BjoernKW

"Degrowth" aka "Malthusianism 2.0" is a synonym for depopulation and / or decreased standard of living.

Even the current number of humans alive - let alone people yet to be born - can't be maintained without continued growth, innovation, and the paradigm shifts resulting from that innovation and growth.

Anyone trying to make the argument for degrowth therefore ultimately has to decide which humans deserve to be born or who gets to have a standard of living comparable to the one common in developed economies today.

The most immediate - yet mostly overlooked - positive impact software and software engineering has on combating climate change is anything that enables remote work or that does away with pointless busywork through automation.

It never ceases to amaze that hardly anyone seems to even want to talk about the daily commute as one of the main reasons for climate change.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter if you're using an EV, a combustion engine, or even public transport to get to office every day. Not having to commute at all is what can make a difference, though.

This still is a common exchange in German shops (in German, of course):

"Will you pay cash or with credit card?"

"Why, cash of course!"

"Thanks. Do you have a Payback card?"

"Certainly."

More often than not, "privacy" is merely used as an argument to avoid change and slow down progress, though.

During the pandemic, for example, remote work tools were routinely criticised or even banned in Germany due to their supposed privacy implications - with schools and public administration often having been the worst offenders.

There were civil servants who were "working from home", but in fact couldn't do any actual work because they were not allowed to access their department's intranet from home.

There were even teachers who refused to use video conferencing solutions for teaching their classes.

While some of that criticism regarding privacy issues with some of those tools might even have been valid, without suggesting a viable alternative, such criticism is pointless and detrimental, because all it achieves is to promote inertia and the status quo.

Germans in general are also highly reluctant towards digital payments, commonly citing "privacy" as a reason. However, the same people often have no qualms about using the - hilariously named - Payback loyalty programme, which keeps a record of individual consumer purchase behaviour.

Unfortunately, governmental organizations and public authorities in general for the most part are exempt from obligations under GDPR, the most easily applicable loophole being that they can always argue legitimate interest or that they're simply legally required to store PII.

It's next to impossible to successfully contest that argument in court.

That it's true - or rather - the current state of affairs, doesn't make it right.

Restricting the (relative) access to opportunities and resources to a select group of people by means of artificial barriers has never worked in the long run, and fortunately so. Otherwise, most people would still be living in abject poverty with only a tiny aristocratic class having agency and control over their lives and standard of living.

I find it particularly baffling that while people would usually claim to be all for social justice and a more equitable distribution of resources, the second their own privileged position is at risk, those ideas go out of the window.

So, people should be anti-WFH to maintain this artificial moat that so far has kept other smart and hungry people from making a decent living and improving their standard of living, simply because they're at the wrong geographical location?

This seems like a blinkered and selfish perspective.

If the number one thing protecting your job is the office, then quite frankly that job probably shouldn't exist.

Yes, I've been observing that development, too. A lot of it indeed is political, but from my point of view the sentiment extends beyond mere political opinion in the narrow sense of the word.

I'd rather describe the phenomenon as an identitarian mindset, pretty much what Paul Graham described in his 2009 essay "Keep Your Identity Small": http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

Everything seems to have become about identity, which in turn again often is politicised or weaponised even - in the sense that identity is used to build a political argument or define oneself or others along ideological fault lines.

In my opinion, identitarianism is a major current societal issue that has the potential to tear society apart.

> > The Muslim explains why Islamic law is a perfect recipe for peace.

> I can't even fathom how someone could convincingly argue that. And honestly that makes this whole post kind of ridiculous to me

This might depend on their definition of "peace". If they - very much tautologically - define "peace" as "Everyone is living in accordance with Islamic law." then according to that definition Islamic law certainly is a perfect recipe for peace.

That'd just not be the usual understanding of peace.

No, in Germany specifically they don't, at least not reliably, because records are scattered across healthcare providers and generally not readily shared between providers (because "data protection").

If it happens at all, exchange of medical data mostly occurs on paper, which means it'll neither be searchable, nor even easily accessible at a later stage.

A workout of 5-10 minutes each day, using follow-along style videos such as these:

full body (depending on how fit you are you can do multiple rounds of these)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_AHHQj7eaM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IPkW78iVb8

specific muscle groups

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FN6ovYpkoM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z68by50la9Q

Other than that, going pretty much everywhere by bike, e.g., when running errands.

> Laundromats look like rented parking space to me [...] In some areas laundromat are basically cost/revenue neutral and inly make sense as a service to the community and keeping the light on.

Which is why laundromats / launderettes (as they're sometimes still called in the UK) are the stereotypical example of a type of business providing a very different kind of laundering service.

