The problem with democracy is its noise. With regard to such matters most citizens couldn't give a fuck, and those few who do care will have countermanding views. Thus, opinionated views mostly cancel out and governments (mainly the faceless gnomes within the bureaucracy) are left to legislate whatever they like into law. More often than not, laws end up reflecting things that make their lives easier.
In short, democracy best serves vested interests, much less so ordinary citizens.
Tragically, in the present political and economic environment it's a lost cause.
Just about everywhere governments are against it with their incessant push towards increasing surveillance and backdooring encryption.
Big Tech—Google, Meta, Microsoft et al including their greedy shareholders—are now financially dependent on income from surveillance and ensuring privacy is nuked. If "Making Orwell fiction again" were to actually happen the economies of these trillion-dollar companies would be in jeopardy.
With such enormous sums at stake and dogged persistence from authoritarian governments it's just not going to happen anytime soon.
> With such enormous sums at stake and dogged persistence from authoritarian governments it's just not going to happen anytime soon.
Not with that attitude! We need to help inform our friends and families about how easily things can be misused against their will; case in point, the recent DEF CON presentation on smart "vape detectors" that have microphones [0].
"We need to help inform our friends and families about how easily things can be misused against their will;"
With the 'convenience' world of the modern internet and millions of users addicted to smartphones and Social Media I defy you to show me that that approach actually works (to date there's little or no evidence that it does).
Telling a heroin addict to give up doesn't work, same goes for 'electronic heroin'. I'd bet you've not given up your smartphone or Social Media. And how about your gmail account?
> Telling a heroin addict to give up doesn't work, same goes for 'electronic heroin'. I'd bet you've not given up your smartphone or Social Media. And how about your gmail account?
It's all about continuous improvements. We shouldn't "No true Scotsman"-fallacy ourselves into inaction.
The thing is, for the surveillance state to be completely obliterated, what the previous commenter said is only a sliver of what has to happen. Yes, consumers would have to put all their devices in the trash, disconnect everything from the Internet and never use it again, etc, but also start tearing out telephone poles, police vehicles, anything with a camera or microphone, etc. That is daunting, so it's understandable why so many either just give up the fight or satisfy themselves with some limp-wristed attempt like just running an ad blocker or VPN or something and calling it good.
The diligence required to stay either low or off (if you are lucky) the radar, as it were, is so exhausting as to be impossible for the common tech consumer. I tried it, for a long time and it came to be known as a War of Attrition in my head because it is one that I no longer believe we can win, having passed the point of no return by trading our privacy for safety and convenience over the course of three decades; a victory by inches for the tech companies, to be sure.
The funny part is, my problem was never with hackers, so the way the rhetoric spewed over the years claimed that this is all for my own safety never clicked with me. "Your data is safe with us!" Okay, who are you, who are you connected to or funded by and what cause do I have to trust you? I learned at a pretty young age that if someone is telling you "this is for your own good" they're the ones exploiting you. So now we have copious amounts of categorized data in the hands of entities that not only make massive profit from it, but will (if they have not already) turn it over to the increasingly conservative world governments who enjoy making lists of people they don't like.
"The diligence required to stay either low or off (if you are lucky) the radar, as it were, is so exhausting as to be impossible for the common tech consumer."
Right, I nevertheless still attempt to keep a low profile by having no Social Media or Google (phone) accounts, no gmail, using rooted phones sans Google apps, blocking both ads and JavaScript, forcing utilities to send me bills by snail mail, etc.; but as you say it's really a lost cause especially if one takes it seriously and really wants to remain anonymous on the net.
I act more out of principal than anything else. Also, I'm quite happy for family and people who know me to just contact me by phone, SMS and or email—or even snail mail (if you read my subsequent reply to the earlier comment it's pretty clear I've no Social Media addiction, not caring a damn about that stuff makes lowering one's profile easier).
I take the view that government already knows full well who I am especially given that it once employed me to do surveillance work. (No, I'm not acting hypocritically here, that work wasn't sussing out citizens but keeping an eye on nuclear materials—stopping it falling into wrong hands.)
What really annoys me is how pernicious and underhanded surveillance capitalism is. For example, despite the steps I've taken above, it only takes one or two people with Google accounts to enter my details into their phone and gmail accounts for Google to figure out who I am. Telling friends and acquaintances not to enter one's details into their phones is a hopeless task.
