619 karma · joined August 12, 2014
Search results are always going to be biased the same way that any media is always going to be biased. Have the regimes of the 20th century not taught us that it's naive to think we can objectively correct for that without opening the possibility for significantly worse repercussions?
If you're literally not willing to listen to any arguments for/against a hypothesis at all, then sure, you're likely more invested in the political aspect than the science itself. But if you're just arguing in favor of what the majority of the established literature suggests, then no, because being pro-science is orthogonal to politics, and arguing in favor of research doesn't make one political. Just because one particular subset of science gets latched onto by politicians, doesn't make it an inherently political subject any more than people who argue that the moon landing is fake make video/image editing an inherently conspiratorial subject. I also wouldn't be accusing others of flawed logic when making an argument that relies on guilt-by-association.
Are companies offering to pay you to drive people around, with little barrier to entry, in a tough economy where it's getting increasingly difficult to afford living in urban centers, not also an incentive to own a car?
More so, since the problem isn't so much about car ownership, but rather about the number of cars actually on the road at any given time: are these companies not also creating additional incentive for many existing car owners to drive their cars more in the hopes of earning extra cash? Because even when they're not actively giving rides, many of these drivers are still going to be driving around waiting for their next client. Then we have to take into account the fact that the shifts these drivers can potentially work are much longer than the amount of time an average driver would normally stay on the road for.
Incentives in a complex system are not an easy clear-cut thing to figure out, so it shouldn't be surprising that the incentives in one direction might actually outweigh and completely counteract the intended incentives of a plan in the opposite direction. Not saying that's actually the case here, but it's far from an impossibility, and it wouldn't require any malevolent bias to happen.
I'm cool with that. Misunderstandings happen more often than people like to admit, even when speaking the same language; the interpretation of language seems to be universally subjective and particular to the person interpreting it. You never know for sure how something will be received until you throw it out there.
> your willingness to continue this argument aligns better with that assertion than with the assertion that if you've known real suffering, you wouldn't bother to argue such a thing
I agree with that, because I never argued to the contrary, like the person that first responded to me might've. I believe it's most likely the product of an entire country/population suffering without any sources of comparison nearby that can produce a certain cultural cynicism/stoicism that habitually overlooks a lot of things. There will always be exceptions when it comes to individuals from these cultures, but I think it's at least worth exploring why some debates that are popular in the US right now likely wouldn't rise up to the level of national discourse in countries like china/russia/colombia/guatemala/etc anytime soon (dubious political regimes aside).
> I don't believe I've put words in your mouth.
The notion of word translations ever being suggested as a "rich vs poor thing" was a pretty notable one, but since I just explained my position a bit more, it's fine. Hopefully it's clear that it's a far more nuanced observation than "americans are spoiled" or something like that.
> Yet, you feel disrespected at the idea that I might do so. Disrespected and affronted
One thing I've learned in interacting with people from a variety of different cultures, is that their ideas of what's considered "respectful" or "disrespectful" are often quite different from each other. In this case for example, I would never use the word "disrespected" to describe myself in this situation. I actually think "confusion" would suit my interpretation of the whole language debate a lot better, which is why I usually try to respond with clarifications of some sort (which I can see how that can come off as "defending my words", but I'm usually much more concerned with being understood than I am with defending any particular point of view). In my mind, "disrespect" is something I associate mostly with gang members getting upset and overreacting about trivial nonsense. But that could just be me!
And if in a bit of irony, I'm misinterpreting you, then please do clarify, cause I might be fairly assimilated, but I'm still not perfect. I can't even begin to describe how many egg shells I regularly walk on trying to talk with americans to this day still.
For example, since I moved to the US ages ago, I've regularly found a lot more in common between myself (a central american) and the world views of immigrants from china, vietnam, and russia, than I have with people from the US, and it wasn't because my american friends were all super well off (most of them live paycheck to paycheck, and more than a few have dealt with homelessness, drug addiction, or involvement with other dubious activities). It's hard to describe, but it encompasses a sort of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" type of outlook that seems to form the basis of much of the thinking in these cultures. At least in my experience.
