. He probably would have gotten something similar to Manning, with maybe a chance of parole at some point.
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by GVIrish 7y ago
Eh I think Snowden rightly figured that he would have had a hard time prevailing in court based on his situation. Intelligence agencies can't just say, "this guy doesn't get a trial". It's just that a trial would
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by GVIrish 7y ago
No, the 54.5 mpg goal by 2025 was from the Obama administration. The Trump administration nixed that and set the fleet fuel economy target to 37 mpg. Several auto manufacturers actually came out against lowering the standard because it wou
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by GVIrish 7y ago
No, several auto makers actually did not want Trump to cut the federal emissions standards, and 4 manufacturers (VW, BMW, Honda, and Ford) made an agreement with California to meet higher standards than what Trump wanted. Reason being that
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by GVIrish 7y ago
Did Snowden go through any of the whistleblowing channels? No. I can see why he didn't, but fact is that he didn't. Snowden didn't read all of the documents he stole, instead he relied on journalists to responsible when reda
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by GVIrish 7y ago
> Snowden sacrificed his extremely lucrative career, his access and his ability to live in his own country to expose the illegal and unconstitutional conduct being carried out by the NSA. He put himself in extreme legal jeopardy to expos
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by GVIrish 7y ago
I've never worked for the intel agencies but I've worked in other places in the USG. You're right that we may never know what exactly Snowden took, that's always going to be the tough part about the public evaluating cla
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by GVIrish 7y ago
Read from the HPSCI report here: https://www.lawfareblog.com/hpsci-releases-full-snowden-repo... > Again, any evidence besides some half-baked government PR? He didn't have any documents with him by the time he left
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by GVIrish 7y ago
Yes, that was what I was referring to when I said that one probably shouldn't have relied on those protections. However, it doesn't change the fact that he stole a tremendous amount of classified material that had nothing to do wi
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by GVIrish 7y ago
The problem with Snowden is that: A. He did not try to whistleblow through any officials channels in the NSA, intelligence community, or Congress B. He stole somewhere around 1.5 million documents, of which the vast majority had nothing to
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by GVIrish 7y ago
Credibly accused rapist. The courts are for determining whether someone should go to jail. But anyone can draw conclusions about whether or not they want to deal with someone who is accused of a crime. Someone might be accused of child mol
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by GVIrish 7y ago
No, initially he refused to apologize, then he withdrew from the hosting gig, then he actually apologized, more than once. Had he just apologized when the academy first brought up the issue, he could have gone right on with hosting. As it
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by GVIrish 7y ago
The biggest hurdle at this point is, what does any European government have to gain from granting Snowden asylum? He was already granted asylum in Russia, so he's presumably safe at the moment. I'm sure it'd be nicer to liv
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by GVIrish 7y ago
It wouldn't be that personal vehicle ownership would be banned, it would just be drastically reduced. In its place there'd be far better public transportation options, maybe better fractional car usage options, bicycles rideshare
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by GVIrish 7y ago
Toyota sells somewhere around 40 different models and 10 million units worldwide per year. There is no way Tesla is getting to that size in 5, 10, or even 15 years. Tesla could potentially remain the number one EV manufacturer if the big m
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by GVIrish 7y ago
I think when hunter-gatherer societies discovered cooking, they could have tried to cook unpalatable plants to make them easier to digest. Then they could've used cooking on poisonous food stuffs to see if it made them edible. As new
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by GVIrish 7y ago
It's not quite that in my opinion. At the time the original union was thought to have big benefits for all members, and it did. Strongarming wasn't driving things as much as perceived mutual benefit. But now with one of the bigge
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by GVIrish 7y ago
> Obviously, no deal is bad for the UK and the EU too, but how can the UK Government negotiate with their hands tied? You have succinctly described one of the devastating flaws in the Brexit idea. The UK has very little leverage and the
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by GVIrish 7y ago
We're talking about a very clever adversary here though. If QA was was enough to catch every instance clandestine sabotage/spying there would never have been any incidents of successful covert action by foreign intelligence servi
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by GVIrish 7y ago
> I guess the million dollar question is - who has the moral authority to tell Brazilians that they don't have the right to utilize their land and natural resources like China, USA, India, and every other industrial nation? That is
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by GVIrish 7y ago
Slashing and burning rainforest to farm cattle or raise crops are both bad options given how critical the Amazon is to maintaining climate and biodiversity. Either way, the amount of land and water required to raise each lb of beef is an or
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by GVIrish 7y ago
Arable land is getting cleared out en masse to farm cattle. Cattle farming is not driven by the inability to grow crops on that land, it's driven by the demand for red meat (and dairy products).
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by GVIrish 7y ago
> Why would it be easier for trouble-makers to fool autonomous cars? As a human driver, I'd be fooled by pretty much any road marking or guy in an orange vest. Imagine someone hacking the 'construction zone protocol' and s
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by GVIrish 7y ago
> The problem is that we're well past the point where "carbon-neutral" is good enough. We not only need to stop causing additional harm, we need to figure out ways to undo at least some of the harm we've already done.
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by GVIrish 7y ago
> However climate change is a direct consequence of capitalism. Halting pollution would ruin the economy. Factories would have to be shut down, entire categories of products could no longer be produced, masses would become unemployed. Th
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by GVIrish 7y ago
I think it's because for the most rapacious capitalists, the human experience is solely governed by 'might makes right'. For them, the only reason people cooperate or do something kind, is either for some reward or to avoid

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