OzyM

Possibly a very dumb question: what's the benefit of using this over Blender? I've been using Blender for all my 2d animation needs for a while now and I don't see a reason to switch to Expressive Suite.

Is one of its main appeals the browser-based editing?

I don't need a Twitter account to read people's tweets, and I contact my representatives through phone/mail. If they decide to spend time in a private platform not everyone will be able to message them on (or spend a lot of time in a restricted physical location that only lets people with "correct" opinions in), that's fine. If a politician wants a consistent way for everyone to be able to read their writing and contact them, there's nothing stopping them from just... Using their own website for that.

Just because some "famous" person uses a platform shouldn't mean the platform has to fall over itself to make sure their every word is hear and everyone can contact them.

I disagree, in that I think any privately-owned platform that people voluntarily use, have easy alternatives to, and can leave without consequence has the right to moderate the content on their platform as they see fit.

That being said, after having a political/ideological group I really liked removed off a major platform (that it followed the ToS of) without analogous opposite-side groups being removed, I'm at least very sympathetic to your position. I thing we both agree that harmless differences of opinion shouldn't be removed, but I'll agree to disagree on whether the law should be involved.

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

I agree that if one company is the only feasible option - a true monopoly - there should be controls on their power.

However, I'm not convinced why any social media would fall under this umbrella at the moment. Facebook(& related) hardly have a stranglehold on the market, at least from the point of view of it being in competition with other social media platforms such as Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, etc. All of their products are slightly different, but generally are grouped under the same niche. If Facebook decided tomorrow that half of the political spectrum was completely barred from discussion, I assume people would just successfully migrate off Facebook (in a way they could not do if their government banned their opinion, or if the only place they could discuss on the internet banned their opinion).

Afaik phone numbers are a completely different discussion, as I believe the government is involved in creating and maintaining phone networks (placing it under the First Amendement).

You make a good point about something like YouTube, though. YouTube is the one on your list which most clearly has control over its market, so I could see the argument for oversight there.

This is a great comment, and definitely food for thought. I'll use this to examine my own beliefs — much appreciated.

Do you have an answer for my political-platform question? I feel like that'd help me understand where you're drawing the line here.

As far as phone companies, my current understanding is that in the U.S., the government is involved in building and maintaining telecommunications infrastructure. Therefore it falls under the First Amendment.

If you run your own wires between a lot of houses to let people talk to each other, and then listen into every conversation and cut off ones you don't like, that doesn't seem illegal.

Things like Discord or Slack, for instance, should legally be able to moderate anything you send through them. Though it would be financial suicide to actually do so.

[Disclaimer here that I only have a vague understanding of telecommunications infrastructure]

Ulterior motives, anti national -> (personally) this seems like free speech. I don't have to like it to think it should be legal.

Blatantly trying to interfere with elections -> if you mean by spreading opinions / propaganda, this seems generally under the realm of free speech. The government being able to silence opinions that disagree with it generally seems much more problematic than civilians being able to spread bad opinions

Cause riots -> Again, I think opinions should be legal. However, saying "hey y'all let's get guns and actively participate in violence" is not protected under free speech in any country I'm aware of, but is also not really my major concern with this legislation.

So there's some popularity point where after people use a platform to talk enough times, the platform is no longer allowed to moderate the speech on it? Why?

If I operate the world's biggest single-political-party discussion forum, is there a point where the forum is now legally compelled to host the other political party's opinions?

(To be clear: I'm not saying that example is exactly analogous to Twitter, but I don't understand why one would be legally different)

I feel like there's some room for middle ground here. While I disagree with some of 80,000 hours' conclusions, I do think that a person's job is a major way they have an effect on the world.

I have hobbies, friends, family, etc. that I consider more important to who I am as a person than my job is. However, I still have a marginal preference for decently-paid meaningful work over well-paid meaningless work.

I mean, I disagree with (some of) platforms' content removal, but I don't disagree with their legal right to do so.

