techdmn

I had a similar experience helping a disabled family member. Without being too specific, it's amazing how much effort and expertise it takes to access benefits to which a person is legally entitled. It's almost as if the means testing is inverted, you cannot access benefits without the means to navigate a system designed to prevent benefits from being distributed. We have a homelessness epidemic for a reason.

It's almost like one of the leading browser developers is also in the advertising business. (To be clear I completely agree, fingerprinting is evil.)

Slavery never went away, it just changed its name to Prison Labor. For fun here's a pair of stories about people being held past their release dates:

* https://promiseofjustice.org/news/louisianans-illegally-kept...

* https://www.corrections1.com/law-and-legislation/articles/re...

Seems like a good time to mention my old stand-by:

There is no such thing as a labor shortage. There may very well be a shortage of qualified people willing to work under the conditions and for the compensation a company would like to provide.

When stated that way you can see that there are several levers to pull, the most obvious being compensation.

Only free if you discount the costs involved in carrying out genocide against the existing inhabitants. But your point stands, that cost was frequently born by the government, so from the perspective of individual settlers it was often free.

One of the things I really miss about those days was the sense of optimism. We knew computers were getting more powerful, we knew they would change society, I hoped they could help make things better for people everywhere. What we got was lock-in and locked-down hardware, mass-surveillance, ad-driven content farms and the attention economy. There have been positives, but man. What a let-down.

Apologies for a (mild) thread-jack. My opinion, one problem with our economic system is focus on short-term results, to the point that several notable companies' stock prices are completely divorced from the reality of their performance. This makes sense if the stock market is primarily a device for gambling or extracting wealth. Investors care less about the prospects of the company than the prospects of the market. I suspect this can trickle all the way down: Board -> CEO -> managers -> individual contributors, all given goals intended to pump the stock short-term, rather than build long-term results.

How do we start to care about quality, building lasting things, fundamentals? What would happen if we taxed capital gains at 100% for the first, I don't know, 3 / 6 / 9 months of holding an asset? Maybe investors would have more incentive to care about fundamentals?

Anyway, I assume I'm wrong about all of this, just looking for someone to explain why. ;-)

I've heard a few things on this. One is that there were a few high profile but very bad cases in the 80s, kids getting kidnapped and trafficked with law enforcement not really willing to even look into it. The odds are infinitesimal, but the cost of the negative outcome is very, very high. Second is kids getting run over by cars. Comparatively that happens all the time. Third is a general breakdown of social connection with people in your neighborhood.

My personal read on this is that everyone is still trying to recreate the "sudden success" of FAANG-like companies in their start-up phases. (Never mind how long it actually took them to become big.) Basically upper management incentivizes "big bets" that might turn into a "moon shot". Those bets are new features. You'll never get rich quick just by optimizing latency. You might get rich slowly, but how is that going to pump the stock this quarter / get me promoted?

Can't speak for anyone but myself of course, but I was pretty disappointed with the way Democrats under Obama tackled healthcare.

One of the big differences between Obama and Clinton in the primaries was that Clinton was in favor of an individual mandate, and Obama was not. We still ended up with an individual mandate, which is both offensive on grounds that the government is forcing you to find and pay for insurance (not always easy on the exchange), and on the grounds that the primary purpose of the mandate is to ensure that insurance companies stay profitable.

Former Al Gore running mate and future republican Joe Lieberman is often given credit for stopping the nationwide insurance exchange in favor of state-level exchanges, again tipping the market in favor of insurers.

Ending denials for pre-existing conditions was nice, as were a few of the other details, but it felt like a far cry from the hope and change voters were promised. Mostly it exposed more-of-the-same pandering to the rich and powerful. Last I checked Medicare For All polls quite favorably.

Chiming in to add crowd-sourced flock camera locations: https://deflock.me/

Crowd-sourced flock camera locations: https://deflock.me/

Many years ago, my daughter (maybe six at the time), lost something semi-important to her, I don't recall what. I think it might have been her username / pictorial password card for her school network account. Anyway, we were looking for it, and she said "Dad, dad, I don't know where it is, I feel like I'm going to say a bad word".

I, having just read an article like this, said "That's ok, sometimes saying a bad word can help you process your emotions and feel less stressed. Do you want to go down to the basement where nobody can hear you, and say the bad word?"

"Yes". She goes down the stairs, I close the door, and she yells at the top of her lungs: "I can't fucking find it!". I managed not to laugh, she comes back up, "Do you feel better?" "Yes." Great moments in parenting. :-) (We did eventually find whatever it was.)

Aging sucks! Obviously you can do everything wrong, and mess your body up pretty good. You can also do everything right, and just have bad luck. Lingering injury, hereditary health conditions, things add up. By the time you are in your 60s, it takes a combination of good habits and good luck to be in good shape. It's comforting to point to active older people and say "I'm going to grow up to be just like them". Just aware of survivorship bias.

As a U.S. citizen, I tend to think of our system of government as only loosely democratic. There are many, many dials and knobs that prevent voters from having too much impact on policy. The Electoral college means losers of the popular vote have been president several times. The Senate is quite unrepresentative, Wyoming (pop. 587k) and California (pop. 39,431k) have the same number of votes. The House is gerrymandered quite heavily, the two-party system has an immense amount of control over which candidates (and policies) are viable, and our campaign finance system ensures both parties pander to donors.

Just watched a vid of LAPD trampling a person with a horse, then shooting them with what looked like a baton round at a range of 5-10 feet. That is a life altering injury, administered with direct intent, while the protestor was trying to flee. Holding my breath for zero consequences for unnecessary force. Not to mention qualified immunity. LAPD doing LAPD things.

