231–240 of 414 posts
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US prisons are so full because people do the time.
They’re full because of the prison industrial complex.
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I am coming to support the notion that ISPs and Internet Backbone providers should be treated as first class utilities like electrical companies and not be able to deny access except for things like non-payment. Otherwise we do run the risk of a physically balkanized internet.
not even non-payment. poor people are disproportionately affected by non-payment cancellations. might be ok if it were means-tested, like only allowing non-payment shut-offs if the customer is above the mean income (even for small businesses).
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His actions in the JSTOR situation were ultimately deemed lawful. But, without passing judgement one way or the other, Aaron's beliefs about free speech and information freedom which informed his activism cannot be reasonably described as moderate.
I meant more moderate than burning a Target store or starting a revolution as in the tweet. And if we stick to objectivism, then they definitely are more moderate than even the status quo - semi-obsolete middlemen holding a rent-seeking/regulatory capture over some of the most important information available to mankind.
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Reddit has conveniently left him out of their about page, despite being a cofounder: https://www.redditinc.com/ About Aaron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
And they've explained this multiple times. Aaron was given the title of co-founder, but he joined well after the site had launched, and then proceeded to go AWOL and not work for months until he was fired. Given that he was only very briefly involved in the site, it doesn't make sense to call him a co-founder, even if that was his de jure title. E: At the same time, I feel like I should state - Aaron Swartz was a mar…
A company with the mendacity to misrepresent an employee as a co-founder in order to attract said employee wasn't happy with that employee's performance. So they boldly refuse to continue misrepresenting him as a co-founder on their about page.
If so, I would like to nominate Reddit for the Silicon Valley Courage Award. (However, I think Facebook is the clear front-runner for clamping down on "Stop the Steal" disinformation now that both houses of Congress and the presidency are under Democratic control.)
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Why would he? I think he's even more convinced of it today. "Free speech" is a pretty right-wing issue nowadays and people assume it's a dog whistle for hate speech. If you want to be a progressive leftist like Randall Munroe, you can't advocate for free speech without hurting your reputation in the current environment.
If this [1] is the xkcd strip we're talking about, and don't see how Randall Munroe isn't advocating for free speech, nor how it is a left vs right issue. He's simply saying "free speech means the government cannot arrest you for what you say", nothing more, nothing less. He furthermore argues that the right to free speech doesn't mean everyone else can't criticize you, have your shows/books/whatever canceled, shout…
"Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences!" is one of the most infuriating lines I've ever had the displeasure to hear parroted. What else could it possibly be, but the general idea of not being punished for saying things? The only thing that matters to the principle of freedom of speech is those consequences.
Who cares whether it's a government that decides that when you express a certain opinion, you lose your job- or twitter?
Funny, but not surprising, how even self-proclaimed leftists will side with capital when it's treading on the right people.
You might say "but you can't force people to platform/associate with those they find odious!", to which I reply 'of course you can'- there's laws against unlimited free association, with the argument that bulk group dynamics end up diminishing individual freedom on net.
You might say opinions are a different category from e.g. ethnicity, as they can be changed, while race can't.
In that case, in the future when we can change our bodies in a day, will it be alright if 'race', no longer existing as such, becomes as acceptably targetable as speech?
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They’re full because of the prison industrial complex.
Industry has nothing to do with it. Every country has industry. The reason the US has so many in prison is because its people are the more hair-on-fire moralistic crusaders in the civilized world and they want people in prison.
The prison industrial complex is a deliberate lengthening of sentences and increasing of mandatory jail time for non-violent offenses designed to increase the for-profit prison population to increase profit.
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His actions in the JSTOR situation were ultimately deemed lawful. But, without passing judgement one way or the other, Aaron's beliefs about free speech and information freedom which informed his activism cannot be reasonably described as moderate.
> His actions in the JSTOR situation were ultimately deemed lawful. Can you provide a citation of that? Swartz was overcharged, but clearly unlawful (a breach of contract at the bare minimum).
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"Telephone directory" is a term that pretty much no one uses for phonebook.
I’m not sure what the GP means by it being the metaphor to replace phone book (“contacts app” would be my off-the-cuff suggestion), but I’m not that old and I’ve heard it referred to as a directory. I haven’t heard it recently , but that has more to do with the disuse of phone books, I think. Maybe it’s a regional thing?
That is probably fair. Anywhere I've lived in the US, someone would know (well, maybe not if they were young enough) what you meant by "telephone directory" but almost everyone would say "phonebook" at least in casual conversation. It's also true that when you would dial 411 for a number, that was called directory assistance. (And a listing of phone numbers for the staff in an organization would probably be called a staff directory or a telephone directory or something along those lines.)
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> Does the average Joe really reads articles from sci-hub ? What a ridiculous statement, do you truly want to live in a world where they can't? Most authors on sci-hub themselves would struggle with containers. If a mechanic mocked a room full of people for not being able to change their own oil what would you think of them? Please reconsider such an ideological stance.
Well, no, but they actually can, so it's not the question. I doubt that most people able to read and publish complex scientitic papers would "struggle" to follow what is overall a one page sequence of instructions to enter in a computer. You don't need to understand containers to run docker. I don't really get the analogy with the mechanic ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Maybe we live in different worlds but the average (non-cs)professor would very much struggle with this stuff. I've seen some barely being able to use basic programs, they are skilled in very different domains and no one will bat an eyelid if they slowly click on the mouse to copy/paste every day of the week. Rocking the command line is certainly not in their job description for the most part.
Even comp-sci academics do work that is horrendously bad and not even close to what would pass in the workplace for an entry level graduate.
> the analogy with the mechanic
Essentially an adult saying to a group of children "this is so simple for me, what are you a dumbass?"
These days sometimes the same entities provide both SSL certificates and DNS, but they are different services.
> Handshake is “is effectively a decentralized domain name server,” Roquerre said. Instead of using the web-standard certificate authority to authenticate user connections to a server, Handshake stores references to the IP address of the websites registered in its system. Namebase is a platform that offers users access to the Handshake network
That makes no sense at all. But it sounds like handshake is simply an alternate DNS protocol? Or does it also serve as a certificate authority somehow? Is it actually more decentralized than DNS (which is already of course decentralized in one axis, but not the relevant one for keeping a lookup available if the entity hosting DNS decides to remove it).
Very confusing.
It seems like tor .onion address would be an actually mature solution to this problem, instead of this thing that seems like press release babble?