61–70 of 154 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the things I have found so alarming about a lot of recent revelations is just how cheap congress goes for.
I only-kinda-jokingly say that I'd be willing to be the sacrifice and get a second mortgage on my house if it could buy the entire nation some new rights. Our politicians routinely sell out smaller issues for "downpayment in a coastal metro" level of money. It's just about within reach of a middle-class urban adult to directly fund with some personal sacrifices. I feel like we like to imagine that these corporations…
It's important to remember that rights cannot be received, or bought. Privileges can. Equally easily privileges can be taken away again.
But rights can only be won in a fight.
Sadly, they also require a constant readiness to fight for keeping them; in civilized societies this happens in courtrooms, but escalations to the worse happen periodically.
> DAO-216-26 bans differential privacy and other modern (and not so modern) techniques. It restricts disclosure avoidance techniques to “coarsening,”
> DAO-216-26 forbids “noise infusion”, described as “methods that involve modifying a dataset by adding random values, or noise.”
> By forbidding noise infusion, the directive bans the disclosure avoidance techniques at the core of dozens of data releases over the last three decades.
> Civil servants will do their best to comply with this order while still following the laws that require them to protect the confidentiality of respondents’ data. To balance these competing mandates, they may seek to produce less data or coarsen data so much that it is unusable. Or they might be pushed by political actors to publish data that can be easily unmasked...
This current administration is cursed.
There has been debate among statisticians and political scientists about using differential privacy for census data. 2020 was actually the first Decennial Census that used differential privacy. This is the mandated census done every 10 years that counts population and is used for apportionment. Some have criticized the use of differential privacy.[1][2] But others have argued that coarsening does not protect privacy…
I'd like to emphasize that coarsening is not just theoretically non-private, a number of attacks that lead to leaking personally identifiable data were demonstrated on the 2010 census. So it's not really a he-said/she-said situation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Free housing, free food, free health care, and free income are also wildly popular with the US adult population. The problem is that those things are not really "free" because somebody else needs to pay for them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
Exactly. Giving people free stuff is extremely popular. If people actually want those things, we can collective open our wallets and pay for it. But that changes people's opinions quite radically.
What is the political goal behind this directive? I assume there is some completely non-subtle purpose, but I can't tell what it is.
Yeah, calling your legislators is going to do precisely nothing [1], just like data centers are almost universally opposed by the communities and the negative externalities are way more real and direct. Yet they keep getting approved anyway. The true crisis here is in the captured political system. In the 1990s in Australia a racist, white supremacist party arose called One Nation through a very weird confluence of e…
Heya, fellow Aussie here. Have you ever tried contacting your local MP? I was cynical at first like you, thinking why bother. But when I tried it, turned out I was wrong and I actually had a pretty good experience! The way I see it now, is that MPs aren't always in a good position to get close to the facts, so when you get in touch and tell them what you think.. you're actually giving them a huge gift. It can actuall…
Yes, contacting your MP and senators can be very useful, including for federal stuff.
It's harder to actually get meetings with Federal members (they spend a lot of time in Canberra) but still worth trying.
Also it is very effective to vote for independent senators. You need to pay careful attention to make sure they aren't secretly insane but senators like David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie are very effective (Lambie seems crazy sometimes but she is surprisingly willing to change her mind on issues).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Giving people free stuff is extremely popular. If people actually want those things, we can collective open our wallets and pay for it. But that changes people's opinions quite radically.
Does it? I'm skeptical. In fact, we apparently have more than enough money for it because we suddenly have billions to spend on war in the Middle East.
Yeah, calling your legislators is going to do precisely nothing [1], just like data centers are almost universally opposed by the communities and the negative externalities are way more real and direct. Yet they keep getting approved anyway. The true crisis here is in the captured political system. In the 1990s in Australia a racist, white supremacist party arose called One Nation through a very weird confluence of e…
Heya, fellow Aussie here. Have you ever tried contacting your local MP? I was cynical at first like you, thinking why bother. But when I tried it, turned out I was wrong and I actually had a pretty good experience! The way I see it now, is that MPs aren't always in a good position to get close to the facts, so when you get in touch and tell them what you think.. you're actually giving them a huge gift. It can actuall…
Its done exactly squat.
>MPs aren't always in a good position to get close to the facts,
Pocock was repeating data centre noise concerns, but refuses to simply hold a press conference on the street outside of his local to demonstrate them. Facts are not desirable for parliamentarians, they routinely get in the way of business.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heya, fellow Aussie here. Have you ever tried contacting your local MP? I was cynical at first like you, thinking why bother. But when I tried it, turned out I was wrong and I actually had a pretty good experience! The way I see it now, is that MPs aren't always in a good position to get close to the facts, so when you get in touch and tell them what you think.. you're actually giving them a huge gift. It can actuall…
Another Australian here too. Yes, contacting your MP and senators can be very useful, including for federal stuff. It's harder to actually get meetings with Federal members (they spend a lot of time in Canberra) but still worth trying. Also it is very effective to vote for independent senators. You need to pay careful attention to make sure they aren't secretly insane but senators like David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie…
Pocock is a blight on the senate. The guy is just a seppo complaint repeating station. I swear he is more in touch with the democrat party than any Australian.