your blatant disregard for rights we consider fundamental is annoying, and your insinuation that despite the obvious way private information is forced into public hands in Europe,  that anyone there enjoys more privacy is laughable

As I said in the PM, I apologize if I took it too far, but I really don't think there's a "blatant disregard" on my end. I question and criticize things, but never quickly and superficially. I think the US is pretty great and have no intention of bashing it, and I really do think that my criticisms are always well researched and substantiated with solid arguments and facts.

And I'm sorry dude, but what you say is "laughable" really is true. This stuff is literally my job. The EU recently adopted its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that is already considered to be the most comprehensive and extensive protection of privacy in history. It applies to all companies and persons processing personal data in Europe, as well as those outside of it that deal with data of Europeans - meaning that even the biggest American companies are scrambling to align themselves with the new rules. Similar rules are currently being rolled out for criminal justice authorities (like courts and prosecutors) as well as law enforcement agencies. All of this has been years in the making and will be in effect by May 2018. In the same line, the new ePrivacy Regulation is also in the works and will soon strengthen how privacy will be protected during telecommunications. These are all major developments in the field of privacy and they will institute new protections for people's private lives from the government and companies.

Just about every European nation has the right to privacy explicitly enshrined in its constitution. It is covered just the same by several European treaties such as the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. This goes far beyond the American approach where privacy is only indirectly covered through the Fourth Amendment and an unfortunately very disparate and fragmented framework of limited privacy clauses in separate areas.

At the international level, the EU's privacy policies are part of most treaties it enters into. Spreading human rights and further human evolution is a cornerstone of the EU's goals, and it tries to project these elsewhere as well. It's no surprise that many developing countries that are building a digital economy are relying on European templates and platforms for their laws and privacy protections. This is equally clear in its dealing with the US, as Trump recently conceded and signed the EU-US Privacy Shield Agreement that grounds several EU privacy principles in the US system as well and requires American companies to follow suit.

Over the past few years, European high courts have set stringent rules and enforcement guidelines for surveillance practices. Digital Rights Ireland, Schrems, Tele2 and EU-Canada PNR are all examples of this happening in the EU's ECJ , while Szabo and Zakharov took place in the CoE's ECtHR. Feel free to Google them for the details and how they protect privacy against monitoring and surveillance. Meanwhile in the US, Trump just signed the bill renewing the NSA's vast surveillance program with ultimately little safeguards and oversight in place. And while there are the occasional outliers, this happens at the national level too. Just two days ago, a high UK court ruled it's DRIPA surveillance measures illegal and in need of overhaul to further protect privacy.

There's much more that I could talk about in this context, such as the large amount of influential European watchdogs and oversight bodies like the WP29, EDPS, EDRI, EDPB, DPA's and such, as well as how the US has long had (on average) lower thresholds for things like searches and both companies and governmental bodies collecting / using data and conducting searches, but I think this already substantiates my point. I work on international projects regarding surveillance and the development of AI. Many of them include American companies, scholars and end-users, and I have never seen a single one of them argue anything other than that the EU is much more demanding and privacy-oriented than the US. And this is nothing personal, nor should you take it that way. But just like how the US has an overall stronger culture of protecting free speech, I think it's a fact that the EU does the same for privacy, even if your gut feeling doesn't want you to believe it. And this is due to several reasons, not in the least because of Europe's war experiences. When the Nazis came into power, one of the first things they did was use extensive registries and records to determine what people were Jewish and who had "dangerous" political opinions so they could go after them.

Privacy has been under fire globally in the digital and information age, that is true. But while the US is largely continuing down the same path, I think I provided ample proof that the EU is putting in enormous effort (everything I mentioned and linked is from less than 4 years ago) by taking actual and effective steps to empower the people and further protect privacy. I really hope this is something you can find yourself in so that we can see eye to eye on this, and I'll try to be more transparent in my criticisms in the future.

Quote from: Flee on February 01, 2018, 09:27:37 PM

Quote from: FatherlyNick on February 01, 2018, 12:47:13 PM

Quote from: Flee on February 01, 2018, 11:52:26 AM

Quote from: FatherlyNick on February 01, 2018, 10:30:53 AM

Well, prior to this rule it was only delete files that have something like IP addresses or usernames. Now its all and anything. But whatever, there is auto-archiving regardless.

That's interesting. Any controller has long been under the obligation to minimize their use of personal data and delete it as soon as it's no longer necessary. The GDPR slightly broadens the definition of personal data but it's mainly just codifying what was already commonly recognized through court cases and whatnot. What other files do you delete then? And auto-archiving of personal data still counts as processing so that doesn't exactly sound like it's allowed.

