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freshm087on Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

The simple truth is that society doesn't need computerized voting technologies to have fair elections.

freshm087on Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

For starters, the whole voting machines concept is a essentially a ploy to exploit wide-spread respect for computer technologies in society to sell hardware, and software. It reduces observability compared to pieces of paper, and doesn't solve any real problems.

I don't think Gates words from 2004 can be seen as policy statement for today's Msft. Apparently, a lot has changed.

freshm087on Protecting democratic elections through secure, verifiable voting

It certainly has nothing to do with democracy, and intended to solve exactly one problem: Microsoft's need to increase revenue through sweet gov't funded contracts. Let's not be fooled by opensourced code, once the idea is sold to politicians, and media, someone should be contracted to implement this useless staff. And who's this going to be? Not hard to guess.

freshm087on An Introduction to C and GUI Programming

There's a school of thought which considers complex data types to be more a part of problem then a solution. You may disagree with it, but nevertheless one certainly doesn't need complex data types to write GUI (or anything) effectively.

Also, in this universe Win32 API was released in 90s, not 80s.

freshm087on Show HN: Should you buy a house and rent it out?

In Eastern Europe it's often the case. Worth mentioning however that plumbing services are much cheaper then in States, and there are usually no legal/insurance nuances which reapairing may bring in the US. So it's simply easier to call a plumber and have trouble solved then include a landlord into equation. Broken washing machine, or expensive furniture in most cases are on landlord, though.

freshm087on The Moral Order of Panera

To sum it up.

Starting point: A produces more good then B.

Me: A can produce more good than B, but not necessary more per dollar spent, and I think it's not the case.

--Here was a place to to try to prove it's more per dollar spent--

You: You are biased!

Me: You are invited to present arguments.

You: You are biased!

freshm087on Austrian government seeks to eliminate internet anonymity, with severe penalties

Such law exists in Belarus, and mr.Kurz (Austrian chancellor) recently visited it.

freshm087on The Moral Order of Panera

"Doubt it" is pretty much a clear invitation to present arguments. But you are welcome to present some sarcasm instead, even if very general.

freshm087on The Moral Order of Panera

I agree that gov't is relatively good at sending checks (except in some economic circumstances, e.g. when the currency it prints is no more in demand - like in Venezuela, or late USSR). However it doesn't necessary make a particular welfare program efficient in general. Maybe recipients are poorly determined (which happens more often with larger programs), or sending checks is not the best idea at all.

freshm087on The Moral Order of Panera

I agree it also includes some usefully prepared people, nevertheless no state welfare program exists without bureacrats.

Also, preparedness/trainings are not exclusive feature of gov't system. I know what I'm saying here because I volunteered in private charity (not in US, so American mileage may vary), and I dare to say people who worked there were more competent then relevant state officials, at least target group always preferred them.

freshm087on The Moral Order of Panera

I really don't know why inefficiency is ok, sorry. If a system is less efficient at scale then engineering approach teaches us to modularize/split it into smaller chunks.

Btw, you used "professional" word as if it's something good in itself. That's far from truth. Professional bureaucrats, and state officials quite often are directly interested in growing inefficiency because it can be exploited to expand budgets, and staff.

freshm087on The Moral Order of Panera

Because Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps do more good for 100+ million

Do more good because their have much bigger budgets? - Maybe. More good per every dollar spent? I doubt it.

freshm087on The Moral Order of Panera

The thing is, charities and churches are rarely "run well".

It's good that gov't agencies, and programs are so well known to to be run well, don't have problems with inefficiency, and corruption. Oh... wait

freshm087on Firefox bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery

Mozilla themselves has said that they didn't remove it for political reasons [or "ideological censorship" as you put it], rather it was the language and vitriol

If it's about politically incorrect speech - it's absolutely ideological.

If it's about obscene language - it's still not Mozilla's business to police someone's lexicon, and Mozilla doesn't do it generally, which means something ideological happens here.

Btw, it's interesting that you yourself agree that the whole thing is political by this stereotyping statement but you and I both know that language like that is commonplace on alt/far-right platforms. And at the same time you disagree.

Try to check your biases: every time Trump tweets, Twitter explodes with left activists using motherfcker, fck, and a lot of derogatory expressions addressed to him, and right-leaning voters which has zero value for any civil discourse. So ask yourself: would you say "we both know it's commonplace on the left to use disparaging, and obscene exoressions"? And would you be fine with Twitter punished for this? (It enables them, gives the platform).

Finally, you are calling dissenter.com alt-right which is not true unless they operate alt-right censorship there. It shows some bias too.

freshm087on Firefox bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery

So if Verizon would block certain websites for its customers it will not be censorship? Well, it will be. You seem to believe that censorship implies denying legal rights, and only is real when it's total. But censorship can be perfectly legal, and it's never total (albeit it requires either efforts, or money, you can reach forbidden websites in China). I'm not arguing about legality of Mozilla's decision at all. Nevertheless, it is censorship, and as long as it's motivated by ideological differences it's ideological censorship. And as Mozilla pretends to be just browser (not some party's browser) it looks weird, and no exactly smart. My question is why anybody who's not fanatically partisan would support it? Does it mean one feels a lot of pain using Mozilla just because political adversaries use it too? Consequently, do we need a separate fork of every browser for every faction nowadays (apparently, with separate sets of ideologically proven extensions)?

freshm087on Firefox bans free speech commenting plugin Dissenter from its extensions gallery

Because Dissenter was created by Gab, a far/alt-right online platform.

So what? I'm not trolling, I'm trying to understand. It's doesn't look like anybody was forced to use the extension, you don't like it - don't use it. If it's ok to use clear-cut ideological censorship for plugins/extensions, then it's ok to block websites. Personally, I find it hard to accept.

freshm087on Building a front end with no JavaScript

Disabled CSS would leave such form still usable. It wouldn't look, and behave exactly as intended, for sure, but I suppose these days no one expects unchanged user experience while disabling CSS. Meanwhile, disabled JS on JS-based forms usually kills them.

freshm087on Explaining Sex Rate Changes

I'm not a native speaker, and may miss some nuances, but promiscuous is defined as "having multiple sexual partners" by my dictionary which I think is as neutral as possible.

Promiscuity is at first, and foremost was (and still is, in spite of contraception availability) practically more acceptable for men. And monogomy among other things is a constraint on men's behavior - forcing to accept social, and economic responsibilities before fulfilling sexual urges. You are right noting that it rarely worked in any absolute way, but I don't think any law, whether written, or not can be 100% effectively implemented. People steal all the time, but I suppose you wouldn't say it's because related norms are not enforced, right? Monogomy's real application varied over times, cultures, and spaces, but it was certainly enforced by societal pressure, and legally too. Actually, in my father's youth years (and it's not that deep in history) it was hard to have sex before marriage. It was for sure possible, but dangerous for reputation of both participants (probably more damaging for a women, but damaging for both nevertheless). It wasn't US, and "sexual revolution" came to us much later, so that's probably why you may have no living witnesses for it.

Also, prostitution was until quite recent times seen as a moral compromise acceptable only because of long serving soldiers, and sailors. In most societies it wasn't ok for a family man to visit a house of prostitution, and in some cases it was even criminalized.

freshm087on Explaining Sex Rate Changes

Enforced monogamy in western societies is part of a broader history of social control that came to exist because it was good at perpetuating itself

It's one interpretation, good for those who accepts the faith tenets of post-structuralism. The other is that it came to exist because of its viability in particular economic conditions.

Also, if acceptance of promiscuity as a social norm really benefits exactly women is a really big question.

freshm087on Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are?

I'm not claiming that EU is planting landmines against migrants. I'm telling that EU's border with migrant-providing regions is short, and already fortified - and that's why there's no discussion about border walls. And it's not a reaction of minority of countries: with all its postures, EU is not afraid to fund expansion and renovation of border fences not only on its own borders, but in other countries which are on typical migrant paths. If you want a projection on US: it's like there's a sea between US, and Mexico, except for a few strips, already fenced for decades, and US administration pays to build walls between Mexico, and Guatemala, Guatemala, and Honduras, and so on.

Btw, I'm quite certain number of migrants drowned in Meditteranean over past 20 years is much more then 7000.

freshm087on Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are?

TB of my knowledge the border between Turkey, and Greece still has uncleared landmine fields, and Serbian-Croatian border has uncleared spots too, in spite of the treaty. For clarification, I'm not telling they appeared there because of migrants. No, but my point is one can't pretend EU don't want to build border walls because EU is all migrant-loving place. EU's land border with unstable regions is very short (a patch in Bulgaria, a patch in Greece, Spanish Ceuta & Melilla), and already well-fortified. That's why there's no duscussion.

freshm087on Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are?

HC factically started her campaign right after the first Obama's term, had support of party leadership, and therefore major party donors, and having sympathies of the press. DT started his campaign a year before elections, was rudiculed by mainstream Republican opinion-makers until May 2016, was (and is) in a conflict with major donors (like Koch brothers), and had/has generally unfriendly relations with press. So unless you imply some very big conspiracy theory I don't see how he could have even a chance to outspent HC.

freshm087on Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are?

Europe doesn't currently have a problem with building a wall to keep the Mexicans out or anything.

This is plainly not true. EU has a lot of its own walls. It's just the fact that it lacks long land border with countries from which major migration flows originate is what makes it a lesser topic for debates.

Why do you think migrants coming from the Middle East prefer to cross Aegean sea, instead of going by land? Because land border is all fences, barbed wire, and even landmines with not a single gap.

And limiting migration is very hot political issue in many EU countries currently.

freshm087on Coc.nvim – Intellisense Engine for Vim8 and Neovim

There are already a lot of replies, but let me sum it up: 1. People don't spend much effort on configuration unless they like the process. 2. You won't get "narrow slices" of functionality. You win at some things, you lose at others - similarly to situation when you compare programming languages. 3. "Comes out of the box" equally applies for a canned IDE, and for Emacs/Vim (it's not forbidden to download other guy's conf from github). The real difference is "sealed box" vs "open box". 4. You are not obliged to like other people's ways, but really do you believe that multitudes of experienced developers decided to suffer constantly while writing their code? Seriously?

freshm087on Winter War

When you say allies, what comes to my mind is US-UK or US-Israel relationship.

It's quite a narrow view, I dare to say. There's no need any for any stable special relationship, or even shared objectives to form an alliance. Expecting some sort of positive returns is quite enough. E.g. since Germans attacked USSR the latter became ally of UK, and then US in spite of the fact that Soviet ideology made it a natural enemy to both (and predictably USSR became an enemy once Germany lost).

There was an addendum to Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (Secret protocol) which was a plan to divide Eastern Europe between two empires, and it means Soviet-Nazi allyship in 1939 was neither an accident, nor a forced decision.

Well, Nazi plans to expand into the east were well known.

It's not correct in the context. While wish to expand Reich was certainly known, Hitler didn't publicly advertize any clear plans regarding territories under Soviet rule. And Stalin obviously trusted Hitler because he personally discarded intelligence indicating German war preparations as ridiculous. Soviet press in line with party directives kept neutral, or friendly tone towards Germans till the moment of the invasion.

freshm087on Why I Switched from Python to Clojure (2016)

"Forest of parens" can be intimidating for sure, but if it's really a forest, then it usually means there's too much nesting. Which is a problem for any language/syntax. Overnested Python code is hard to grasp, and wide fields of whitespaces doesn't make it better than deep forests of parens/curlies, or mounting slabs of begin/end pairs.

freshm087on ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

Any radical voice that made the news, in any light, has gotten a larger following. Every single time a moderate brings a radical to debate it is a net gain for the radical.

You literally don't believe in democracy. Not that you are obliged to, but it's interesting if you realize it?

freshm087on ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

Why you believe you should stop other people from sharing something?

freshm087on ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

NZ is in a state of collective shock, and, at the moment, apparently a very cool head, and bravery (understanding that you will get massive social pressure, and lots of ugly accusations) needed to stand against censorship. By no means it's a normal situation for a political debare.

freshm087on ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

In fact, exactly NZ gov't should have continued doing things as usual. This tragedy, while having huge media-multiplied emotional response, is (from POV of rational security) is an absolute outlier. An average Kiwi has probably bigger chance to choke on beefsteak than to be killed by a political weirdo. Few politicians however are able to resist a temptation to pose as a "decisive leader" and play a security theater.