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Friday, August 4, 2017

The Big 5 (US IT Firms) aren't Unbeatable, Random Stuff, and More

- the more time you spend in the workforce the more you wonder why some companies are successful while others aren't. Of particular interest to people in the IT sector are why are the Big 5 (Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook) are so different
- what's become obvious to me is that (like professional sports) there isn't really much separating people at the upper end of things. The difference can often be tiny, or can come down pure chance at times?
- a good example of this is the following. Do a direct analysis (the key thing is that not to listen to other people's perspectives but to try and get a first hand account of what they are. Compare them to the smartest people that you've ever come across. It's hard to see the difference at times?) of the people and organisations in question. What they actually worked on versus what is actually said of them? While some of the stories about their intellect, work ethic, etc... are true it feels like a good deal of it also borders on mythology/over-exaggerated? It feels like a tactic to hype them up or demoralise possible rivals at times?
CHM Revolutionaries - 'How Google Works' Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg
Sergey Brin on taking moonshots & the value of failing
Mark Zuckerberg  - How to Build the Future
Marissa Mayer on growing up in Wisconsin, getting hired at Google, and the origins of Adsense
Marissa Mayer's Ingredients For Success _ Disrupt SF 2013
CHM Revolutionaries - 'How Google Works' Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg
Apple CEO Tim Cook - Optimism For The Future _ Mad Money _ CNBC
Jeff Bezos on How To Start Up A Business
Jeff Bezos Revealed - Building Amazon One Box at a Time
Jeff Bezos shares his management style and philosophy
Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products and User Experience, Google
Larry Page and Sergey Brin interview on Beginning Google (2001)
Best marketing strategy ever! Steve Jobs Think different _ Crazy ones speech (with real subtitles)
Bill Gates interview - How the world will change by 2030
Bill Gates Interview - On AI, Trump, Fake News
Tim Cook - Bloomberg Studio 1.0 - Full Interview
Steve Jobs PISSED OFF moments (1997-2010)
The Power of Jeff Bezos - Interview Oct 2016
Blitzscaling 17 - Marissa Mayer on Scaling Google and Yahoo
Marissa Mayer on Life and Leadership Lessons
Where's Google going next _ Larry Page
working with marissa mayer
working with larry page
working with sergey brin
working with mark zuckerberg
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/work/10-reasons-why-99-facebook-employees-love-mark-zuckerberg.html
mark zuckerberg engineer level
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/mark-zuckerberg-is-not-actually-a-coding-genius-2015-1?r=US&IR=T
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/mark-zuckerberg-succession-plans-performance-reviews-2017-8?r=US&IR=T
https://www.quora.com/How-good-of-a-programmer-is-Mark-Zuckerberg-and-does-he-still-sometimes-code-for-Facebook
https://mobile.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-jarvis/10154361492931634/
elon musk engineer level
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/405r4b/elon_musk_and_the_hype_around_him_is_he_an/
https://qz.com/968101/how-elon-musk-learns-faster-and-better-than-everyone-else/
https://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/highlights-elon-musks-reddit-ask-me-anything.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk
working with jeff bezos
working with bill gates
working with amanda rosenberg
Reactions [through Glass]
Amanda Rosenberg - Google's Associate Business Development Manager, Mobile, EMEA
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3138519/Google-founder-Sergey-Brin-finalizes-divorce-Anne-Wojcicki-two-years-caught-having-affair-paying-settlement-30billion-fortune.html
- the hiring practices that they engage in aren't entirely 'above board' or as clear as they'd like you to believe...
http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2017/05/if-only-hiring-were-so-simple-random.html
'How to Get a Job at the Big 4 - Amazon, Facebook, Google & Microsoft' by Sean Lee
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJZCUhxNCv8
- note the background of many of these people? They're generally from middle to upper class backgrounds (not genuinely 'dirt poor')? This means that they have a lot of advantages in life such as educational opportunities, a network of contacts, etc...
- dig deeper into many of the projects by these individuals and companies. If you're curious and reasonably competent I'm fairly certain that you can at least build pretty much anything (at minimum basic prototypes) that is currently on offer at any of these organisations. In fact, if you track my previous work you'll realise that combining a few of the projects you can do exactly this? My guess it may be the same for a lot of other IT professionals out there as well? One thing that seems obvious to me is that due to the amount of data that many of the major IT organisations out there now have there success (and by implication growth) can sort of scale up dramatically at times?
