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> "reporters" take their “emerging and growing problem” list from Netflix?

Your point was actually the authors point too. Quite a truculent critique from Guardian's Martha Gill:

"It probably shouldn’t work like this. Policy decisions would ideally not hinge on the quality of an actor’s performance (Adolescence had some spectacular ones, which explains its success), and whether politicians manage to catch the latest Netflix series. It makes us look a little emotionally incontinent, as a country, when the decisions of TV drama commissioners weigh quite so heavily in our politics. But the fickle spotlight of political attention has landed here, for now."

However, it's always worked like this since Plato feared the Poets and Shakespeare shaped Elizabethan England. I think politics by artists is much preferable to politics by "engineers", though the latter get the ears of the engine the former speak directly to the hearts of the people. Both are needed.

Smartphones and social media have destroyed society and TV series "Adolescence" is only a tepid glimpse of the mental-health and cultural epidemic that we've been avoiding talking about for decades now. Whether you trust the "data" or people's "emotions", the picture looks the same now.

Every comment here revolves around the question of whether of European customers may choose to relocate services in the EU as an alternative to dominant US ones. The background is that the US is now an "unreliable ally".

I see something else. If Europe has anything to offer (and because we are technically behind it is neither price nor quality), it must be based on political values.

The USA is an "ally in distress". What I am wondering about is those US customers who will now relocate to Europe where democratic values are better defended. If Europe can demonstrably uphold those values, given the true democratic spirit of the US people, then I see more than a "local first" movement for Europe. We can also anticipate an exodus of US principals in exile taking refuge in EU.

> only thing that really matters is whether people advance economically.

This is such an incomplete understanding of governance and state it could only appear under already degenerate conditions of poor political education and non-participation.

Yarvin comes across as not very articulate in this conversation. One has to doubt his bona fides. Karl Marx was no statesman, but his ideas were the banner to slaughter millions. Yarvin is no remarkable thinker whose ideas surfaced on their merits. This stuff is 6th form debating society take on politics. He's been dug up as justification for people who want to seize power and need acceptable words to flatter their plans. Ambitious thugs in any epoch can find "genius" writer from the unhinged fringe and hold them aloft. So Yarvin suddenly feels bathed in light, but he's just being used and is too giddy with attention to see that.

Title needs correcting from "US" to "us"

As is, it implies there is a concerted effort by the United States to help people in North Korea.

The "us" in question is Human Rights Foundation which happens to be in the United States, but under the current regime is probably faring as well as if it were based in North Korea. Maybe the North Koreans can later return the USB sticks with something to help Americans.

> to them the relevant knowledge is knowledge of what voters will support or tolerate

That's relevant knowledge. It's not the relevant knowledge. Another piece of relevant knowledge is facts about complex things like political science, cryptography, etc. Since politicians actually need to decide and implement things, as a side gig to being popular, lack of the proper knowledge to do so is a shortcoming.

> I would like to know what the public opinion on these issues is

Not big sample sizes, but I regularly ask and interview people from all sides of life, and to a simple question like "Do you think the police should spy on you if that catches criminals?" the answer is always a resounding "no". Especially young people. They just way "No way. We're not criminals". They "arguments" may be choppy, muddy waters, but I don't think peoples feelings about being spied on is much of a mystery.

Pitifully disingenuous.

How I see it digital literacy 1.0 was crude stimulus and not at all disguised, to get globally competitive in the new microprocessor wave, and in the late 70s and early 80s Japan, and to a lesser extent USA were players at the time. BASIC for school kids was like cod liver oil in the workhouse gruel. It made us strong. The "equaliser" worked out well for the few, ones like me, maybe you. Digital literacy 2.0 is a different project. It's to enable those two generations removed, who natural tech users facing de-stimulus and social warehousing, what that tech is really for and who really controls it. Keep at it.

This sort of positive security model with behavioural analysis is the future. We need to get it built-in to Apache,Nginx,Caddy etc. The trick is spotting crawlers from users. It can be done though.

lol. Tell that to Nicolae and Elena Ceaucescu, Saddam Hussain, Muammar Gaddafi, and all those other tinpot nobjockeys who thought their money and influence would save them from "nice" people.

These are DDOS attacks and should be treated in law as such. (Although I do realise that in many countries now we no longer have any effective "rule of law")

Maybe it's a blessing in disguise, yes. But I wrote up here [0] about how sad this makes me feel. We've squandered a huge opportunity this past 20 years by allowing BigTech to emerge and basically destroy the good political agenda of the original (D)ARPA project. Sure it was hegemonic. Sure we screwed up with things like "Arab Spring".

But I cannot stop feeling the Internet was the greatest tool of democracy and liberty - and we messed it up by allowing weak minded greedy and insecure types to take over.

It's no surprise that the latest brand of technofascist thugs targeted "data" as the new power-lever. "Flipping" carefully installed defective leaders is a new kind of threat and a new kind of attack we need to think about more in cybserscurity.

