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dxdm

1,302 karma · joined April 29, 2020

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dxdm··on Reforming English Spelling
Based on your comment and username, you might like or even already have read this:

https://www.lovelybooks.de/autor/Z%C3%A9-do-Rock/Fom-Winde-f...

I found it quite enjoyable.

dxdm··on Canadians are running out of time to oppose Bill C-22
This sounds like an interesting argument, but it's damn hard to parse. I think you're saying that real democracy needs political (in the widest sense) engagement, which can't be got from the majority of people, so letting everyone participate without regard to such engagement gets in the way of real democracy, and therefore you suggest to "replace" (redistribute) power?

Anyway, this really needs an explanation of what your idea of "real democracy" is, and what "replace power" is supposed to mean.

Anyway, the answer to your question of "how" is likely: at your own peril. ;)

dxdm··on ICE Planning $100M 'Nightmare' Domestic Spy Program
I found a source from 2024 that seems trustworthy. It comes to the conclusion that about 2.5 million were "released into the US", while an estimated 1.6 million snuck in. That's Feb 2021 to Oct 2023.

The details are complicated, and higher numbers seem to come from the fact that usually _encounters_ are counted, in the wild and at ports of entry, which includes millions of people who were turned around, many of whom will have tried and been encountered multiple times.

The source is extremely comprehensive and deep, way beyond what I wrote above.

https://www.factcheck.org/2024/02/breaking-down-the-immigrat...

That being said, the HR bit that you also quoted from GP is a bad analogy. It should be clear that immigration is quite different than onboarding new hires, something a country literally built on immigration like the US is a testament to.

Edit: As someone is mentioning elsewhere in the thread, let's not forget that during the Biden admin there was a bipartisan immigration and border security bill, including many provisions previously demanded by the Republicans, that got rejected in a turnaround by the Republicans in the end in the election year.

dxdm··on A statement on the Tor Project's relationship with Mullvad
Well, I think that pointing to the direction of travel is necessary, because that's where these folks want to go - and if we don't end up there, it's not because they had a change of heart, but because not enough people jumped on their bandwagon.

As I said, I also think that "fascism" is overused as a label, but that it fits in this case and is one of the right labels. Calling the modern revenant by the name of one of its previous forms is not wrong, and should be goddamn possible, at the very least. That was my point. I won't pursue it here anymore, because I agree that it probably does not _work_. It doesn't work because it's wrong, but because it seems like there are simply no words at all that work. This name, that label, new, old, short, long - enough people just don't care, don't see, will not see what they are supporting and voting for. It sucks.

dxdm··on A statement on the Tor Project's relationship with Mullvad
> things could get a lot worse! And they just might!

Looks like they will. Do you care to bet what sort of party will make them so? You can see them in action across the world and in our past.

> They just aren’t that similar.

That's where we disagree. I say they're similar where it counts the most, at the core. Where did the fascists come from?

There's a combination of xenophobia and populism, this tendency to offer simple solutions to complex problems that tend to involve blaming and getting rid of people that are "different". It usually goes hand in hand with a certain latent or overt brutality, doesn't it, the tendency to not care about the suffering inflicted, about the humanity of others. There's a generous streak of authoritarianism there, wanting to suppress differences, a hostility towards the mechanisms that allow these differences to be expressed and balanced and protected. A disdain for courts that don't rule the right way, for journalists that don't write the right thing, and a soft spot for what we call "alternative facts" these days and for "remigration" - I think the nazis entertained such an idea, too.

I agree that there's an inflationary use of calling out "fascism", but you don't need to look deeply into that Swedish party to see the similarities. From what I read, much more likely than not, somebody like their boss would have been an ardent nazi even before the 1930s, golden party badge and all - and if not, then only because he'd have a competing party for a while.