open source adsense
is it possible to use Perl to process Outlook emails?
sample mbox file
- a lot of individuals and organisations have actually outdone these individuals and organisations themselves (if you're really observant my guess is that you'll notice a lot of often unknown, undocumented, and undiscovered bugs)? They clearly engage in anti-competitive behaviour in spite of what they may say?
http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2017/02/life-in-libya-going-off-grid-and-more.html
online apk builder
free online app builder rss
open source search engines
open source operating system
open source software
alternatives github
- it's at this point when you begin to wonder why the US/West are richer then many other countries and why they're companies are amongst the largest in the world? It basically comes down to the fact that they engaged in slavery, colonialism, etc... and that they've been relatively geographically isolated from many global conflicts (track the whole of civilised human history not just a narrow cross-section). They've since been trying to hang on to this advantage that they've gained? Obviously, due to this advantage they've developed an outsized financial sector (relative to the size of their economy) and many of their organisations can follow the same basic model of swamping international markets first and figuring out how to make a profit later (Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, Tesla, Twitter, Uber, etc... have all followed this basic model)? Obviously, this makes them very difficult to compete against
crowdfunding
10 Top Crowdfunding Websites for Entrepreneurs
- something that is often referred to (by opponents of 'corporatism') is that the US/West engages in borderline (or outright) 'facism'. In spite of what the US/West may publicly say the state (especially the national security apparatus) and private sector are tightly linked. This makes it much more difficult to compete with then in a standard 'straight up' contest (that said, a lot of other countries do the same thing?)?
'Stasi on steroids' - Whistleblower Bill Binney on NSA's massive spy network
government subsidies by country
economic subsidies by country
- owing to their cultural dominance the US/West actually make life easier for themselves by gaining 'free advertising'
http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2016/07/social-engineeringmanipulation-rigging.html
It feels like many US organisations use the cover of 'liberation, democracy, innocence, etc...' as a marketing mechanism for whatever other activities they may be carrying out nowadays?
- the growth model that a lot of these companies seem to be using is very strange? I've looked over in China as well as the United States. Basically, it's a variation of corporate facism and communism (still nationaliism) respectively. The government opens up the field for certain individuals and groups by changing rules/regulations for them. Then they provide great 'financing terms' on whatever debt they require. In both cases, this allows them to 'market their products/swamp their respective markets' and block out all possible major competitors. In the meantime they bleed/lose money until some point down the line at which they start to make money. The strange thing I've found out is that the company founders often aren't as brilliant as the media sometimes make them out to be. Basically, they use money to hire the best that they can thereafter. What's also interesting is how a lot of them 'grow'. A lot of them grow through pure acquisition of other companies and their associated technologies...
https://sputniknews.com/world/201711051058839626-elon-musk-ventures-problems/
- a lot of people consider these companies innovative but in reality they purchase a lot of technologies
mergers and aquisitions google
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/google-acquisitions-data-visualisation-infoporn-waze-youtube-android
https://www.cbinsights.com/research/google-biggest-acquisitions-infographic/
mergers and aquisitions microsoft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft
https://www.cbinsights.com/research/infographic-microsoft-biggest-acquisitions/
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/020316/top-5-companies-owned-microsoft-msft.asp
mergers and aquisitions facebook
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Facebook
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/051815/top-11-companies-owned-facebook.asp
https://www.techwyse.com/blog/infographics/facebook-acquisitions-the-complete-list-infographic/
mergers and aquisitions amazon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Amazon
https://www.cbinsights.com/research/amazon-biggest-acquisitions-infographic/
https://www.amazon.com/slp/mergers-and-acquisitions/sxevnukfbwtc9fn
- one thing which feels obvious is that with some of these people they're not entirely certain how they were successful or they are aware that they are successful because of reasons that aren't entirely above board?
Gainspan Corporation manufactures low power Wi-Fi semiconductors that form the heart of modern remote sensing, monitoring and control technologies.