Google can further tighen up my address details by 'triangulation'—cross-referencing it using my neighbors' WiFi to get my SSID info, etc. Yes, I could hide that info but it's too much trouble.
In my other reply it's clear that governments dropped the ball early on with respect to user privacy, what I didn't mention was that it didn't take them long to realize that having Big Tech to do the heavy lifting with respect to surveiling citizens was and is a great advantage. Thus, their great reluctance to act.
Dodging both Big Tech and government is essentially fruitless. The best I can do is to render the data collected for advertising purposes worthless. To date, at least to my knowledge, I've been successful as I've never received any targeted advertising.
But then how would I ever know given that I've always been very efficient at blocking ads? :-)
> I take the view that government already knows full well who I am especially given that it once employed me to do surveillance work.
I have to imagine you have some stories or lessons worth sharing, for sure.
There was a point where I said the same thing; I didn't really care if the government knew my activities and whatnot because I was not hiding anything, and well, part of participating as a tax-payer in a functioning society involves records and information. That I get.
However, regardless of where you or anyone reading this stands on the political spectrum, particularly in the US, you'd have to admit that there's some trepidation regarding that massive amount of information about each of us that is out there and how it can be used against you, even if you have done nothing wrong. To use a pointed example, I would rather not be labeled and treated as a dissenter because I played Dungeons & Dragons online with a person who identifies as queer or trans, even if I may or may not have been completely unaware of that fact. That's just one such extreme example, but it does not seem so extreme anymore, and with each passing week, it seems like using information against people in that exact way is getting more and more normalized.
My biggest fear about the US and Big Tech collaboratively heading in that direction is being actively realized, and that is ultimately what had caused me to...not "give up," but more akin to "stop fighting." Don't have the energy anymore, barely enough to sweep up some of my own footprints, let alone those of people I care about that DO have that social media addiction you and I lack.
Appreciate the discussion and your perspective, given that it is a little more "insider" than most. I wish I had more to add, but I can see my cynicism creeping back into my replies.
note: since my example is a hot-button, I want to ensure that I am clear about my own stance, here. I do not care how anyone identifies, that's up to them and not for me to decide for them. All I care about is whether or not they're a good person, treating others with the same kindness, respect and support that they would like to receive. Bottom line.
"I have to imagine you have some stories or lessons worth sharing, for sure."
There are a few but as one would expect with that line of work they're protected by my signature on a document where I agree to keep them secret. I don't see that as a problem as there's no burning issue that would set the world ablaze if revealed. Nevertheless, such work necessitates that UN member states work in collaboration with one another, so those engaged in this line of work inevitably come across information that countries often consider sensitive to the extent that those involved are forbidden from revealing said facts even to their own governments. Safeguards is important work and most take those rules very seriously.
"I would rather not be labeled and treated as a dissenter because I played Dungeons & Dragons online with a person who identifies as queer or trans, even if I may or may not have been completely unaware of that fact."
Exactly. I have very strong feelings about this matter. It is a quintessential example of why privacy is so important. Very few people are completely free of prejudice, political, sexual, race, financial or whatever, and in an increasingly intolerant world such prejudices can be easily weaponised against those who are essentially innocent bystanders.
There is essentially no defense against such prejudice other than to maintain one's privacy. Loss of privacy especially when prejudice is involved goes hand in hand with a loss of one's autonomy. At its worst such a loss can have serious repercussions for an individual.
"…and with each passing week, it seems like using information against people in that exact way is getting more and more normalized."
One of the most upsetting things I've witnessed in my lifetime is the significant decrease in ethics especially the matter of having respect and regard for one another. That such disregard for one another is apparently getting worse is terrible. I've ideas why this decline has occurred but I can't adequately address them here except to say that when I was a kid I was taught at both home and school that one should not discuss religion, politics nor one's financial status or that of others if one wanted to maintain harmonious relationships with people.
It's somewhat strange these social rules and understandings have waned to such a degree in the last four or so decades. Once they were well understood, after all they are clearly articulated in Dale Carnegie's famous book How to Win Friends and Influence People† — one of the best selling books of all time.
Right, day by day this dysfunctional and destructive behavior is becoming more the norm and I see no likelihood of any improvement on the horizon.
"… I care about that DO have that social media addiction you and I lack."
Likewise. There are several issues at stake here, first is the naivety of so many in respect of privacy matters. The question one has to ask is why when online they are so willing and eager to throw caution to the wind and reveal so much about themselves to strangers when they'd not do so in many other situations—even though they have been warned repeatedly about dangers of engaging in the practice.
