That's always possible. The version I heard from a company I may or may not work for: investors watch revenue vs expenses. If you expect a downturn in revenue, you cut expenses to avoid problems.
Which apparently becomes self fulfilling.
7,133 karma · joined February 5, 2015
Which apparently becomes self fulfilling.
A gross generalization, but definitely a common interaction I'm seeing/feeling.
I agree that increased scrutiny does not make the problem ok, but does reveal the problems more quickly.
But the only reason those points matter in the "Should I use Zoom?" question is if you're assuming all other products have the same flaws and just haven't been looked at. To which, I'm pretty confident they don't all share these problems, particularly but not limited to the "blatantly lied about the basic security features".
Technically speaking, zoom has shown off great and remarkably stable/scalable features.
But that is orthogonal to whether they are putting people at risk (e.g. not-so-secret therapy sessions) or lying about their feature set (clearly claiming to have end to end encryption).
My comment was not to the article directly, but rather to the above poster who seemed so joyous at a "takedown". That's the attitude that is so tiresome. Good-natured pointing out of idiosyncrasies like the "wat" video ARE funny, but people that use them to look down on others aren't. Perhaps I'm oversensitive, but that could be to having my profession belittle me for the past several years...
When I first started coding 20-some years ago, I ended up as a Perl dev. (Cue mockery). I noticed that the perl community loved to mock the PHP (and to a lesser extent Python ) devs. But the LEADERS in the Perl community did NOT mock them. They compared notes, shared experiences, and mutually improved.
So when the programming community decides it is cool to put one group down, to relentless mock and deride them, but hey, it's just a joke, lighten up....
I'm not impressed. I enjoy a good joke, but not all jokes are good jokes.
The point of patent laws is to encourage the spread of knowledge. To put it another way, it's NOT yours, but we'll let you act like it for a bit in order to make sure the knowledge gets out. If we've created a situation where the "land of ideas" is remaining fallow, then the process isn't working as intended.
> The problem I believe, is that software innovators are taught not to worry about patents
Who's the innovator? What side of the worry?
The software companies I've been in have been all about MAKING patents. Teaching special classes, polling workers to see if they've done anything patentable.
Worrying about violating patents is a different story.
Meanwhile, as an individual coder doing anything outside a corporate market, the message is that it's too expensive and difficult to "worry" about violating them.
You've inserted the word "trust" in there - I was saying we all shouldn't HAVE to.
Let me insert "trust" into your argument, not to be troll-ey, but to show how that's biasing the argument needlessly, and I'll also answer your question.
I recognize my limitation to not be an expert in everything, including distinguishing experts in all fields from those that falsely claim to be.
I recognize that others are ALSO so limited. If you want to call that not trusting people, feel free, and let's adjust this argument to be "there are other people who feel as I do" - the conclusions will be the same.
We (myself and these like-minded others) wish to select those we do trust to filter out the worst abuses. We'll set up rules to say on what basis these decisions are made.
Of course, any system is prone to abuse, but we judge that our ability to monitor this group is better than our ability to monitor literally everyone.
You aren't trusting us to do that.
> it leads to a centralized authority being entrusted with the task of determining what is and isn't wrong and that is a fundamental non starter if we are to try and preserve free speech in a meaningful way
Considering my position here that absolute free speech turns out to be harmful, this feels like a tautology.
Humans have been filtering and evaluating words from others throughout history. Often poorly, even without a centralized authority involved. Often a centralized authority filters words poorly. Yet in the face of both of these words have been heard, progress is made. Perhaps the more important aspect is that we individuals value hearing the words of others, even words we don't like, and push back against excessive filtering, without requiring that no filtering be done.
You aren't trusting us to be able to do that.
If it survives for 12 hours on surfaces, you only need 1 person to have poor hygiene to expose a LOT of people. And "normal" hygiene levels pass infection around plenty. I wash my hands when I go to the bathroom or before I prepare food. The rest of the time I'm just passing whatever I touch to whatever else I touch. I've given up on not touching my face. I'm sure I'm not the worst in these areas.
As I understand it, you'd have this sort of infection rate with the seasonal flu if there wasn't some level of herd immunity, and you certainly have roughly this level of infection with the common cold - "Con crud" is a thing - it's just not much remarked upon as unexpected.
> Is a recognition that humans are free agents and get to make their own choices in life.
And also puts the biggest burden upon those in the minority, even if the majority thinks they shouldn't have that burden.
> No man or woman is fit to play the censor.
But apparently they can drive other men and women away. It's defacto censorship, just of another source.
> What harm? Mean words on the internet?
Yes. Pointing out (and sharing) where you live, perhaps some details about your kids, and discussing the tragic consequences of families that lose children is just one example of "mean words on the internet". And maybe, per the above, the govt shouldn't be able to do anything about that. But saying that we, as society, just need to get thick skinned about that and suck it up as individuals is naive as to whom we are empowering and whom we are harming. We have more options than just dealing with things as individuals.
I'm not likely to respond further - my goal was not to debate the topic, but to share that there are some nuanced views on the topic of companies practicing some level of limitations on the free speech of others - anything more is well past the penumbra of the article. You clearly disagree with my views, and you clearly aren't alone, but I feel I've expressed my view well enough.
Because (in relation to the article) we're talking about companies and social groups making decisions, not just the govt. Notably, I think the US 1st amendment is basically based around the idea that we, collectively, will take social action above the personal level. If you remove that ability, my defense of the 1st amendment reduces notably.
I see the social discourse primarily being improved by the general awareness that it CAN be harmed. To think it's immune from harm outside of censorship is the key problem.
The issue isn't "identify", nor "trust". It's effort. The adult voting public are the ones that should be picking (and auditing!) those that are taking on the effort, as well as drawing the line as to where the effort is worth handing off and where it is worth keeping in personal hand.
Requiring everyone to be an expert on everything in order to evaluate it is a problem. I'm not saying they CAN'T be experts, I'm saying we have the right to choose that we don't HAVE to be. As a group. And pick whom we empower to deal with that. And pick what limitations and reviews it has to go through.
Again, I'm not saying restricting speech is free of problems. It has tons. But so does unrestricted speech. That's why it is complicated and hard, and pretending that everyone is a rational and well-intentioned actor is not a good idea. (Pretending power structures don't have problems is also not a good idea, but I've already admitted that)
I'm in WA state, where until last week testing wasn't being conducted on anyone that wasn't traveling from a level 3 country or in contact with a known infected person, EVEN IF THE WOULD-BE TESTEE WAS SHOWING SYMPTOMS. We keep talking about the count of infected (and relying on it to decide who to test) but it's unarguably low if we've not been testing, particularly as we apparently have introductions via Europe as well as China, plus community transmission.
Trump just a few days ago said that everyone who wants to be tested can get tested. According to the doctor's offices, that's still false.
Trump himself has a NUMBER of downplaying statements. So many I won't bother to list them. But lots of statements along the lines of "just the flu", among others.
> there's been an overabundance of information and caution
Hard to judge "overabundance" (see other article about how everything with a pandemic is premature until it is too late)
Today's headlines: "The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion, according to four Trump administration officials."
Note this prevents any expert who doesn't have clearance from attending.
A few days ago: "US health officials wanted to recommend that elderly Americans avoid flying amid the coronavirus crisis. The White House overruled them"
Note: I'm aware U.S. Govt 1st amendment doesn't restrict anything but the govt. I think we're both talking about the general concept of free speech, not that particular example.
Let's take the example of twitter. People swamp twitter with misinformation and toxic behavior. As individuals, we're all free to ignore/block the annoying/misleading people, and the company (the higher power) does not interfere. Ideal, right?
Except that the toxic people drive the others away. White supremacists attack and threaten people of color. Toxic bros attack and threaten women. Misinformation swamps the good information, and only the people that are already experts can tell the difference (and the misleading people will claim to be experts, so...).
If your response to above is "threats are illegal", you've not paid attention to how threats can made sufficiently arguable to be legal, but still clear enough to threaten.
Putting the burden on each individual to filter everyone is NOT taking "no" stance, it's taking the stance that those most willing to "speak" (which includes expressive actions) are given power. When the talking is for good things, that's great. But the people least willing to consider other people, the people lacking empathy, will have no restraint on what they say (or do, expressively) unless imposed. Long before they suffer any personal social repercussions they care about, they will have inflicted their harm upon a lot of people.
Preventing our "higher authorities" from taking action is reducing the power of collective people to take action. Sometimes collective people are wrong, but sometimes they are right, and that's why I say the topic isn't simple.
There are behaviors that most everyone finds reprehensible, and when someone commits them we want to be able to shun them, to remove our connection.
