nkw's comments

So I like to think I'm pretty darn on the liberal side of the spectrum, but the (ACA if Democrat) (Obamacare if Republican) was overall a giant handout to the health insurance companies while carrying forward almost all of the pre-existing problems with health care in the US (see the charts in the original article). Both parties share substantial amount of blame for the current state of health care in the US.

It is honestly such an entrenched and complex problem I do not see any way it is going to be fixed (or get better) anytime soon.

Where in the OFAC regulations or any IEEPA type executive order is a requirement that a U.S. bank obtain proof of U.S. citizenship from an accountholder?

> It’s a regulatory requirement.

Really? Do you have a citation to that regulation?

I'm not sure how much legal protection such silliness buys them. I'm sitting in an airport lounge in Frankfurt and just flipped on a VPN to access the article. I can't imagine that whether or not I access the website via the IP the airport lounge gave me or via my VPN IP in the US makes much difference in the real world as to whether or not they would have obligations under the GDPR.

If anyone wants it, I put a copy of the actual order here: https://www.woodlaw.com/casedocs/gov.uscourts.cand.305531.24...

Even though it is marked as an opinion (and should be free) I don't see an easy way to access N.D.Cal. opinions from their webpage without a pacer login unless it is whatever they deem a "Case of Interest".

I also downloaded it with the RECAP extension[1] so it should be available on CourtListener[2] soon.

[1] https://free.law/recap/

[2] https://www.courtlistener.com/

Not much beyond looking at the product pages. The only piece of Office 365 that we are in love with is Word. Slack is the choice right now for us because we can use G Suite as our identity provider for SSO and the Slack integrations that are available for other products we use as well as our internal system.

The effort barrier just to get Office 365 to use G Suite for SSO keeps us from seriously deploying any of the other Office 365 features. It seems MS has made setting that up particularly annoying while almost all other app/providers have made it blissfully simple. We would probably be more likely to move to the new Hangouts Chat as a slack replacement, just because we are much more likely to continue to use Gmail/Calendar vs ever moving to Outlook 365/Exchange.

The primary roadblock for us is gDocs. Sheets would probably meet our needs because spreadsheet aren't really a core need, however word processing/documents are our lifeblood. While gDocs has improved it doesn't come close to Word for us. It isn't just that it is a web app -- the Office 365 web based Word actually would be usable for us vs. the desktop apps. That fact is actually pretty amazing to me, I would not have anticipated that to ever be the case when Microsoft first put out their web based version of Word. As it happens a while back I mentioned on here one of the big bugs/lack features that kept us from using the web based Word and some guy from Microsoft asked for more details and then the issue was resolved a few weeks later. That was pretty surprising and impressive to me.

I have no doubt Google has the talent and ability to make Docs competitive, but for some reason it is just not a priority for them.

I'm going to look at Hangouts Chat, but we had a particularly painful process (for no technological reason) when we migrated from using Hangouts for IM to Slack and I don't really look forward to the eye-rolls that are going to come with "Remember Hangouts? We're going back..." even if the Hangouts Chat is an entirely different product. But that is our issue.. Kudos to Google if it can eliminate the need for Slack.

I don't really get why this is that useful. Except maybe the Gmail/Dropbox integration. Our office pays for 1) G Suite - from which we use Gmail and Calendar, 2) Dropbox for Business for file storage/sync, 3) Office 365 for Word and Excel, and 4) Slack.

I would really really like to give my money to one company, except Google Docs/Drive sucks (er, doesn't meet our use case), Office 365 - Outlook sucks (in comparison to Gmail) as well as whatever the Microsoft file syncing option is (OneDrive?). Our Dropbox for Business comes up for renewal this month and Google and Microsoft's file sync stuff isn't remotely comparable. Same for Slack vs the Hangouts incarnation of the moment.

I primarily blame Google. We are probably paying an extra $500/user/year because outside of Gmail and Calendar the other G Suite services are pretty awful in comparison to their competition. It is super frustrating.

This is a very insightful comment. In my opinion one of the largest shortcomings of our system of minting new lawyers is a lack of practical training. While doctors generally must both go to medical school and complete an internship and/or residency in order to treat patients, a freshly licensed lawyer can represent someone without previously having ever entered a courthouse, drafted a will, or taken a deposition. I think most recognize this is a problem and there are some law schools that are doing an excellent job of addressing the issue by requiring 3rd year practice court, externships, or clinics that actually give lawyers some experience in the things they will be doing after law school. Bar associations are trying to address the issue through mentor programs and CLEs aimed at new lawyers. No longer can the profession depend on mid to large law firms to bring lawyers up through the ranks, both because their clients aren't really interested in subsidizing it and the firms cannot or will not put in the resources to train all those entering the profession.

> Accessing PACER from a courthouse is free.

