chuckee

> the CCP is organizing scholarly conferences and asking researchers to look for the root causes of the demographic problem.

What a proactive approach. I wish Western governments emulated it.

And Netflix degrades video quality on untrusted platforms, and there is a host of apps that refuse to run on unlocked phones. Wide availability of TPM could be just what is needed to spread this to PCs - which are the exception among computing platforms in being open.

We're sliding down the slope right now. The fallacy is thinking the trend will stop, because.. well, surely this is the last step, right? Just like all the ones before it.

> the Identified Documents are not required to be released on the ground that they constitute material communicated in confidence.

So a government entity can hide from FOIA requests any information related to its dealings with a private entity, as long as they get an NDA?

Basically, this puts private contracts above public law. To prevent breaking a private contract, the law requiring this taxpayer-funded organization to be transparent is ignored.

It starts with something palatable like anti-cheat systems.

But I look forward to video players using the TPM preventing screenshots or recording, and after that, websites preventing screenshots or copying text, and your bank verifying your browser before letting you log in.

Of course only a handful of large browsers will be supported or able to get licenses for the accompanying DRM code, but you can still use your 'free' browsers for less important things. Don't worry.

> AB-1591 was made an “urgency statute” under Article IV, §8(d) of the Constitution of California after “an organized band of men armed with loaded firearms [...] entered the Capitol”

So, an armed insurrection? By blacks. Which we are told would be shot on sight [1,2,3,4,..], and the only reason the insurrectionists at the US Capitol weren't is because they were white. But the Sacramento Bee wrote of the incident:

After the state police questioned the men, they returned the weapons to them because the intruders had broken no law. - https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/history/article148667224.h...

I'm sure that as soon as we inform the people making the claims of shot on sight that they are empirically wrong, they will immediately stop, having seen their error. After all, they do so hate misinformation, especially divisive misinfromation, and would not want to spread it themselves.

[1] If rioters were Black, 'hundreds' would have been killed - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-inequality-i...

[2] The response to Black people storming the Capitol likely would have ended in mass bloodshed. - https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/01/how-would-the-p...

[3] US Capitol: Blacks would have been shot dead - https://dailypost.ng/2021/01/07/us-capitol-blacks-would-have...

[4] Hollywood Condemns Capitol Chaos: 'If They Were Black They Would Be Shot Already' - https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/hollywood-condemns-capitol...> AB-1591 was made an “urgency statute” under Article IV, §8(d) of the Constitution of California after “an organized band of men armed with loaded firearms [...] entered the Capitol”

So, an armed insurrection? By blacks. Which we are told would be shot on sight [1,2,3,4,..], and the only reason the insurrectionists at the US Capitol weren't is because they were white. But the Sacramento Bee wrote of the incident:

After the state police questioned the men, they returned the weapons to them because the intruders had broken no law. - https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/history/article148667224.h...

I'm sure that as soon as we inform the people making the claims of shot on sight that they are empirically wrong, they will immediately stop, having seen their error. After all, they do so hate misinformation, especially divisive misinfromation, and would not want to spread it themselves.

[1] If rioters were Black, 'hundreds' would have been killed - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-inequality-i...

[2] The response to Black people storming the Capitol likely would have ended in mass bloodshed. - https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/01/how-would-the-p...

[3] US Capitol: Blacks would have been shot dead - https://dailypost.ng/2021/01/07/us-capitol-blacks-would-have...

[4] Hollywood Condemns Capitol Chaos: 'If They Were Black They Would Be Shot Already' - https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/hollywood-condemns-capitol...

> For more than a century, the people of the United States have been locked in a game of cat and mouse with the forces of separation and segregation.

Forces? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the government of the United States has been in a game of cat and mouse with the people desiring separation? Calling them 'forces' is dehumanization.

Conservatives are against the status quo in many areas. Immigration, globalization, outsourcing of industry, public housing used as residential desegregation.. I suppose if your stereotypical, borderline strawman conservative wants nothing other than lowering taxes, starting wars in the middle east, busting unions, and keeping healthcare privatized, they would be very happy.

> Our Hubbers’ dedication to their own acumen was evident when 97% of them completed the Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging learning journey.

The 3% that did not were too dumb to realize that would land them on a list.

> learning circles with Hubbers to courageously discuss important inclusion topics in a safe space

I am sure all opinions were welcome in these courageous, nay, heroic! discussions.

Maybe instead of resigning, malicious compliance would be better.