So yeah, sometimes it's right to call a spade a spade. Another one of the reasons that accusations of “fascism” fall flat is that people just don't want to be associated with _that_, and there are enough differences to talk about to avoid looking in the mirror of the past. You don't need to have arrived at the extremes for people to understand where your heart is, and what is at least the direction you want to go. It's the one that's consistently turned out to be worse.

dxdm··on A statement on the Tor Project's relationship with Mullvad
My point is that the term "fascist" here gets used to draw attention to parallels in core ideology, and that this is unsurprising and indeed appropriate.

There will always be differences, and a narrower definition can be useful in a different discussion, but in general, I'd say recognizing the same patterns from the past is the opposite of historical illiteracy and something that we could use more of. Insisting on the finer points _in this context_ comes across as historical pedantry at best, or an inability or unwillingness to recognize the fundamental similarities otherwise.

dxdm··on A statement on the Tor Project's relationship with Mullvad
It's not the "calls for fusion of corporations and state" you mentioned above that these people are the most famous for, and what you seem worried about others being associated with; but their ideology and the associated actions. It's no wonder modern forms of a similar ideology draw comparisons to its most famous proponents in recent history.

The association happens by way of that similarity. That's what they're getting called out for.

Opening up a discussion about technical differences in economic policy is completely beside the point, unless you want to distract from the rest of the rotten elephant in the room.

It's not about names, it's about using names as a shorthand for what these people said to motivate and justify their horrific deeds.

They were not the first, or last, but, as you say, among the worst. They serve as an excellent model of what can happen when you put people like that in control of a modern, organized and industrialized state.

And as such, I find it entirely appropriate to invoke their handle as a shorthand for modern ducks quacking a similar tune.

dxdm··on Margaret Hamilton has died
I think that's named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton
dxdm··on Permanent Daylight Saving Time Could Harm Sleep and Mental Health, Analysis Says
Ok, understood. It seemed like you were proposing an alternative to permanent-DST that should be worse by your own logic (unnatural standard), but if it's tongue in cheek, then I'm much less confused.
dxdm··on Permanent Daylight Saving Time Could Harm Sleep and Mental Health, Analysis Says
I thought we wanted to prevent imposing unnatural time standards? "China manages somehow" seems nowhere close to that.

The point of the article is that timezones solve practical problems that will keep existing if you remove timezones - no matter if you do it globally or only in one large geographic region.

People have a use for a time grid that is relative to when they're awake, and the article I linked to goes into great detail why. Don't worry about telephones, people can still interact without them.

dxdm··on Permanent Daylight Saving Time Could Harm Sleep and Mental Health, Analysis Says
Not entirely, if the country covers enough time zones, like China suggested above. 4 hours of difference is already half the working day, and a sizable chunk of daylight.
dxdm··on Permanent Daylight Saving Time Could Harm Sleep and Mental Health, Analysis Says
Seems relevant: https://qntm.org/abolish
dxdm··on Court agrees with EFF: Utah's VPN law demands a technical impossibility
I can only repeat what I wrote before: There are no hard red lines, only mostly hard, mostly red, and mostly straight lines, not in law, and not even when looking at literal lines that somebody drew or printed.

Trying to define something simple and universally applicable is a fool's errand, because people will disagree, and even if it's just you, reality will hit you with exceptions and curveballs if you look hard or wait long enough.

The point of the constitution is not to satisfy a need for simple, unchangeable rules that need no interpretation whatsoever.

If you look for the point of the constitution, here's one explanation from the horse's mouth:

> We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It's ground rules. They will necessarily require interpretation, as all rules do. What that interpretation should be and how far it should go is part of that, and has been ongoing ever since, as would be expected.

dxdm··on Court agrees with EFF: Utah's VPN law demands a technical impossibility
So what?

> Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech

Note that it does not define what that means. At the same time, it is well established that some forms of speech do come with consequences. I'm sure you can think of commonly accepted examples.

Laws do not exist outside of courts who interpret them. They made an extra court to do that for the constitution. That's a feature!

Reality is fuzzy. The problem with insisting on "verbatim" readings of texts is that there is always wiggle room and edge cases, and nobody can agree on what that one, true reading is.

