sky-kedge0749

People in these states would care if secession were seriously on the table, since a lot of them have personal connections to the state and will not be like "Oh, I guess my parents are going to be in a different country now, no big deal," especially if said parents very much don't want their state to secede.

Why not use something like Postfix or Exim with a local application like Thunderbird?

Also unless this is a tech-savvy organization or emailing or FOSS is part of their mission, consider just sticking with something from Google, Microsoft or Fastmail. A shelter for homeless kittens probably doesn't want to mess with something custom.

In this case I don't think the point is whether Google is better or worse at this search than Bing, it's that Google should fix the problem.

I'm just riffing here but this doesn't seem like an insurmountable problem if you're willing to spend. Open up a training school, put the old guard in as instructors, get some good students, pay everyone big money. Build a lab reactor for hands-on practice, and pay to put students as glorified interns into under-construction and operating plants across the world. A few years later, you've got your people.

I don't mean to say it would be trivial but it seems like you could do the whole thing for a couple billion USD a year.

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying but it sounds like your theory is that Texan and Georgian voters were hornswoggled by New York and California carpetbaggers so their votes somehow don't matter for this discussion. The plain fact is that as of 2020 approximately as many Texan voters wanted Biden as Trump, to where a 3% shift would have changed the result. Those voters could have stayed home but they went in and cast a ballot. Talking about secession on that margin is ridiculous.

Also, if you're using New York and California Democrats as a proxy for left-wing voters, Biden is pretty disappointing on that front. A huge part of why Biden was the nominee was specifically so he could appeal to centrist voters. The fact that Texan and Georgian voters voted for someone who was picked partly to appeal to those same people should not be surprising.

One of the most pro-Republican states is Wyoming, state population around 581,000 in 2020. If we consider Trump voters as a proxy for people who might want to secede, we have about 235,000 people who voted for Trump out of about 427,000 eligible. That's about 55% of eligible voters and 40% of the whole population. Even if secession were legal, it would be unjust to let a state secede with only 40% support.

A more viable attempt at secession might look like: perhaps a new Hawaiian independence party forms with massive (>80%) and sustained (>20 years) on-the-ground support, with all federal representatives coming from this party. Eventually this party might convince the federal and enough state governments to support a constitutional amendment recognizing a specific independence referendum. That's very theoretical but I hope illustrates what actual secession might look like.

Texas went for Trump over Biden by a margin of about 630,000 votes in a state with a population of close to 30 million. That's a really tight margin for New York and California to decide to cut the whole state loose.

Another factoid: Biden got 5,244,886 votes in New York and 5,259,126 votes in Texas. In other words, more people voted for Biden in Texas than in New York.

Which part is a mixed bag?

(2014)

(Not that the facts have changed since then, but I guess Katy Perry is now part of the golden oldies for people in their 30s.)

A while ago when I used Linux I found that installing some alternate desktop environment usually messed up some default even if you switched back. I don't remember exactly but it'd be like, you start on GNOME, install KDE, switch back to GNOME but now your file explorer is Dolphin.

Has that happened to you? Is that still a problem?

"Look, I already told you. I deal with the goddamn customers so the AI doesn't have to. I have people skills. I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNuu9CpdjIo

You can also throttle your connection with browser settings:

Firefox: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/networ...

Chrome: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/device-mode/

I want to second or third the recommendation for Ted Chiang. Basically all of Chiang's stories could go on any "best short stories" list.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosia#Business_model it's basically Bing with some revenue sharing from the ads.

> Yes, I agree, it's never just one person. And yes, there's probably going to be violence when someone threatens the food supply.

The trick is to stop the problem before violence is a possibility, for example rotate who is in control of the food supply, or ensure a distributed food surplus so that any interruptions can be dealt with in time. It's important though to also imagine a society where people can count on having their basic needs met and everyone is integrated into the social network, in which case wanting to order people around would be thought of as perverse, and someone taking over some vital resource for personal gain wouldn't be a problem you'd need to constantly prepare for.

> But it seems to me that centuries of experience have shown that those most effective at doing violence are very thoroughly organized, which seems to me to be kind of the opposite of anarchy.

