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The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

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Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incentive for parents to stop giving their children smartphones does not exist. If it did exist, it would incite parents to perform the action: ie not give their children smartphones. Incentives incite action. No action. No incentive.

That's not true. Incentives aren't the whole cause of behavior and they aren't the solution to changing it either. That's the same simplistic and flawed mentality that pushes for harsher punishments to deter crime when the evidence shows that doesn't work and that not even death penalty is an effective deterrent. People have several incentives to lose weight, but increasingly they still overeat. Incentives play a rol…

I'm sorry, but that is simply wrong. You're confusing desire/intention with incentive.

Someone may have a desire or intention to lose weight. But unless they lose the weight they lack incentive.

It's simple: incentives incite action. Don't make it more complicated to win an argument.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#242
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the other commenter who replied to you. I don’t think this comes from actual parents. And the article suggests this latest push is from right-leaning groups whose goals are surveillance and censorship. That said, I’m a father of 3. I’m a millennial and tech worker. I have the digital literacy to teach my kids about the internet and its horrors in a safe way. Not every parent does, so passing this off as…

> I dunno if you can legislate “better parental control ux”, If we must have something, I’m in favor of the OS-level flag where a parent can set the device as belonging to a minor and the apps and browser can receive the flag. Lock it behind the most basic parental controls that can be protected and remotely monitored. There are some loopholes with kids downloading apps that allow custom web requests without the flag…

just add a flag to the OS

What a fucking stupid, impossible, idea.

Like, explain to me how you think this could be done meaningfully other than some setting that can just be arbitrarily flipped without adding massive complexity.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#243
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the crisis isn't a short term economic shock but a long term decline from resource decline, possible water/food shortages amplified by climate blow back. Something that will not end in your lifetime or the next generations. Military's, intelligence agencies and actuaries have been warning about this for decades now and their language is getting very direct on this and the time lines nowadays. If you have ev…

Could you please link those warnings? I’m interested in institutional forecasts of such challenges in the upcoming decades.

No problem at all, thanks for asking! Two from this year both from the UK.

I really wish I had kept all the others from the US, Europe, Aus/NZ etc. It is a very common theme but they are largely kept quiet and only typically (partially) released through freedom of information requests.

This one from Actuaries UK was one that set off alarm bells. As they advise the insurance industry, they are structured to be politically neutral. The key takeaway is the impacts of 3c temperature rise by 2050 on page 9. The reason this is an issue, we are currently on target to hit that with us likely to pass 2c mid next decade with the rate of warming increasing.

https://actuaries.org.uk/media/r3cporjb/planetary-solvency-c...

This one from the UK government is all about addressing national security regarding this issue. Typically they are advising that they secure their food supplies and hardened up boarders in the next 5 years. Funnily enough Brexit may have given them the power to enforce this much more than they would have otherwise had. But that just means they have built a unique flavor of oppression.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nature-security-a...

I have said it for years now about a lot of countries. They will welcome immigrants with open arms, those arms being machine guns, rockets and drones.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#244

Is anyone that cares going to put on a suit and talk to the people passing laws?

Yeah we definitely have. Here's me and another dev opposing AB 1856 (would have criminalized open source in the name of age assurance): https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/hearings/279266#t=10...

And here's like ~120 of us who showed up to oppose AB 2023 (the 3D printer spyware bill). It was incredible. https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/hearings/279741#t=19...

I think the easiest way to get involved is to become an EFF member. They'll keep you up to date on all the censorship and surveillance bills. Then you can contact your legislator, sent letters to the CA legislature committees, or show up to the hearings in Sacramento.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#245
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War is coming to Europe. At this point I'm even thinking about moving to China - at least they don't accept Zuckerberg checks. Tbf in my case I'm also a tech holder - so i'm just getting robbed.

