Does anyone else develop a sense of cognitive dissonance while considering the concept of an end-to-end encrypted workplace where employees are encouraged to speak mostly in public channels?
4,390 karma · joined July 13, 2008
This account's password has been randomized, so if you see it commenting/updating in future.. that probably wasn't me :)
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
(by the way: have you ever played Quadrilateral Cowboy[1]?)
A software security mindset can be useful, because in the same way that software attackers theorize about how some code could be exploited, or about the way that a system may behave, people attempting to game a system are looking for flaws that they can benefit from.
Statistics, research and analytical skills can be useful to practice, because for any given {game/policy situation}, it's likely that there exist many similar examples throughout history and the world at-large. It's often easier to find out how similar systems have worked rather than attempting to design your own from scratch.
Good luck!
Part of the playbook of any addiction-based industry is to encourage outrage at the prospect of the product being restricted; it builds their moat and delays the resolution of the problem (allowing their revenue streams to continue for longer).
Roughly speaking: people who seem to enjoy having power and control over other human beings find opportunities to do so, and so it's important to be wary of that trend when unusual research takes place within your region or organization.
Adding too many legal requirements could make it more challenging for competitors to build their own compliant implementations.
Something makes me uneasy though: a radical, risky innovation that could significantly reduce operational costs albeit at an environmental cost to be paid at a later date and/or even used as a point of leverage? It feels plausible (and dangerous) enough to warrant inquiry and consideration.
"Apollo tested several fuel types and found that if the corrosive effects of mercury on the spacecraft could be controlled, and they could keep the use of mercury secret, the ACE could seriously outperform its competitors indefinitely. To date, no other electric propulsion thruster can match the efficiency or power of the ACE, and leading experts in the plasma and fusion fields are convinced that Apollo has made a miraculous breakthrough because they all assume that the ACE uses xenon as a fuel source."
It's possible that companies (knowingly or unwittingly) co-operate under some circumstances, though - even if competition is generally the {expected/favoured} model.
(in practice: there are probably a lot of reasons why it's a terrible idea)
That's true, although, in a way, I think it's reasonable for the parent commentor to want to identify as a corporation if that's what they feel like.
Are there preferred pronouns for corporate identities? Perhaps people would display a personal stock ticker symbol instead?
"To be registered as an official station you 'MUST' operate from a site which has a connection with Guglielmo Marconi himself, not a business etc created after his work. This must be somewhere Guglielmo Marconi has personally operated from, lived or set up experimental stations."
That is, perhaps unusually, why I think it could, under some circumstances, be far preferable for (some? most?) network traffic to be more transparent.
(and yep, totally agree with you that identity and integrity are important to maintain)
And no, I don't that the water-related question is equivalent, although in the spirit of debate, I'll attempt to answer with a unifying concept: in both cases, it is preferable for the content of the {network channels/water streams} to be healthy and fit for consumption.
- You can see that they're sharing your texts, and for some people, that would actually be great (exhibitionism, and/or narcissism to some degree). There's also a potential sex-positivity angle whereby you could receive feedback and suggestions for improvements.
- That's fair; although it also helps increase the corpus of joke material. And hopefully a friendly neighbour (and/or HOA) would ask to clarify or let you know that there was some potential for confusion before taking any action in return.
- It's possible that society could benefit from compensation levels being made public? (in some countries, it already effectively is)
</snark>
I think that the success criteria in situations like this should be whether the project results in effective matches between employers and employees, and avoids as much ineffective matching / wastage-of-time as possible.
With many of today's payment methods, I agree that the payment identifiers are susceptible to being copied in unencrypted environments. However, identification/authentication and authorization are two separate steps - it'd be possible to entrust authorization, for example, to groups of trusted friends/family (with perhaps separate social groups and rules based on category of purchase, amount, and so on).
(I'm also yet to make much headway in the marketing industry)
Roughly speaking: focus on producing something of value, and then the monetization strategy should follow naturally if the project succeeds.
At the same time, I think it's important to focus on reducing total cost of infrastructure, because doing that increases the size of the audience who can participate and reach a sustainable value threshold.
(and one caveat to that: long-term cost is often minimized thanks to high-quality, durable systems that often have high associated price points. it may be necessary to have entry-level alternatives available too, although I don't think that's an excuse for providing poor-quality systems, or for entrenching high price points on legacy trusted systems)
(see https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/FOOD/MainPage.html for some context)
Hmm, maybe. I'm not so sure that's always true, though. Individual withdrawals can turn into group retreats, which can build into an exodus.
The potential for developer wealth on the platform may be well-publicized, but the financial returns received by typical developers themselves may be less rewarding.
I'd agree that well-designed operating systems shouldn't require anyone to undestand programming to begin to use them, but equally I'd argue that anyone should be able to look at the code that's running on their computer and inspect it. It's one way (often a very effective way) to learn about software in the first place.
The technology landscape will no doubt look very different in another twenty years, and while it's relatively well-understood that anyone can contribute to FOSS projects regardless of age or experience, it's worth improving that opportunity when possible (both technically and socially).
There's some kind of analogy with web development here; the ability to view source for webpages and tinker with the HTML/CSS/JS easily is an educational pathway.
> The first step I see in all of this is creating an operating system where the kernel has no concept of being booted.
If both the operating system and network card are safe to initialize from cold at any point (and with robust software and protocol design, they should be), then even with peer-to-peer commodity memory as a storage medium, statelessness should be perfectly achievable, I think?
Slightly off-topic: you may be interested in Linux's kexec[1] functionality (it provides the ability for a running kernel to load and run another kernel).
"Good taxes meet four major criteria. They are (1) proportionate to incomes or abilities to pay (2) certain rather than arbitrary (3) payable at times and in ways convenient to the taxpayers and (4) cheap to administer and collect."
Is it profit or revenue that is taxed, generally?