4,898 karma · joined October 30, 2014
Citation needed.
I took some minutes to try and find statistics, and also ChatGPT claims that the EU simply doesn't collect or publish that kind of data, so I'm wondering how you think you know.
Freedom from, or freedom to?
‘Freedom does not consist in doing what we want, but in overcoming what we have for an open future; the existence of others defines my situation and is the condition of my freedom. They oppress me if they take me to prison, but they are not oppressing me if they prevent me from taking my neighbour to prison.’ -- Simone de BeauvoirAgreed. I just wanted to point out the confusion/misunderstanding that happens around this topic. Germans have the deeply ingrained (pun) idea that only the harder bread is healthy (and has earned the right to be called "(proper) bread"), and the softer versions are not. I just very much prefer the slightly harder/denser ones (that still contain yeast) with a nice crunchy crust, and found them very difficult to get in the US whereas in Germany they are everywhere, presliced or not.
And, no, I am not talking about Pumpernickel-style breads either. That's another category: "soft/white bread", "(typical/standard) bread" (which is a range between white and black in terms of softness/grain size and can be all wheat, or other grain), and "black breads" like Pumpernickel or Barbara Rütting.
It is telling that the dark Rye bread picture on Wikipedia is used on German, Russian and Platt Wikipedia, but not on English Wikipedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vaasan_Jyv%C3%A4viip...
I get "The request is blocked." when trying to open your link. (and you posted the same link twice)
That's a common misunderstanding. My last comment on the difference between "bread" and "bread" in different countries, from some months ago, including links and pictures: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45795914
Roughly, you could say any bread that you can squeeze and it temporarily loses its shape is a single category not considered very healthy in Germany ("white bread"), and not what a German would typically mean when they speak of bread.
To provide some additional context to an often over-(ab)used quote:
I often see it used as a "thought-terminating cliché". Applying it this way would likely meet his definition of intolerant at least half-way:
Popper defines what he means by 'intolerance'. According to his definition, it requires both (A) the refusal to participate in 'rational discourse', and (B) incitement to and use of violence against people with different views.
You will find 'intolerant people' on all sides of the political spectra. (I don't see how dumbing it down to 'left' and 'right' really serves any rational discourse.)
> "I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies ; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force ; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument ; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal." (The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945)
https://ia800100.us.archive.org/10/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.5...
(It's well worth to read as a whole, given how often it is used and abused out of its surrounding context in the book.)
> "Conscience could be defined as the intuitive capacity of man to find out the meaning of a situation. Since this meaning is something unique, it does not fall under a general law, and an intuitive capacity such as conscience is the only means to seize hold of meaning Gestalts. […] True conscience has nothing to do with what I would term “superegotistic pseudomorality.” Nor can it be dismissed as a conditioning process. Conscience is a definitely human phenomenon. But we must add that it is also “just” a human phenomenon. It is subject to the human condition in that it is stamped by the finiteness of man. For he is not only guided by conscience in his search for meaning, he is sometimes misled by it as well. Unless he is a perfectionist, he also will accept this fallibility of conscience. It is true, man is free and responsible. But his freedom is finite. Human freedom is not omnipotence. Nor is human wisdom omniscience, and this holds for both cognition and conscience. One never knows whether or not it is the true meaning to which he is committed. And he will not know it even on his deathbed. Ignoramus et ignorabimus—we do not, and shall never know—as Emil Du Bois-Reymond once put it, albeit in a wholly different context of the psychophysical problem. But if man is not to contradict his own humanness, he has to obey his conscience unconditionally, even though he is aware of the possibility of error. I would say that the possibility of error does not dispense him from the necessity of trial. As Gordon W. Allport puts it, “we can be at one and the same time half-sure and whole-hearted. *The possibility that my conscience errs implies the possibility that another one’s conscience is right. This entails humility and modesty. If I am to search for meaning, I have to be certain that there is meaning. If, on the other hand, I cannot be certain that I will also find it, I must be tolerant.* This does not imply by any means any sort of indifferentism. Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one’s belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one’s right to believe, and obey, his own conscience. […] Suffering is only one aspect of what I call “the tragic triad” of human existence. This triad is made up of pain, guilt, and death. There is no human being who may say that he has not failed, that he does not suffer, and that he will not die." (Viktor Frankl, The Will to Meaning, 1972)
> "For tolerance, rightly understood, has not the slightest thing to do with indifferentism. And if we finally ask ourselves: how can I, being one hundred percent convinced of my own faith, possibly accept another's faith, another's conviction? Do I not, by that very act, become unfaithful to my own faith and my own conviction? We must answer this question in the negative. For I do not respect another's faith because I can share it, but because I must respect the other person himself. Note: Tolerance does not consist in sharing another's view, but only in granting the other the right to be of a different view at all. On the other hand, tolerance is also misunderstood if one goes so far as to grant the other the right to be, for his own part, intolerant." (machine translated from the German original)
You are mistaken. Plenty of people own businesses in the US even as foreigners. I don't even have to step into that country to open one, and also not for a transfer of ownership/shares.