Second, evidence suggests when people are online and or in Social Media environments that there are intrinsic factors at work which result in people being less guarded and more uninhibited. What I find outrageous is how Big Tech has not only deliberately taken advantage of this quirk in human nature but that it has exploited the fact to the hilt to its financial advantage. That the teachings of those merchants of propaganda and advertising were very well known years before Google and Social Media came into existence and yet the takeover of billions of minds nevertheless still happened is most disconcerting. That fact just boggles my mind.
Until recently the two greatest and most financial monopolies in history were the Dutch and British East India Companies but their power and wealth were amassed over a period of a hundred or more years not in about a generation as has happened here with Big Tech.
Twenty or so years ago after the Dot-com bubble had burst, opportunistic techies and investors caught everyone off guard by finding ways of not only turning the Internet's debris and discarded detritus into the fastest and largest moneymaking concerns in all of human history but they also managed to monopolize the web to the point where they now essentially control and or influence just about every type of online activity. Nowadays, Big Tech effectively owns the internet.
What they did was unprecedented, they hijacked control of the internet by manipulating its users through psychological means that would have even shocked the likes of Edward Bernays and David Ogilvy, those masters of propaganda and advertising would not have thought such a degree of control at all feasible.
We now have well over five billion people on Social Media (>63% of the world's population) and Google dominates search with just on 90% of the market share with some 5 trillion search results per year—all of which they've achieved in just 20 or so years. These are unrivalled and staggering—in fact terrifying—statistics! Not even that evil but brilliant propagandist Goebbels—who is often touted as the greatest manipulator in history—would ever have dreamed such a huge turnaround would have been possible in such a short time. In a speech to the party faithful on 9 January 1928 he discusses the nature of propaganda and how to bring about change in the worldview of a population with carefully crafted ideas so as to manipulate their minds into believing the propagandist's message but he never extended that to the notion of making 'convenience' so indispensable to the point where addiction takes hold and reason is abandoned. Like a ratchet on a cog, once Big Tech entraps users they find escape or turning back impossible. (In the light of events of recent years, it's well worth reading that speech.)
It truly beats me how you can say "it's all about continuous improvements". In my view Big Tech's unregulated manipulation of human minds on such a monumental scale is one of the most disastrous events in human history.
The strategies that those behind Big Tech concocted were no doubt truly brilliant—so brilliant that even regulators and governments were blinded to both their negative effects on users and to the inevitable monopolies that would form. Their own addiction parasitized their minds against seeing what were blatantly obvious dangers at the outset. For 20 years they thus took no regulatory action.
> addiction... on monumental scale... no doubt truly brilliant... nigh on impossible.
What if you've made a fundamental mistake or two in your otherwise astute analysis? That would be innocent by itself but jumping to grand generalizations may not be.
Well, I'm just citing sociologists and researchers who point to the overwhelming evidence. That said, one has to be a mushroom or blind not to have noticed the fact.
Besides, no one likes to be told home truths, it's why shooting the messenger is such a common activity.
> Well, I'm just citing sociologists and researchers
"Sociologists and researchers" are well aware on which side their bread is buttered. Or do you think they are less aware than you about being under continuous surveillance?
Then everybody there ends up in the chorus of half truths and you end up sucked in their wake.
These problems likely stem from Google's latest attempt to nuke NewPipe, PipePipe et al.
Just had a message from PipePipe. Quote:
"Announcement
##251016
YouTube has just rolled out an update that effectively blocks our current implementation for video stream extraction. This affects both anonymous and authenticated (login based) fetching. We are actively working on a solution. Thank you for your patience!"
Why do you let your vehicle update without supervision and knowing exactly what the update entails (what it does)?
If you knew upates were occurring why didn't you stop them by not allowing internet access and or disabling the web/net hardware?
I find it very odd, I never allow any hardware unfettered internet access let alone update its firmware. Experience has taught me that that's a recipe for trouble.
"Something here doesn't add up. Tastes like bullshit to me."
Perhaps so, but it's easily confirmed by another owner of said device going through the same or similar procedure.
If there's any truth to this then everyone should know about it. (Frankly, from what I've seen lately I'd not be a bit surprised that manufacturers would stoop so low).
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that every part of this story is fake. Just that as told, the details don't seem to hang together. Something feels embellished or exaggerated or missing.