Yes, that's basically the rationale behind not closing borders in case of a pandemic: You can't close all the holes. Someone, and inevitably the pathogen with them, will pass through.

However, and very much absurdly, the same people and organisations opposing closing borders were those supporting prolonged and repeated lockdowns, which pretty much puts you in the same situation, just with no clearly defined perimeter to control.

Closing borders will just buy you additional time. That's it. Imposing lockdowns on the other hand in the end will achieve nothing.

React neither is a framework, nor is it opinionated. When you're using React the time-honoured Perl motto TIMTOWTDI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_more_than_one_way_to... ) applies.

If you'd like a more opinionated, cookie-cutter approach there are frameworks such as Angular that fit that particular bill.

It's your job as a React developer to figure out these things. When people say React is simple, they usually mean that conceptually it's relatively simple. That doesn't necessarily mean it's easy to use.

That said, there are guidelines and tools like the following that can help you get started with your React projects:

https://reactjs.org/docs/faq-structure.html

https://github.com/alan2207/bulletproof-react/blob/master/do...

https://profy.dev/article/react-folder-structure

https://create-react-app.dev/

Your confusion is perfectly understandable, by the way. Having worked on web applications since the mid-90s I am what you might call a seasoned web developer, and at first I was confused by React, too. So, nothing to worry about.

> See, even China did those measures that helped but ultimately they had to give up.

No, they didn't. They implemented precisely those authoritarian measures that seem to be working at first (like lockdowns) but are neither sustainable nor even effective for any prolonged period of time (> 2 weeks).

It's precisely the unwillingness and inability of authorities to implement measures that actually would have worked (such as restricting flights at the beginning of the pandemic for a limited period of time), which gave us prolonged, repeated lockdowns and similar authoritarian measures with little to no benefit.

Should there actually be a another variant with significant immune escape properties due to the current number of new cases in China, some European countries at least will again resort to the only measures they know how to implement, which means, in that event: Lockdown, it is.

You specifically mentioned TLS being enforced in mobile apps. For non-mobile apps such an enforcement either happens through an app store vetting process or the operating system restricting access to non-secure API calls.

I also didn't say a VPN is an alternative to proper TLS validation. It just prevents public WiFi networks from trying to intercept (improperly validated) connections.

> Do you have any examples of apps not doing TLS validation?

Potentially, any desktop app not downloaded via an app store might do this.

> While public Wifi providers may try to MITM, TLS effectively prevents that from happening unless you are prone to accept "insecure certificate/connection" warnings.

For connections happening via a browser that's true. For other applications, it depends, since those might happily accept a certificate that has been tampered with without the user being aware of it.

> That said, why did you choose EXpressVPN?

Put snarkily: Because I'm not Edward Snowden and I'm not subject to the same kind of threat level.

At the time (2018), ExpressVPN for me was the right choice in terms of sufficient security for my requirements and - not to be underestimated - user experience.

Other VPN products I tried out back then were more difficult to install and use (sometimes significantly so) and suffered from slow or even regularly dropped connections.

> Commercial VPNs are not as useful and secure as you think.

That's highly contingent on the "as you think" part.

For example, I use ExpressVPN on public WiFi networks because I trust them a whole lot more than random public WiFi providers. Sure, they have access to the URLs I've accessed while using their service. Then again, so does my ISP.

The crucial part is, said random public WiFi providers won't have access to that data.

Additionally, and much more importantly, some public WiFi providers try to MITM secure connections, which is effectively prevented when using a trustworthy VPN.

In a nutshell: Emergence. Like an anthill, the Internet very much is a coordinated system.

The thing is, the constituents of such a system wouldn't necessarily recognise the higher-order system they're part of. An ant doesn't know it's part of an anthill.

Such a higher-order system wouldn't necessarily follow the same or even remotely similar evolutionary steps or patterns as the systems and structures that preceded it.

So, here's a question to really keep you up at night: How do we know the global Internet as a whole hasn't developed intelligence already?

It might have already, but pretty much like ants aren't aware they make up a system that's greater than the sum its parts (i.e. an anthill), we might just not be aware of a higher-order intelligence we're part of.

Anyone providing professional services should have liability insurance.

Furthermore, unless a service provider has been acting negligently or has given some sort of guarantee like "With my services, your WordPress instance won't be hacked.", they usually can't be held responsible for actions and outcomes that are out of their control.

There's ElephantSQL, which offers a free tier: https://www.elephantsql.com/

> I read articles that the Russians were banning computers altogether in some circumstances and using typewriters instead.

Then, there was this - rather successful - effort by the KGB itself, later named "Project Gunman" by NSA counterintelligence: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/10/how-s...

