whacko_quacko

Just the name made me think it would be an esoteric language with instructions encoded as "DUCK DUCK ... GOOSE"

Not a fan of trade barriers, but love it when CEOs go to jail for ignoring the law. Now start enforcing copyright laws against AI companies please <3

A (classically) liberal society can only work if everyone is held to the same standard of the law.

A majority thought differently. They knew who Trump was and who Kamala was, and they voted for Trump. That's how it goes in a democracy... Anyways, they're getting what they voted for

Especially given that a popular open source project recently tried to do exactly that.

https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/327

I really got fooled here for a second, but the unfortunate reality is that people will try this soon, and someone will have to litigate this, if open source is to survive, which will take years and millions of dollars to resolve

Are you kidding me? Hamas controlled the aid distribution until the US and Israel recently implemented their own distribution channels.

BTW, here's 120 Million funneled through te UN, which has dependent organizations (UNRWA) with ties to Hamas https://civil-protection-humanitarian-aid.ec.europa.eu/news-...

https://unwatch.org/new-un-watch-report-exposes-hamas-takeov...

But hey, that's okay, because Israel is the problem, right?

That's like saying the EU fundeh Hamas because they gave aid money to Gaza. If you squint at it the right way then maybe, but fundamentally it's disingenuous to call something like that funding.

But "the Jews .. uhm, I mean Israel .. had it coming and they did it to themselves" is always a favorite, isn't it?

Care to articulate them?

Yes. This wording just misses the mark and sounds super tone deaf

Not sure that an apology is necessary though. Some overconfident marketing person tried something, and it failed. That's what happens if you try stuff. They should just try harder next time

I'm sure you're fun at parties

You're mixing up AI and Blockchain there, bud. AI has other, much deeper problems than energy usage, but nice virtue signalling nonetheless.

Love the idea! And thanks for sharing the script =)

If you can find such a "choke point" that makes it relatively easy to enforce, then maybe. But I suspect that won't work for certain products especially if they're B2C, and still by only regulating the supply side without actually changing anything about the demand you don't really get good outcomes

Who is "they"? The government is generally not in the business of developing software

But I have to agree that actual alternatives are a prerequisite for changing anything about the dominance of the US tech sector

While I generally agree that it's disingenuous, this framing could activate the reflexive hate against Israel that many people share and actually get something done.

Would be funny if antisemitism led to good outcomes for once

I agree, that the EU breaking up the tech giants is insane, but I don't think that banning them is much better. How would you enforce this? I don't want a big firewall like china has.

I'd argue for open protocols that allow exporting your data and switching services instead. Make export capabilities a requirement akin to data protection laws, and you have defanged the monopolistic nature of tech. Ideally also force interoperability between services, but that's a whole other can of worms.

This is on paper obviously much harder than just banning something, because you would have to define such exchange protocols, but it has a chance of success. One could start with certain industries, like social media, and in some cases build on existing work, like the AT or ActivityPub protocols.

I don't see any evidence that this should be the case. My email appears in dumps on haveibeenpwnd too, because of database dumps. How is that evidence that there's a key logger on my system?

Actually critisizing DOGE for their major gaffes (like putting up easily defaceable websites, or their incompetence when it comes to reading numbers accurately) is important, but this kind of article is just sad and diminishes the credibility of news journalism

For example when reading a CSV. Try using `read_csv` on a file that contains two letter country codes including NA.

Damn, you're right ^^' Thanks for pointing that out

Pandas has a Nigeria problem, where NA -> NaN.

It's not that bad, because you can explicitly turn that behavior off, but ask me how I know =(

> I'm just saying, we change the market via regulation (or at least, used to) all the time, and businesses survive despite their endless moaning about it.

Ah, got it. Then I'd say we should only regulate things that need regulation. I don't think advertising is one of these. The data collection happening in the background on the other hand...

> State funded operations don't generally prioritize profits [...]

Yes, but people generally do, even when they're funded by government. They just lose the incentive to create a good product.

> Yeah, again. Fund [the local little league] with taxes.

No. Why should I pay for something like that?

> If you want Microsoft Office, any Adobe product, Quickbooks, just to name a few, your only options are subscriptions to them.

