The only way the US can win is by moving past the culture wars and returning to an accelerating society. Other Western countries have already given up (Germany, Italy, and Portugal have sided with China by signing up for the Belt and Road and using Huawei equipment. Probably more countries to come)
I really hope the chaos we're going through is a cathartic release from the period of economic stagnation that we've been in for the past 40 - 50 years. I disagree with AOC on almost everything but her Green New Deal had one aspect worth praising. There was a bit harking for a return to American Greatness (Apollo program, etc.) Not too far from Trump's "Make America Great Again". The US is still united in its underlying goals but people are divided on how we get there.
"Americans will always do the right thing." - Winston Churchill.
The US is returning to space again, this time built on the ambitions of two of the world's most successful living entrepreneurs (Bezos and Musk). Perhaps this will be the inspiring force driving Americans back to a focus on technological innovation. Anything is possible, but this is my bet.
The maintainability of networks based on a vendor that can't produce secure firmware is highly questionable, nevermind it being insecure by definition.
This is the problem with Americans, banking on pie in the sky fantasies from billionaires. Meanwhile promising kids get killed in school and people die needlessly due to lack of healthcare, at enormous costs to society. Basic, fundamental stuff!
But that has always been the way how Capitalism works. It's never meant to serve the mass as only the fittest, or the luckiest shall I say to avoid the meritocracy mentality, will reap the majority of benefits. In most industries we look at, there are only very few main players that will completely dominate 80-90% of the market, while the rest are just there to pick up the remaining 10% scraps. Same situation in current society where the 1% elites own the majority of wealth compared to the 99%. This is just how Capitalism works as everything in the system is structured this way to facilitate achieving such an outcome.
People complain about inequalities but then unwilling to modify or upgrade the current capitalism model to a higher more advanced version. Everything has its own lifecycle in life, the current model has achieved many incredible results in the past but it may be approaching a maturity stage and is in need of an upgrade. America is always about pursuing the current capitalism model to the max so if one is navigating under this version and yet expecting something different in contrast, that would be unrealistic. Again under this model and structure if you leave something running for a while, it always ends up with very few luckiest players who will receive the most. It might work well when under small to medium population as the negative effects are negligent, but as the number keeps on growing, the ratio of amount of people between the 1% and 99% will become drastically different and those negative effects will also increase tenfold. Globalization process will only help speeding this up and accelerating it more.
How do you solve this? If putting a cap on the elites' earnings, arguably it may stop innovations as they may lose the incentives to invest. But everything in life is a trade off, you get one thing by giving up another. Even things that are seemingly good now can become destructive if you leave it running by itself for too long without re-balancing it. Real world example is medicine, it may help your health but if you take too much or too long it may kill you, same with our food if you eat too much you become obese then you die. Excess is good only to a certain point then it will become bad. This is the law of nature that is timeless and never going to change, anyone who goes against this rule they will cease to exist it's that simple.
Our real world is dynamic and ever changing, we could have a model that worked very well from 30-40 years ago but it would have also produced a lot of baggages and side effects along the way, and one day it will reach a point where those side effects will take over what used to be good, the unexpected negativity will gain larger as they will become devastating and lead to self-destructive result of this model, that is if it's not re-adjusted or re-modeled in time to lessen those unwanted consequences. Anyone who believes they can keep running well on the same model to eternity without re-adjusting to avoid self-destruction are in complete disillusion. They are attempting to go against the unchanged universal law stated above and the end result will always be the same.
To solve inequalities, it's important to set a cap NOT at the maximum wealth level, but rather at the wealth difference ratio between the 1% (or arguably 10%) and the remaining 99% (or 90%). This way people at the top can keep growing but they will also need to pull those below them up as well, because let's face it we are all living daily depending on each other, nobody among the 1% would have gotten to the top or can keep remaining there without the 99%. This is very different than tax as it correlates and connects wealth ownerships directly between the two groups of population. Besides, tax is never intended for the goal of wealth distribution anyway or at least it is not being used efficiently for that purpose, most of it goes to funding other also critical but unrelated government projects and even wars.
However, any forms of such re-distribution is against the fundamentals of current capitalism model and some people will start screaming communist before they even attempt to understand the real issues at hand so I'm not sure if it's even possible. Similar to how everyone knows exactly what needs to be done to prevent climate change but that doesn't mean they will do it. Who knows? Maybe I would be biased too if I were among the 1%. Here's the catch 22, people who care don't really have the power to make changes because they're not among the 1%. The 1% don't care about the system because they think they can sustain themselves even in the face of collapse. The history of Rome empire was the definite proof of such an outcome. We cannot go against the law of nature. To prolong ourselves we have to keep changing.
How broadly applicable is it? From what I've read of machine learning powered classroom monitoring systems from Hikvision and the like require regular retraining (eg: new 360 degree photos) for each student as they age and change. Seems like an idea that is 90% of the way there, and is mainly propped up by the central govt subsidizing these systems despite their severe limitations.
Isn't the "millions of miles of free data" the edge cases? Yes, they're not literally streaming back everything but they have millions of miles with people driving auto-pilot and sending back a significant amount of edge case scenarios, which is the truly valuable information. Sending back data of "successful auto-pilot" can be sending back 10 hours of driving on a straight two-lane road; which seems quite useless.
They also have cars all over the planet while Waymo seems to only be tested in a few cities. I can't find the podcast, but Elon mentioned how one of the main difficulties is the varying types of intersections. There are only so many intersections in Mountain View. But Tesla is getting data for all kinds of intersections.
> anything Libertarian, (which is labeled "far-right" now)
US Capital-“L” Libertarians tend to be solid-to-far right as well as libertarian, but, no, genuine center- and left-libertarian isn't usually called far-right by anyone.
Also, right-libertarians are a pretty big segment of the HN community, possibly more dominant than anything on the left.
Uh, personalities like Joe Rogan and Tim Pool have been called far-right[0], then there are also secular muslims who get called "anti-muslim extremists" by SPLC[1]. So unless you want to claim that these aren't "true scotsmen", there are most certainly people who get called far-right, who are anything but.
> anything Libertarian, (which is labeled "far-right" now)
Not just HN. Almost all tech companies are HQ-ed (at least for policy making purposes) in and around San Francisco. And they ALL behave the same way - impose their world view with impunity on the rest of the population, at a scale unheard of in human history. Just ponder for a moment that some overpaid Mozilla censorship committee employee, enjoying his/her/zi $20 soy latte in their $4000/month studio in San Francisco got to shut down an entire community's online presence with a single click, because they found the speech there disagreeable (not illegal)
> Which is protected by constitutional rights in the country Mozilla’s nexus exists in.
Good thing it is not the government telling Mozilla to remove the plugin then, otherwise there might be an actual problem here.
What makes free speech useless is pretending that someone else has a responsibility to promote your message or provide you with access to a printing press. Neither are true. This does not even appear to be the case that Mozilla is preventing anyone from using the plugin, they are just deciding that they aren't going to make any effort to promote it.
I guess it is not too hard to see who the real snowflakes are...
Militant leftists wanting to outlaw certain speech are no different then the alt right. It’s not as if more reason is necessary for regulating tech. You want to be the new commons, you get the responsibility of the commons along with it. Can’t have it both ways.
Note we heavily regulate private companies in many US industries when we deem it necessary.
>Militant leftists wanting to outlaw certain speech
Uhh, Mozilla didn't outlaw anything. Do you want to force Mozilla to put that extension on their site against their free speech rights? The only thing guaranteed by the first amendment is the federal government cannot prevent you from saying what you want. It says nothing about preventing you from using a 3rd party platform. Feel free to get a literal soapbox and preach your truth wherever you want in the real world, no one is stopping you.
It would not be against Mozilla "free speech" rights, it would be against their free association rights.
I want to hold Mozilla up to their public advertisements, and commitments they made to the public at large, these are a contract if you will to the public. Both because of their Tax Exempt status, and a truth in advertising issue.
If mozilla wants to exercise their right to free association as censorship platform, then they need to give up their Tax Exempt status, as well as cease all public advertisement around "Our mission: Keep the internet open and accessible to all.", Clearly this is only true to people that share the ideological worldview as Mozilla. AS such this is a false statement.
There is no such thing as a "contract if you will to the public" nor do any "commitments" that Mozilla has made to the "public at large" (whatever those are supposed to be) constitute a contract in any legally binding sense.
>If mozilla wants to exercise their right to free association as censorship platform, then they need to give up their Tax Exempt status, as well as cease all public advertisement around "Our mission: Keep the internet open and accessible to all."
Losing tax exempt status and being barred from mentioning a mission statement sound like legal, not social consequences. My impression was that the parent believed Mozilla was breaking some actual law regarding truth in advertising or something by claiming their mission was to "keep the internet open and accessible to all" while also curating plugins.
>Which is protected by constitutional rights in the country Mozilla’s nexus exists in.
Your understanding of the first amendment's protections is fundamentally flawed. The first amendment protects individual freedom of speech from prosecution and silencing by the government. It does not preclude private businesses or individuals from choosing to ban or prevent certain thoughts and opinions from a service which they provide. If Mozilla gets enough complaints about the speech that can be found on Dissenter, they have every legal right to choose not to host that app.
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences of said speech. Dissenter users are perfectly free to find another home on the internet to voice their opinions.
