1,513 karma · joined March 17, 2021
Incidentally, people thinking for themselves and being able to look at studies and talk to (actual) experts directly without the interference of the media or "experts" is exactly why there are so many skeptics, and why the White House, the Media, and Big Tech are doing everything they can to censor the living shit out of vaccine discussion. You people spent years yammering about how great the free, uncensored discussion on the Internet would be: finally the strongest ideas would win out! And then when people didn't come flooding to YOUR ideas, but actually started to move AWAY from them, you screamed for it to all be shut down, post-haste. The game is only good when you win, huh?
1. Blindly accept what the government, the media, and "experts" tell them, despite all three repeatedly demonstrating they're not trustworthy.
2. Continually parrot false claims about the vaccine's efficacy, and dismiss any study, doctor, nurse or academic that disagrees with the Official Narrative as wonks or Russian Operatives (has that one fallen out of style yet?)
3. CUT PEOPLE OUT OF THE LABOR MARKET, out of jobs they need, in the middle of a LABOR SHORTAGE, because they refuse to take highly suspicious medication the government is forcing on them.
The whole vaccine situation handling by the government has been nothing short of tyrannical. If the government can force you to take an unknown injection whenever they like, on penalty of being cut off from society, do any of your other rights even matter? You're probably the type that constantly cried "Fascist!" during the Trump years, and yet you're cheering on an authoritarian take-over of the US, by both government and Big Tech.
Beyond that, IPFS is a joke. It's hovered in toy status for years, devoid of the core features it needs to justify its existence (a way to motivate people to host besides the goodness of their hearts, a DNS replacement that's not laughable, a simple and stable interface etc). But even if IPFS was everything it claims to be, using it for something like this is laughable:
1. There is no security in IPFS. It's a content mirroring technology. If you're hosting something illegal, the authorities can find you just fine.
2. IPFS is entirely voluntary. Mirrors can opt out of mirroring things they don't want to host. What are people going to opt out of most? Controversial content. Oh yeah, you can host "controversial" content of the type a teenager things is controversial. But anything actually hot is going to get shit-canned before you can blink.
Overall, IPFS, and anything built on it, is either absurd over-engineering or absurd under-engineering. If you wanna mirror bland, non-hot stuff, just mirror it in the usual ways. You don't need all this cyber-punk larping cloak-and-dagger shit. Nobody cares. And if they DO care? IPFS ain't gonna save you.
Humans are complicated creatures with many flaws and nobilities. Because of Washington's actions in both the revolution and his presidency, a vast number of people enjoyed far more freedom than they would have otherwise. Also because of Washington's actions, some people had to endure a life a brutal slavery. Neither of these aspects is untrue, or erases the other from history by its existence. History, and humans, are often messy and uncomfortable. Stop trying to pretend otherwise. It is possible for Washington to be both a hero of freedom and a disappointing oppressor at the same time. This is the paradox of the human condition.
You're not enlightened. You haven't discovered some grand, hidden truth that all the world must know by pointing out that respected historical figures were flawed. We know. We've always known. We respect them anyway, because they did good as well as bad, and the good was a big deal.
The stage of history doesn't care how many followers you have on Twitter, or how many people's lives you can destroy in the name of your religion masquerading as science. In the coming years, the US MUST LEAD. It must shake the slop from itself and rise to the role of world leader again, not just with guns but with minds, because the battlefield of the future is a battlefield of the mind. If it does not rise, China or Russia will be glad to.
Either "wokeness" dies, or the US dies. It's that simple.
Yes, obviously in order to make an apple pie you must first create the universe. In order to be gifted you must first be born, have a basic level of food and shelter, be mostly free of disease and so on. That's not a relevant point of discussion here. We're discussing a case where all things are equal.
"But all things aren't equal!" You scream. "Those evil white people grew up in the lap of luxury while the poor, repressed minorities had a life of scraping, miserable poverty!"
First, this isn't always true. There are poor white people and middle-class (or even rich) minorities, and to suggest that every minority is hopelessly disadvantaged because they all grew up in the ghetto is its own kind of racism. But second, this is a separate discussion. To answer the question "Are some people naturally gifted?" you have to adjust the other variables to equal first in order to tease out the answer to that specific question. Having discovered that yes, indeed they are, you can then conclude that this CONTINUES TO BE THE CASE in situations where "privilege" is not equal. The fact that some people are handicapped or helped by their economic or racial background does not magically erase the fact that they are ALSO helped or held back by their innate intelligence, and tendency to understand or not understand specific concepts.
Some people are smarter than other people, in a way that has nothing to do with economics or racism, but is purely biological luck. In direct contradiction to your assertion, THIS is self-evident, in the same way that "Things fall to the earth when dropped". and "Eventually, everyone dies" are. To deny this is to deny basic, readily-observable and reproducible reality, in a way that suggests either disingenuousness or mental illness.
Everyone is not equal, never has been, and never will be. It is an inherent property of the randomness of nature that some members of a species end up with abilities superior to others, completely independent of economics, race, social class, or any other human construction. Stop pushing this inane Harrison Bergeron gibberish.