Quote

Blue Diamond customers are the most pain. You need to do some much just to get a single file. Some people on the team, flat out refuse to work with BD customers because of this. Even though I wrote up a straight-forward doc on how to get to the files.

I have no clue what they are. Just important / high profile clients with high security requirements? Because that's probably not a legal requirement then.

Blue Diamond customers are clients from the medical field. So basically anything with med. records.

Yeah, I figured as much. There's several categories of personal data that are considered sensitive or special under EU privacy law. These include the likes of medical data but also information on sexuality, race, ethnicity and the likes. Processing them can only take place under stricter conditions, which is why there's more requirements regarding specific written consent and whatnot.

ah yeah man. You have to train for a few hours to get BD certified - meaning you can deal with BD clients.

It's good to see companies like IBM take the GDPR this seriously. It should be a great improvement compared to the old Directive and its national implementations. If IBM doesn't comply with these rules and seriously neglects them, they can face fines up to 4% of their global revenue - or almost $3.2 billion dollars.

Well, prior to this rule it was only delete files that have something like IP addresses or usernames. Now its all and anything. But whatever, there is auto-archiving regardless.

That's interesting. Any controller has long been under the obligation to minimize their use of personal data and delete it as soon as it's no longer necessary. The GDPR slightly broadens the definition of personal data but it's mainly just codifying what was already commonly recognized through court cases and whatnot. What other files do you delete then? And auto-archiving of personal data still counts as processing so that doesn't exactly sound like it's allowed.

Blue Diamond customers are the most pain. You need to do some much just to get a single file. Some people on the team, flat out refuse to work with BD customers because of this. Even though I wrote up a straight-forward doc on how to get to the files.

I have no clue what they are. Just important / high profile clients with high security requirements? Because that's probably not a legal requirement then.

Damn dude, sorry to hear that. You'll get through it though.

I'm not sure.

Perhaps the one that nearly all illicit drugs should be legalized and the resources used to prosecute individuals for using should be funneled into programs that educate people more effectively and help addicts use safer (clean needles, quality controlled substances etc) and ultimately come clean.

Basically treat drug use as a public health issue instead of a criminal one.

Might not remain that controversial for long. Pretty good results coming out of the places that have tried something similar (like Portugal).

God forbid a child sees a pee pee of a vee vee

Whats the official excuse for this?

Exactly this. Protecting the children. It's a potential nightmare though. The law is pretty vague and leaves a lot of discretion for the oversight body to determine what constitutes as NSFW material. They've also already said they'd turn to sites like Twitter to shut down or block pornographic profiles and whatnot too.

Quote from: Aether on January 29, 2018, 12:49:43 PM

Blizzard decided to start monitoring people's social media

What the actual fuck?

They can now look at video footage of people playing the game on sites like Twitch and Youtube to determine if people are breaking the rules. "Monitoring people's social media" makes it sound like they're looking at your Facebook and banning people for their posts on there, but that's not what this is about at all.

Fair enough. I think we probably agree on more than it seems. I just think that much of the outrage about this is undeserved and that the whole "offended PC culture silences people and the truth" is massively overstated. The very few fringe people who act like that at universities and the like don't seem to gain much traction and their sentiments are not at all institutionalized or in positions of power.

And I also think that most of these reports are far from accurate and often leave out context. Take the WOTC bans, for example. To my knowledge there's two well known players that received a ban recently. One of them, Jeremy Hambly / Unsleeved Media, seems to have been a pretty notoriously toxic content creator who made numerous videos and tweets attacking and harassing other members of the community. A well known female cosplayer left the Magic community after he targeted her pretty relentlessly by making videos insulting her and leaving messages like "you're a dog, 3/10 but I'd still do you". Several of his videos were removed by YouTube itself because they violated their standards. After getting his fans involved against people he disliked and not doing anything to stop the kind of abuse he pretty clearly set them up to, he claims he's "only trolling" or "just joking" after telling women things like "I wouldn't even rape you". The dude even tried to sabotage panels at WOTC and threatened to harass other content creators during a Magic event. Sorry, but that doesn't have anything to do with controversial opinions. It's toxic harassment and WOTC have all the reason to exclude these kinds of people from their events for breaking their code of conduct.

