arunabha

I am not sure I follow your reasoning. You're complaining about a request for donation, on a site which provides a language and supporting infrastructure like a package manager for free?

Why shouldn't the PSF be allowed to ask for donations on their site? I'm sure if you're unhappy with them, they will cheerfully refund you the price you paid?

Oh!, that's right, you paid nothing and you claim that asking for donations is somehow 'enshittification' of PSF.

Frankly, the level of entitlement in your post is something else.

Doesn't that only shift the question to what God wants you to do and in turn who interprets God's will?

Said another way, how would you conclude with any certainty that you are indeed following God's will with any action you take?

> heritage Americans

I'm curious as to how you'd define a 'heritage' American.

> and instead demand your passport and other identification, scan it and leave it in their system forever. They also are known to sell this data to other from time to time.

Isn't this the problem vs the Supreme court judgement? Why does the hotel need to save this data forever?

A simple fix will be to make companies liable for leaks of personal data. That alone will incentivize then to delete personal data as fast as humanly possible.

> today I am of the opinion that countries like India shouldn't waste money and time on these.

I agree that there are undeniable benefits from Aadhar. However, the issue is that the narrative from the govt has been that it's an either or situation. Either you have the convenience of Aadhaar, or you have privacy. This is unequivocally false. The solution isn't even technical. There are two simple, easily doable fixes which will deliver most of the benefits without significantly eroding privacy.

1. Ensure that legally valid ids other than Aadhaar are not treated as second class by any govt department. If a non Aadhaar id is refused, the reason must be given in writing. The problem is govt babus like the ease of Aadhaar and hence refuse to do the tiny bit of extra work needed on the non Aadhaar path.

2. Amend the Aadhaar act to ban the use of Aadhaar for anything except identity verification. If any personal data linked to Aadhaar is saved by a platform, then they are liable for leak of the data in the event of a breach.

Just doing these will enable the use of Aadhaar for it's original intent which was verifiable identity. The privacy degradation comes from using Aadhaar as a primary key for arbitrary storage of personal data, not from the existence of Aadhaar itself.

My point wasn't that no id was required before Aadhaar. It's that any id from a range of acceptable ids like passports, ration card, drivers license worked.

Post Aadhaar, even though all of those IDs are still legal and acceptable under law, the govt has added so much friction on the non Aadhaar path that in practice those IDs are unusable.

My point wasn't that no id was required before Aadhaar. It's that any id from a range of acceptable ids like passports, ration card, drivers license worked.

Post Aadhaar, even though all of those IDs are still legal and acceptable under law, the govt has added so much friction on the non Aadhaar path that in practice those IDs are unusable.

You just demonstrated first hand the point made by GP. When the supreme court ordered the Govt to cease making Aadhaar mandatory, they just responded by adding so much friction to daily life without Aadhaar that most people, including privacy conscious folks like you just gave in.

Exactly! Politics as usual in India.

> A government minister has clarified that the app is not mandatory but "optional" and can be deleted by the user

In India it doesn't really mean anything. As an example the biometric based id 'Aadhaar' is 'voluntary' on paper, The Modi govt had to concede this after a Supreme court judgement that made it clear that Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory. However in practice it's anything but. Govt officials will openly refuse to consider other forms of id. They have been informally told by the highest rungs of govt that they will be protected against any complaints and that they need to insist on Aadhaar.

The whole point is to make daily life practically impossible without Aadhaar so that the citizens give in and 'voluntarily' give their biometrics.

You know, unsurprisingly these claims are almost always heavy on rhetoric but offer no references or data to back up the assertion beyond a had wavy 'everyone knows'.

>> Or maybe he was as arrogant as he seemed and believed he knew better than everyone else.

Do you have any references for this? Our understanding of Covid evolved pretty rapidly during the pandemic and as usual hindsight is 20/20.

I have no doubt that *you* are convinced of your statement. I'd just like to understand what data you based your conviction on.

I'm not from Brazil, so I'm curious if you're saying the court broke some law by imposing house arrest on Bolsonaro? This part of the article makes it seem like it was done pretty legally.

> In a statement, Federal Police said it executed a preventive arrest warrant > that had been requested by the police themselves and authorized by the > Supreme Court, CNN affiliate CNN Brasil reported.

Clearly, a lot of people here disagree with you. Doesn't mean you cannot be right, but in general, the HN crowd is a pretty good predictor of the trends in the tech industry.

> That's the scientific community being parochial and self-interested, though. Their priority is writing more papers, and if that means holding the rest of us back, they're fine with it.

Is it? To me, this sounds awfully similar in construction to 'The devs are always worried about tech debt and architecture, but they just want to polish their resumes to hold back the product' speech we are prone to hear from PM/MBA types.

Why would you prefer to believe a random outsider's view (scientists are holding us back) over people who have built professional careers working in the field(a.k.a scientists)? Especially when you provide no evidence to back up your claims?