>It’s not necessary for a bloated non profit to remove access to an extension for political reasons (versus technical deficiencies).
Mozilla themselves has said that they didn't remove it for political reasons, rather it was the language and vitriol being used on the platform. As an example, it's one thing to use something like Dissenter to calmly and rationally discuss why you might think a nation should close its borders to all immigrants, it's another thing to use that same platform to say stuff like, "Fuck those worthless lazy piece of shit beaners coming to this country and stealing white jobs" (not my opinion, btw).
I'm not going to pretend to know that stuff like that was posted to Dissenter, but you and I both know that language like that is commonplace on alt/far-right platforms. It's by no means a stretch to imagine that those kinds of posts are what got Dissenter banned.
>Free speech is useless if you’re not willing to defend that which you find most disagreeable.
I go back to my point above. It's one thing to have a political opinion, it's another thing to be a horrible human being to other people just because you disagree with them. I still think that people should be able to say whatever they want, but if Mozilla doesn't want them to do it on their platform, then the rest of the internet is literally wide open for them to go and find another place to say whatever they want.
If Mozilla is a "bloated non profit" then they have no constitutional obligation to defend Gab's free speech. When you act like tech companies have the obligation to promote free speech you're actually giving them more legitimacy than they deserve because you implicitly accepted the idea that if speech isn't being propagated by them then it's impossible for it to spread.
In a way they do... They are tax exempt which means there is a case to be made as being Tax Exempt comes with Strings
For example we do not allow Churches to comment on politics they have to remain neutral or they lose their tax exemption
The same should apply to Mozilla. They need to be politically neutral, up holding Legal Speech, or they need to shutdown the Mozilla Foundation and become a for profit organization
This is an avenue I had not considering exploring. I will have to research constraints on non profits and when they can be reported to the IRS for possibly violating those constraints and an evaluation can occur to consider revoking their 503c status.
The Bitcoin community ironically supports MMT in order to accelerate the decline of traditional financial institutions. I can't believe people take MMT seriously.
It's this type of state intervention into internet companies that I worry about. We'll have lost something special when we give the US or the EU to dictate what we can or can not see on the internet.
In parts of the developing world, Facebook is used sort of like Craigslist to connect buyers and sellers, with the prospective client's friends list acting as a reputation system. Instead of this person to person bartering system, the developed world relies on advertisements and influencers for commerce. There's a Bloomberg article that goes deeper into this but I can't find it right now.
The best movies I saw this year were Bohemian Rhapsody (Critics: 61%, Audience: 87%) and Alita: Battle Angel (Critics: 60%, Audience: 94%). Maybe Rotten Tomatoes should be looking into how their critics are reviewing movies instead of banning "trolls"? If you read some of the critic reviews for the movies I mentioned, they are equally tinged with cultural and ideological opinions.
I think this is why conservatives are so up in arms about this movie. The majority of critics lean left and give high ratings to movies that align with their values. But when conservatives attempt to promote their own opinions about a movie, it's censored because "trolls". At this point, I give more weight to an army of fans, or haters, than a small group of critics.
It's also interesting how the NY Times, New Yorker and The Atlantic will write an essay afterwards that give "nuance" to the details of these types of events. Typically with a liberal bias.
> It's also interesting how the NY Times, New Yorker and The Atlantic will write an essay afterwards that give "nuance" to the details of these types of events. Typically with a liberal bias.
I think you need to be more specific than liberal or conservative. They way those terms are used usually correlates highest to "live near a large city" or "lives in a rural area."
I think it is more useful to break it down further than that to get more understanding.
Huh. I never before considered that liberal meant "city dweller" and conservative meant "farm boy". I had always assumed the terms were used to describe the different ends of a value base continuum.
It's easy to blame tech. I'm someone who is borderline Millenial/Gen Z and I'm actually finding myself, both internally and externally, through the use of Twitter. Still very alone at times, think Mr. Robot, but I've actually found hope through the internet. Strangely enough, I had actually wasted time and developed maladaptive traits by trying to find myself in the "real" world, as in the people I was forced to bond with through school and sports.
My take on this is different and many people will disagree. Here it goes. The "intermediate layers and hacks in social interaction" you speak of isn't technology but actually our myths of diversity and multi-culturalism. Real multi-culturalism is really REALLY hard, might be impossible given human nature. The only diverse thing we can all agree on is ethnic food. The other is probably college, careers, etc. Everything else is gone. Our culture is absent of anything internal or metaphysic. Religion and local communities are gone. Political correctness destroyed art.
I'm happy that some people can thrive in this world and good for them. There's the other half who pretend to be part of the trend; the ones that feel isolated. Then there are those like me who are lost in this world. Don't need pity, I've decided to make my own.