So, yeah, the first amendment might not say what you think it says, because it only says what it says, and not what it does, because it can only say, and it takes people to do.

dxdm··on America.gov
Did you try your question on the website?
dxdm··on Pirating the Pirates
That button only works if I enter my email address in the text box next to it. :/
dxdm··on Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy (2021)
Oh, I don't mind the disagreement, I'm curious to understand why your position is so different from mine, after getting closer to understanding what your position actually is. (I had to do that because there are some implicit premises in my thinking vs what you're saying which seem fundamentally different, and I had to work those out for myself.)

I think I do get it now, and it seems to be pretty much to what I described before. While I think that there is responsibility for the outcomes of one's actions no matter through which ways and means they are accomplished, for you, it seems to depend: making it about smarts or intellect or whatever, and putting a computer in between, causes it to transcend legality and morality. Adverse consequences are not on the actor anymore, and purely on the "defender".

That's not how a lot of people (including myself) see this issue. They would not agree that responsibility and outcomes should get disconnected or redistributed by changing the ways and means in between. (Edit, just to make this extra clear: The idea is that it should not matter if one uses their brain and a computer to effect damage, or some other means. Computers are a different tool, not a different game.) Even more, people find it hard to follow both the ethics and the logic of your argument, because you've not been able to express WHY an exception should be made for "smarts" and "computers" and not in other cases. Whenever I've asked you to explain, you've either misunderstood or evaded the question and responded with re-iterating that "smart" is different from "strong", as if that explains anything. (It boils down to being asked: "Why should the difference between red and blue matter here?" and answering with "Because they are different.")

So, you're taking an position that people find ethically problematic and logically inconsistent, and that's the reason why you receive this pushback: people feel motivated to counter what they see as an uncontested "ethical divergence", and you gave them an obvious logical chink to pry a lever into.

What I'm taking away is that you truly believe this, which is so foreign to me that I'm completely mystified. It makes me curious, and also uncomfortable, and for both reasons I wonder: How? Why? However, you're simply re-iterating your position, and I've come no closer to finding out, nor do I think I actually will, because I can't find a way to phrase my questions in a way that would bridge a barrier of understanding between us and make you respond to what I'm asking.

I'm still curious. But in any case, please do enjoy the rest of your weekend.

dxdm··on Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy (2021)
Here's how I understand your position so far:

You think it's okay when actual harm and suffering results from a "battle of the brains" via computers, because one party "outsmarted" the other. Sure, it would "suck", but you think the playing field is pure and level, making it a fair contest and any consequence fair game, and therefore it should not be illegal.

You are unable or unwilling to engage with the question if and why using a computer and "smarts" to cause harm is different from using strength, or any other advantage, to cause such adverse outcomes in other ways; it is not clear to me if you would also regard that as okay and think we should not have the laws that sanction such things; or if and why you think this anarchy should only exist in some sort of "digital computer space", crossing which would serve to make actual, real world consequences not matter that much anymore. It's almost like, by putting a computer between actions and consequences, one passes through a waterfall that washes away responsibility and "sin", in the ethical sense. But that depends on whether you think those were there to begin with, and is only an interesting metaphor for me; please don't get distracted by it.

In any case, that's a very interesting position. I'm curious what you gain from arguing it. Where does that come from? It's possible you're just trolling, but maybe smarts and brains connected via networks are truly special to you. Why?

(Edit: Please disregard "what you gain", it comes across completely wrong and takes it in an unintended direction. "Where does it come from" is what I mean.)

dxdm··on Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy (2021)
You're presenting a false dilemma, there are more options than "all hacking is completely illegal" and "all hacking is a free-for-all".

We're in a thread that starts from the notion that it should not be illegal to "hack a telecom network and take control of it", because "the people running it did not do a good job configuring and securing it." That's essentially the free-for-all position, and defending it by claiming that the opposite extreme is the only other option is a false choice. Nuance and compromise exist, and our world is made of them.

