Viewing profile — rbecker

> not a system that works as intended [..] flooding the market with warm bodies to undercut local labor. Are you sure that's not intended? "Not enough migrants arriving to keep pay…

Google is using Widevine to control the browser market. Can't make a competitive browser without their permission. That is the purpose of DRM, and it works.

Instead, they're chanting "White silence equals violence". I'm sure demonization of a group that's on the way to becoming a minority will work out great.

The point isn't to protect content, but to need permission from the DRM makers to make a viable browser (or TV, or music player, or ebook reader, or...) Without their blessing, it …

Justifiably so. For example, social science research proposals likely to have findings with an unwanted political impact have a 40-50% chance of being granted, compared to 95% for …

> the most fundamental idea is minimizing the amount of surprises a user faces I wouldn't call being given the master key to my own computer "surprising".

Without principles, your freedom will be (is being!) slowly chiseled away, pragmatically accepting each small step. By the time even pragmatism tells you to refuse, it'll be too la…

> Freedom and computer security are in fundamental opposition. Only if you interpret "freedom" as "freedom for apps" instead of "freedom for the user". None of what you said preclu…

> Walled gardens are safer, and usually have some implicit or explicit quality guarantee (like the Nintendo seal of quality). And consumers who want to limit themselves to the safe…

It must be very convenient to be able to dismiss research done by anyone that might be remotely interested in publishing findings you dislike. When a left-leaning institution publi…

> Surprised to see the level of anger here about this. Anger could be due to: 1) Kill competition by offering product at a loss. 2) Once competition is dead and people are invested…

Even the Brookings link cites a few studies, while the rest of this thread's posts offer nothing but hand-wringing and loaded questions. And you're right, the links aren't exclusiv…

It seems what you consider odd enough to require a citation depends on your political orientation. Citations for the original claim: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0e3d/640709c88…

Dating experience corresponds to less stable marriage: https://img.ifunny.co/images/0b11659d375d3cc296d5683e8e54e28...

You're not wrong. Both can be (and often are) abuses of market power.

Do you think it's possible to hold an opinion other than "this should be illegal" and "this is OK"? Do you think even free speech purists can see the danger in allowing too much in…

The citations can only include mistakes, not the enormous (and much more effective) bias in choosing which stories to run and how to frame them. Do you think it's a coincidence you…

But when it's your sacred cows that science is slaying, you're not a "denialist", you're just wisely cautious about misinterpreting narrow studies, that are confounded by environme…

Instead, circumventing it is illegal.

> It is a huge leap to go from "there's less Vitamin C in this supermarket carrot" to "you will get fewer diseases and/or live longer or better if you eat carrots from soil 100 yea…

Is there a specific "senior citizen" version of iPhone you have to request? Or is it as simple as toggling and password-protecting a "senior citizen/parental" mode somewhere in the…

If a publisher is found to have published a book without license, would it be reasonable to find all who bought the book, break into their homes, take the book, and leave in its pl…

> You are avoiding my point. I addressed your point directly. You claimed content might not be available otherwise (and that this is the reason consumers want DRM), I gave examples…