I think this is a historical accident. We can name many centralized organizations today, companies and countries, with completely inept leadership. Conversely we can look at the history of trade unions, or the Republicans in the Spanish civil war, for flatter organizations that did well. Arguably the overthrow of the Tsarist government by the Bolsheviks is another example, in the sense that they accomplished their literal goal of taking over, not in the sense that the authoritarian rule that followed was good (it wasn't).

It may very well be that when push comes to shove centralized organizations outperform organizations with more decentralized leadership in certain crucial ways but I don't think we've had a good test yet to say either way. Nor, I hope we agree, should we say that just because a particular system is better at violence that it's a better system in general.

> I think that's a rather ahistorical perspective.

It's hard to say because it's the relatively recent flood of fossil fuels that have allowed for extreme wealth and thus extreme wealth differences. But today's society might be the first where only money matters. Even in historic actual empires, social rules could constrain the emperor and wealth generally. If nothing else anyone rich enough to rival the emperor or god-king might be killed.

The history of kings and rulers is full of horrifying anecdotes such as being buried with servants or mutilating political opponents. Crucially this brutality is associated with the rulers and not the everyday people. Were some better than others, sure, but I think that we'd find every king or emperor with a non-trivial reign routinely used means to maintain their rule that both we and their contemporary subjects would consider terrible.

> I'm in an ultimate frisbee group where there's some fairly clear distinctions in skill level. It's not quite a strict hierarchy, because skill has multiple axes - someone could be slower but have a better handle. Still, there are definitely better players and worse players. But we just divide into approximately equal-strength teams, and go have fun.

Thank you for sharing. I'll point out though that even though you're happy with the situation, the skill discrepancies are something that you are working around and not seeking out. Maybe it would be easier if everyone was roughly the same and people could group off in any old random way.

> Well, others here do it sometimes with malice, or at least with manipulative intent, so I've become rather sensitive to it. Sorry if I jumped on you.

No problem, in fact I'm trying to work on speaking more plainly so I appreciate the call-out.

Thanks!

Do any significant disadvantages of Privacy Badger stand out to you, contrasted with uBlock Origin? The biggest problem I can think of is that uBlock Origin will immediately prevent me from loading content that could be dangerous, while Privacy Badger has to visit dangerous content enough times to learn to block it, which is less good for security.

On the other hand the big advantage to me for Privacy Badger is that it doesn't depend on manually-curated lists. uBlock Origin nicely wraps the block lists but when it comes down to it you are giving control over your browsing experience to the random volunteers building these lists, which, who knows? Though I'm not accusing anyone of anything.

The TPM is used for various security features, see: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/informatio.... Providing better security is the play.

You don't really think it's "great", do you? More like, an acceptable trade-off? I'd love to hear the argument if you actually are pro-DRM as a thing in itself.

> It is so easy that Fortnite (the biggest game at the time, and maybe now) was/is distributed directly by APK.

Amazon Prime Video used to be like this back in the day. You'd have to allow sideloading, install Amazon's custom store, then install the video app from there.

This sort of thing is one of the reasons I like that iPhone is locked down. I know that none of the apps I use will decide they can make reducing my phone's security a condition of using their app. If they want to be in the iPhone store -- and they do -- then they'll have to work with iPhone's strong security.

Are you using some ethical framework to decide what's "fair" in this case, or are you just going with your gut?

Thanks for your work.

Has there been any study as to how closely Privacy Badger converges to list-based blockers like uBlock Origin given enough time? Is that at all a metric you use in development?

> 1. That works fine, for a small group. But I live in a city of a million people, and I don't know most of them. If one of them acquires too much control over the food supply, say, what are we going to do? Not invite them to parties? Their parties will have food at them.

Control is social. One person cannot literally control the food supply in the sense that they personally created all of it, guard it like a dragon, and distribute it. Many other people are involved at all steps. If the would-be dragon violates social norms on not being a hoarding jerk, they can be ejected. If your response is now something like "It's not literally one person but they will have guards and police, now what?", this starts getting into the discussion about violence.