And in the case of slurs in spanish in particular, it's actually part of a broader context that includes the casual use of words that would be considered blunt insults in the west (though not necessarily slurs), as expected parts of conversation, and often times even as terms of endearment. Like, getting someone's attention by calling them the spanish equivalent of "fatso", "bastard", or "idiot" would be considered normal and non-offensive by the person receiving the remark. It's viewed in the same vein as calling someone skinny/short/tall/black/white/asian/etc, which is to say, it's treated as light-hearted mocking that doesn't really mean anything other than something to get your attention by. If a person wants to take a mild jab at you, they might call you one of the more infamous "slur" words like puto/pendejo/maricon/idiota/etc, but the terms in this group vary wildly by region, and they're generally not considered to be any more severe than calling someone an ass here. If you really want to get under the skin of someone in spanish, you have to basically insult their mothers or physically threaten them somehow. Basically, so long as you aren't literally threatening a person's family or physical safety, it's not really taken seriously very much, and I believe this is largely because your physical safety can very realistically be in serious danger in those parts of the world. For example, it's been several years, and I still find it odd to not hear gunshots going off outside my house at night every now and then; which is weird because it's not something you'd normally associate with a comforting sound that would remind someone of "home".
That being said, latin-america is huge, and I don't claim to speak for all the countries there, but there is a decent amount of overlap in the cultures.
the question is, which definition of "equality" are we even aiming for: equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? In reality, most people would likely agree with you that we should aim for "equality", but there are some pretty big fundamental differences about what people mean when they say that. Equal opportunity inherently means that we have to be ok with accepting less than equal outcomes if the process is the same for everybody; while equal outcomes mean we have to be ok with the possibility of favoring more opportunities for some people over others. These two interpretations of the same exact word are as close to mutually exclusive as you can get, so it's no surprise that there's so much tension around it. Doesn't mean people don't want "equality" though, it just means that the way they view the world led them to a different (equally defendable) interpretation of what it should mean.
Por supuesto que siempre van haber personas que tienen malas intenciones cuando dicen palabras como "maricon", pero la diferencia entre nosotros y los de paises mas estables, es que a ellos no les vale la intencion de uno, solo ven a las propias palabras como que si usar esas partes del lenguaje fuera pecado. Como que no tomaran en cuenta la realidad que el lenguaje y las definiciones de palabras son construidas por la gente que las usa, y que cambian todo el tiempo. He vivido en los estados por muchos anos ya, y todavia no entiendo por que la cultura es asi, pero ni modo, asi es la vida.
Somebody having less than perfect communication skills is no reason to be wildly speculating and throwing them under the bus when they're the victims of something much worse.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_fu...
https://www.reddit.com/r/CopperheadOS/comments/8oq1l3/cos_fu...
Ok, apologies for thinking we were discussing a more mundane/realistic scenario then. However that kind of slavery that you're talking about is very niche and not something that could be universally applied by any entrepreneur like you seemed to be suggesting. Furthermore, it'd be illegal pretty much everywhere, and you'd end up in the same sort of scenario of tax avoidance where it's still in your best selfish interest to comply with the law anyway.
>"the market will respond to people's preferences" doesn't work with such one sided information. Sure people are leaving Facebook, but to go where?
Going nowhere is also a feasible option by the way. People lived just fine without having any kind of facebook/snapchat/instagram/etc not that long ago, so there's no reason why they couldn't just go back to that if the alternatives are distasteful enough. I know that's certainly the path I've taken. It may be a minority stance still, but give it time, the markets don't just respond to abstract things like this over night. I'd wager that we won't be able to adequately gauge the real effects of these sorts of privacy breaches until at least a couple decades from now, because the whole questionable online advertising industry isn't just going to run out of money and disappear that quickly.
>And now not following the GPDR will get you serious fines followed by jail time if you continually flaunt the regulators.
Did you skip over the example in my comment of that not being the case? If you don't do business in the EU (e.g. by range-banning them), and aren't holding on to EU user data, then you're not facing any consequences, plain and simple. Doing that doesn't mean you're complying with all that the GDPR is requesting either, so you can't just hand-wave it away as if that were the case.
>Even if you don't sell the data, you are creating a pool of user data that is valuable to steal
Once again, not following all the little rules that the GDPR entails, and/or not doing business in the EU, does not logically imply that a company is even collecting sensitive data in the first place. A small static site could potentially still be non-compliant if all it does is collect ip addresses in its server logs, or uses a 3rd party analytics service of any kind (without keeping any of the actual data itself).