Have the Berkeley website and brochures clearly state "Students and faculty are not allowed to express the opinion that merit-based admissions are preferable to current diversity efforts, on- or off- campus." Once there are more cancellations, a list of specific* ideas that are disallowed, prominently featured in all of the university's marketing materials and official communications. Force the censorship out into the open - that is what the censor fears most.

*I.e. not how the activists characterized the statements (usually some flavor of "Is opposed to diversity"), but what the cancelled person really said, or an honest summary thereof, ideally with links to exact quotes in full context.

If you're willing to call the civil rights movement silly, sure.

But in any case, the university and courts and media should phrase it honestly and directly. "This court finds the university's racial discrimination is legal" and not "the university did not do the wrong kind of racial discrimination". Maybe the brochures for new students should inform them that, in addition to having "high academic standards" they also "prefer student applicants of race X, Y, and Z".

It is after all silly to hold racial discrimination off-limits, so the university should have no problems being open about it, right?

It's hilarious they think they can change the meaning of words by legislation.

Or it would be, if people didn't play along.

I found the language used the most interesting part. This article, and the WSJ's [1], both write "did not discriminate against White and Asian-American applicants". Which is later contradicted by "U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs found UNC had narrowly tailored its use of race as a factor" - i.e. they did discriminate, but not "unduly" (as the related case for Harvard puts it [2]).

It's telling how much they try to avoid accurately describing it as "discrimination". "It is not bad discrimination" is so much more palatable than "it is good discrimination".

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/university-of-north-carolina-at...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v...

What about trademark issues? E.g. if I buy coca-cola.net (assuming Coca-Cola forgot to register that domain) and use it to sell watered-down Coca-Cola (or software with adware tacked-on..), doesn't Coca-Cola have a valid case against me?

What if I don't sell watered-down cola, but Pepsi? Would they still have a case, and could the resolution of that case include me losing the domain?

Use 'position of power' to argue that systems are biased in favor of a group, not against it, then use that positive bias as evidence for the groups power.

Brilliant.

> No reasonable person can view this coverage as proportionate or reasonable.

Ah yes. If only the media refrained from disproportionate coverage and using single events to imply country-wide trends.

I don't think any of the (real) authors are trans, so it's not ideologically difficult from that perspective. On the other hand, feminism is (nominally) a movement to establish equality of the sexes, and about fighting against gender stereotypes. Men convincingly writing from a female point of view, and publicly presented as women, would seem to me to do exactly that. Fight against writing style/subject stereotypes, and demonstrate how gender is not essential in the act of writing - subverting gender essentialism.

If feminist were true to their professed convictions, they should be applauding this book.

> massive shortages of workers in developed countries

There is no such thing as a shortage of workers, only misallocation of labor. Ultimately people have to support themselves - trying to solve it by importing more workers makes as much sense as trying to improve a ship's buoyancy by welding multiple ships together.

> North Ayrshire Council said 97 per cent of children or their parents had consented to the new system

So the opinion of the North Ayrshire Council is that children can consent?

> A working group in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland has proposed a series of steps to "decolonize" the Informatics curriculum

I was not aware that computer science was developed by some other group, then colonized and taken over by Western countries. If so, I absolutely agree - the terms and names used in CS education should be reverted to accurately reflect the peoples that discovered them!

The Bertelsmann Foundation wants to promote social integration and diversity. It advocates for creating a "comprehensive and long-term migration architecture" for Germany. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertelsmann_Stiftung#Society

But as the sibling comment notes, in other areas they're not at all left-leaning, e.g.:

Arvato, a division of the Bertelsmann Group, declared the privatization of public services a strategic business area.

It should not surprise anyone that characterizing their politics on a one-dimensional left-right spectrum is inaccurate (findings such as https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.12320 notwithstanding).

> If you don't like the company's decisions, you should stop working for the company - easy enough.

While I don't agree with the aims of the employees in question, I should point out that unions came about because your advice does not work. The only way to stand a chance against organized capital is with organized labor. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28603398

> Main site, first element lists "Independent."

> One Director always appointed and controlled by Microsoft

> Microsoft appointed Director can effectively override "any vote to materially change the Foundation’s Membership Policy, Director Election Policy, Project Governance Policy, or any Intellectual Property-related agreements or policies" [..]

> Any change to the Bylaws which attempts to change this requires not only a 2/3 vote of the Directors, but also agreement from Microsoft separate from the Microsoft appointed director.