So far, courts are siding with the "fair use" argument. No need to exclude any data.
https://natlawreview.com/article/anthropic-and-meta-fair-use...
"Even if LLM training is fair use, AI companies face potential liability for unauthorized copying and distribution. The extent of that liability and any damages remain unresolved."
https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/two-california-distr...
Anna's Archive alone claims to currently publicly host 61,654,285 books, more than 1PB in total.
No need for surprises! It is publicly known that the corpus of 'shadow libraries' such as Library Genesis and Anna's Archive were specifically and manually requested by at least NVIDIA for their training data [1], used by Google in their training [2], downloaded by Meta employees [3] etc.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46572846
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/20/fresh-con...
[3] https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/9/23788741/sarah-silverman-o...
It would also be a plain and simple category error. The legal code is not concerned with the how. It doesn't list actions but abstract pursuits, outcomes. "Open source development" simply doesn't fit there. My previous comparison was "cleaning toilets". It can equally be part of a charitable activity beneficial to the public if you do it for a charity, yet there would be no point in adding it to a closed list.
By the way, it would still require the project to register as a German charity, file reports, etc.
Plenty of questions, zero answers in the petition. The petition doesn't state what their goal is at all. What is the actionable item, what is the request, and from whom? Even a prayer is usually more specific.
To me, it doesn't read at all like the petition is advocating to add "open source" to the list of charity goals, since that has nothing to do with "getting volunteering recognized" (whatever that may refer to). Charities work with money, which is what the law is about after all -- it's a Tax Code! All it deals with is money. Unless you deal with actual financial flows, you don't need to respect any of that, and you're free to do whatever! "Volunteering" has very little to do with money.
And I say that as somebody who has almost exclusively worked for and with charities, in both paid positions and as volunteer, for the past decades. I really don't know what this is advocating for. I get a lot of "recognition" for my contributions to open source projects, both finanicially and non-financially, and so do others that I know who contribute to open source.
It's like petitioning for "rainbow cotton candy". Sounds nice -- who would object to that! But: Who? What? Where? How?
Dependent on the project, other categories might work too. The list is in Abgabenordnung §52 ( https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ao_1977/__52.html ) / Fiscal Code Section 52 Public benefit purposes ( https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_ao/englisch_ao.p... )
(Contrary to intuition, "advancement of science and research" is very hard to get accepted in unless you're a university or at least publish papers in journals. And while the law claims that in theory other purposes could be argued for, in practice tax authorities will simply stick to the list and not make exceptions.)
The petition only makes legal sense if it were to ask to extend the set of charitable goals as specified in the Abgabenordnung, but the existing set already allows for FOSS projects as part of e.g. the "national education" category (public code is educative).
And, to be frank, I also don't get the "recognition" part. The tangible benefits of volunteering for a charity are limited; what does it even mean to get recognition for it.
And could it possibly be that people exist that do things for pure enjoyment of the exercise? Looks like they learned quite a bit throughout the process. In practical terms, this may even land them a job at Tor (or elsewhere) later, since they can demonstrate that they understood what it is doing and where to find the relevant pieces of information to "circumvent" the protection.