I'm not arguing that amassing pools of personal data are in any way a good idea for anybody, but that's a separate issue than the one of "is it worth it to comply with the GDPR?", which is how most entrepreneurs outside the EU will inevitably approach the problem, even if they weren't planning to collect data. For example, startups will now have to consider if they'll ever collect any kind of data at all, at any point in the future, before they even decide to start, just so that they know whether or not it's in their interest to try serving the EU market at all, even if they have no plans to collect data yet. You could argue that the GDPR will disincentivize such activity and make entrepreneurs think twice about it, but most likely, the path of least resistance for them will just be to range-ban the EU.
>but using that as an argument for not trying something like the GPDR is disenguous.
No one is saying the EU shouldn't have tried passing the GDPR. What's actually happening, is a discussion between businesses/entrepreneurs outside the EU about whether it's worth it to comply with the GDPR or not. I have yet to see anyone legitimately advocate for it to get repealed or anything like that. We're all just looking out for what the best strategy to take is now that it's in place, and it seems like people in the EU are getting upset that not serving EU users is even being taken into consideration as a serious option, when it's a perfectly rational course of action for any outside business to consider.
>Everyomes entitled to their opinion, but I am firmly in the camp of actually forcing companies into stopping this practice
Right, and I'm in the camp that it's your right to try and do so, but also I'm pessimistic about using force to achieve this as opposed to starving the market via ubiquitous ad blockers and things like ad-nauseum. Only time will tell if the approach was successful or not.
Because judging countries for not being able to meet standards its incapable of meeting is plain naive colonialist mentality. It's like criticizing a school yard basketball player for not being up to NBA standards, then getting mad when people point out that they aren't in the NBA. Like what are you expecting to accomplish by projecting your beliefs about regulations in a situation like that, and then acting as if people are attacking your way of life? Again, it must be really convenient to have been sheltered and only ever have known environments where abundant regulations are possible, but stop projecting your morals on people that live differently.
>Do you find it offensive that people prefer to live in countries with a high standard of living if given the choice?
I don't see the need for you to be asking such an obvious question, other than to intentionally try to put words in my mouth or paint some kind of strawman of my arguments. The answer should be obvious to anyone.
>Is that somehow disrespectful to the people who do not have that choice?
No, but accusing people of suffering from some kind of cognitive bias ("when i was young we didn't have [seatbelts|gun regulation|hard hats on construction sites] and i turned out just fine!") when all they're doing is explaining why a certain situation is the way it is, is definitely disrespectful. Again, re-read my original comment: nowhere was I even remotely attacking western standards, yet you chose to respond to it by criticizing someone for explaining how they lived through sub-par circumstances. Like seriously, what need was there to get all holier-than-thou about this?
>Generally you seem to agree that regulation can be beneficial (if compliance is feasible).
Only up to a point. I am generally pessimistic about how government intervention in the free market tends to turn out. I'm an entrepreneur here in the US, and enjoy some of the luxuries the US has compared to my home country, but I'd be lying if I didn't think certain regulations were hindering my ability to even start certain businesses (not because I try to do anything questionable, but because I have ADHD and literally can't stand to jump through endless hoops and file mountains of paperwork). I've already switched states once here to move to one that had more favorable business regulations than the one I originally came to.
>I'm sure you also agree that you'd like the toys you buy for your kids in the US to comply with US safety standards, even when they're made in china, and regardless of whatever standards exist in china?
What does this have to do with anything? I'm not opposed to businesses following the regulations of the countries they intend to do business in. The problem with the GDPR is that now a lot of businesses that weren't even intending to do business in the EU, now have a huge universal liability on their hands. Yeah "they've had enough time" and all that, but that still doesn't change the fact that the EU has done the equivalent of police china's toy manufacturers according to its own standards, simply because these toys may potentially get shipped to the EU at some point. It's not the same as having a requirement that toys entering the country meet a certain standard, because a public web server can be accessed by anyone at any time, even if the host was never intending to serve EU people specifically.
Right, but the alternative in certain situations is having no businesses at all, as was the case in my home country.
>Are you making the argument that the west is generally over-regulating food safety and public health? If so, on what basis? Looks to me like a variant of the old "when i was young we didn't have [seatbelts|gun regulation|hard hats on construction sites] and i turned out just fine!"