Noted. As yet no one has posted a confirmation of the story so your initial conclusion may be correct.
That said, given the comparatively small number of readers here on HN the chances of another experiencing the same issue would be small. As the story will have alerted everyone the truth will eventually out itself.
I'm hardly a gamer but I liked Leisure Suit Larry it was good fun and very entertaining. One had to find and equip Larry with various accoutrements then attempt to best guide him in his quests.
It worked rather like the original Fortran Adventure game but with very primitive graphics (by today's standards).
I reckon if I searched deep amongst my archives I'd still find the original floppy disks.
Perhaps so, but users have not done a damn thing to reverse the situation. It's Social Media and Google's apps as usual.
It's privacy bedamned when those factors get in the way. Even with the strongest will, electronic heroin, like its chemical counterpart, is almost impossible to shed.
"But the time of "making people care" about things is gone. They don't care. They never will with all this noise going on."
Tragically, that's very true. But society and societal issues being what they are nowadays we should not expect anything else.
Most of the world's addicted users would be bereft and suffer severe withdrawal without their regular dose of Social Media. Same would apply if those 'amazing' apps provided 'freely' by that wonderful magnanimous benefactor Google were to disappear or ever be under threat.
Any notion that their treasured online ecosystem could be disrupted or their 'free' apps might be replaced with FOSS equivalents would cause outrage. With their attention spans already severely reduced, uses would never stop to consider the true benefits of FOSS, instead they'd actively fight against it.
Like a parasitoid wasp taking control of a catapillar's mind/body to benefit its offspring, Big Tech has parasitized the minds of much of the world's population before anyone realized the fact.
That this outrage has actually happened without any effective opposition is a true tragedy, to expect FOSS to reverse the situation without some cataclysmic event intervening is just a fanciful pipedream.
not to mention that ... there are simply more important things.
from climate change to a landwar in Europe, or simply spending time with loved ones (or the loneliness epidemic - which might be a measurement artifact, but just as with starvation, tuberculosis, measles, even one person is too many).
FOSS is a good amalgamation of ideas, it needs a bit more work on sustainability, but public goods provisioning is a well-studied field (note, not a solved one!)
we might not like it, but probably wrapping the problem in national/geopolitical security terms and civil and social infrastructure concepts is required to make progress on it. (providing a public safe baseline, then standardization and productivity cooperation, but all this requires the underlying problems to be also considered in similar terms - and as long as education, healthcare, transportation, housing, construction, logistics and so on lack a public basic quasi-standardized option there's not much software can do.)
and where a common platform makes sense FOSS software capital is already being accumulated. (though of course the iron laws of amortization/upkeep apply to software too.)
Probably because that alternative was to build next gen programs to be less performant, and can't settle when platform last 30/40/50 years now.
The problem isn't lol US start making fancy magnets. The problem is lol modern US MIC hardware performance/overmatch is built around access to ABUNDANT fancy magnets that can only be built at scale/cost via processes PRC pioneered because they have (relatively unique) access to geologicly bound ionic clay deposits in PRC backyard. That capability doesn't exist in past history. US+co never had it. And if US can't replicate it, the entire current tranch of military hardware based on size, weight, (SWaP) of pushing highend PRC magnetics to their limits (motors of missiles, planes, precision motors, aesa radars, sonars), might not even make operational sense.
Then strategic delimma is budgetting 100s of billions into retrofitting/integrating of alternative components with slightly different (potentially inferior) performance characteristics. Or trillions in new programs based on alternative material assumptions. That's the real killer. Moving away from PRC HREE dependency =/= make more rocks, but if make more rocks no worky, or settle with making slightly different/less performant rocks, then have to redesign/reengineer/requalify the entire force structure over decades.
"…budgetting 100s of billions into retrofitting/integrating of alternative components with slightly different (potentially inferior) performance characteristics."
For strategic reasons the Military budgets enormous funds on items that may or may not pay off, it's a recognized gamble that all militaries engage in out of deemed necessity.
Why "potentially inferior performance", are you suggesting the US doesn't possess mining and chemistry expertise that are up to Chinese standards?
Just because the US hasn't needed to process REs to certain standards or requirements in the past doesn't mean it's not capable of doing so.
>all militaries engage in out of deemed necessity.