... other than the half day you had to take off work, transportation to the courthouse and fees for printing out an electronic document -- and that is if you are local. What if I want to get a 'free' document in a court that is 2,000 miles away?

> Accessing PACER for a case you are involved in is free.

This is false. If you are an ECF user you theoretically can get "one free view" of a document as they are filed in a case you are a party, however this rarely works so you end up having to pay the pacer fee anyway. You still have to pay PACER fees anytime you view the docket, search, or view any document in a "case you are involved in".

> Getting judicial opinions from PACER is free.

... a relative recent development and only covers some opinions.

> If you convince a judge that the cost of PACER is a burden to you, it is free.

Really? You have a citation for that? I'm sure I can convince at least one federal judge my several thousand dollar a month pacer bill is a burden. That would be great.

> The misleading thing about the “free law” angle is that PACER does not record “the law.”

This is pretty much wrong. There are a variety of things on PACER that would be considered "the law" from opinions (although a lot of them have recently been made available) to court orders and judgments.

> It’s a system for accessing parties’ legal filings.

... as well as rulings made by the court and filings by the government. All of which are public records.

>Opinions rendered by courts, which are “law” are generally posted on the courts’ websites: http://www.nysb.uscourts.gov/judges-info/opinions.

Only some and this is a recent development.

> PACER is a service that’s primarily used by litigants that’s value is primarily to litigants.

What is your basis for this assertion? The information on PACER is used by journalists, historians, litigants, lawyers, scholars and others. Why do we need to be concerned with who or why citizens want to access public information held by the government?

> Litigants who need PACER access but can’t afford it are given free access.

Why should a governments' citizens have to 'afford' access to the public information of said government?

> It’s not unreasonable for the government to charge a user fee to access it, like all the other kinds of user fees the government charges for public services. (Indeed, the government charges substantial filing fees for availing oneself of the courts in the first place.)

PACER charges are not cost based fees, unless you take the view that the "cost basis" is all of the technology infrastructure of the judicial branch. Rather it funds what is essentially a technology orientated slush fund that the AO of the US Courts doesn't want to let go of.

> had to be completed in a hurry

"We reported this issue to Intel, AMD and ARM on 2017-06-01"

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/01/reading-privi...

Well for me the title. The premise of the article appears to be "author unconvinced bitcoin is stable store of value". The title appears to be nothing but click bait.

It is an enormously broad statute. Many would say too much so. This article[1] advocates that it is too broad, but provides some useful examples of how it has been interpreted and applied. Whether or not it was intended to cover something like this is not really relevant as to whether or not the statute was violated. I think what you might be getting at is the question of whether or not the statute is unconstitutionally vague, which is a pretty good argument, but has been mostly rejected by the courts.

[1] https://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=http...

Off the top of my head I don't know. Is the existence of a prior prosecution based on identical or substantially similar facts a condition precedent for a statute to be violated?

Unless you were asking for the state law which would be http://codes.findlaw.com/ny/penal-law/pen-sect-190-25.html

18 U.S.C. § 1001

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001

1) Yes. I would say "no". 2) Not very. 3) Yes, but they are not likely to be effective or easy to enforce.

If they want to look at it badly enough they can buy it.

> 1Password X was designed for our hosted 1Password service and connects directly to your account.

Agilebits/1Passwords continued shoving of their 'hosted' services down their customer's throats amazes me. I'm not even particularly against SaaS/cloud/hosted/subscription/whatever, except a password manager is exactly the type of product that I do not want in that type of environment. Is it really impossible to have a successful software business without this BS? I guess I am in the minority but I would much rather you charge me more for the software or charge me for the upgrades, than push me into your hosted cloud-subscription stuff.

Agilebits/1Password was by far the best product out there, with astonishing goodwill amongst their customer base, which they have managed to lose, not to competitors or outside forces, but rather by incinerating it themselves.

1) Why Google?

Because media attention and it plays well with the current Missouri AG's base. e.g. pseudo-libertarian, anti-big brother, technology, coast-elites, etc.

There are no statutes in Missouri that regulate in any meaningful way the use of consumer data by technology companies. Also, actual law enforcement or regulatory investigations are rarely proceeded with press releases to the effect of "we are going to investigate you", so I would imagine this doesn't go further than said press release and Google spending some money at one of Missouri's larger law firms.

2) Why Missouri? How come a republican is doing this?

Current AG [1] is the likely republican nominee for the Senate seat currently held by Claire McCaskill. It will likely be an extraordinarily expensive and contested race with tons of money and resources flowing into the election from across the country. Despite winning statewide office in the Missouri Trump-landslide, current AG is relatively unknown. I imagine he will be using his office to make a name for himself in the coming months. (I'm not saying that is any different than his predecessors, both democrat and republican -- both have used the office as a political soapbox to propel them to their next office.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Hawley [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_McCaskill