How can one argue that the police serve the people? They don't necessarily even serve local government. They get a lot of federal funding and equipment, and in riot-control mode their purpose is to brutalize protestors until people stop showing up.

I also find it rather grotesque to watch Newsom argue that state and local police are perfectly capable of handling (i.e. crippling) protestors by themselves and don't need any federal assistance to do so.

My own list:

* Leave your phone at home.

* Shop locally, not online.

* At locally owned stores, not big box chains that benefit from a lot of customer behavior data.

* Paying cash, to avoid the payment processor reselling your purchase history.

Now if only I could figure out a solution to those traffic cameras with license plate tracking, not to mention facial recognition.

Should I be surprised that a story about a tech company censoring workers communications (emails sent inside and outside) was flagged? Maybe this post was flagged due to the nature of the communications. Maybe Microsoft isn't the only censor.

This might be a crazy idea, but they could also try advancing policies their constituents care about.

Or be in the U.S. on a green card or student visa, apparently. But those are just people experiencing oppression. We're all being tracked.

Are you arguing that since voters elect representatives, voters are ultimately responsible for everything those representatives do, even if it is contrary to the interests and desires of those who voted for them? If the process is flawed, are the results not also flawed? Unless we started with a perfect system, and voters clearly chose to make it less perfect. That doesn't match the history I know.

Maybe in a perfectly functioning democracy, but the U.S. has been actively separating policy from politics maybe for my entire lifetime. Just for starters:

* The two-party system dominates the process, and actively excludes 3rd parties. Look into changing requirements for debate participation.

* The Democratic party argued in court that they have no obligation to use a "fair" primary to select candidates. This was in response to a lawsuit from donors claiming the party mislead them by tipping the scales against Bernie Sanders in 2016.

* Gerrymandering continues to enable parties to win large majorities in state legislatures while losing the popular vote at the state level.

* Many of our current troubles have been caused by the Supreme Court, which is not democratically elected.

* The Electoral College and Senate apportionment continue to give more power to voters in low-population states.

Some people want to back a winner, and they don't really get too worked up about the details. Another example would be Ferrari in early 2000s in F1. Biggest budget, most skilled driver, all the dirty tricks at all levels (on-track, technical, political), plenty of fans.

Labeled incorrectly in Sharpie is the best! I agree, with the caveat that I have worked as an electrician professionally. Generally this is how home ownership works. You go over everything, find all the weirdness that the previous owner did, and fix it up. Years later you sell the house, and the process starts all over again. ;-)

It's been embarrassing for a long time, it's just that now it's embarrassing about stupid shit too, not just genocide and mass incarceration and WMDs and shit, though frankly the WMD thing was pretty stupid too. Remember "freedom fries"?

There are many parties, generally referred to as "third parties", but there are also many systems working to ensure that only the two parties everyone knows about have any power. First-past-the-post is a big part of the problem, and both parties campaign against alternatives like instant-runoff and ranked-choice voting. The "Big Two" also control televised debates, and have consistently raised requirements for participation in order to exclude other parties. The big parties, big corporations and the big media are all aligned in this, refusing the discuss third parties except in terms of spoilers. People who might vote for a third party are routinely reprimanded for helping the other big party win.

The other option is to try to change a party through the primary process, but the Democratic party in particular has a process very well insulated against public influence. "Super Delegates" (party insiders) until very recently had open and official votes that could easily override a choice by primary voters. In a lawsuit filed after the Democratic Party fought to ensure Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders, a leading member the Democratic Party argued, in court and under oath, the that party was a private organization and had NO OBLIGATION to use any kind of democratic process to chose its nominee. In this last election they didn't even have a primary.

I live in the U.S., I vote, at best I consider it a very flawed, or perhaps well controlled, democracy. In many cases a majority of voters prefer policy changes that are simply off the table for both major parties. Examples are things like winding down the war on drugs, ensuring abortion access, and raising the minimum wage. Neither party will do anything about these issues at the national level, and any progress being made is at the state level - largely in states that have a ballot initiative process where voters can (in some ways) bypass the usual party-controlled political process.

I like to jokingly argue that the primary difference between Democrats and Republicans is disagreement on whether it's more important to subsidize large corporations directly or through tax policy.

In reality I think there is a lot of daylight between the parties on social issues that do not affect current power structures.

Abortion, trans rights, women's rights, gay marriage, religion in public schools, etc: Tons of difference.

Funding genocide, subsidising the fossil fuel industry, maintaining a for-profit healthcare system, opposing ranked choice or instant run-off voting, keeping third parties out, refusing to enforce anti-trust law, refusing to raise the minimum wage, no accountability for police brutality, etc: Broad bipartisan support.

I would argue that advertising ruined the web. SEO for sites selling real products only goes so far. People are often searching for information, and monetizing that activity through advertising is what caused the disaster of low quality content flooding the web today. I'm not saying things would be perfect without advertising, just much better than they are now.

I like to imagine an alternate universe in which all advertising is banned, similar to the way advertising certain products (alcohol, tobacco, medication) is banned in some countries. Sure you can put a sign above the front door of your business, and sure you can buy a slot in the yellow pages, but that's all folks. We'd need different funding models for radio, television and much of the internet, but we're smart, we can figure it out.

Also curious about this. Several other posts of similar age and with fewer points are in top spots on the front page. This post is still gathering comments, but seems to be hidden.