If Twitter becomes a propaganda machine deleting any tweet it disagrees with, I think that's shitty and if I had an account I'd delete it to avoid participating, but I'm not sold on why the government should make that illegal.

People and private organizations currently have the right to propagandize in the U.S. (without explicitly calling for violent uprisings, etc). What's the major difference between Twitter moderating tweets and a privately-owned forum moderating comments?

Ah, that's fair. I definitely agree it's a problem when trying to cooperate on a program. I think it's probably more a function of inexperience or poor judgement than passion per se, but overzealousness definitely exacerbates it.

I read the government's requirement of certain executive roles + the requirement of it being an Indian citizen as the government having undue control over a private (foreign) company's executive positions. I'm still not familiar with the background on the mandating of these new executive roles, but wanting the person overseeing implementation of your country's laws to be from your country at least makes sense to me.

As far as the "controversial hash tag", that was a quote directly from the article. I feel like removing an entire hashtag related to a political position is generally a bad idea and can silence a lot of legitimate free speech, but I don't know enough on the specifics of this situation to apply that here.

Thanks for adding more context to clear up some misconceptions.

I really don't think this is universal. Sure, some people are definitely like this, but I want to be able to believe I'm building something interesting that will be used after I leave. I would take (and have taken) slightly lower-paid jobs that I thought would matter more in the long run.

Also, I feel like this view of software developers' motivation would have a really hard time explaining major FOSS projects.

How so? Wouldn't working with someone passionate about improving the project be useful, even if you're not equally interested?

Super interesting Wikipedia article, thanks for the link! Some of the restrictions on free speech make me instinctually uncomfortable (i.e. restrictions for the sake of "decency and morality"), but I recognize these are hardly unique to India and countries such as the U.S. have censored plenty of books, etc. in the past.

I'm not sure that I personally am in favor. However, you're clearly right in that it's hardly unprecedented or unique.

"The IT rules, which became effective end-May, are aimed at regulating content on social media and making firms act more swiftly on legal requests to remove posts and sharing details on the originators of messages. They also require the appointment of certain new executives."

The article makes this sound like a massive detriment to free speech. Companies removing content on their own platforms makes sense. However, governments being able to force the removal of content (such as a "controversial hash tag related to farmer protests against new agricultural reforms") can't be good. That plus forcing the company to hire government-approved executives seems like a slippery slope.

Are there any benefits to this regulation I'm overlooking?

I think it all depends on what the goal is.

For tractable, straightforward, or routine software development, this seems very true. For middling-difficulty, this seems often true.

It's more just the edge cases - problems requiring a lot of creative thought or unique problem-solving tactics - where it seems like getting software developers to "believe" would be a huge boon.

Just as curiosity is a large multiplier to learning, genuine interest is a large multiplier on difficult mental work.

As a side note, offering "interesting" and "meaningful" work can be seen as another perk of a job listing (just like other optional benefits), especially to young or idealistic devs.

I don't know enough about carbon capture to agree with the statement that it's directly proportional to land height. Even if it were, trying to calculate an inch of height difference through rotating cover crops and possible inches of snow at different points throughout the year seems infeasible at best.

Same for weighing - this sounds like an implementation nightmare. The cost of equipment and time to weigh every piece of vegetation grown (then the cost of developing the mathematical models to subtract out carbon emissions, possible loss of carbon sink, etc.) sounds wildly expensive for something easily gamed by any nontrustworthy farmer.

That said though, if you have a vision for this that would solve these problems, you could probably create an extremely successful startup with it. There's hundreds of millions of dollars in the market of carbon indulgences.

This article just further hammers in the comparison between carbon offsets and buying indulgences to me. Even at the higher payment-per-acre point, all current forms of carbon offsets seem both too intractable and ineffectual to make much of a difference.

I agree with the opposing view in the article that we should consider researching the possibility and ways to make it more effective... but currently, that seems like it should be done as an academic project, not by throwing hundreds of millions of dollars to miscellaneous carbon startups and hoping something changes.