Ha!

> But he wasn’t foreign, is my whole point. He was born in Britain. Or if not, passed the whole naturalisation process. Apparently he’s indistinguishable from other British people.

Naturalisation process as it currently stands. I believe the GP was alluding to the fact that that process could be changed. Though I agree the public should base their sentiment on, for example, per-capita homicide rates of various groups, and not anecdata. But graphs don't seem to move people the way stories do, and we are stuck with the public we have.

> When a white British guy, with a name like Gary or Shaun stabs a teacher, say, you get stories from people who went to school with Gary or Shaun. He was an alright guy but a bit extreme when angry, maybe. Or no one would see it coming, he was a quiet guy. Why did no one see it coming? Ah well you can’t prevent everything.

After Stephen Lawrence, a Black man, was murdered in the UK by whites, he was commemorated by, among other things, making 22 April "Stephen Lawrence Day": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence

> what other primates do may not translate to good public policy.

True, but we weren't talking about whether it's good public policy, but about what the cause is. That chimpanzees exhibit bullying does not mean we should accept bullying, but it does mean we can't e.g. exclusively blame violent movies for bullying - not without strong additional evidence.

> It seem weird to me that when women are on top it's the system's fault, but when the men are on top it is natural and/or biology.

Both sides of the debate could stand to be more principled and objective, yes.

I have a question: Librarians are fiercely protective of reading privacy, and don't want to hand the information on who borrowed which book to the police. Yet they still record that information. Why? Wouldn't it be better to, for example, require a cash deposit equal to the value of the borrowed books, possibly in the form of some token? And if some books were too expensive, you'd still have the option of presenting some personally-identifiable ID. But the record of what you borrowed would be destroyed after you returned the book.

And Apple prevents their users from getting the app elsewhere.

They don't get to build a cage, then plead innocence when others abuse the cage.

Can someone explain which information Apple is using to target ads?

And that's a great trick - calling it "privacy" without reducing your own data collection/telemetry/spying, only your competitors. If I want privacy, Apple is included in the companies I want to stay private from!

Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/xeMGm

> Such is the starkness of deepening poverty in Afghanistan, a humanitarian crisis that is worsening fast after the Taliban seized power on Aug. 15, prompting the U.S. to freeze $9 billion in Afghan central-bank assets and causing a halt in most foreign aid.

So the cause is not so much any economic policies instituted by the Taliban, but the seizure of Afghan assets by the US, and the ambiguously worded "causing a halt in most foreign aid" - does this mean the US government stopped giving aid, or did the US stop others from giving aid? I'm assuming the US is also pressuring other countries to enact various sanctions? I'd appreciate it if someone could shed more light on this. It would not be the first time the media was very discreet about US sanctions (Venezuela comes to mind). On the other hand:

> The U.S. and other Western nations that spent the past two decades fighting in Afghanistan have a particular responsibility, some aid officials say.

This is a common sentiment, but how does that responsibility arise? Are they claiming that Afghanistan would be better off had the US not intervened? (I'm not informed enough about Afghanistan to discount this possibility, so I don't mean to imply the answer is "No".) If so, I'd prefer they phrased it that way, instead of this "You touched it last so anything that happens after is your fault" logic.

No mention of UK laws that prescribe 10-15 year jail sentences for "repeated viewing of terrorist content" [1], or the German NetzDG [2] that gives companies 24 hours to delete "obviously illegal" content upon receiving a complaint ("illegal" includes hate speech), or risk a €5 million fine (which in practice means every complaint results in deletion, or a handful of mistakes bankrupt a company), or Facebook and Twitter censoring links to stories even in private messages between users [3].

I can appreciate that censorship is worse in the countries listed, but that is no reason to ignore what is happening in Western countries - I would expect at least a mention.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41479620

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Enforcement_Act

[3] https://theintercept.com/2020/10/15/facebook-and-twitter-cro...

> we are about to enter an era where our personal devices not only don't work exclusively for us but instead work explicitly against us.

About to? LG smart TVs send filenames on connected storage devices back to LG, Google's phones by default (and until they were caught, even if you explicitly disabled it) send your location to Google for logging, that is then accessed by police with geofence warrants, printers add tracking dots to deanonymize you, Intel and AMD refuse to sell CPUs without their management engines (except to special customers), printers want "authorized" ink, and all of DRM is explicitly anti-user.

We are already firmly in that era, even if you ignore China.