631–640 of 648 posts
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The better thing would be to hold Google directly accountable for every malicious ad they allow through their network. If they cannot do that, they should not be in business selling ads then. Yes, that means amending the law (in the US). But the law as it is written facilitates crime.
I mean, maybe we can try going after the scammers.. but we can’t even stop scam callers and junk mail
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> It's not just Google, the Internet stops existing. Uh? No? The internet existed before being overrun by corporate presence. It still does. Advertising pays a lot, but take the ad money away and let it scale accordingly.
The worst thing about the modern internet is people's innate expectation that others will work/pay to entertain or inform them for free. What existed in 1993 was a cultural blip, it's never coming back, so let it go.
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Can't wait until we are forced to actually make Linux Phone systems actually good, but no one will invest until Android is closed
No one will invest even after Android is closed. The Android/iPhone duopoly is nearly impossible to break because very few people want to carry two personal phones, and it takes only one app that they can't do without being only available on Android/iPhone to make it impossible to choose anything else. The app providers likewise have no incentive to support anything else because everyone has one of these two. Bank ap…
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Sarcasm?
Not in the slightest. Who do you believe works more for consumer privacy and security? Meta? Google? Microsoft?
Apple fined $8.5M for illegally collecting iPhone owners' data for ads (gizmodo.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433
Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected (aalto.fi)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39927657
Apple silently uploads your passwords and keeps them (lapcatsoftware.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42014588
Watchdog ponders why Apple doesn't apply its strict app tracking rules to itself (theregister.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43047952
Apple memory holed its broken promise for an OCSP opt-out (lapcatsoftware.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41184153
Google collects 20 times more telemetry from Android devices than Apple from iOS (therecord.media) [but Apple still collects a lot!]
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Not in the slightest. Who do you believe works more for consumer privacy and security? Meta? Google? Microsoft?
There are no megacorps that care about your privacy. Regarding Apple, see these: Apple fined $8.5M for illegally collecting iPhone owners' data for ads (gizmodo.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433 Keeping your data from Apple is harder than expected (aalto.fi) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39927657 Apple silently uploads your passwords and keeps them (lapcatsoftware.com) https://news.ycombinator…
That your examples are rather weak proves my point, not the opposite.
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It's called a hypothetical, not a fantasy, and it is a device used to ground the discussion by giving us a baseline for comparison. I don't think this is a very useful discussion if we're going to talk past each other and not assume the best possible interpretation of each other's words.
I know what a hypothetical is. An utterly unrealistic hypothetical is more distracting than grounding. I don't think we're exactly talking past each other. I think the problem is that you've misdiagnosed the problem as, like you said in another comment, "a malfunctioning executive branch", and don't realize the full scale of Congress's culpability. I honestly thought you would know what I was talking about regarding…
At no point did I assign triviality to the process of establishing a functioning Congress. In fact, I promoted it to be equal alongside a functioning executive branch.
You're arguing with a sarcastic attitude and continuing to interpret my words uncharitably. I'm interested in having this conversation and hearing your perspective as a former federal worker, but I don't want it to be hostile.
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I can't prove a negative but consider that winning the Democratic primary requires convincing a bunch of left-of-center voters to support your plan. Sanders couldn't do that. How do you think he would have fared with Republicans? He's never passed a significant bill of his own and focuses on renaming post offices. The man has no political skill. As president he would have been a disaster.
> The man has no political skill This is what I take issue with. It's a heavy enough accusation that it needs receipts. It needs proper framing on why exactly the benchmarks you've listed are important for delineating political skill and why other benchmarks are not.
- legislation proposed and passed - elections won (i.e. candidate WAR) - ability to make backroom deals - campaigning skills
He's not good at any of those except the last one. I've mentioned the bills, he lost two primaries (his staffers engaged in election denialism both times), only has a seat because he's in a safe Dem state, and has a reputation for being a difficult politician to work with. He is obviously out-of-touch with American voters, his policy proposals are very fluffy and barely substantial, and about the nicest thing I can about his campaigns is that they draw in an enthusiastic crowd, but not one that seems to vote for him and his candidates.
Progressives have much better politicians now: Mamdani, AOC, Al-Sayed. If all of them can deliver like Mamdani - who might genuinely have the best political skills of any American politician living now - then maybe this "what if Bernie won" stuff could actually work. But Sanders would have crashed and burned the second the GOP shut down the government, because he's not good at convincing people who disagree with him.
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I know what a hypothetical is. An utterly unrealistic hypothetical is more distracting than grounding. I don't think we're exactly talking past each other. I think the problem is that you've misdiagnosed the problem as, like you said in another comment, "a malfunctioning executive branch", and don't realize the full scale of Congress's culpability. I honestly thought you would know what I was talking about regarding…
> I honestly thought you would know what I was talking about regarding the feasibility of a "functioning Congress", but you apparently just think that's an important but trivial detail to mention At no point did I assign triviality to the process of establishing a functioning Congress. In fact, I promoted it to be equal alongside a functioning executive branch. You're arguing with a sarcastic attitude and continuing…
> If only the DNC was interested in promoting candidates that work for the people and aren't just interested in lip service while mostly maintaining the status quo. Things could have been different. Imagine what 8 years of Bernie and a functioning Congress might have accomplished.
Yes, you acknowledge that a functioning Congress is necessary for the scenario, but at least by my reading, only perfunctorily. It's thrown in with no visible connection to the rest of the scenario.
Maybe I misread this and the actual starting point for your scenario is a DNC that works for the people, and this leads to both Bernie and a functioning Congress? I still don't buy it. Such a well-intentioned party is already fantasy in my view (we could equally well imagine a well-intended GOP), and even if it existed it wouldn't fix all the problems that a single party can cause. The whole scenario falls apart. That could be why I missed this interpretation: it's less common to see, still doesn't make sense, and Bernie in particular doesn't really figure into it.
> But as you've already pointed out, it's kind of pointless if the fundamental problem is a malfunctioning executive branch (and a federal government with far too much power).
This is technically phrased as a conditional, but with subtext that accepts the premise about the "fundamental problem" (and is content-free otherwise). This makes it an implicit claim that the fundamental problem is indeed the executive.
If you don't think these statements show a lack of focus on Congress's dysfunctionality, clarify.
Again, that claim of incorrect focus was the main content of my original response to your "things could have been better":
> That "functioning Congress" requirement is doing a lot of the work in that claim, and no single election result would make that happen.
Maybe the "no single election result" thing was a misread, but why else would you mention Bernie unless you thought that was significant enough to matter? It isn't. The problem is the incentives in the overall system, and everything you've talked about is downstream of those.
Anyway, my perspective as a former federal worker is mostly a hundred papercuts that have mercifully faded into the past, but which at the time were all traceable to some act, or failure to act, of Congress. It was mind-numbing at the time, and could only be boring now even if I recalled the details.