The record from the land registry includes things like wayrights for third parties, known ground contaminations, utilities/water/power lines etc. -- all very relevant to me as a potential buyer. I did enjoy the notaries explanations of various aspects, which went beyond reading the contract out loud and making sure we verbally understood what we were going to sign. The process also forces both parties to have written copies of everything prior to the final meeting, which provides another chance to let it sink in and potentially reconsider -- which in our case, we did. Also, they're really trained to verify IDs, not like a random clerk in some liquor store.
I understand one can experience it as "bureaucracy" and "annoyance" in their individual case, but then I wonder how much such people consider the bigger picture and what the benefit of all of it really is, for their own and for societies sake, and what kind of shitshow it would turn into if we got rid of all the "bureaucracy" -- such as described in the very blogpost here.
Even if I (wrongly?) assume I am always on top of things and I will not get ripped off ever, only so-called stupid people will, I really don't need more angry people who fell for scams or made quick decisions that they regret or whose identity got 'stolen' around me/on public streets/in bars. If it was for me, we could add even more such layers of protection, which you seem to see only as "(unnecessary) bureaucracy"?
Excuse my German ignorance, but my understanding of how it works here is that unless the transfer is notarized, logged and recorded with the local authority, there has not been a legal transfer. So, by that definition of land ownership, no "events outside of its jurisdiction" can take place. Any such agreements become binding only upon their verified registration. A notary is responsible not only for confirming the transfer but also as independent consultant so neither party gets seriously ripped off. (And if they didn't, they would be in serious liability trouble.)
The "share of the database" is managed and owned by the local government, but its records are available all across Germany for authorities to look up. The vector database of lots is public, and there are procedures to request access to ownership documents for various purposes. The procedure is that when you want to buy a certain property, the owner confirms that you have permission to get the official record directly from the land registry, which then become the basis for any serious negotiations as what is recorded there is in fact the single source of truth.
Women as abusers are rarely mentioned or investigated because (A) it's still a taboo to touch the mother archetype, (B) repressed memories of mother abuse, the relationship is key to survival for a child, (C) female sexual abuse is often not experienced or seen as abusive even for 'bystanders', (D) females use less visible, more subtle forms of violence then men and are usually a lot smarter in covering it up.
You can see this also in the Epstein reporting: The (adult) female "companions" are mentioned but their involvement not questioned. Potentially you're falling for the "stupid blonde" myth, instead of thinking of them as potentially highly intelligent hunters -- equally broken in their own childhood and statistically likely to have been sexually abused within their own families and thus subsequently drawn to/attracted to child sexual abuse; in psychology, see 'reenactment'. A woman with healthy psyche would not be able to ignore the child abuse around them, and especially not the mistreatment of their own children, even if you give them the (wrong) benefit of the doubt as passive bystanders.
The point made in the article that all this is related to patriarchy still stands. It just falls short on important details of the dynamics at 'play', and it's pretty clear you will not fix the one without fixing the other.
This strategy works poorly to avoid conflict and friction (life), since one just shifts conflict to reappear elsewhere. Hence the often claimed need to self-isolate "for mental health" to avoid getting in contact with... positions such as one's own, and half-suppressed anger at all those that just don't see what is RIGHT.
Hint: It doesn't work.
It's OK not to want to be in connection with others whose behavior you don't agree with, but it's not necessary and from my perspective counter-productive for yourself and society as a whole to turn that into a permission to act in hostile ways against them, especially if you're not providing clear feedback. In fact, unless you provide that in an open way, they will not change their ways around you, so you're losing a lot of chances to influence people around you in situations where you simply cannot decide to avoid them altogether. You're not in control over which humans you interact with, and you're turning interactions into exchanges of aggression unnecessarily.
If you feel worn out after listening to other people, that's one way to avoid that, at the expense of human connection. There are other ways to not feel drained even after listening to the most horrible (or boring) stories that don't cut people (and thus yourself) off. You gain options, not lose any. You can learn to have more control over your own inner state without effort, and become more independent from what people around you are saying or doing, instead of turning your problem into their wrongdoing. Instead of having your world suddenly be full of energy vampires you need to protect yourself from.
Or they are practicing buddhists. Or victims of trauma. The former doesn't need (but won't mind) validation, the latter does.
"I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage."