I started reading Byte when I had no way to understand what it was talking about. There were technical terms that I simply had no reference for. What the heck is an assembler?
I suppose it was an example of immersion language learning because after devouring the magazine for months it started making sense. I knew it was about something I wanted to know.
I also have used DO for years, and was very happy with the quality of their service. Until I found the alternative prices. Not as easy to use, but much better performance for much lower prices.
The introduction lost me. To quote: "Japan’s vast railway network", but it does not address the mouse in the room. Japan is approximately the size of California with a population density that is three times that of California. I would argue that a comparison of rail systems without addressing those critical issues may be interesting but isn't really informative. The issues are complex.
France has a density (pop/km²) of 122, similar density countries include Poland, Azerbaijan, Sierra Leone, Egypt (how are consistent are the rail systems across those countries?). US has a density of 37.
California specifically has a density of 94 (29% lower), which puts it near Spain, Timor-Leste, Moldova and Cuba.. California is doing OK for it's position.
The substantial issue is not "unconstitutional" or "revenue", but instead "corporate protectionism". The elephant in the room.
There are certainly concerns about home distillation. The question is whether We address those concerns uniformly or whether protections of "tax revenue" is really protection for corporate interests.
We live in a time of toxic corporatism. Not all corporations are toxic, but those who prioritize their interest over the common good are indeed toxic. Everyone has the right to use nicotine and smoke cigarettes. You can buy them - if old enough - anywhere. But the use of cigarettes is toxic. As are vapes. But some corporations believe that their wealth is worth all the early deaths and health costs that a lifetime of smoking brings.
It is the behavior of these corporations that is the issue here. Those who take the Friedman Doctrine to toxic extreme. The courts have promoted these greedoconomy by enacting United vs FEC and other anti-democratic policies. In contravention of their duty.
Corporate interest have become so powerful that we have become a corpocracy rather than a democracy.
Jeff Bezos has "Democracy dies in the dark" as the motto of the Washington Post. Democracy dies with the Friedman Doctrine and United vs FEC. Thanks Jeff and to all of the other corporate overlords.
Our collective learned helplessness in the face of being bombarded with advertising, propaganda and outright lies is just astonishing to me. Not an article about fighting back, or doing anything, just the resignation of a follower.
There's a lot of people who are comfortable (socially or professionally) with diagnosing and analyzing problems. Those same people are often indifferent or outright hostile to people proposing solutions, not least because solutions that brought about change would make the analysts less relevant.
It's a hard problem because it reduces to the fact that narcissists and sociopaths are a significant proportion of the population, and they're strongly attracted to money, power, attention, and status.
So even though they're a small minority they infest politics, business, and the media, and create a culture in their own image.
Most proposed solutions end up in superficial tribal arguments about standard economic and political positions. Not about the underlying issue, which cuts right across the usual battle lines.
Frankly, who are these people? Because this is just another "they" idle conspiracy theory.
"They" are against me.
Ironically I could cite a very specific group this applies to: fitness influencers in the wake of ozempic. "Natural weight loss" and FUD about the drug took off when it hit mainstream awareness because it really was a direct threat to them. Of course this group also tends to heavily abuse other drugs as they age out - because being a trim fitness inflencer is easy in your 20s, keeping it going into your mid-30s is a lot more difficult.
I was thinking specifically of political pundits who are doing a roaring trade (in opinion columns, TV hits, book promotions etc) talking about authoritarianism and its many causal factors. They're curiously mute when it comes to discussing solutions, with very generic advice like 'go to a protest' or 'vote for the opposition' despite the abundant evidence from authoritarian regimes around the world of these tactics not being very effective. You never hear them talk about things like general strikes or mass civil disobedience campaigns for some reason.
reminds me of the college scene in the movie Tomorrowland where all the teachers going on and on about about the things that would end us and when she asked "Can we fix it?" and teacher is like "What?" "I get things are bad but what can we do?"
learned helplessness is really a problem, but personally all I have gotten is scorn and hatred for trying to make a difference/improve things that I managed/had control of. All people care about is precious number go up/ignoring the future while everyone around me is looking at me like I have two heads for not blindly following the insanity
A learned helplessness as a diagnosis implies that there are things that can be done. But I can't see any. It may be because of a learned helplessness of course, so my inability to see what can be done can be a fact about myself, not about the world around me, but still... It is a catch 22, isn't it? Maybe not, but it is a self-reinforcing uncertainty loop. I'm not buying it.
Unfortunately the political movements most interested in the relationship between society and technology were wrapped up with Nazis and so the line of thinking is underdeveloped, as it has had to start again.
fork it. Fork the internet. How about that? We have this stupid system built on people paying to target us. Is that "the" internet or is it just one internet, and not a very good one. This is supposed to be a place for hackers. So fork the internet.
This is basically "just don't use things you don't enjoy" and the trouble of our time seems to be the number of people who can't or won't do that.