No, and again, it's offensive that this is legitimately the first thing that comes to mind when somebody from a developing nation says that it's local population has reasons for doing things the way it does. Nowhere was I arguing that public safety is a bad thing, and don't appreciate having words put in my mouth. I was merely stating the fact that businesses down there almost unanimously don't have the resources to be hiring lawyers, or whatever other services that they would need in order to guarantee compliance with overly strict regulations like you see in the west. If such regulations were in place, and they were strictly enforced somehow, what would happen is that nearly all entrepreneurship would disappear altogether, except possibly for the wealthy (which are often the most corrupt down there), or outside investors with potentially dubious motives for dealing with the local population. It would literally price-out the very people you'd be trying to help with your regulations.
I never said that situation was better than the west, or that things were somehow better "back then" (I much prefer living in the US today), I was saying it was better than nothing, and that these entitled western sentiments can't feasibly be applied everywhere to positive effect. Has it come to the point now that small villages will be needing to apologize to westerners for liking the convenience of having some semblance of commerce in their neighborhoods, due to all the benefits that brings, like not having to worry about cooking dinner in equally poor conditions every night at home? It's not an attack on the west, it's annoyance with the west's over-the-top moralizing of the choices different people make under constrained circumstances that westerners seem to forget exist.
Assuming you legitimately want to know, and aren't just trying to ask a pointed rhetorical question, ok:
>>Why not throw your trash on a neighbor's lawn?
Because unless you like having other people's trash on your lawn, a simple tit-for-tat strategy in game theory would suggest that it's in your best interest to not do that yourself either. In other words, the most sustainable course of action in this case is to follow The Golden Rule ("do unto others as you would like them to do unto you").
The thing with the GDPR, is that the parties involved in the game are you and the EU government, and you not complying with the GDPR by just refusing to serve EU customers doesn't put you in line for any kind of equivalent retaliation if you delete all your EU user data first.
>>Why not enslave your workers so you don't have to deal with turnover and hiring replacements?
Because in a developed free market economy, that business strategy is doomed to fail, since your workers can choose to go work somewhere else that has more favorable conditions, and will likely warn any potential future workers against working for you. If you maintain these sorts of business practices long enough, eventually your pool of workers to choose from will shrink to the point where you'll no longer have enough viable candidates to replenish your workforce.
Similarly, if your business is in fact collecting sensitive data and abusing its use of it for shady purposes, your customers will eventually start looking for a way out of dealing with you (as is possibly the case with facebook right now).
However, the key distinction that seems to be missed by a lot of people here, is that not complying with the GDPR does not inherently guarantee that a business is either collecting dubious data, nor that it's doing shady things with it. And this is a result of the fact that companies around the world are not obligated to conduct business in the EU. If they magically were obligated somehow, it'd be a different story, but that's never going to be the case.
For example, if a new business starts up in the US right now, it will not actively have any EU user data yet, but could still opt to not comply with the GDPR purely because of the overhead costs, and just block EU users altogether in order to avoid any hassles in the future. Does this mean that the business is doing questionable things with user data? Obviously not, since it hasn't even had a chance to collect any data yet, but clearly it positioned itself in a way that it found to be the most advantageous for its given resources, at the detriment of any potential future EU users, without risking any obvious repercussions other than having a slightly smaller potential market. If all of its competitors decide to comply with the GDPR and serve EU customers however, then the strategy could turn out to be a losing one, but it's far from a given that this will happen.
>>Why dont you stop paying taxes so you don't have to do work to get the same amount of income as you would without taxes?
Because not paying taxes will get you jail time and/or non-trivial fines in pretty much every country you could possibly be based out of. I know there are quacks in the US that claim you can "legally" not pay any income taxes, but none of those crazy arguments have ever stood up in court, and have historically landed tax avoiders that tried to argue for them in jail. Regardless of how you feel about taxes, needlessly incurring large fees and/or landing yourself in jail, just isn't gonna be good for business, so it's in your best interest to pay them even if you're a raging psychopath/narcissist.
>Not complying with the GDPR doesn't have any obvious consequences because every company that sells user data is pushing their negative externalities onto others.
Not complying with the GDPR != selling user data.
