mikem170

I agree, we could do so much better. Zoning can be a tremendous quality of life issue, and needing a car to participate in society is an expense other people in other places aren't burdened with.

Or a regression in the standard of living. Ideally to a comfortable sweet spot for people.

There were lots of Jan 6 weapons related convictions:

"180 defendants were charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon, which includes firearms and other types of weapons." [0]

What you described as a riot is considered by others to be part of a "fake electors" plot, to keep Trump in power after he lost the election [1], a plot which Pence didn't go along with. Trump even tweeted that day about it:

"If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency." [2]

[0] https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-capitol-attack-rioters...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot

[2] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-january-6-2...

> To build high-density housing, the city or state would have to buy out the existing landowners

Couldn't they just change the zoning to allow for greater density?

The properties become more valuable, some would want to develop, and some would sell to those developers. Moreso over time.

Does the interestate commerce clause preclude state laws pertaining to implementation and usage?

For example, can a state outlaw public plate/facial recognition cameras, or usage of social network data and AI by local police?

You could still buy AI, but The People decided you can't use it on the public for anything and everything just because big tech profits.

Or has that become the point of the interstate commerce clause, that big companies can maximize profits in cooperation (lobbying) with one federal government, instead of being inconvenienced with the laws of fifty states, in this the richest country of the world?

> The best solution is to have uniform federal regulation with no state laws

What if the feds won't let a state outlaw policing using AI? Or insurance companies setting rates based on AI interpretation of their driving, phone location, browsing and/or credit card data? Or public license plate and face tracking by private companies?

Why do the feds want to interfere with the states setting implementation rules for themselves? What if the federal rules are really bad, or non-existent, perhaps due to lobbying/corruption?

Who is helped by uniform federal regulation? The public in all fifty states? Or big tech AI companies?

If self-driving is better, then presumably cheaper insurance costs would be an incentive.

Big tech is a coercive power. They are cooperating with the government to control the population. Doesn't that worry you? Don't you think there should be limits, beside profitability?

I think of it as flaws in our system that need to be patched. The masses are manipulated by their algorithms. Those who would protest are surveilled by them. The rich seem to be running everything to their advantage. The rugged individualist is running out of space.

What about radical individualism + regulated tech - inevitable technology?

I don't see anything wrong with individuals who by consensus choose to regulate "inevitable" technology. Technology is not a person, and we don't need to make ourselves subservient to it.

I'm thinking of things like liability as a publisher for algorithmic feeds, anti-trust enforcement against companies competing unfairly, mandates for inter-operability to avoid user lock-in, limitations on surveillance capitalism, protections for personal data, maybe also regulating things like advertising, campaigning, fake news, etc.

This [0] mentions that social security, medicare, public assistance and military and other federal wages were a wash, as of 2018-2022 data:

> Digging deeper into the component parts of federal contribution, red and blue states received similar dollar amounts in direct payments on a nominal ($6.9 trillion) and per capita ($42,900) basis, much of which come in the form of payments from Social Security, Medicare, and public assistance programs, such as the earned income and child tax credits. The red and blue states also receive similar amounts for military and non-military wages (excluding the U.S. Post Office, which is self-funded) on a nominal ($650 billion) and per capita ($4,900) basis.

Tax receipts were listed as the most significant difference, and after that other things like military bases, block grants, federal contracts and highways, some going one way, and some the other.

The numbers were interesting. They added it up to $1 trillion going from blue to red states.

[0] https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118494/documents/...

I didn't say that the economy would be cratered. GDP doesn't capture everything.

Are stock market profit expectations mostly long term? Stock markets have been wrong before.

Besides that, the U.S. stock market went up over several decades while manufacturing capabilities were transferred overseas. That has had, and will continue to have, domestic ramifications that might not be captured by investor profits.

You did specify revenue. The original comment mentioned benefits. I was thinking that the two are different.

Investors are optimistic, but what will this new tech be used for? Advertising? Propaganda? Surveillance? Drone strikes?

Does profitable always equal useful? Might other cultures justifiably think differently, like the Amish?

Hmmm, I got something different. I thought that Bullshit Jobs was based on people who self reported that their jobs were pointless. He detailed these types of jobs, the negative psychological impact this can have on employees, and the kicker was that these jobs don't make sense economically, the bureaucratization of the health care and education sectors for example, in contrast so many other professions that actually are useful. Other examples were status-symbol employees, sycophants, duct-tapers, etc.

I thought he made a case for both societal and economic impact.

> drawing on a federal officer

It is my understanding [0] that multiple videos show that Petti did not draw his gun.

Do you know of evidence to the contrary?

[0] https://factually.co/fact-checks/justice/did-pretti-draw-wea...

If algorithm output is protected by the 1st amendment then perhaps Section 230 [0] protections should no longer apply, and they should be liable for what they and their algorithms choose to show people.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

I don't get how that hasn't had an effect on prices.

There's not enough houses on the market (zoning, and people want to keep their low-rate mortgages), there's people worried they can't afford houses (prices inflated faster than wages, rates went up), and a large amount of housing transactions (someone quoted 29% of starter homes) are being paid for by institutional investors (who can pay cash).

Wouldn't these institutional investors buying houses be "marginal consumers", kind of like the marginal producers who set the price of inelastic commodities such as oil? Seems like 29% of transactions is even more than marginal.

I assume that sellers would need to come down in price to what non-institutional buyers could afford if institutional buyers were removed from the equation.

As an aside, I'd rather see supply increased, but maybe demographics over the next decade or two will fix that problem anyways.

Are you saying that one billionaire's loss in the primaries indicates money is not a problem in U.S. politics?

I was thinking of things like the 2015 study referenced in this article [0] that looked at 1,800 policy change polls over three decades indicating that elites got their way twice as often as the majority, and the majority never - not a single time - got something the elites didn't support.