Also, your argument about burglars can be applied to "hackers", too. Police can find and arrest people domestically and beyond. Consequences deter people from all sorts of illegal activity. On the other hand, nation states are not necessarily deterred by laws from kidnapping and killing people inside the territory of other countries. You've probably seen the news.

What's different is the ease of access to digitical, internet-connected systems, and the scale of abuse that affords. That's a reason to think differently about _how_ to shape the rules and laws around "hacking", but not a reason to have no rules or laws at all.

dxdm··on Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy (2021)
> I really don’t understand the urge or need to compare software security with physical security.

Both are about preventing harm in many different forms. Software famously has effects in the physical world, that's the reason why a lot of it exists, and why people get paid that deal with software because it makes their brains feel good.

I also notice that you haven't really answered my questions around that.

> if you get hacked, it is on you. The attacker was smarter than you, simple as that.

From your perspective, what makes "smarter" different from "stronger", or "more resourceful" here? Or do you think that if your door gets bashed in, it's your fault, because your door was too weak? Or your head? What if someone outsmarts your physical security arrangements to wander around in your house? Where's your boundary here?

I think physical and "cyber" security are not so dissimilar in the need to back them up with rules and laws at some point. Still, there are differences, so I don't think the rules and laws need to be the same. You seem to be advocating to have none at all for the software case, and I'm trying to find out about that.

dxdm··on Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy (2021)
Since you mentioned it below several responses to this comment: Why do you think this is okay for software, but not okay in the "physical world"?

Is it about a perceived lack of consequences of the one vs the other? What if the hack caused real damage and suffering? For example, people's medical histories get stolen and exposed? Ransomware encrypts hospital systems, disrupting medical care?

Or, the inverse: while you're away, somebody breaks into your home non-destructively, takes some photos, sleeps on your couch, and leaves. Should that be forbidden? Your fault for allowing it? It is easier to pull something like this in the digital world, is that why it seems different to you?

dxdm··on Most people prefer traditional architecture
I thought we were talking about how things look, not the skill that goes into making them look like it. These are sufficiently different things.

Fashion. Taste. Informed by functional and economical requirements, materials, surroundings, urban planning, yes, but in the end, there's also an element of taste and subjective preference that can clump together in periods or zeitgeist forms or whatever you like to call it.

As taste and preference go, you are free to delegate yours to others without question, as you seem to be doing here so passionately. I don't find empty appeals to authority very convincing. But maybe I misunderstand what you're saying.

I'm willing to hold two concepts in my head: my own impression of the appearance of different examples of a certain architectural style (which, like all others, has better and worse ones); and the question why some people who know a lot more than me might see it differently than me. Their reasons and my reasons might both be valid, but mine would be far less interesting. Hence, my question.

Finally: You seem to think that I asked you to trust my opinion, or even to change yours. You might want to look into why you think that, because that's not at all what I did. I asked something entirely different.

dxdm··on Most people prefer traditional architecture
Yes, I would like to understand why this is their preference. Aren't you curious? I don't think it's enough to say: these people are experts, so in this issue of style and taste their answer is automatically correct, no more info needed, thank you.

Also, I'd be surprised if ALL "people who study [this] subject and dedicate their lives to studying and perfecting their understanding" would share the same preference.

dxdm··on Most people prefer traditional architecture
Why, indeed.
dxdm··on Compressing a flag to 11 bits
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes

> In Greek mythology, Procrustes [...] was a rogue smith and bandit from Attica who attacked people by stretching them or cutting off their legs, so as to force them to fit the size of an iron bed.

> The word Procrustean is thus used by analogy to describe, for example, situations where an arbitrary standard is used to measure success, while completely disregarding obvious harm that results from the effort.

dxdm··on Version control second coming
I don't want to stop you from providing your opinion, and looking back, I shouldn't have questioned it the way I did.

