> Theoretically, it can guide operators to course-correct during a call to win over an angry customer
It's more like I feel like I have to get heated during every customer service call I might make now-a-days (at least when it comes to big companies) since calmly and rationally explaining your problem seems to give much worse results and waste much more of your own time.
This, the lauding of the engineering and business efforts involved mentioned in other comments on this article pales in comparison to the continued oppression of human rights in China and government censored access to information. Let's stop praising technology that doesn't do anything positive for the world.
> The need for a deep sense of caution when working on a new frontier struck me as more rational than a stance that basically boiled down to "let's assume we haven't overlooked any potential risks".
It's an economically profitable assumption for the particular businesses which happen to operate with it. Especially when they are able to lobby congress to encourage this point of view.
I believe that the traffic patterns (up/down request amount and timing) will still look sufficiently different from a 'normal' https connection to be detected and cut off within an hour.
> Esser has his reasons - "Short reminder: Europeans are not allowed to disclose vulns privately to a foreign company like Apple without registering dual-use export"
I don't think of this as strictly career advancement. I think he is making an important legal and political point. If there were never serious issues while we operate under said laws, then they would never be changed or subject to question either.
> The citizens here are to blame. The police are just giving the public what it wants. It's a county full of McMansions and extreme paranoia
Your comment makes it sound like the fear and paranoia are a natural consequence of the environment and the US citizens are responsible for this kind of police force.
Fear and paranoia exist in the US primarily due to the media portrayal of certain events and the fact that political parties and certain corporate interests have a lot to gain from cultivating this mentality in the population.
> [1] It's notable that this story takes place just across the Potomac from where those parents got in trouble with the police for letting their kids walk home less than a mile from school.
Yes, for example the safety of children in the US - I have not seen any statistically significant evidence to support the statement that they are less safe today than they would have been 50 years ago. This is a very likely case of media and culturally induced paranoia.
Yeah except the US basically ruined Cuba's economy with sanctions for what 50+ years? And another ~25 after there was no more soviet threat - just to stick it to the damn unrepentant commies. Because forcing the rest (majority) of the populace to experience economic hardship for dozens of years is really an admirable foreign policy.
The US didn't ruin Cuba's economy. Cuba did it to itself with the nationalization of all industry, prohibition of any private enterprise, limited access to information, and restricted freedom of movement, among other things. The Castros don't care about the well-being of the Cuban people, only their own hold on power. In the 90s, after the collapse of the USSR and its subsidies brought the Cuban economy to its knees, the Castros temporarily liberalized parts of the economy. As soon as the situation improved enough to prevent a revolt, they renewed the crackdown on private enterprise with a vengeance.
In the most generous remotely tenable reading of the facts for the US policy, it protected the Cuban policies you point to by providing an easy, convenient, and credible PR scapegoat for the deleterious effects of the Cuban policies, thereby reducing pressure on the regime to alter them.
> The US didn't ruin Cuba's economy. Cuba did it to itself
This is almost entirely fiction, although I'm sure this is the common political narrative. Cuba is a small island in the middle of the Caribbean cut-off from it's biggest and most developed trading partner, which would have been what 70-90%+ of the economy?
But yes of - course the arch-villain fidel castro and those damn commies.
Suppressing the middle class, nationalizing industries, disaffecting business people all contribute to tanking their economy. Didn't the cutting-off happen AFTER all that?
This is the modern narrative for revolutions in Latin/South America? "Middle Class", really? Because well fed people providing for their families decided to take up arms? Or because the well-fed were a tiny minority, and the rest lived in poverty under the economic oppression of former colonialists?
Don't know what that's all about; sorry to press your hot button. But a stable society needs a middle class. You take businesses away, drive people to leave their homeland, its gonna be disruptive.
Communism doesn't work. I don't understand why so many people here with anti-US bones to pick won't or can't understand that The idea Castro's Cuba would have been wonderfully prosperous while Pol Pot, Stalin, the Jong-un dynasty, etc all have failed is ridiculous. Cuba did model itself after these regimes politically, with requisite horrible human rights abuses to keep the population from asserting their natural rights as free citizens who should be able to petition their government, hold property, start businesses, etc.
China is only doing well because it liberalized so much so quickly and more or less run a capitalist market economy.
Given conditions, what else could have realistically be done? Post Bay of Pigs, things were gonna be hostile ( and Fidel Castro fed politically on the dischord ). Cuba sort of wanted to be offline. The Revolution timed with Eisenhower's departure, so Kennedy set the tone.
Bay of Pigs was a busted op; there is long term blowback from those.
Might be worth gaining a little perspective on the Caribbean in general - James Michener's "Caribbean" is quite good , an easy and entertaining read and sketches out the basic historical framework. We don't think of the historical significance of any of the climes which were once Spanish holdings enough in English speaking cultures, IMO.
Of particular interest is the effect of the uprising in Haiti, which we still feel today.
Also, I am somewhat surprised Canada didn't jump on trade with Cuba - ten years ago, vacations there were advertised in Montreal. The Canadian embassy in Cuba never closed nor did the Cuban embassy in Canada.
Yes, but the last 25 years, for what? Unlike North Korea or China (our major economic partner) Cuba has neither a greater record of human rights abuses nor Nuclear weapons.
Edit: I'm not arguing Castro is not bad, but as far as dictators goes he is probably a lesser evil; as it stands US Foreign policy has done nothing to displace Castro* but a great deal to oppress the Cuban populace.
*(although we did displace a number of democratically elected governments in other Latin American nations) -
I won't disagree, but Castro used animus against the Yanqui for political gain for forever. Over the last 25 years, it may be that the Florida based Cuban expat political bloc alone was enough to set that in stone.