Recorded Future Inc. is a Massachusetts web startup that monitors the web in real time and claims its media analytics search engine can be used to predict the future.

Keyhole Corp. created the 3D earth visualization technology that became the core of Google Earth.

The common denominator? All of these companies, and hundreds more cutting edge technology and software startups, have received seed money and investment funding from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s own venture capital firm.

Welcome, this is James Corbett of The Corbett Report with your Eyeopener Report for BoilingFrogsPost.com

For decades, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has been the American governmental body tasked with conducting high-risk, high-payoff research into cutting edge science and technology. Responsible most famously for developing the world’s first operational packet switching network that eventually became the core of the Internet, DARPA tends to garner headlines these days for some of its more outlandish research proposals and is generally looked upon a a blue-sky research agency whose endeavours only occasionally bear fruit.

In the post-9/11 consolidation of the American intelligence community, IARPA, or the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, was created to serve as the spymaster’s equivalent of DARPA’s defense research.

In contrast to this, In-Q-Tel was formed by the CIA in 1999 as a private, not-for-profit venture capital firm with the specific task of delivering technology to America’s intelligence community.

Publicly, In-Q-Tel markets itself as an innovative way to leverage the power of the private sector by identifying key emerging technologies and providing companies with the funding to bring those technologies to market.

In reality, however, what In-Q-Tel represents is a dangerous blurring of the lines between the public and private sectors in a way that makes it difficult to tell where the American intelligence community ends and the IT sector begins.
https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-in-q-tel-the-cias-venture-capital-firm-preview/
From the earliest days of networked computing—when the ARPANET was still just a twinkle in its engineers’ eyes and famed ARPA computer scientist J. C. R. Licklider was writing memos to his colleagues in Palo Alto updating them on his vision for an “Intergalactic Computer Network”—to today, when DARPA scientists are plotting military uses for the Internet of Things,the technology underpinning the US government’s plans for full-spectrum dominance of the cyber world has advanced by leaps and bounds. But the vision itself remains the same.

In this vision, every person is tracked, their conversations recorded, their purchases monitored, their social networks mapped, their habits studied, and, ultimately, their behaviours predicted, so that the Pentagon and the spies of Silicon Valley can better control the human population. And, with the advent of technologies that ensure that every item we own will be spying on us and broadcasting that data through networks that are compromised by the intelligence agencies, that vision is closer than ever to a reality.

And there, helping that vision to come to reality, are the giants of Big Tech who were founded, funded, aided and, when needed, compromised by the spooks, spies and soldiers who desire complete control over the cyber world.

This is the secret of Silicon Valley. In a key sense, the Big Tech giants are the Pentagon and the intelligence community. The DoD and the intelligence agencies are the Big Tech giants. It was this way from the very dawn of modern computing, and it remains this way today.

We should not be surprised that the world of the internet—the world bequeathed to us by the ARPANET—is increasingly looking like an always-on surveillance device. That was what it was intended to be.

Yet the public, blissfully unaware of this reality (or willfully ignorant of it) continues to record their every move in their Facebook LifeLog, flock like birds of a feather to ask their most intimate questions of Google, and feed their personal data into the gaping maw of the PRISM beast.