I didn't consider, after my own experience switching from the time of CVS and then SVN to git, with the substantial liberation of workflow that it brought, that somebody would not have that experience, but maybe even an opposite one instead. To be honest, I still find that hard to imagine. That's silly of me, but here we are. I apologize.

(Edit: I do want to add that I also reacted to the hyperbole in your previous comments in this thread, which honestly did not help your opinion to come across as particularly well-considered, so that colored my impression of your position and my response to it.)

> I really just hope that we can move past git-as-default into a better era. That's all.

Than I can only recommend to give jujutsu a try, with its git backend, as sacrilegious as it might sound to you. It offers a much saner and more consistent approach to version control, and with with its abstraction over different possible backends, it offers a way out without having to overcome the considerable problem of having to replace git _first_. A better backed can come later.

Depending on what exactly your issues with git are, you might like it, and it could allow you to have a small part in moving past git right now.

I'm usually not one to fall for, or advocate for new-ish tooling, but jj is one of the few that convinced me. I started using it exclusively with existing git repos; colleagues are still using git with the same repos and are none the wiser. I haven't looked back.

But that depends on your list of missing features, I suppose. If they don't match, I'd be curious what they are and why they might not have been picked up.

dxdm··on Version control second coming
Well, then I'm sorry. Your issue seems not so much that tools have shortcomings, but rather, that you seem to focus on these shortcomings so much that everything looks like crap. Maybe not in general, but at least in relation to VCSes, it sure seems like you're wearing some brown-tinted glasses, so to speak.

As a point in case, it's certainly interesting to see you completely disregard jujutsu because it happens to also work (optionally!) with a proprietary backend, when its most useful feature is that it makes working with git night-and-day better, nothing proprietary required. This thing could be a ray of light for you, but for some curious reason, you seem to go out of your way to ignore it.

I mean, it's definitely possible that you think to this day that SVN was the bee's knees and its demise in favor of git or mercurial made us all poorer, but that's certainly a rare perspective. In that context, I'm also finding it hard to reconcile your initial statement around the calcification in VCS land, and now it sounds like you would have preferred to stick with SVN instead.

I'm sure you can give me a rationale for it all, but I wonder how much of it will be just picking rotten (or declared-rotten) cherries out of an otherwise tasty pile. If you stack up the present against a rosy-tinted version of the past and some inexistent pie-in-the-sky, it's no surprise it comes up wanting; but that's just a way to make yourself unhappy, really.

dxdm··on Version control second coming
I don't think jujutsu is proprietary (unless you want to redefine that term). Source is freely available, and it uses Apache License 2.0.

While you're right about the disadvantages of git, pretending that it became ubiquitous because it "became a quasi-religion because Linus made it in a day" is selling short its advantages. If you think about it for even just a little bit, it should be obvious what a simplistic statement that it. Also, git was not the stagnation you make it out to be. Even with its warts, it was a breath of fresh air, not unlike jujutsu is now a breath of fresh air vs git.

I remember working with SVN, and all things considered, git was a vast net improvement. Git took a lot of pain away. It made working with a versioned code base faster and simpler, to the point of enabling much better collaborative software development. There's a reason we got GitHub and not SVNhub. And GitHub was what helped git become so dominant.

Would it have been better if Mercurial had beat out git in the propularity contest? Possibly? There's trade-offs between the two, but Mercurial's easier interface counts for a lot. But if it had won, I'm sure we'd be griping about its shortcomings by now.

So yeah, I'm also happy to see some movement around the ergonomics of version control, but I don't understand the need to disparage the tools that got us where we are. It just seems that you're more bitter than happy, and like you're letting that bitterness cloud your judgment.

dxdm··on .gitignore Everything by Default
There's -i for interactive, lets you add, patch and reset (unstage).
dxdm··on It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell
I agree that requirements need to be kept in check to avoid over engineering. However, I think it's hard to decide for other people far away what their requirements ought to be.

So I don't agree that you can call mrb's basic wireless doorbell "overengineered" for requirements reasons alone without opening yourself up to the same scrutiny that you're applying to him.

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