This sentiment was quite popular around 2009-2011 with real-name policies, the "nymwars", and what have you. The idea that the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory [1] explained the noxious state of online discourse had taken root, and people believed, often in good faith, that peeling back the layers of anonymity from larger communities would combat bad behavior. Both Google+ and Battle.net infamously implemented real name policies during this period to very little discernible effect, and eventually reverted their policies. To this day human group interaction remains challenging to control, with or without authoritarian means.
I understand that the intended goal of this policy is likely orthogonal to the argument presented, but it's a surprisingly weak argument in face of all the previous attempts showing the contrary. You can effectively point to South Korea, where they relented on this [2], after the intended effect was shown to be practically insignificant, while simultaneously putting users at increased risk.
While I don't like the recent executive order from Trump, this situation seems unrelated to it, instead revolving around the earlier H.R.158 [0] bill that passed at the tail end of 2015 (the article does mention this in passing), which disqualifies any non-citizen from entering the US under the visa waiver program if they have traveled to one of the seven countries since march 1st, 2011 (amongst other things). Trump's recent EO explicitly makes exceptions for diplomatic passports, and I worry that conflating these documents will only undermine the rhetorical grounds for repealing them.
I just want to underscore the law at fault instead of fueling partisanship.
From the aftenposten[1] article he was in the US last year, after the law was passed, with same passport and the same stamp and was not stopped or questioned about it.
I kind of agree. I don't know how the process works which is why I'm asking for someone more knowledgeable. But my current understanding is that is how it is done.
Or pretend to have lost their passport and get a new passport without stamp. Or get a secondary passport that's made available by most governments because of issues like this one.
But you are right in principle. Letting people through because they look important is a big security hole.
>Has he visited the US between that law passing and before Trumps ban without any issues?
Doesn't say much, as it only takes a random border idiot to get into that situation -- so you might, or might not, even if before you were coming in without issue.
Yes, same far from defending Trump. But in theory, if DHS would have followed the Obama bill, he should have denied him entry as he can't use VWP anymore.
You are aware that getting a new, clean passport without any trace of his visit to Iran would have cost him less than the efforts of going through, say, getting an ESTA in place?
If customs is triggered by what countries one has visited in the past, know that only someone who has means no harm has these in his or her passport. All others will remove this evidence prior to flying...
I'm surprised he didn't have a second diplomatic passport.
I've always had two standard US Blue passports. All I was required to do to get them was write a explanation as to why I needed it and await approval. The most common reason is travel to Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, keeping them separate reduces some of the headaches.
My understanding is that it was because US travelers with an Israel stamp would have trouble if later trying to visit a country not friendly toward Israel.
I was just there last summer. They gave me a bar-coded receipt in lieu of the passport stamp.
There's still an issue that if you visit Jordan from Israel you get a stamp from Jordan that states the entry point.
I had a conversation about this yesterday and I assumed USA keeps a database of your entries into other countries thus ending this new passport hack. Can anyone confirm this?
I'd like to see a comprehensive history of adblocking. from webfree to adblock [0] to wherever we are today, because it seems like we're stuck in a cycle. Time and time again i see the web and it's users going through the same motions [1] [2]. It's the same arguments and the same experiments being tried, whose success and failure are as predictable as ever [3]. Today is just another day under the falling sky.
I hope this entices developers to reconsider the use of private use area (PUA) [0] based icon fonts for key navigational elements. I see them used time and again, and a slow connection or spotty CDN can render these sites unusable. [1]
If you absolutely have to use icon fonts, at least use ligatures instead of a PUA. That lets you fallback to a whole word if the specific font isn't present, or if the user relies on assistive technology like a screen reader.
I've made a point of installing a variety of extra Unicode fonts like Symbola, and I still find sites with characters that don't render properly. I do see the magnifying glass on the parent comment's site though...
Thanks for explaining the issue so clearly. I see this a lot after installing Privacy Badger and I wondered what it was called. In the rare instances that I needed one of these for page navigation, I've just hovered the mouse pointer over it and guessed at it's purpose by looking at the URL. It's one of those things that are an annoyance, but not quite a big enough issue to spend my time solving it or learning the cause.
Me too. I blocked web fonts in Firefox because a lot of them rendered text like trash when I had font anti-aliasing/sub-pixel rendering disabled (I prefer blocky-crispness to blurry-smoothness). Those stupid icon fonts have been the collateral damage.
And what's the point of sticking a handful of icons into a downloadable font rather than just downloading a few images?
> And what's the point of sticking a handful of icons into a downloadable font rather than just downloading a few images?
Some reasons:
* They are scalable vector images without the download bloat and processing load of rendering them with SVG.
* Raster icons need to closely match the screen DPI or they look awful - eg Retina displays made raster icons look like blocky pixellated afterthoughts.
* They inherit colors, sizes etc from CSS the same way as their surrounding elements.
It's always great to see people improve their workflows in creative ways. At the same time, I find it strange how insensible browser defaults are for productivity (why do ctrl+F & ctrl+G do the same thing?). Developers tend to zoom around in their text editor at breakneck speeds, but slow to a comparative crawl in the browsers themselves. If I press F12 in Chrome or Firefox, I have no idea where focus even goes.
My primary annoyance is how ctrl+L (and alt+D) is the standard "focus urlbar" keyboard shortcut. It's definitely one of the most useful actions, but the shortcut requires a large motion or two hands. I rebound it to ctrl+Q for a while, but reverted as I just kept closing browser windows on other people's computers.
Ultimately, I recommend any person who uses a program often to explore ways of using it more effectively, not just for speed, but also to prevent RSI.
Yep. Something like ~20mbit symmetric fiber service was supposed to be rolled out by the incumbent telcos nationwide back in the 1990's. Super glad to see that they kept to their promises.
ever since that hanfree story [0], Kickstarter has been a bit more explicit about creator obligations [1]. Creators are now told to "make every reasonable effort to find another way of bringing the project to the best possible conclusion for backers" should the project fail or rewards not make it to backers. The terms of use also has an explicit warning about possible legal action at the bottom.
That's actually a watered-down version of what Kickstarter had before, with significantly less protection for backers. Previously the ToS said creators had to give either the rewards they'd promised or a refund. Kickstarter made a big deal about protecting backers a few years ago after ZionEyez took a quarter of a million in backer funds and then disappeared to a tropical beach never to be heard from again, then quietly removed those protections and more after the heat died down.
Not requiring a refund does seem somewhat reasonable. It's not as good for the backers, but won't terrify the companies being funded with a super-massive liability.
The link you provide is interesting. However, any technical explanation doesn't solve the optical illusion that the last three letters appear to be closer together than the first three letters.
I understand that the intended goal of this policy is likely orthogonal to the argument presented, but it's a surprisingly weak argument in face of all the previous attempts showing the contrary. You can effectively point to South Korea, where they relented on this [2], after the intended effect was shown to be practically insignificant, while simultaneously putting users at increased risk.
[1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
[2] http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/12/30/2011...