It may be too late to pull back from the brink of this always-on, always-surveilled, wireless networked precipice . . . but until we look squarely at the facts showing that Big Tech is a front for the US government, we will never hope to escape the silicon trap that they have laid for us.
https://www.corbettreport.com/siliconvalley/
- after doing more resarch it seems more then possible to live in a world without any massive capital outlay any of the major IT firms that currently exist. We can have the progress without the current commercial/corporate framework that exists? 
- that said, even if you know all of the above you still need to go out and actually beat them... Not impossible but not as difficult as it sometimes sounds?

Random Stuff:
- as usual thanks to all of the individuals and groups who purchase and use my goods and services
http://sites.google.com/site/dtbnguyen/
http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com.au/
- some animal news
Elephant Eats Poop! HD
Elephant Digs Deep Into Another Elephants Ass For a snack
2 Gorrilas Eating Poop - ORIGINAL
Monkey eating his own poop
- recently found out that BigData tools (and associated packaging) for Debian (Hadoop in particular was) was somewhat shoddy. Since a lot of what I want to do is somewhat unique I'm guessing I may have to build my own tools?
alternative hadoop
big data debian
finding entropy in text
- latest in defense
Inside Story - What does the Houthis' new military capabilities mean for Yemen
US bombers fly over S. Korea in ‘direct response’ to Pyongyang missile test
US tests THAAD by launching ballistic missile over Pacific
Warning sounded of nuclear and missile tests by North Korea
US Transgender soldiers banned from army to save money while $41,6mn Viagra expense stays
- latest in science and technology
paypal ebay costs
Can't sign in to your Google Account
developing windows applications on linux
- latest in finance and politics
CrossTalk - What Does N. Korea Want
The Stream - The smouldering impact of London’s tower block fire
Inside Story - Does world still need US for leadership
CrossTalk - Bullhorns - Sanctions War (EXTENDED VERSION)
[70] Jordan Chariton On The Collapse Of The Mainstream Media
‘Clear Russophobia’ - Moscow accuses Warsaw for barred access to WWII museum project
'Trump is forced into trade war' - Virginia State senator Richard Black
'It's a terrible thing' - Ron Paul on newly-signed US anti-Russian sanctions
East VS West for Global Dominace
'America 1st cannot mean that Europe's interests come last' - Juncker on new anti-Russia sanctions
Putin - 755 US diplomats to depart Russia, time to show we won’t leave anything unanswered
Keiser Report - Making Coal Great Again (E1100)
Keiser Report - Making Politics Great Again (E1101)
Keiser Report - MAGAnomics (E1102)
Keiser Report - Wall Street’s ‘Dean of Valuation’ (E1103)
Keiser Report - Distant American Dream (E1104)
- some music resources
mpk mk 2 remote script
online midi file generator
iem system
extract audio from video via ffmpeg
wav to midi linux

Random Quotes:
- Alien: You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.
- The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is under heavy fire after an investigation by the Population Research Institute (PRI) showed yet again that the UN is working with the communist dictatorship ruling mainland China to enforce its barbaric “one-child” policy — complete with forced abortions, involuntary sterilization, kidnapping of “illegal” children, and other brutal tactics. The evidence of UN complicity in the atrocious human rights violations is undeniable, according to PRI President Steven Mosher (pictured above), who said U.S. taxpayers should permanently halt funding to the global anti-population agency.  
- The researchers write in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they made vancomycin 1,000 times more powerful by fiddling with the medication’s molecules, which means doctors can use less of the antibiotic to treat resistant infections. In turn, bacteria would be less able to become resistant to it.

Scientists claim that their modified version of vancomycin is also “smarter” in that it can fight off bacteria in 3 different ways. Should an invading bacterium manage to overcome one of the drug’s defenses, there are still 2 other ways for the antibiotic to kill it.

Dale Boger, of TSRI’s Department­ of Chemistry, said:

    “Organisms can’t just simultaneously work to find a way around 3. Even if they find a solution to 1, the organisms would still be killed by the other 2. This increases the durability of the antibiotic.”

