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rbecker

468 karma · joined June 18, 2020

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rbecker··on Kansas welcomed my immigrant parents. Then I built Dropbox
> not a system that works as intended [..] flooding the market with warm bodies to undercut local labor.

Are you sure that's not intended?

"Not enough migrants arriving to keep pay down - [Irish] Central Bank" - https://www.independent.ie/business/jobs/not-enough-migrants...

rbecker··on A Modest Proposal in the New Age of DMCA Takedown Aggression
Google is using Widevine to control the browser market. Can't make a competitive browser without their permission. That is the purpose of DRM, and it works.
rbecker··on They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)
Instead, they're chanting "White silence equals violence". I'm sure demonization of a group that's on the way to becoming a minority will work out great.
rbecker··on Google Widevine Content Decryption Module DMCA
The point isn't to protect content, but to need permission from the DRM makers to make a viable browser (or TV, or music player, or ebook reader, or...) Without their blessing, it won't work with locked content, and your users will go to a competitor favored by the DRM owners.
rbecker··on Public’s trust in science takes a hit when scientific journals take sides
Justifiably so. For example, social science research proposals likely to have findings with an unwanted political impact have a 40-50% chance of being granted, compared to 95% for otherwise identical proposals without such impact: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1986-12806-001

And since approval committees are drawn from the same pool as researchers themselves, such politically unfavorable research is less likely to be proposed in the first place, so the 95% -> 50% drop, if anything, underestimates the bias.

In other words, overwhelmingly, they simply won't do research that they think could hurt their politics.

rbecker··on Judge dismisses Apple’s “theft” claims in Epic Games lawsuit
> the most fundamental idea is minimizing the amount of surprises a user faces

I wouldn't call being given the master key to my own computer "surprising".

rbecker··on macOS unable to open any non-Apple application
Without principles, your freedom will be (is being!) slowly chiseled away, pragmatically accepting each small step. By the time even pragmatism tells you to refuse, it'll be too late.

That's exactly what happened in Hong Kong: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/technology/apple-hong-kon...

But it could never happen here...

(As someone pointed out, this does more than just prevent apps from running - it also leaks which apps you use and how often. Someone could ask Apple exactly when you started Tor browser, for example)

rbecker··on Judge dismisses Apple’s “theft” claims in Epic Games lawsuit
> Freedom and computer security are in fundamental opposition.

Only if you interpret "freedom" as "freedom for apps" instead of "freedom for the user". None of what you said precludes the user (I won't say "owner") being able to override Apple, or take Apple's place in deciding what their device may do.

In your mind, is a platform only "secure" when ultimate control is with the manufacturer, and not the user?

How much more "secure" were Apple's users in Hong Kong, after Apple decided to disable the app they were using to track the police?

rbecker··on Judge dismisses Apple’s “theft” claims in Epic Games lawsuit
> Walled gardens are safer, and usually have some implicit or explicit quality guarantee (like the Nintendo seal of quality).

And consumers who want to limit themselves to the safety of Apple's app store are free to do so. But Apple goes a step beyond this, and prevents consumers who don't want to be locked-in this way, from using "unauthorized" stores or apps.

It's false to claim that the only way to offer safety is to take away user freedom.

rbecker··on Americans are more worried about their sons than their daughters
It must be very convenient to be able to dismiss research done by anyone that might be remotely interested in publishing findings you dislike.

When a left-leaning institution publishes findings that broadly align with the left, do you also dismiss them?

rbecker··on Google Photos will end its free unlimited storage in June 2021
> Surprised to see the level of anger here about this.

Anger could be due to:

1) Kill competition by offering product at a loss.

2) Once competition is dead and people are invested in the product and ecosystem, start charging.

rbecker··on The U.S. Divorce Rate Has Hit a 50-Year Low
Even the Brookings link cites a few studies, while the rest of this thread's posts offer nothing but hand-wringing and loaded questions.

And you're right, the links aren't exclusively about marriage. So if "married" was erased from the original claim, you'd agree with it?

rbecker··on The U.S. Divorce Rate Has Hit a 50-Year Low
It seems what you consider odd enough to require a citation depends on your political orientation. Citations for the original claim:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0e3d/640709c889472858054c8f...

https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/are-children-raised-with-...

https://www.apa.org/topics/single-parent

https://www.bbc.com/news/education-47057787

rbecker··on The U.S. Divorce Rate Has Hit a 50-Year Low
Dating experience corresponds to less stable marriage: https://img.ifunny.co/images/0b11659d375d3cc296d5683e8e54e28...
rbecker··on Amazon Charged with Antitrust Violations by European Regulators
You're not wrong. Both can be (and often are) abuses of market power.
rbecker··on Twitter may slow down users’ ability to ‘like’ tweets containing misinformation
Do you think it's possible to hold an opinion other than "this should be illegal" and "this is OK"?