I don't think it needs us to be Cassandras for everyone to understand (vigilance is the essence of democracy) that if we want good, nice things, we'll have to actively work for them and defend daily. I'm also quietly optimistic that taking it back won't be such a big deal as we fear. We'll just have a lot of repair work to do when this sad episode is over. I think a Euro-centric rebuild will be a useful step towards a healed global vision again. One day.

[0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/layer10/

If you're an expert with FLOSS software.

A maturing math library makes Racket a serious LISP. I saw a DFT under misc, but would like to see more extensive DSP to make Racket more fun for music and video processing.

"it is imperative that the UK's technical demands of Apple – and of any other US companies – be subjected to robust, public analysis and debate by cybersecurity experts," the letter states.

There was extensive debate and input by experts. The UK gov were told in no uncertain terms that this would not fly, and chose to ignore that and steam ahead asking for the impossible anyway.

I know science is unfashionable nowadays, but more debate will not make perpetual motion machines, time travel or NOBUS backdoors any more feasible.

We covered it when the bill was in motion [0] and revised it yesterday here [1]

[0] https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=16

[1] https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=42

Fireworks: Emphasis on colour, animation, bells, whistles and bangs.

Liarfox: Even more corporate shitfuckery and deception.

Firefux: Porn optimised browser.

endless possibilities.....

> Pressly's book is less about privacy and more about what it protects, a condition he calls "oblivion."

Privacy is a beautiful word because it actually describes a cluster that is a massive part of the human experience, including dignity, respect, self-respect, and most importantly perhaps "peace".

They use magnetism AFAIK

> you don't become a global ceo without being an absolute killer

This idea is very parochial and American, and it's unfortunate in spreading a wrong idea that gives license for some people to behave as hooligans.

There are massive global companies most of us have never heard of, with CEOs who shun publicity and operate in what is really a mild-mannered but highly competent fashion.

Power also comes from politeness, tact, diplomacy, and the earned attachment of subordinates we call "respect".

They are not constantly immersed in scandal and drama because most of the employees never have much cause to interact negatively.

The cult of US Tech leaders is a vile and embarrassing spectacle of vanity, tantrums, acting-out, histrionics and arrogance. It's very poor human behaviour that harms the perception of business in the wider world, and we should not hold it up as normative.

Where can I buy this book? I'll get one now, even if I never read it.

Good question.

I'd also like to hear more detail (budget, time, people and skills) on real cases.

When I had research students I set a few of them doing studies on migration, degoogling, data "repatriation" (ick!) and all the things I think we now call "sovereignty". But there was lots of theory and precious few solid, documented studies. There were also hundreds of propaganda pieces and Google/Microsoft/Amazon shill pieces sowing disinfo.

Surely that's changed now and the economic realities are clearer?

That's a lot of words to describe technofascism.

I'm still regularly surprised how far behind mainstream/media/public understanding is on issues that we take for granted as hackers.

However, the Atlantic hints at one fresh concept, of "Constitutional Cybersecurity". Who enforces the boundaries within government.

First instinct is that's the NSA's job (?).

> Has anyone ever seen Facebook as idealistic?

During the "Arab Spring" [0], a lot of people thought Facebook was the dogs bollocks and that the sun shone out of Mark Zuckerberg's arse.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring

Well we've used pigeons fr missile guidance before [0], and for messaging [1], so birds have a firm place in the military including having their own special units [2]

More generally, the history of warfare is all about taking the enemy's resources and using them as weapons against the foe. This will be a defining feature of future cyberwar and AI - everything we build to "protect ourselves" will at some point be repurposed to advantage an enemy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_pigeon

[2] https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/warfares-unsung-pi...

> against the basic human (animal?) instinct to take the path of least resistance.

Fitness. Nobody takes a run because they're needing to waste a half hour. Okay, some people just have energy and time to burn, and some like to code for the sake of it (I used to). We need to do things we don't like from time to time in order to stay fresh. That's why we have drills and exercises.

And that too. Company towns are usually built around a resource like a mine or something, whereas city states arise at natural confluences. A company setup has only one show in town and whoever controls that is boss. Building out in the desert is Red Alert command sims stuff IMHO. and probably works if you've a nuclear reactor and a ring of tesla-coils around the whole perimeter.

Hopefully I'm not nitpicking, "propaganda" in general form can be to any purpose; rallying/unity, sapping morale, creating a scapegoat... A lovely word for what your describing is "discombobulation" - sowing seeds of fear, uncertainty, doubt (FUD), gaslighting and disorienting.

I really like the idea of a well designed, and open, scalable home power solution with grid integration. My thought for you; battery technology is going to keep changing, so design-in that variability for the long term. Ideally one should be to able to hook-up a mixed bag of various cells, lead-acids, fuel-cells, lithium... in varying capacities and conditions and have the management system look after them all.

> what regulations they want to be free from?

All those except their own.

The old concept of the city state or polis [0] helps somewhat in understanding this model of granularity.

From my ignorant reading of classics, they're basically never at peace with each other for long.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Greek_cities

> So I think that's the real reason these systems never took off: "everything works together" too often becomes "everything breaks together."

Beautifully put.