The other, Travis Woo (who you're probably referring to), didn't exactly get banned for his opinions on Facebook away from Magic. He got banned for creating and leading a group called "Magic for Bad" which hosted things like people listing pictures of female community members and Magic players for others to comment on and rank them based on who they'd drop or fuck, as well as plenty of other racist and sexist content. The professional team he was on dropped him because of this before he was banned and also released a statement saying he had a history of shitty behavior. Framing this as posting "an opinion deemed controversial" is kind of misleading, I think.

"Donald Trump is a great president" is a controversial but fair opinion. "Fuck Hillary I wish she'd get raped after Trump beat her" is not. "Mass immigration is harmful to the host country" is a controversial but fair opinion. "I wish these fucking sandniggers and Muslim RAPEfugees would drown trying to cross the sea" is not. Speaking out against overly regressive social policies is a controversial opinion. Keeping lists of the women in your community based on what you'd do to them sexually and saying things like "fuck the japs" in conversations about how "Nanking should be raped a bit more roughly" is not. The latter, which this guy was involved in, is toxic trash and now that I read up on it I fully support WOTC for kicking these kinds of people out of their tours and community events for breaking the code of conduct. This isn't PC culture gone wild. This is no different from professional sport leagues and sponsors sanctioning players who represent them poorly and make the workspace hostile and unpleasant for many people there. This has been around for before the internet was even a thing. If you're a representative of a business and publicly talk about the holocaust and how "the jews took it to a point where the Germans would revolt and get back at them" (which is another thing this guy did), you should definitely expect to get fired.

I'm not accusing them of being abusive yet, let me just clarify that. I'm turned off by their decision mostly out of principle. Toxicity is arbitrary and the idea of a person being excluded from a game, possibly permanently, because of a decision made by a game developer taking the position of a moral arbiter for the community. . . in fact the idea of a developer taking the position of moral arbiter to begin with. .  well it just isn't something I feel comfortable supporting, and abuse is absolutely a possibility with this new policy regardless of whether or not you believe it's an overstatement.

Blizzard makes games, I don't trust them to decide on what ultimately is or is not offensive to players. I don't trust any developer to decide that. I'm willing to compromise at the level of developers banning words like 'nigger' from gamertags or taking action against players for throwing games, cheating, preventing other players from playing properly etc. That level of moderation is basically essential for online games to function well. But if some kid just generally shit talks to the other team indiscriminately when he plays and makes videos then I don't believe any action should be taken against him. That, I would say, is overreaching.

Blizzard can certainly do whatever they want with Overwatch, it's their game. We'll just have to wait and see whether or not they take it that far, and I probably won't be playing again until I know how this plays out.

I see where you're coming from, but how is it any different from just about any other online platform or service? The issue you have with this is that the developers are being a "moral arbiter" of sorts, but I don't see how that differs from what Blizzard and hundreds of others have already been doing for years. Webhosts, social media, forums and marketplaces do it. Microsoft, Sony, Bungie.net, Facebook, Twitter and even this very site all act like a moral arbiter and decide on what's essentially a moral code of conduct that involves the exclusion of people who don't abide. And as is the case with any kind of rule or law, this needs to be sufficiently vague to be applied to practical situations which naturally involves a certain amount of discretion. This is nothing new and companies setting and enforcing a code of conduct for their platform / service by acting as a "moral arbiter" has been around for decades, more often than not without solely relying on a report function to bring abuisve behavior to their attention. You say you're not comfortable with a developer being a moral arbiter, but many of them already are. And while not technically a developer in this instance, Valve also has its own rules of conduct for Steam and has been sanctioning toxic people in its community for years.

So I'm not really sure if we're on the same page about what their new policy is, as I don't really see how you're fine with using these other sites and services then. The only difference here is that Blizzard doesn't just rely on reports but also monitors what happens in-game through other means, which is something that happens elswhere just the same. To my knowledge, Blizzard hasn't changed their actual policy one bit. They've just made it so that they're better equipped to pick up on behavior that would have already been breaking the rules before.

graduated top of my class in the navy seals and get over 300 confirmed kills

Gorilla warfare too, I assume.

I got turned off from Overwatch when Blizzard decided to start monitoring people's social media for the ever so vague scourge of online gaming, "toxic behavior." That shit sounds ripe for abuse.

Shit talk and banter has always been a part of competitive play, and I don't have faith that video game devs are capable of understanding the nuance and context of every situation with the potential to offend someone.