Do you think even free speech purists can see the danger in allowing too much influence concentrated in too few hands?

rbecker··on Twitter may slow down users’ ability to ‘like’ tweets containing misinformation
The citations can only include mistakes, not the enormous (and much more effective) bias in choosing which stories to run and how to frame them. Do you think it's a coincidence you only hear of police killings when the victim is black? Or, in the rare case when covering a white victim, that their race never makes the headline?
rbecker··on The Denialist Playbook
But when it's your sacred cows that science is slaying, you're not a "denialist", you're just wisely cautious about misinterpreting narrow studies, that are confounded by environmental and social influences, and in any case were produced by a systemically racist institution with a problematic history of justifying human rights abuses.

Though that never stops you from proclaiming what you'd want the studies to say as undisputed fact. It only becomes "complicated" when the studies say the wrong thing.

rbecker··on The battle for the soul of digital freedom taking place inside your printer
Instead, circumventing it is illegal.
rbecker··on Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? (2011)
> It is a huge leap to go from "there's less Vitamin C in this supermarket carrot" to "you will get fewer diseases and/or live longer or better if you eat carrots from soil 100 years ago".

If only there was some kind of study linking vitamin [1] and protein intake [2] to health [3]...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin#Deficient_intake

[2] https://www.nutrition.org.uk/nutritionscience/nutrients-food...

[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/high-intake-of-vit...

rbecker··on Apple requests to remove WebAssembly support in a-Shell
Is there a specific "senior citizen" version of iPhone you have to request? Or is it as simple as toggling and password-protecting a "senior citizen/parental" mode somewhere in the settings? Or maybe the parental mode comes enabled by default, with restrictions chosen by Apple, and you can disable it by entering a password that came with your phone, or perhaps a password you have to separately request from Apple, once you've proven ownership of your phone (easiest at time of purchase)?

Or is it none of those things, and Apple fights hard against users having any control whatsoever over their devices?

Did Apple know better which apps their users in Hong Kong should be allowed to run? https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/10/apple-removes-police-trackin...

What does it tell you about Apple, when it insists on remaining the absolute arbiter of what their users may run, even after it was forced to use that power to betray its users to authoritarian governments? That these are the kind of practices, the kind of company, that you should be promoting?

rbecker··on Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
If a publisher is found to have published a book without license, would it be reasonable to find all who bought the book, break into their homes, take the book, and leave in its place the purchase price in cash?

If not, then why is doing the same, but on a computer, remotely reasonable?

rbecker··on Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
> You are avoiding my point.

I addressed your point directly. You claimed content might not be available otherwise (and that this is the reason consumers want DRM), I gave examples that showed that to be obviously false. And DRM is much more than just not banned - it's illegal to circumvent, thanks to DMCA.

> And if you don't like it, don't subscribe.

I don't. But you're still not happy - I guess you'd also like me to shut up about how bad DRM is for consumers, and allow you to spread your false claims how Netflix wouldn't exist without it, unchallenged?

> Are you against companies being able to choose if to use DRM or not? Do you want to ban DRM? What about encryption, do you want to ban that too?

So you agree that DRM is bad for consumers and society, you're just not sure how to fix it? Because that is the only reason you'd want to skip directly to arguing what should be done about it... unless you were hoping to make it seem like DRM is good by proposing some overreaching "solution", and make it look bad by association with an encryption ban. But that would be an incredibly dishonest and slimy way of arguing, so I'm sure that's not what you were going for!

For the record, no, I don't want to ban encryption. But if DRM continues to infringe upon people's rights (such as fair use, or even regular property rights, like when Amazon remotely deleted an e-book, or Sony disabled OtherOS on PS3, or HP disabled "unauthorized" ink with an update to already sold printers), a DRM ban could be warranted. Many types of contracts are already banned, but you think consumers should just bow their heads and take it while corporations lock away their rights behind DRM?

Do you believe the only choice consumers should have is whether to buy a product or not? They shouldn't advocate for consumer-protection legislation? They shouldn't even complain about anti-consumer practices, judging by how much my complaints bother you?

rbecker··on Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
> might not be available otherwise.

Like how they stopped showing movies on TV once VCRs entered the market, or stopped playing music on the radio once home taping killed it. If only we had had DRM on radios and TVs back then, perhaps there would still be some entertainment industry left.

rbecker··on Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
So when media and technology conglomerates conspire to include unasked-for, unadvertised DRM on consumer devices, that's "consenting relationships".

When I point out consumers are harmed by this, that's "interference".

rbecker··on Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-patent-could-remotely-di...

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/10/apple-removes-police-trackin...

rbecker··on Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
> prevent screenshotting licensed content. [..] good for 99% of the people

Is this a parody, or do you truly think DRM is good?

rbecker··on Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
It was a bug - this time. It's not your phone, you're just using it.
rbecker··on Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
For the benefit of readers less willing to selectively ignore statistics: non-Hispanic whites are 2.4x more likely than blacks to be killed by police (2.7x more if counting only unarmed deaths), per committed homicide. Sources:

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

rbecker··on Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
Could you quantify that imbalance? How many are killed by police, compared to the number of committed homicides (used as proxy for rate of legitimate police interventions), by race?
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