Boger and his colleagues tested the revamped vancomycin on Enterococci bacteria, the drug-resistant version of which the WHO considers to be one of the superbugs that poses the biggest threat to human health. The newfangled medication killed both the original and the drug-resistant forms of the bacteria. It has yet to be tested outside of the lab.

Boger’s thinking behind the experiment was that restricting the use of antibiotics doesn’t solve the burgeoning superbug crisis, but “better science” does.

I guess it depends on your idea of “better science.” Maybe, once we determine that the risks are low, it will be a viable option. On the other hand, though, researchers have demonstrated time and again that natural remedies successfully kill and fight off superbugs, including honey. These weren’t small studies published in obscure medical journals, either.

Garlic, Echinacea, turmeric, and oregano have proven beneficial in the fight against superbugs, along with spicy ginger.

Scientists have made other huge breakthroughs in the fight against antibiotic resistance as well, including the creation of a new antibiotic made from human breast milk, and the discovery that peptides from Tasmanian devil milk kills multidrug-resistant bacteria like vancomycin-resistant enterococcus and methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (or MRSA).
- btmorex 1158 days ago
Basically unreadable. Not sure what you were going for, but I think it was the wrong thing.
Off the top of my head:
1.) There's no reason not to use newlines. They have no chance of introducing bugs in any reasonable language and they aid readability.
2.) You're using closures all over place and I haven't checked every occurrence, but I strongly suspect that almost all of them are unnecessary and unhelpful. Closures are not free in terms of code complexity. Use them only when necessary.
agorism 1158 days ago
1) newlines reduce the amount of code that you can see on the page at a time. Skipping newlines is identical to purchasing a bigger monitor.
2) Some people group similar functions into classes. I dislike classes and prefer grouping code this way.
DavidBradbury 1157 days ago
> Skipping newlines is identical to purchasing a bigger monitor.
Wat.
- Williams said it could be true that Kaspersky software did not have any features built in for the sole purpose of gathering identifying data from customers.

"But anti-virus software collects lots of telemetry on malware activities," he pointed out. "Part of that telemetry involves the autorun registry keys used by malware to persist between reboots.

"In some cases, malware even stores exfiltration or configuration data in the registry and Kaspersky needs this data to be effective with their detection, quarantine, and removal of malware artefacts on infected machines.

"As a result, it seems highly unlikely that Kaspersky software does not have the ability to query arbitrary registry keys and return their contents back to Kaspersky operations centres."

He said that by querying the correct registry keys, Kaspersky Lab would be able to gather data such as:

    The machine name and domain name;
    The username of the currently logged on user;
    The usernames of previously logged on users;
    The email address of the Microsoft account linked to the local accounts (if any);
    The Wi-Fi network the machine is currently connected to;
    The names of saved Wi-Fi networks;
    The Windows unique product ID;
    The Kaspersky unique product ID;
    Unique hardware information (processor serial number, etc.);
    Recently typed URLs;
    Recently opened document names; and
    Recently executed programs.

Williams also pointed out that these details were only part of the information that could be enumerated from registry values alone – and Kaspersky software was sure to have this capability.

"This completely discounts the fact that Kaspersky can arbitrarily enable new capabilities in its software at will and deploy those capabilities only to specific machines, presumably those targeted by FSB," he added. "Please note that Rendition isn’t claiming Kaspersky is using these capabilities, but it’s ridiculous to think they don’t have them."

He said that neither side had been totally transparent in the back-and-forth of this affair. While it appeared that Kaspersky Lab appeared to have been more open, it was possible that the US government was more guarded in its comments due to a need to protect sources.

"If the US Government discloses information derived from sensitive sources, it may no longer be able to access those sources – like everything in intelligence (cyber threat intelligence included) there must be an intel gain/loss calculation performed," Williams added.