There are many times in the past when this shunning has been abused to censor or otherwise oppress others.
Generally people feel like they believe the latter part is the most important part...until something occurs in the former part.
As a solution to this dilemma, some advocate strong "non-moral" stances (ala "free speech") where everyone can do as they want, unrestricted. That used to be my answer. But I've come around to believing that if society doesn't apply a means of guidance/restriction/social repercussions the void will be filled with emergent results (i.e. ugliness). Abused rules are abusive, but a lack of a set of rules doesn't lead to peace, it leads to warlords and those least willing to restrain their own actions in the name of empathy gaining the most power.
I don't have the right answers, but I'm confident that walking away from the questions is not the right answer.
Hot plates and other heating elements were banned. Use of a dorm room was mandatory for freshman year.
But crockfird said it was done to keep the parsing simple (and thus secure), and between seeing how XML has it, and seeing how poorly many json parsing implementations are despite this simplicity, I have begrudgingly decided to accept it. Still wish there was a way without those problems though.
Absolute containment is highly unlikely, but delay can help a ton.
We would both use this as an example - you think it is because people changed their views, I think it is because a big group of people bitterly opposed to this died off, opening the door to change.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree. FWIW, I hope you're correct. I'd love to see society avoid repeating mistakes, learning from alternative viewpoints and expanding what they consider. Sadly, the one concrete case I can have of changing viewpoints is my own: In my twenties I felt as you do. In the decades since I've seen people embrace willful ignorance and proudly stand by hypocrisy so long as they didn't have to accept anything that was outside of their "normal". I retain the hope, but I've lost the expectation.
Here's to the hope that my conclusions are wrong.
I'm not (meaning to be) saying old people are conservative. I'm saying people, as a whole, don't change their views. The only way for new views to gain purchase in society is for the people with different views to die off of old age.
Most often those new views ARE more progressive, but not always.
But my core point is that if those in power don't die, they aren't going to change their views, and their power will only concentrate. "in power" doesn't just mean rulers, it also means numbers. Those racist uncles, those people deeply offended by same-sex marriages, etc. Unless the young are automatically more progressive (as you've just argued is not the case), then they won't go away, and won't be marginalized, and they'll keep holding their views.
Exceptions will exist, but numerically, it's an issue.
But let's compare the numbers of moms like that to the number of racist uncles. From whom do you think those angry neo-nazis learned their rhetoric?
Looking at history, though, it seems like most (all?) significant social progress comes about because old people that bitterly cling their views and (most importantly) their power eventually die off, freeing room for the new.
We live in a world that isnt controlled by feudal powers owning a good portion of the population not because of wars, but because younger and less invested people forced those conflicts. The results of those conflicts are accepted because the people for whom the old way was normal die off. The new generations are able to make their own mistakes, get invested in the nest normal, and be replaced in turn.
Now I fear we will make anti-agathics before we develop a means to actually change without people dying.
I still hope. Someday we might live with death as a choice AND without oppression. Pretty sure I wont be around for it.
Citation needed. I wont declare the govt to respond quickly, but the incentives, experiences, and expertise at companies dont tell me they are likely to respond in the best way. Some, certainly. Many? Maybe. Most? Prove it.
No - I was saying the same thing you are: the items of the bundle CANNOT be mapped individually, which is why GOG has this policy. The poster I was replying to was saying they didn't understand why a bundle was treated differently, and I was trying to say why. (apparently, poorly)
Let's say 3 SKUs exist: one for $10 and 2 for $15
Now add a bundle that offers all three for $30.
If someone with the bundle wants a refund on the item that is normally $10, what do you do that ISN'T different from someone that bought them each individually?
Or am I misunderstanding your confusion?
In the late aughts I changed my tune because coal is just too disastrous and indeed, people/govts werent motivated enough.
So while I understand the simple practicality of going nuke to get off coal, I also expect that most of the potential downsides of nuclear will become reality before people will be motivated enough to do anything about it.
"Most people just want entertainment to relax, so they tolerate supporting the existing power structures for a while"
This doesn't blame people for needing a break, but it does acknowledge that the choice isn't "fight or not fight", it is "fight or support".
So many of the "don't bring politics into X" arguments ignore that the politics are already there.
I understand viewing the media with skepticism - they make money off of generating emotional reactions. That means their reporting is unreliable, it doesn't mean it is utterly false.