Side question: why are many of the article's examples of "carbon friendly" farmers getting major carbon-credit payments part-time cattle ranchers? It seems like helping expand cattle ranching is not a fantastic side-effect of carbon credits, and could cancel out much of the marginal benefit of cover crop planting, etc.

> Maybe the most depressing thing is that the US isn’t even that bad... [the] US does better than many Western European countries like Denmark, Norway and Germany.

I'm not exactly sure what the writer's thesis is? They get stuck on a specific school in New Jersey for a while, but overall it doesn't seem like there's a huge cause for concern.

They also cite the increase in graduation rate in the entire U.S. as a cause for concern (i.e. grade inflation), but then narrow in on New Jersey's state-specific standardized tests as proof that students are not learning enough to graduate.

I'd disagree with a lot of the proposed solutions, as well. They recommend we "expand school days and the school year." However, my current understanding is that Montessori models, etc. are highly effective, and a lot of the European countries with fantastic educational outcomes emphasize less time in school. How we teach [and especially student's outside-of-school lives, though that's much harder to influence] seems like a much clearer avenue for improvement than just having them sit in the same desks for a couple thousand more hours overall.

Also, as a personal gripe, I found the whole educational system miserable enough as it was. I was already flirting with the idea of dropping out without adults expanding my already-unnecessarily-packed schedule.

If feeding was the only thing keeping you from caring for an animal, you could either adopt an herbivorous pet (most small mammals, maybe?) or adopt an omnivore capable of eating a plant-based diet (dogs?). In either case it seems like a moral net positive to me.

...though I also understand the "no pets" and moving on attitude from a more personal angle. I've accidentally killed enough houseplants to scare me away from the "caring for a dependent living being" plan for now

Edit: just wanted to note that "people who got the memo but didn't read it" is now one of my favorite phrases. I've never heard it before, but something about it delights me

I mean, I think everyone agrees that way too much sugar or eating nondigestible plants is not a good idea.

But a vegan diet has been approved for humans at all stages of life, and the vegan dog food I'm aware of meets all AAFCO standards (nutrients, digestibility, protein:carb:fat ratio) as well as passing tests for dog interest/palatability.

There's a big difference between a well-rounded plant-based diet, and living off sugar or cellulose-heavy raw plants.

I think the dog problem has more to do with you killing animals to feed to your dog. As far as I can tell, vegans don't oppose animals in the wild hunting to survive (i.e. a killer whale).

However, paying for animals to be killed to feed your dog instead of buying vegan dog food seems like it falls under the same umbrella as buying meat for yourself.

[Not really sure how to address obligate carnivores, like cats. Could see a vegan feeding their cat they had meat foods until they died naturally, but getting a cat with the intention of buying meat for it over its lifetime seems non-vegan.]

Would welcome correction if I'm misguided, though.

I agree it's not an ideal situation, but I honestly think it's better than the alternative.

In your example of me personally, this is kind of the tradeoff most small humans (including myself) made for the first ten years of life. Supervision, lack of freedom, etc. in exchange for food, shelter, and hopefully companionship.

As it's not ideal, I could agree with you on reducing breeding so we don't have to make this choice in the future. But currently, for domesticated animals who can't be released into the wild without high chance of extreme pain to themselves (dogs) or major ecological damage (cats), it seems like our kindest option is to put as many of them in loving & protective situations as possible.

I don't really understand why you're being downvoted, this was my understanding as well. There are plenty of vegan dog foods that seem to have a history of success and meet all AAFCO standards.

I think as far as vegan cat food, I'm not sure it will be healthy or feasible at scale until/unless there's something like Wild Earth's mouse-meat kibble based on cultured cells (under development, but no time frame given for expected completion).

I'd love to hear the opposing perspective, though.

Is this sarcasm? I fail to understand how taking a dog from a loving household into scrounging on the streets is at all an ethical solution.