He was, however, sure that more information would come to light about the stoush soon: "with Kaspersky on the defensive and likely backlash against US companies in Russia and elsewhere, the intelligence community may be sharing more of it what it knows sooner than later".

iTWire has contacted Kaspersky Lab's local outlet for comment.
- Here's what Open Whisper Systems, the company behind the encrypted messaging app Signal, pointed out some time ago: "We've designed the Signal service to minimise the data we retain about Signal users, so the only information we can produce in response to a request like this (from law enforcement) is the date and time a user registered with Signal and the last date of a user's connectivity to the Signal service."

Signal is headed by noted cryptographer Moxie Marlinspike. The company added: "Notably, things we don't have stored include anything about a user's contacts (such as the contacts themselves, a hash of the contacts, any other derivative contact information), anything about a user's groups (such as how many groups a user is in, which groups a user is in, the membership lists of a user's groups), or any records of who a user has been communicating with."

OWS is not alone in this. Apple, for instance, does not want to know anything about users' communications. Its software encryption routines are being linked more and more to hardware as well, making it even more difficult to get at the original content.

Britain last year passed what has come to be known as the Snooper's Charter, draconian laws that are said to be similar to what Australia intends to pass. New Zealand passed a law in 2013.

But we are yet to hear of any cases similar to the San Bernardino case in the US — where the FBI tried to force Apple to decrypt information on an Apple iPhone 5C belonging to a terrorist — in either of these countries.

To use an analogy, it is one thing to turn water into wine. Turning it back into water is not half as easy.

The only thing that will result from laws like these is more business for firms like the Israel-based Cellebrite who claim to be able to crack encryption. The company earns a little more than half a million dollars of Australian taxpayer money right now. Expect that figure to rise.

And as with the use of guns — the number of shootings by police always increases when they are provided with weapons as a default option — expect the number of cases where the authorities want to engage companies to try and crack encrypted messages to soar.
- Beijing (CNN)The world's reigning and emerging superpowers are neck-and-neck in the popularity stakes, according to a new report on China's global image released Thursday.
Among nearly 42,000 people across 38 countries polled by the Washington-based Pew Research Center this spring, 49% held a favorable view of the United States, compared to 47% for China. 
...
China's global unfavorable rating stands at 37%, compared to 39% for the US. While Americans seem equally divided between fans and critics of China, Asian nations such as Japan and Vietnam have responded most negatively to their giant neighbor, which has been flexing its military muscles in the East and South China Seas in dealing with territorial disputes.
- Cardinal Sin himself told a group of foreign journalists soon after the reported miracle: "When you are hungry, you see visions. So my first advice is to eat. When you are not hungry anymore, you will not see visions."
- A STUDENT at one of Melbourne’s most prestigious schools has won the support of some students after leaving notes explaining why she was defecating on school property.

The student began leaving faeces around the bathrooms of the reputable Mac.Robertson Girls High School in Melbourne, Victoria, at the beginning of the year, during the school’s first term.

According to a student from the high school, who spoke to news.com.au on the condition of anonymity, the student had defecated on the floor of the bathroom and around the sink “on numerous occasions” since February.

On Monday, the unidentified student added an open letter to her protest and placed it around the school’s premises.

In the letter the student confirmed that it was not a random act but was a protest against what she claimed was a poor educational standard at the school.

“I know I have resorted to the most extreme method to make a symbolic point but you NEVER listen to student voice,” the note began.
- According to Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network, during the past two years, the Yemeni army has managed to destroy 11 Saudi ships and battleships and sink over 10 gunboats and frigates of the Arab kingdom in the strategic Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
- How did Donald Trump come to speak for Western civilization?

This wasn’t what his campaign promised. Candidate Trump put America First. He proposed a creative solution to the problem that has confronted every president since the collapse of the Soviet Union, namely that the United States lacks an adversary against which to define itself and orient its foreign policy. In place of a single enemy, Mr. Trump offered the world. He laid into everything and everyone from the Islamic State to China to NATO allies to immigrants, albeit with the notable exception of Russia.

