sbv @ sbv @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

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Last month, the U.S. and Britain announced a trade deal related to a range of products. But Britain’s 2-per-cent DST was not affected.

In a statement at the time, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the U.S. “is disappointed that Britain was unwilling to agree to fully address its discriminatory Digital Services Tax.”

Britain kept theirs. They'd probably argue that they aren't European, but y'know.

I don't think university libraries check IDs until you take out a book, so you should be able to walk in. You might want to verify though.

I feel like this is the default. Many of the people in my life don't want to make decisions. They just want to do the simple things that bring immediate contentment and avoid everything else.

Thanks for posting these. It's always nice to see the whimsy.

The parental controls should work consistently and reliably.

You took my faves off the list: libraries and coffee shops.

You could try university libraries or the Archives. I don't think either has public kettles.

That's a really weird way of looking at it.

That's how I roll.

Without the database, there's no central ledger to consult as to whether or not you're legally a person.

We're already seeing them do that without a database. 🤷‍♂️

Other countries are able to maintain internal databases without using them to screw over their own citizens (except when they do). The problem isn't the database.

Three of the 10 members of CPPIB’s board of directors also sit on the boards of fossil fuel companies. The CDPQ, by contrast, does not have any board directors who also sit on the board of a fossil fuel company. CPPIB’s board includes Barry Perry (former CEO of Fortis) who now sits on the board of Capital Power; Judith Athaide who also sits on the board of Kiwetinohk Energy, and Ashleigh Everett who is also the president and a director of Royal Canadian Securities, a holding company for Domo Gasoline Corporation.

Disconnecting a computer from the network is murder and must be punished as such.

See the UK Post Office accounting scandal, in which a persistent computer error went unfixed for decades and caused hundreds of post office employees to be fired and dragged through courts for corruption that never happened. A good chunk of them committed suicide.

The database is the least important part of the system: the organizational structure, rules, and procedures are way more important, because they actively help or harm people.

no no, it's an input to a Palantir database

"I stay in constant prayer that they get seized," she said. "I don't want to know that I'm responsible for somebody losing their life."

Betcha she is.

I miss the techno-utopianism of the 90s. I think it was built on naivete - we had no idea how capitalism worked, and the absolute hunger investors have for new markets.

One of the original sins of that utopianism was saying everything should be free (as in have no cost). So many of our current problems stem from how we refused to pay for stuff. News is a great example:

• journalists must be paid to do good work;
• so "free" news sites get their money from nefarious sources.

To be fair, part of that was because we had a hard time figuring out how to charge users for stuff. Newspapers gave their content away because they didn't have the technical acumen to set up a reasonably billing service. But I digress.

When we pushed the techno-utopia, we kind of forgot that people need to eat, and we pushed pushed pushed the idea that services shouldn't have a cost. And here we are: real journalism is hard to come by, while agenda-based drek is the default.

As someone in the software/networking space, I have a hard time with the author's lack of attribution of the control/evasion characteristics of networks to people (developers of protocols, network operators, and users). Yeah, he admits the MPAA exists, but dude doesn't mention Bram Cohen.

Describing files as "artificial life" in

Because peer-to-peer networks on which all files replicate are unpredictable complex systems, the files themselves can be seen as a form of nonorganic life. The reproduction of files can be described with a family tree in the same way that genetic family trees show the relationships between biological relatives.

is tortured.

Yeah, control/evasion is an arms race, but it isn't meaningfully described as interactions within file sharing networks. It's interactions between people, institutions, laws, legislators, courts, and software owned by different actors.

Generally speaking, no programmable networked device is guaranteed to be under your control.

You can make strong arguments about certain types of hardware and software, but it is always possible that it contains a backdoor from the manufacturer, and it is almost guaranteed that it has multiple vulnerabilities that would give a remote attacker full control.

Related

Edit: Generally, I agree with the sentiment that things shouldn't be this way, but that's the world we live in. Given how we build software and hardware, we need to be able to update our devices to fix vulnerabilities. As long as that requirement exists, no device can be considered trustworthy.

Looks like: trees and cooling centres. And better municipal planning.

Did I miss anything?

Welp, I know what I'm reading next. Thanks!

I always enjoy these low-citation think pieces. It's not that I think the author is wrong, it's that they're producing a philosophical argument about the real world. It should have citations and references to studies that support the thesis, but it's a "just trust me bro". The ideas are usually fun, but they tell you more about the author than the world.

Having said that: I don't think the tribalism the author described ever went away. We have a two tiered society where the in-group is the main tribe, and everyone else gets battered about by its power.

Of course I'm talking about white rich dudes - if you're part of the moneyed set, or look pretty close to them, then you're probably going to get the easy version of justice. If you're a bit different, then you're part of the Other tribe, and you get harassed by the police, shat on by the media, and a weaker form of justice.

And no, I'm not gonna cite anything, because the original author didn't either.