This argument is moot because it doesn't logically follow that not complying with the GDPR necessarily produces these "negative externalities" that you're referring to. Therefore, it doesn't explain anything about why not following the GDPR doesn't have obvious consequences. Refer to my hypothetical startup example above for elaboration, because this is an example of conflating "data collection/dubious practices" with "GDPR compliance", which are two very different things.
>The GDPR is trying to make it so that the people creating the negative externalities are the ones paying for them
I agree that that's what it's trying to do. Unfortunately, it seems like it might be having some unintended consequences along the way regardless.
None of those examples make sense from a classical economics perspective, nor would they be considered sustainable from a game theoretic perspective either.
Meanwhile, not complying with the GDPR doesn't seem to have any obviously severe economic/game-theoretic consequences if you're not based in the EU, or don't already have a large profitable presence there. So it's a bit disingenuous to just lump it in with all those other behaviors.
a vast majority of the food places in my home country were like that when I was growing up, and such places likely still make up a sizable portion of the food businesses down there now. I can't help but be a bit offended by this attitude, because it seems to not only be implying that these businesses are likely to be operating in bad faith, but that the world would legitimately be better off without them as well. It's great that you probably grew up and live in a situation where that might've been feasible, but I can't in good conscience defend those views having lived in places where such strictness is out of reach for most entrepreneurs.
The world isn't entirely comprised of Europe and North America.
Unfortunately, I have a hard time believing this would actually happen. But it's better than thinking being born with ADHD is now borderline illegal in China, I guess.
I'm not defending shady tactics here, I'm being realistic about the functionality marketing provides despite the bad stuff. I get the annoyance, but there's no need to be calling all of marketing "evil" when the free market seems to still be working as it should. When a critical mass of consumers begin blocking all tracking utilities, businesses are going be forced to innovate around it one way or another anyway, and you'll get what you want. It may take a while for that to happen, but that's not a reason to be angry at marketing as a whole. Just continue voting with your wallet (or browser extensions in this case).
EDIT: really, downvotes? I don't even think we disagree, but whatever man. I wish I could be surprised at HN downvoting people trying to be calm and rational instead of emotional and hyperbolic, but that's just cliche at this point. I try to avoid commenting on controversial topics for this reason, but I guess I'll have to add "marketing" to my blacklist of topics as well now.
I'm no fan of invasive tracking or obnoxious sales techniques either, but marketing does serve an objectively useful purpose, as any small business owner will tell you. Demanding to do away with it entirely is just throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Since when? It's last commit was 5 days ago:
Any browser is going to struggle against the top two behemoths, so I'm not sure why exactly that would be an argument to just accept it and continue using products by companies that have lost your trust. Are end users supposed to compromise their ethics just because web developers aren't in the habit of testing against their browser of choice yet? That just seems like an awfully 'silicon-valley-centric' view of the world.
What does this "success" thing have to do with ditching a product that had violated your trust anyway? Are businesses in most other industries viewed this way? Am I expected to stop buying food from local producers just because the big-box food suppliers are more ubiquitous?
To me, all that matters is sustainability, and IceCat has been going strong for 12 years, PaleMoon has been consistently developed for 8 years, and Waterfox for 6 years. So that's enough for me to at least give them a shot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMALm1VthGY
It's also disingenuous to present a false dichotomy with Chrome, as if there weren't any other privacy-focused alternatives out there:
> Resmini’s statement comes just a few months after Discord took action against a number of nefarious ALT-RIGHT servers. One of the largest servers, Centipede Central, became heavily monitored by Discord administrators and in the past few months, underwent its own implosion.
And more importantly:
> “The team has confirmed that they are aware of Centipede Central and will take action IF they find CC is in violation of their terms of service and/or community guidelines”
In other words, it sounds like the politics of that group alone was probably enough to justify keeping them under close surveillance. It wasn't necessarily just responding to "raiding and spamming" once it happened.
You deliberately cut out the part which states he's talking about the ecosystem of OpenBSD, in an OpenBSD mailing list. That is an extremely disingenuous and uncharitable cherry-picked interpretation. He was categorically talking about efforts to port OpenBSD utilities to such a language and merge them into the project (i.e. the OpenBSD ecosystem). What you're suggesting he said is just plain FUD.