I lived in China for a while a decade ago, studied at Tsinghua and did some research as well. IMHO you have more freedom in China than in Europe. Can you walk on the street and say "Fuck Xi Jinping" like you would in France with Macron? Probably not. But it's a completely useless freedom to have. At least in China you get relative safety when you walk on the street at night. And when the government decides to restric…

[deleted]

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really true though is it. The Sackler family caused over 500,000 deaths. Nestlé has killed millions of babies. DuPont and 3M poisoned every living creature on Earth. Nobody spent even one day in prison for any of it. Corporations all over the world routinely and knowingly poison, injure, or outright murder their employees and their customers. They spend massive amounts of money preventing the public from k…

Not that it makes it any better, those people were treated as just externalities to doing business. Government violence is a lot more targeted. Yes, it has the same result but the intention is very different. One is just careless, the other is malicious.

When corporations knowingly kill people it isn't careless. What they do is entirely calculated. For example, it wasn't carelessness that caused the Philip Morris executives to hire a bunch of scientists who were then ordered to falsify reports saying that smoking wasn't harmful in an attempt to trick the public to keep smoking when the company was sitting on a mountain of evidence showing that their product was killing people.

Government violence is different though. When the government acts against the public they are generally required to follow long and complex procedures with multiple points of checks and accountability. A cop has to get enough evidence to convince a judge to issue an arrest warrant. A person is taken into custody and given access to a lawyer. A trial is held in court with a jury. At every step there are volumes of records detailing exactly what was done, by whom, and why. All of that information is public record and we can request those records to keep watch on what the government does. If the government abuses the power we give them we can vote them out of office and replace them.

Obviously there are a lot of problems with our legal system and places where all of that breaks down, but the goal was for there to be transparency and accountability and nothing stops us from improving the situation. With corporations on the other hand, they act in secret, they don't have to ask anyone for permission, they aren't required to keep records of everything they do, you have no legal right to examine the records they have, and even if you find out a CEO is responsible for murdering a bunch of people for profit you have no power to vote that CEO out of office.

It's pretty clear which of whose two entities is the larger threat. Which one of them has already repeatedly poisoned you and your entire family. Which one do you think was responsible for more violence done to your loved ones?

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the issue I have with most of my well meaning but somewhat politically uninformed friends. The idea of “wouldn’t it be good if …” (idealized scenario), is never followed up with a “yes, but …” (realistic evaluation of how politics actually works). Yes it might actually work out ok if a mythical benevolent dictator could manage things with infinite precision and unlimited compassion. I would imagine that has n…

> is never followed up with a “yes, but …” (realistic evaluation of how politics actually works). OK, but following this logic, shouldn't we disband the government altogether and have mafias rule us all? When is it acceptable to hope that something is actually going to work well enough when handed over to the government?

Following this logic, shouldn’t we all just do nothing and parish in the same spot we’re standing in?

Or perhaps you’re not actually following the logic but rather an oversimplified characterization of it?

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the issue I have with most of my well meaning but somewhat politically uninformed friends. The idea of “wouldn’t it be good if …” (idealized scenario), is never followed up with a “yes, but …” (realistic evaluation of how politics actually works). Yes it might actually work out ok if a mythical benevolent dictator could manage things with infinite precision and unlimited compassion. I would imagine that has n…

> is never followed up with a “yes, but …” (realistic evaluation of how politics actually works). OK, but following this logic, shouldn't we disband the government altogether and have mafias rule us all? When is it acceptable to hope that something is actually going to work well enough when handed over to the government?

Straight to Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities, since more competition between governments must be good for the customers of government-like services!

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#250
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is never followed up with a “yes, but …” (realistic evaluation of how politics actually works). OK, but following this logic, shouldn't we disband the government altogether and have mafias rule us all? When is it acceptable to hope that something is actually going to work well enough when handed over to the government?

> OK, but following this logic, shouldn't we disband the government altogether and have mafias rule us all? Only if "following this logic" means "extrapolate to an unreasonable extreme." Compare: 1. "Just eat healthy food and you'll be healthy!" 2. "Yes, but [things are complex]" 3. "Following that logic, we should just eat trash."

I am still curious: when is it acceptable to hope that something is actually going to work well enough when handed over to the government?
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