Six months into his presidency, America First nationalism has not gone away. But President Trump has increasingly organized his foreign policy around another principle, codified in his July 6 speech in Warsaw. No longer the aggrieved victim that he portrayed during the campaign, the United States has morphed into the proud leader of the West, embedded in a “community of nations” sharing a common “way of life.” The outlines of a Trump doctrine are emerging: The president has pledged America to the “defense of civilization itself.”
- The Somalia-based Al-Shabaab terrorist group has mocked US President Donald Trump in a new video, calling him a "brainless billionaire." It comes after Washington intensified efforts against the extremists.

The video, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, refers to Trump as a "brainless billionaire" and accuses US voters of electing "arguably the most stupid president a country could ever have." 

It goes on to state that Trump is "making the United States the greatest joke on Earth and is now propelling it further to its eventual defeat and destruction," AP reported, citing SITE.
- Last week, the 12-day US-Ukrainian Sea Breeze 2017 naval exercises wrapped up in Ukraine's Odessa and Nikolayev regions. 17 nations, including the UK and Turkey, took part in the drills. 

Conspicuously absent from the exercises was the Hetman Sahaydachniy frigate, the flagship of the Ukrainian Navy, which sat out the drills in the Odessa port, left unfixed after suffering engine failure in May, shortly after undergoing repairs.

The ship did not go entirely unused however. In the mid-point during the exercises, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko boarded the ship for a photo opportunity with Ukrainian and NATO sailors. Congratulating participants, Poroshenko said the drills were an expression of unity and readiness to jointly defend the common values of the transatlantic community.
- Behind China's recent 6.9 per cent growth in GDP lies a bigger fact: between 2009 and 2030, the country will add 850 million to its middle class. I would call that a killer fact.

Nothing else on Canberra's agenda – talk about innovation, relations with India or tax cuts for business – competes with that statistic for its potential impact on Australian living standards. It is equivalent to a new continent emerging somewhere to Australia's north with 850 million more consumers asking Australia to fill its supermarkets, sell them places in our schools and universities, invest our expertise in aged and health care and let them come as tourists, investors and cashed-up migrants.
- "We know who/what killed Windows Phone, and it’s not Android," Gassée said. "We could point fingers at one or more Microsoft executives as the culprits, but that misses the point: Microsoft culture did it.

"Culture is dangerous; under our field of consciousness, it sneakily filters and shapes perceptions, it’s a system of permissions to emote, think, speak, and do."
- Americans want to “to see Russia take steps to improve relations with the United States," Tillerson said in a statement on Saturday.

"We hope that there will be cooperation between our two countries on major global issues and these sanctions will no longer be necessary," Tillerson added.

Tillerson said the Trump administration would work to make sure its "messages" to the countries were "clearly understood."

"We will work closely with our friends and Allies to ensure our messages to Russia, Iran, and North Korea are clearly understood," he said.

Tillerson's  statement comes a day after the White House said Trump would sign a bill imposing fresh sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea.
- However the mendacity and arrogance behind Washington's history of imposing economic sanctions against other states is certainly no laughing matter, not when we consider the ineffable human suffering they have caused and continue to cause.

Moreover, a history of subverting, destabilizing, and destroying one country after another is all the evidence needed to label the US a country so drunk with power and a corresponding sense of exceptionalism that the rest of the world would be more than justified in uniting to impose sanctions on it. In fact, given the brutal history of US imperialism the world needs to as a matter of necessity.

As Fidel Castro said, "The United States tyrannizes and pillages the globalized world with its political, economic, technological, and military might."    
- “When I flew for the first time, I did not understand why the commander of the ship, Yuri Gidzenko, got on board and hung this thing [gnome] on an elastic band. At first I thought it was a talisman, but in fact, as soon as we took off, this elastic band began to stretch – Russians historically used to measure acceleration in this way and of course now it isn’t necessary to do this but they are very connected to their history,” Vittori said.
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Market Consolidation/Neo-Feudalism, Random Stuff, and More

- it never occured to me until recently how consolidated things in the world were in the global market place. In this post we'll take a ...