> The Biden administration decided that the best way to fight inflation was to invent a giant pile og money and hand it out

Can you provide some references for your claim? IIRC, under Biden, inflation was stoked by the Covid stimulus(arguably necessary to avoid rapid deflation due to Covid, but probably kept for too long) and the Fed moved pretty decisively in the second half of the Biden presidency to raise interest rates rapidly to combat inflation. FWIW, the inflation issue seemed to be under control and heading in the right direction before the administration changed.

It's mind blowing to witness the speed and rapidity with which we have

* Completely alienated key allies via an erratic and unpredictable tariff policy

* Significantly undermined faith in US economic data and fiscal policy via overt politicization of key economic institutions

* Increased the deficit by almost $3 trillion after vowing to reduce the deficit

* Signaled far and wide that pay for play is the new norm, whether for pardons or favourable policy. Preferably paid in crypto, but with in kind payments being acceptable.

Is there any wonder that other countries are unwilling to trust the US? The only hope we have is that the current bout of madness in Washington DC is a one time aberration, but who knows!

Getting better sleep has been a bit of a personal quest for me. Having said that, much as I would love to get the device, having been bitten by a bunch of subscription locked devices by startups, I have (reluctantly) settled on a policy of not purchasing hardware that can't work independently of the company.

Startups are hard at the best of times, hardware startups are harder. When the company making the hardware inevitably goes under, you are left with a useless piece of plastic that you paid a ton of money upfront for, and then paid a hefty sum every month on top.

> But it's a war, so innocents are getting hurt as well

I'm wondering if you'd apply the same standard on the flip side? Per Hamas, they are engaged in a war with Israel, so by your standard they are justified in their rocket attacks killing Israeli civilians who have nothing to do with the war?

Yeah, that was pretty surprising. Usually political stories are flagged and buried pretty quickly.

> And when given the right to vote, they placed Hamas into power

Are you sure you want to hold voters directly accountable for an election that happened over a decade ago? If yes, then it's a pretty slippery slope to be on, esp if the same standard were to be applied to US voters.

The issue is, the current administration seems to be hell bent on speed running the course to a similar destination. The overt attempts to politicize the Fed and key govt institutions has sown the seeds to distrust in US govt data and monetary policy.

Whether we water and fertilize the seeds, or let them dry and wither will decide the level of credibility we get in the future.

Strong institutions are absolutely critical for long term economic success. Enforcement of the rule of law, accurate data and credible monetary policy are the bedrock on which long term economic prosperity is built. Right now, we seem to be taking a jackhammer to that foundation.

A lot of countries have learnt from this and maintain a govt mandated /supported standard for digital payments.

In India, the universal payments interface (UPI) has been hugely successful in providing instant, commission less payments for a vast majority of the population.

Similarly, RuPay is the common standard for credit and debit cards.

It's eye opening to see just how effective and impactful these two have been, particularly UPI. The smallest seller in the remotest village will likely accept UPI payments.

What's mind blowing is that all of this came about in the short span of just under a decade.

Undoubtedly, but the corollary 'statistics is not reality' doesn't really hold. I'm sure people here would know many Americans who moved to Spain.

Statistics might not be ideal, but making policy decisions based on anecdotes is far, far worse.

In the Aadhaar issue, the supreme court has at least clarified that aadhaar cannot be mandatory for most things. However, it upheld the requirement for linking PAN numbers to aadhaar.

PAN card is required for pretty much any major financial transaction so it does open up a major loophole. However it *is* possible to do a lot of things without Aadhaar, it just takes significantly longer and involves a lot of back and forth. The trick is to get past the frontline folks and talk to someone with real authority. Mentioning the Supreme court judgement or better still the relevant ombudsman does wonders in making the previously 'mandatory' aadhaar non mandatory.

I am not very optimistic about the situation improving anytime soon. I'm regularly shocked at how little people care about privacy are offer up detailed personal information on demand.

> Some of these have been flagged and my comments are almost always downvoted to oblivion but I don't care, I will continue speaking out because these are my honest opinions on the subject.

If only you spent a fraction of that energy on self reflection...

> The implication was that, going forwards, the numbers would be more accurately calculated in order to reflect REALITY of US employment, which is far bleaker than any of us really wishes to accept, myself included!

Ok, would that imply that if the jobs numbers are not worse in the next couple of reports and instead, are suspiciously higher then the administration is in fact cooking the books?

Agreed. I think the point was that Woz was definitely less rich than Jobs(not poor though) and seems to have had a far happier life than Jobs. In some sense, Woz had what Jobs never had. Woz was blessed with having enough.

I'm genuinely struggling to think of downsides in that. Surely the most 'secure' microphone is the one that doesn't exist in the first place?

Relentless grinding and going well above and beyond make sense when you capture a significant portion of the upside (e.g co founder, or 'well known' tech guru like Carmack).

Grinding and hustling _without_ participating proportionally in the upside is naivete at best and foolishness at worst.