pyuser583

Learn how to calculate longitude and latitude by eyesight using the Ptolemaic system.

Then add a telescope or sextant.

This is lots of fun, if you’re into that sort of thing.

It sounds weird there is a pro-rat constituency.

Had this problem with my kid - social media caused serious mental health issues. Toxic content in kids areas.

But taking it away was worse.

Once “not using it” isn’t an option, government intervention becomes reasonable.

The wording is a bit strange - technically all men (18-25) must register. When I tried to register, I was told I couldn't because I was already registered.

The Selective Service auto-registers people from various data sources.

But this puts me in a weird spot: I've never actually registered. I am registered. But I did not register - which is the requirement.

There are Kafka-esque parts of the US government where this distinction could matter.

No other use for the registry.

Informally, it's put forward as one of the most successful government programs in history: it succeeds at all it's objective, comes in at or under budget, employs few people, and avoids the scope creep that kills other successful programs.

It's only shortcoming: it doesn't actually do anything.

Does quantum have any money making prospects?

Breaking encryption is illegal. Making encryption is difficult to profit from.

Other than that, what’s the value add?

Frankly this is true about Earth too. Not enough effort is spent wisely managing human waste, and many people die as a result.

No that doesn’t work - tried it.

Google is basically its own private internet. It caches content so you can access all sorts of terrible stuff just from Google.com (and its related domains).

But if you cut Google you cut Google Classroom - which is required.

And Google Classroom itself has many workarounds.

This isn’t just a Google problem. The centralization of the Internet around a few mixed content domains really kills conventional filtering.

Paradoxically, there are so many centralized domains that even if you can block one, it’s just a game of whack a mole.

Eventually you just block the whole internet - and then what’s the point? Take away the 20 most popular mixed content platforms, messaging, etc, and you’re effectively blocking the whole internet.

The kids can’t contact their friends, watch educational videos, or any other legitimate use.

Privacy (from state surveillance) and freedoms of speech are very different issues.

But they are both issues where Americans have greater protections than Europeans.

I’m so sorry, I confused the Clipper Chip with the V-Chip.

The 1990s were interesting times.

That’s just not how the system works.

Each school brews its own system more or less.

I was reading an essay by Kant called “what is Enlightenment?” It argues that people should be permitted to say whatever they wanted, provided they obey the laws.

He bases it on the idea that we should not be subject to be “lifelong tuteledge.” At some point we must speak up and contribute.

We can be wrong. Very wrong. We can advise our rulers to do terrible things. The Holocaust hadn’t happened yet, but the Wars of Relgion had - he knew how bad people could be.

Europe doesn’t seem to reject lifelong tuteledge any more. There want opinion and thought to be guided and formed by an elite class, not a noisy crowd of peers.

This is new. It was foreign to Kant, foreign to Locke, Hobbes, Marx, etc.

It’s a bit scary the Europe is leading the way on this. And it does seem they are poking at speech specifically.

Most recently the EU is considering a “ban conversion therapy.” Not medical malpractice legislation - just a very specific type of medical malpractice that has a very specific political constituency.

Meanwhile people who are subject to quacky things like past life regression or Freudian analysis are left with the normal malpractice system.

Really Europe (and other places) are using it as a way to weaken freedom of speech.

Maybe I’m connecting dots where there are none, but there seems to be a big international shift away from free speech, with Europe taking the lead.

In America this manifests itself as “it would be nice if we could restrict speech like normal countries do, but we have to worry about the Republicans, so let’s not do that - yet.”

But it’s pretty clear free speech is going the way of right to bear arms and trial by jury.

Freedom of speech is not a European value.

How is the Clipper chip different from what online platforms claim have: a curated kids only section?

It’s very hard to control kids internet access. Impossible really. Even if you do it fine at home, once they go to school it’s whatever policies the school has. Most require laptops and provide internet access.

There was a time when WINE was iffy. At best.

It’s gotten good and reliable.

Commendations to contributors!

Finland comes to mind.

They are fake in the sense individual items are listed as having costs that are not accurate.

But really the defense deals are very complicated, and not based around buying x number of items.

You’re making a not well-formed query. How much is a shell?

Adam Smith pointed out the first pencil costs thousands of dollars, but the second is mostly free. Same dynamic here, but multipled by a thousand.

It’s terrible at that. Rich people are very good at passing down wealth, even in high tax environments. They just move abroad for a bit.

They also pay for education and use networks and names to get their kids jobs and status.

In America everything is a shady shell company so it doesn’t matter ;P

Why aren’t European countries competing on better corporate law?

Press made it pretty clear one of the EU’s goals was to ensure nobody did this again. That fits the word “punishment.”

It sounds like a system with little democratic buy-in.

True but you do have to register with the state of Ohio, and jump through some hoops.

It’s possible to be registered in a state you’ve never been to - how many people have actually been to Delaware or Wyoming - and employ nobody at.

Some countries play this game too - after the Cayman Islands enacted anti money laundering laws, they tried to keep companies with privacy and efficient dispute resolution.

Yes, but you can incorporate in any state you want (provided the state allows that).

That means there’s no barrier to movement.

It’d also possible to reincorporate relatively easily.

There is still one country that uses leaded gasoline for personal cars.

For automobiles, the future comes very slowly.

Here’s another take: passing LLM output as human makes it harder to train future LLM on the text.

It makes the human generated text much less valuable.

The Soviet Atomic Project was helped by starting early and capturing massive amounts of fissile material at the end of WWII.

British scientists helped some.

But the spies at Los Alamos were giving updates on US progress, not delivering secret technology.

Even now his Oxford bio lists him as alive, by his Royal Society bio lists him as deceased.

This would not help with gerrymandering.

Extremely small districts are much more likely to be homogeneous, ideologically and otherwise.

It might make it harder to get disproportionate percentages, but the politicians themselves are extremely unlikely to represent diverse constituents.

Even worse is the smaller number of constituents holding their legislators to account.

50,000 people per district, let’s say 40% vote, that’s 20,000 electors per legislator.

I’d rather have lots of people keeping their eyes on my representative, not fewer.

I’ve never had difficulty getting the attention of my representative. They respond quickly.

Smaller electorates result in poorer quality politicians. This happens when city wide elections are converted to district based elections - quality and accountability go down.

This is would be a House of Aldermen.