In the other direction, the article gave examples of things the elites wanted that were passed into law, even thought he majority opposed. Like NAFTA, the Bush tax cuts, and the repeal of Glass-Steagall banking laws.

It appears that politicians pay more attention to voters with money.

btw, I agree with you that ideally voters are rational and informed. I guess that's a separate question than the influence of money.

[0] https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2015/05/disturbing-d...

Other western democracies go further than the U.S. with campaign restrictions, including restrictions to campaign financing. One might say they protect the functioning of their democracies more with these additional restrictions, protecting voters.

And one might ask why we don't want to protect ours more.

I mentioned buses and trains, and was thinking that only those mobile wifi hotspots would be permitted, whitelisted for 5g service. Hotspots in (human driven) cars would not. That might encourage some people to take the bus?

I agree with the other poster about this being more workable in a fictional society with different shared values.

A lot of people would be fine with that. Drivers are impaired while on the phone, even hands-free. Not to mention texting while driving!

I kind of picture the cellular telcos doing this. Maybe buses and trains come with wifi hotspots allowed to connect. Otherwise auto passengers could use their devices offline, maybe read an ebook or something. Not the end of the world.

I just bumped into the idea of "demographic diversity" versus "moral diversity" [1].

Demographic diversity speaks to the differences in sex, race, sexual orientation, etc. A nation of immigrants, for example.

Moral diversity speaks to the differences in culture, the rules a society follows. Erosion of those rules is what leads to a low trust society.

I thought this was a really interesting distinction to make.

It seems that the U.S. is not as high trust as it was 75+ years ago. The book I read used the example of neighbors disciplining children, which was more common in U.S. culture 75+ years ago. Today you'd worry about a parent calling the police for that. In general the idea of character has replaced with personality. Moral diversity. Live and let live.

But on the other hand 75+ years ago women and minorities were more limited. We now have more demographic diversity. Which is a good thing.

I would like to think that demographic diversity and a high trust society aren't mutually exclusive. Conflating the two doesn't help.

[1] The Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt, Chapter 8, The Felicity of Virtue

I'm using openbsd on a several laptops at the moment, a dell x55, a thinkpad x230, and a thinkpad x270. Everything works on all of them - sleep, hibernate, wifi, touchpad, colume and brightness buttons, cpu throttling, etc.

On one of them I use a creative bt-w2 bluetooth dongle for audio output, openbsd removed software bluetooth support due to security concerns. The latest wifi standards are not supported on these models, which doesn't bother me. It's not the size of your network, it's what you do with it! I don't mind not having the latest flashy hardware - been there, done that.

I have to pay attention when I purchase hardware, and am happy to do so, because openbsd aligns much better with my priorities. For me that includes simplicity, security, documentation and especially stability through time - I don't want to have to rearrange my working configs every two years cuz of haphazard changes to things like audio, systemd, wayland, binary blobs, etc.

> we can all take in whatever is happening in public

People have the right to take in what is in public, but maybe cameras should not?

This could apply to everyone in public spaces. No video, audio or surveillance without obtaining permission. Better blur anything you share, or you might get busted. The least we could do is restrict corporations from possessing such data.

Similar to what Germany does with doorbell cameras, making it illegal to film anything outside of your property, like a public sidewalk or the neighbors house. It is my understanding that people there will confront someone taking pictures of them without their consent.

Correct, as per the Social Media section on his How I Do My Computing page:

> I have a Mastodon account, @rms on mastodon.xyz, which mirrors the political notes of stallman.org. The person who set up the mirroring chose that site. [1]

The same document also says he has a similar Twitter account called rmspostcomments, that he doesn't use himself either.

[1] https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

I was curious if by "traction" you mean growth? Can people into cycling find each other? Or are there not enough of those people on Mastodon?

In your earlier up-thread comment you mentioned being tarred over certain things, like AI/LLM posts. Are situations like that avoidable in any fashion, like with twit-filters or finding friendlier groups?

Disclaimer: I'm tempted, but have never tried Mastadon, and wondered how some of these things played out, if the good can be found, the bad avoided, etc.

I ended up on OpenBSD, having gotten frustrated with Windows, Suse, Fedora, FreeBSD and a Chromebook.

I grew to appreciate stability, over time - I don't want to have to fix things after updates, including my tweaks and customizations. I want complete control of my computers. I appreciate a cohesive and well documented system. I want simple and consistent and secure. I don't want the OS to take up more of my time than it needs to.

Perhaps you should consider the BSDs to be like different linux distributions, having their own priorities, pros and cons. Some people don't care. Some do. It's all good, having more options.

Seems to be that big companies usually push to externalize costs and take advantage as much as possible, to the detriment of everyone else. Shareholders have a right to sue them if they don't.

Fake cures, filthy mines, toxic ingredients, polluted waterways, fraud, predation, monopolies, algorithmic social outrage networks, etc. These things have been going on for a long time. Regulations have fixed a lot of problems.

It doesn't seem that reputation matters as much as regulation. It doesn't take many greedy people/companies to leave behind a big mess. Just a few breaking the rules (including the cultural rules around reputation) gain an advantage over all those who don't.

What better way for society to protect itself?

I assume you were talking about audio/video sync? I used to use mine to mostly listen to music, audio only.

But I still have a creative bt-w2 audio dongle, and was curious, so I gave it a try, using mvp to watch a yt-dlp mp4, showing someone talking on camera. The bluetooth speaker was 3 meters away from my laptop. No tweaks.

It looked good, I was pleasantly surprised. It definitely had better sync than I've seen on some badly compressed cable tv content.

I wasn't familiar with how bluetooth buffering used to be, but I can believe it's caused problems. I've noticed sometimes when people are using bluetooth on their phones.