This seems like a bit of an overstated issue. Seems to me like they're just going to look at controversial gameplay on YouTube and Twitch to pick up on abusive behavior that might not have been reported. I'd be very surprised if they'd care about your everyday banter. Blizzard will likely just focus on the people putting out blatantly abusive content or being in those recordings, and there's plenty of them out there. I recently saw a video on Reddit where some guy constantly harassed female players in voice chat until they stopped talking completely and followed them around as Mei to put icewalls in front of them every few seconds. We don't know enough details yet, but I'd applaud them for going above and beyond their game to pick up on that stuff and put an end to it. Cautious props to them for raising the bar of in-game moderation.

You don't have much to worry about. First time I traveled long distance (which I guess is pretty subjective) had me awake for almost 40 hours and involved 3 consecutive planes, a trans-continental flight and an unexpected overnight stay in Denver (fuck that, never again). You'll be taking a pretty easy and short flight so really you'll be fine.

Not sure what kind of general advice I can give other than to plan a little. Your fears stem from the not knowing and much of that is easily remedied.

- Read up on the conference. What's the programme and what will you be attending? Will they serve food (breakfast in particular)? Will they have shuttle busses bringing people in? What time does it open / close? Do you need to register early? What should you bring? Read up reviews from previous years. Knowing what you can expect will help you plan accordingly.

- Try to find an affordable hotel close to the conference venue. It doesn't sound like you're actually participating in the conference, but they can be exhausting nevertheless. If this one's anything like the ones I've been to, you can expect getting up early, having a very stacked program and not getting back to your room until late. You won't be spending much time at the hotel, so anything clean with good commodities will do. The closer to the venue, the better.

- Plan your routes. How will you get to the airport? Ideally, someone can drop you off so you don't have to worry about anything at this point. Arrive ahead of time (at least 1.5 hours in advance) and know your flight details well. Get the app of the airline or airport to stey on top of the time and gate your plane will leave at. Then, look into how you'll get from the airport of arrival to your hotel. Usually you can just google "getting from airport X to hotel / venue / downtown of the city" and you'll find tripadvisor pages or even sections on the city / airport sites giving you all the information you need. Take a look at what the best option might be (bus, shuttle, taxi, uber?) and already figure out what you're going to do ("there's a bus terminal at the airport exit from which I can take bus X that runs every 20 minutes to the center of the city. I'll get off at stop Y and then walk for another 10 minutes to my hotel").

Do all of this ahead of time and you'll find that there really isn't much to it. You're worried because you don't know what to expect. Having a plan and informing yourself in advance should take away a lot of the stress.

Let me know if you have any more questions. I've traveled by myself a lot and attend international conferences at least every other month.

for some reason giving robots the ability to use weapons of mass destruction doesn't sit right with me

You're not alone. It's a hot topic in the legal and ethical circles right now. Autonomous weapon systems of any kind are still being fit into the rules of warfare and nuclear capabilities only make it that more of a touchy subject. There's well known instances of computer systems alerting people that nuclear warfare is imminent, only for the operator to decide against firing back and and it later being revealed that a bug or system/data flaw was responsible for a false warning. Had this been an entirely automated process without a human in the loop, much of the US would have been turned into a nuclear wasteland.

That isn't to say that the Russian submarine works like that (it's doubtful even) but your concerns aren't misplaced.

Quote from: Flee on January 24, 2018, 06:11:13 PM

Quote from: Dietrich Six on January 24, 2018, 06:06:56 PM

Quote from: Flee on January 24, 2018, 04:55:46 PM

Quote from: Snake on January 24, 2018, 04:32:45 PM

Alright dude, I can tell you have no real interest in sorting this out. You just do you then, I guess.

It's for the best flee, snake is just a meany poo poo head.

Also, I'll be building a PC when I get my tax returns so we can be r6 buddies.

What specs are you going for? And does the game go on sale often? If it's cheap I might consider getting it.

Not sure on specs, I got round about $1000 to play with but zero equipment.

The game is on sale all the time.

Looks like it goes down to like $8 every so often. I'll probably get it when it's at that price.

Make a thread in Gaming when you're deciding on a PC. Several people on here who know this stuff so you'll definitely receive some good advice on what parts to get and whatnot.

Putin's got a massive one

It seems like war is inevitable for these sociopaths

With each other? I doubt it. I think Trump knows that Russia's destructive capabilities still pose a major threat to the US. Not in the sense that Russia could successfully invade the country, but they're still capable of killing millions if it would come down to an actual war. Concerning China, he probably realises that going to war with them would be disastrous for the US economy and trade. He's just grandstanding. And if things would ever escalate with North Korea, I doubt he'd take the plunge without knowing that China would back off. Then again, this is Donny we're talking about.

Also, US top military has already said they won't follow through with suicidal orders like nuclear war, so he'd probably be stopped before doing anything too crazy.