It's somewhat an age thing but also definitely a lot of people in all generations never learn it: you can just stop using things. Walk away and suddenly find you never want to look back, and if you do it's entirely unappealing.
It's (mostly) not the networking layer where people pay to target us. It's the application layer that would most benefit from being forked.
Of course the problem is that what can be forked already has been. Federated social media. Distributed git hosting. However most "essential" uses are centralized and often also commercial in nature. If you fork Amazon you're ... still Amazon. That sort of thing.
I mean, I've had pipe dreams of a parallel networking stack built on IPv6 with a killer app offering real peer-to-peer networking again. But who will deploy and maintain all the new IPv6 networking gear, infrastructure, undersea cables? This is not something within the purview of the average (or even above average) hacker any more; the encumbents are too firmly entrenched.
Collectives, cooperatives and other organizations. It's been done before, giant WiFi networks spanning countries. Freifunk, Guifi and NYC Mesh are a few of them, the two first are real and alive alternative networks built on independent hardware infrastructure.
Not sure about the details with Freifunk, but Guifi has collaborating companies who basically operate like ISPs but connect you to Guifi + you get a internet connection via the Guifi peering the installer helps you with.
Personally, I am guessing it is the other way around. Not first killer app, but first a parallel networking stack, etc.
The idea that anyone is too firmly entrenched is always true. Until it is not. We are not still using horses, nor casting bronze tools. Nor do most ships sail. We (mostly) don't burn coal anymore. It would have been utterly insane to imagine replacing any of those entrenched technologies. That is the "follower" syndrome.
The context for a new kind of internet is very different now, than when the internet started. That changed context provides an opening for new ways to do things.
A crucial and hard piece is that it has to be paid for. As much as you need a parallel networking stack you need a parallel business model. Yes, the current one is too firmly entrenched, etc.
I think Heidegger provides a framing for why these are just musings in, as you put it, a firm entrenchment and the whole ordeal is looking quite bleak. I honestly can't imagine a way out of the technological frame and I am simply not seeing my generation in common spaces. Even my ability to meaningfully connect with my peers through conversation is deteriorating by product of the sheer scale of potential engagements one has at any moment. It is quite overwhelming and I am afraid there is no technological answer here.
This. Spinning up Postgresql is easy once you know how. Just as SQLITE3 is easy once you know how. But I can find no benefit from not just learning postgres the first time around.
This "drift" is not a drift at all, nor is it new. There are many names for this such as cargo cult and think-by-numbers (like paint by numbers), ant mills. It is recipes. And many, many common recipes demonstrate a wide spread lack of understanding.
This kind of follow-the-leader kind of "thinking" is probably a requirement. The amount of expertise it would require to understand and decide about things in our daily life is overwhelming. Do you fix your own car, decide each day how to travel, get food and understand how all that works? No.
So what is the problem? The problem is that if you follow the leader and the leader has an agenda that differs from your agenda. Do you really think that with Jeff Bezos being a (the?) major investor in Washington Post has anything to do with Democraccy? You know as in the WAPO slogan "Democracy dies in the Dark".
Does Jeff have an agenda that differs from yours? Yes. NYT? Yes. Hacker news? Yes. Google? Yes. We now live in a world so filled with propaganda that it makes no difference whether something is AI. We all "follow". Or not.
The concept is good. It is in the right direction.
I think it needs to not have a dependence on github. This is a microsoft thing, and at best it means this will become another way for a corporation to make money from people.
Speaking of money, it needs to be paid for. (The github part is free from Microsloth and so is NOT free). So how do you pay for this? Micropayments.
So we need a system of micropayments. Then we need it to provide a way to help people economically. These are not barriers, because this is hacker news, instead this is an accurate understanding of more of the problem.
People keep talking about a collaborative internet without using the term. But to be clear we are talking about a fundamentally different kind of internet. That we can build.
It doesn't really seem to have a dependence on github, so much as a dependence on git. You can push to a git repo anywhere, even publish a site with it. For example the method I've used is no longer documented on the open web but an archive is here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220817005415/https://neurobin....
Also I think you're confusing "free as in beer" and "free as in free" here. The last thing any alternative social network needs is to bake capitalist incentives into the model, as that would just lead to everything optimizing for the same dark patterns and influencer garbage people want to avoid. There already exist plenty of ways to help people economically.
It is the corporate internet - the one by the corporation, for the corporation that is dead. Or at least everything in it is dead. The death blow is AI, but it was almost there anyway.
The good news is that the community internet - for the community, by the community - is just starting.
What is a community internet? The internet is layered protocols. UDP, ICMP, TCP, HTTP, HTTPS etc. The community internet is just a new layer of protocols. Coming soon.
I suppose it was an example of immersion language learning because after devouring the magazine for months it started making sense. I knew it was about something I wanted to know.
reply