These people are monsters. They're literally tearing apart civilization (education of children is foundational) for the sake of their doomed ideology. If you can't see the parallels to the Soviet Union, you're either already drinking the kool-aide or incomprehensibly dense.
New internet is dominated by tech giants, who want to make money. In order to do this, they fuck with their user's minds at every opportunity. As a result, no "tool" is really a tool anymore. Google search doesn't exist to serve you. Same with maps, or Gmail. Same with Facebook, Twitter and on and on. These are not tools. They're machines to collect data on you, so you can be understood, so you can have crap sold to you. Or, more sinisterly, so you can be controlled in any number of ways.
A shadow of the old internet still exists, spread across fragmented digital ghettos here and there. Places run by humans, rather than SV companies. Places whose aim is still community, education, or just genuine fun, rather than running endless non-consensual psychology experiments on their users. But who knows how much longer any of these will endure. Most are already showing cracks.
Still, worth griping about 2FA while we're here.
1. Google does not require 2FA.
2. Google DOES require 2FA on an account, but only requires the second auth if "suspicious activity" crops up.
3. Google requires 2 auths on each and every login.
On 1, if a bad actor picks up your phone and tries to log in, they will fail if you haven't saved your login, or succeed if you've been lazy and saved it. In the latter case, that's really on you (and you might still be able to get your account back even then, if they didn't fully and quickly reset password and other details!)
On 2 however, they will try to log in, fail, and trigger a lock-down that can only be lifted with both auths. One of which you don't have anymore. Congrads, you've just lost your account!
3 is the same as 2, just for different reasons. As soon as that phone disappears, you don't have the second auth, and you're screwed.
And don't even bother with anything that isn't a phone. We both know nobody in the general public is using anything other than text for this. And some older folks don't even have that! Add on to this that SMS can be easily hacked, and it's pretty clear this whole system is a joke.
"Nobody is obligated to teach you self-defense."
"I tried to stop while driving but my breaks failed and I crashed into a house!"
"Nobody is obligated to teach you proper car maintenance."
"My wife's surgeon lied about his qualifications and now she's dead!"
"Nobody is obligated to teach you how to spot a quack."
IT'S NOT OUR OBLIGATION EITHER. It's Google's, to make products that don't abuse and exploit their users. Stop this bizarre gaslighting tactic. 2FA is a shitty scam system that increases complexity and failure rates, radically decreases privacy, and DOESN'T increase security because the vast majority of users will just use SMS, which is easily hacked.
The "cool" internet was largely populated by two things: People screwing around creating content in their spare time, with no expectation of profit ("Hobbyists"), and eager entrepreneurs burning through tons of money trying to find the "one weird trick" that would make them rich on the net. Most of #2 failed, but while it was happening it provided a host of interesting things to see, and spaces to hang out in online.
Then 2008 happened and it all came tumbling down. People tend to think more of the 90s ".com" crash, but there was another after the "recession." Suddenly there wasn't as much money to throw around, so #2 became more and more rare, and those that did exist were less casual and more dogged in their attempts to extract money. At the same time, #1 also collapsed, because people were losing their jobs, downgrading to worse paying jobs, working longer hours etc. People didn't have time for hobbies, and self-starters didn't have money for wild new experiments.
So innovation and expression on the web kind of ground to a halt. This happened culture-wide by the way, but certainly it was obvious on the net. What had once been a space for fun and experimentation became a wasteland ruled over by the handful of tyrannical companies that could survive the harsh conditions. That's why there are only 6 sites. Outside of SV, people aren't doing so well. They haven't been doing so well in a while. Maybe you noticed the protests and riots and crazy elections? People have other things on their minds besides having fun on the internet these days.
Frankly, I agree with the leftists that Chappelle should retire, or at least stop performing in big left wing cities and states. The disaster America has become doesn't deserve solid comedians like him anymore.
The discussion is always the same, I'm not sure what can be added at this point. Yes the way they're actively destroying it is mystifying, yes, maybe money issues are part of that but god can't you just make your own browser? Mozilla's problem, more than any specific incident like this, is that they've become completely incapable of thinking for themselves. Everything is a follower move, trying to find something popular and than emulating it.
I'll continue to use FF, but only because it's easier to massively "tweak" into a usable product than chrome.
None of the "products" that came after have been as impressive, including copilot. Using GPT as a font for new writing ideas is probably the only "practical" thing it's good for, at least until the tech advances significantly, but charging for a service like this that essentially adds 0 value is pure rent-seeking.
2,000 years ago people born into wealth and power fought amongst each other for leadership and control while the population simply learned to live with the results. The only thing that has changed since is that the process has been optimized: less bloodshed, less constant dramatic upheaval, the hills and valleys leveled a bit. This benefits everyone, including those on top. But let's not pretend we're engaged in some grand experiment for the betterment of mankind. We're living in a plutocracy. Always have, always will.
So yes, it's absolutely about winning. Losing means that your group suffers, and eventually that your group (ideologic, geographic, economic or, grimly, even ethnic) ceases to exist.