Yes. And there's LibreOffice, GIMP/Inkscape and GNUCash (and many others) if you don't like that model.

BTW, these aren't what I was thinking about. I assume big players would generally be favored by such a prohibition, because they're already known to a wide audience.

> I mean just having a newsletter that advocates for socialism doesn't mean you're advertising socialism. It's propaganda, and that's fine. Propaganda isn't necessarily a bad thing despite the modern attitudes towards it.

I agree with you, but the article explicitly lumps together propaganda and advertising. I think that's dangerous. Socialists should be free to make their case, even though I think it's idiotic

I read that as "the US government is already crippling the economy, so other measures potentially crippling the economy are not a problem," but maybe I'm misunderstanding you?

> There was likely economic fallout many would call extensive when we mandated equal wages for minorities and an end to child labor, and yet businesses soldier on.

Advertising isn't child labor. If there was something immoral about telling people about your product, you'd have a point.

> It seems like bankrupting a lot of them and letting teams return to public goods funded by municipalities would be a huge step forward into preserving sports as a social event, not a profit seeking venture.

I disagree. I don't think the state has any place here. And profit seeking will not stop just because the source of the money changes and there's less of it.

> We could just get rid of the money men up top and let things settle where they may. Sure we may not get blockbuster sports events anymore, but maybe more people could then afford to actually attend?

If there's less money in it, there will be less supply, so I don't see how it would be easier for people to afford attendance.

Your local little league team couldn't even get a sponsorship for their uniforms anymore.

> Consumers LOATHE SaaS. They would cheer for it to be killed off.

SaaS was just an example for a new product trying to gain market share.

Also, right now they are free to not use SaaS products if they do hate the concept. Afterwards they're practically forced to not use it, because it's much harder to get one off the ground.

> I don’t see how that would run afoul of my definition?

Well, they're paying people to write positively about them and their product/politics. I can see it.

Trump's tariffs are idiotic, and I'm against them. I don't see your point

I feel that the lumping together of advertising and propaganda in the article is very apt. That's why I find it somewhat sinister. You should be allowed to try to change minds. If anything should be outlawed, it's the massive tracking effort involved.

Kudos for providing a somewhat sensible definition. This helps by addressing the free speech issues (at least to an extent^[1]), but I think there are other problems as well.

The economical fallout would be extensive. Google's and Meta's business model (and that of many others) would basically disappear overnight. While I'm not a fan of either, and think there should be much stricter regulation for (very large) tech-companies, this would make financing of a lot of important products infeasible. But not just in tech. Think about product placement in movies or television, banners in big sporting events etc. Who'd pay for that? The state? With whose money?

Also, it would make entering markets much harder, if you're not a household name already. If I read your definition correctly, you couldn't even give a complimentary account for your SaaS product to a reviewer ("by way of other agreement") to enable them to test your software (and hopefully write favorably about it if they're convinced). This would definitely hurt consumers.

I think you should be allowed to try to change minds. If anything, we should outlaw the massive tracking effort involved in advertising.

[1]: What about a political party publishing a newspaper and paying their staff? Is that okay? I could construct more examples, and life is even messier. On the other hand, I have to admit, that the focus on the payment aspect makes this much more palatable to me.

I like it

> websites and apps should be explicitly required to ask permission when they send your data somewhere to tell you where they send your data and who will get to see it, store it, and with what conditions

The first part is somewhat infeasible, because your IP is sent by just visiting the page in the first place. And I think the second part is what a privacy policy is.

It might be more helpful to make it mandatory to have your privacy policy be one page or less and in plain english, so people might read them for the services they use often.

I had a drug problem once, and di something like that. It helped a lot. If there's no way to procure any drugs, it takes away a lot of the pain and anguish you feel coming off of drugs.

RFK might be an idiot, but even idiots might be right once in a while

Sure, but who did the proactive flagging back then? Probably moderators. Seems like a shitty job nonetheless

The End of Race Politics by Coleman Hughes. Pretty good book. I used to be a bleeding heart liberal with pro social justice (read: pro affirmative action) sentiments, but he makes a compelling case against it. Also, it's very well written and fun to read