No, the opposite. Most militaries import equipment / are takers. Most militaries not engaged in very expensive R&D and capex to maintain overmatch. Most militaries buy off the shelf from vendors and make do because defense budget not priority unlike US.
US military budget while enormous is not unlimited, already experiencing extreme capitilization issues across the force, active naval hulls, airframes age etc are all in very bad state. 100's of billions buys a lot of hardware, but more importantly non trivial DELAYs a lot of hardware if there needs to be reengineeering.
>up to Chinese standards
>it's not capable of doing so
A bunch of the HREE US _NEVER_ had industrial process knowledge for commercial mining. PRC accumulated 20+ years of R&D, build out workforce, infra, supply chains. Do I think US replicate part of that / hit PRC quality AND quantity in short time, i.e. before have to start substituting components if PRC locks down REE hard. Serious doubts, i.e. dysprosium, terbim for heat resistent magnets were lab tech and ONLY PRC has ever extracted at scale, and it's application is ONLY because PRC can extract them at scale. It's like saying PRC has lab EUV technology too, but doesn't mean they can do commercial scale, or even strategic scale unlike ASML who has decades of R&D and tacit knowledge. There's is zero reason to believe US is remotely capable of spinning up scale of HREE operation required in critical timeframe.
Now keep in mind PRC HREE is ONLY viable because they have specific geologic deposits that are economic to extract at scale. US does not have those deposits, US to break hard rocks (vs PRC leech from soft clay), it's magnitudes less output, if US needs to spend 100X more effort for same unit of HREE, it may not even be strategically sustainable, see how PRC has more shale than US but can't extract it economically, because it's very deep so doesn't even try and ended up pivoting to entirely different tech stack - renewables - despite US wanking about blockading PRC oil SLOCs for decades.
This is like when people say but US was industrial powerhouse in WW2, US can mobilize again. But the reality is US industrial capacity was 5/5 in WW2, but PRC has changed the denominator to 50. There is a lot of things US can't do now. Not that it can't do _eventually_ but can't do on timelines required. MIC overmatch is about doing things in strategic relelvant timeframe, i.e. we're talking about HREE that goes into sensors, aelectronic warfare actuators for highend aviation/missiles performance, the bread and butter of next gen platforms.
At some point, the time constraint may compel US it's strategically better off basically retooling to different componets with different material science - that's decades + trillions pivot. Presumably short term stopgaps would be less performant since US MIC R&D does make effort to use leading edge for overmatch, whatever alternative they switch to will be second best. But again the real killer is every part of this is time friction, measured in decades that disrupt the entire procurement cycle, split force design, it's not problem you can throw money at - which again even US DoD/W seemingly doesn't have... or else US wouldn't be going through capitalization squeeze in navy/airforce. This translates to US overmatch declining, regional force balance / deterence changing, expose US posture to decades of vunerability. It's ripple of technical turn strategic issues US doesn't have the TIME to figure out in short/medium term, and arguably money, at least without taking from elsewhere, which in DoD/W case is going to be procurement, because most other costs fixed.
It's not just the actual element itself. You need:
- the ore
- the ability to refine it, safely (if not in China) and economically to various extents
- the supply chain to produce the end product (eg a magnet)
Then you need this for all the various REEs for the final goods.
You don't just build a mine and off you go. The US gave up a lot of strategic supply chains a long time ago.
China knew that chips were security and strategic issues maybe 20 years ago if not more, I wonder why they haven't done building equally capable factories on-shore.
Because cutting edge chips are not. They are nice to have and sell for a lot. But for vast majority of things you can absolutely manage with chips they can produce. And in some cases those top end chip technologies are not even useful for those purposes.
We are so deep in AI and super computing or wasteful server side computing that we forget that lower end chips are in absolutely everything. And China can produce those just fine.
Consider: you'd have to build an expensive, dirty factory which would only be able to sell to defense contractors which are legally required to buy local; otherwise it won't be able to compete.
And environmental red flags thrown up at every step. It would have taken 7 years (guess) for them to break ground at a reduced scale, and probably $10M in fees to attorneys and lobbyists
The problem with democracy is its noise. With regard to such matters most citizens couldn't give a fuck, and those few who do care will have countermanding views. Thus, opinionated views mostly cancel out and governments (mainly the faceless gnomes within the bureaucracy) are left to legislate whatever they like into law. More often than not, laws end up reflecting things that make their lives easier.
In short, democracy best serves vested interests, much less so ordinary citizens.
reply