As outlined above, simply having a US-based supplier or customer might be enough for a business to be in violation of GDPR.

Even if your entire business is offline and all your processes are still paper-based (which today would be highly unusual, even in less digitized countries such as Germany, where quite a few businesses actually still rely on paper and - indeed - fax for at least some of their processes), that might still be the case.

More realistically, any run-of-the-mill SMB will use at least some digital tools, e.g., for accounting or for running their website. Relying on EU-based suppliers and EU data centres exclusively or even going all the way and storing everything on-premises doesn't necessarily mean you're compliant with GDPR.

If only one of those EU-based suppliers has any dealings whatsoever with just one US-based company you're technically in violation of GDPR again.

The EU's relevance and clout is notoriously overestimated, particularly when it comes to the digital economy. There's this pipe dream that GDPR would somehow jumpstart a privacy-focused digital economy with viable alternatives to US-based services, cloud providers in particular. By and large, these ideas so far have proven to be unrealistic, delusional even.

Let's consider the possibly ways this might play out:

1. The US maintains its position and the CLOUD Act, specifically. The EU maintains its position and GDPR and the Schrems II ruling, but doesn't strictly enforce those.

So, pretty much the status quo as it is today. In that scenario, the EU and local authorities will keep pestering EU-based businesses here and there, but overall prove they're a paper tiger with lofty ideals but no power or will to back those up with action.

From a US perspective, that's an not only an acceptable but even a desirable outcome, because a relevant international party decided to deliberately hamper themselves and their economy with no repercussions for the US. So, no need for the US to blink first, or at all, as a matter of fact.

2. The US maintains its position. The EU maintains its position, too, but contrary to the first scenario does suddenly decide to strictly enforce GDPR and crack down on any business that doesn't comply.

Since, as outlined above, this would mean pretty much every business under EU jurisdiction, the entire economy of the EU would come to a grinding halt within weeks, which in turn would probably lead to major insurrections and the EU ceasing to exist within a matter of weeks as well.

This of course would entail major turmoil and crisis for the world economy as a whole as well, but the EU and EU countries what suffer the most.

So, not exactly a desirable outcome for the US. However, there'd be no need for the US to blink first in this scenario either. If a player decides to commit economic suicide, why should the other player indulge them?

3. The US maintains its position. Again, the EU maintains its position, too, but contrary to scenario #1 and #2 not only decides to strictly enforce GDPR, but first entirely extricates itself from the US economy (i.e. mercantilism 2.0) by not only requiring businesses under EU jurisdiction to cut all ties to the US but by managing to provide viable alternatives to US-based services first.

As pointed out above, so far this hasn't been happening and there's no obvious reason why that would change all of a sudden.

Still, even if such a scenario were realistic, the economic consequences probably would be more severe for the EU than for the US, too.

So, again, no need for the US to blink first.

Hence, in any possible scenario - however likely or unlikely - the US can simply wait it out and it's on the EU to make the first move.

At this point, virtually no digital service - or in fact in business - can be considered to be compliant with GDPR. The reason for this is an ECJ case ruling informally known as Schrems II (https://www.gdprsummary.com/schrems-ii/ ).

That ruling not only invalidated the Privacy Shield agreement, but in fact prohibits the transfer of any data to any company affiliated with a US-based company in any way (including subsidiaries or even mere suppliers or customers), which comprises pretty much every company out there - US-based or not - because in today's globalized economy you'd be hard-pressed to find a company that doesn't in some way at least transitively deal with US-based companies.

Technically, the reason for this is the US CLOUD Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act ), which requires US-based companies to hand over any data, regardless of where that data is stored geographically. This also means that the common naïve assumption that you're safe in terms of GDPR as long as your data is stored in EU-based data centres is false as well.

So, when following GDPR and this court ruling to the letter, we'd (as in "everyone") pretty much have to stop trading and doing business altogether. Since that's (hopefully) not going to happen, none of this is enforced, at least not consistently or according to the rule of law (which in a way is even worse because at that point law and law enforcement becomes arbitrary and fines will be imposed based on how eagerly local authorities pursue these matters rather than universal principle).

Now, it can be argued that the EU and GDPR really aren't to blame because it's the US CLOUD Act that created this issue, after all. That CLOUD Act indeed is hugely problematic, to say the least.

However, the problem remains and it's on the EU to negotiate an agreement with the US that allows companies to legally do business in the real world (as opposed to an ideal world according to GDPR) again.

That's a clever hack. Thanks for finding that out and for sharing this approach.

It's not an optimal solution, but until Apple themselves come up with something better it's at least sufficient to ward off potentially severe consequences from petty crime or crimes of opportunity.