> 2. Again, what you say is true in the small. But my city shows no such preference, and we're all trying to live together here. So, no, I don't mean "one global society", but I mean something much larger than my ultimate frisbee group.

To clarify, by global society I meant the one society dominated by European-style nation-states where money can buy anything, or at least a good substitute. With enough money you can monopolize the food supply or anything else. Where is there a strong, what we might call legally-enforceable rule against being rich? If such a place existed and mattered, it would be bought out or made illegal.

The point I'm making is that all societies today above "the small" are manifestations of the global society I just mentioned, created in Europe hundreds of years ago and spread in multiple waves throughout the world. So if we're counting up societies that permit extreme wealth differences and those that don't, in the first group we have: today's global society and a handful of historical and invariably brutal kingdoms and empires; in the second group we have: all "small" societies today and the vast majority of human societies before encountering early modern European expansion. The societies permitting extreme wealth are weird aberrations in world history. We should not count every modern city as an independent data point about what kind of society people prefer.

For (1) and (2): as far as the number of people, the way to do it would be decentralized. A neural network is an example. Or your brain: a cell in your brain's right hemisphere may never interact with a cell in the left hemisphere, yet your brain works. A more real-world political example would be a collection of neighborhood councils and guilds in a city, as just one option.

> Don't put words in my mouth (or reactions in my emotions), especially ones I don't agree with.

That was a rhetorical statement, a more cutesy way of saying "A, therefore B." I'm sorry if it bothered you.

> This society exists due to much less violence and much less disinformation than the historical norm; I don't think it's fair to characterize it as "only existing due to violence and disinformation". That may be your characterization; it certainly isn't mine.

Today's society is mostly due to fossil fuel and a little bit due to technical advancement. The vast inequalities are what are due to violence and disinformation. Imagine a job where all your output is given to your boss and all you get is a cot to sleep on and simple food. What would it take for you to stay at that job? How do you think a unionization effort would go? Could you use the word "violence" to describe any of this? Now consider that as of 2020, 2153 billionaires had more wealth than 4.6 billion people: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-....

> Nor do I think that "people hate hierarchy" is a fair characterization. > > In fact, I think you're mistaking your preferences for a universal. And I think you're taking what your ideology says about society as the truth, without honestly evaluating society.

It's important to distinguish consensual hierarchy from forced hierarchy. A group can agree to let someone lead in some area where they are skilled: we'll let you drive the car because you're a better driver. I don't think anyone likes forced hierarchy though: I will beat you if you don't let me drive. I don't think that's an ideological preference.

But do you think that many people prefer associating with people with much different skill, intelligence, education or income? For example, would you like to be on a programming team where you could clearly rank skill from worst to best? If so, I'd be interested in having you walk me through why you think that.

I don't totally understand your response. "Clans/tribes", which I think you originally used as a catch-all for the many and varied forms of local government over the past ten+ millennia of human history, predate the modern state. They don't emerge from the lack or absence of a state any more than freedom arises from the lack or absence of a jail.

All of my comments have been, I hope respectfully, pushing back on the implication that the modern nation-state is the natural form of government and that in its absence people will necessarily find themselves members of small, violently feuding patriarchal groups.

1. Power in human society is social and contextual. If there's a custom to limit your status and you violate that, you can be ejected from the group and then your status goes down to nothing. This sort of thing happens all the time. If you play casual sports with friends and then one person trains up to pro level, they'll need to take a handicap or no one will play with them, because having one player dominate the game is no fun, and allowing the pro would twist the whole social vibe into a metagame of currying favor.

2. I don't agree with you about most societies. Most people prefer their own social circles to have similar ability, intelligence, income, even physical attractiveness. That's the revealed preference for a society. We're not ants or bees that choose hierarchies when we don't have to. So by existing societies I assume you mean, the one global society that manifests differently everywhere but is really all the same and can't be escaped. Since people hate hierarchy it will not surprise you when I point out that this particular society only exists due to extreme violence and disinformation. So instead of thinking about molding a consensus, let's think instead about removing the violence and disinformation and then we can see what people really want. As for the easiest way of doing that, I don't know, but at least we don't need to go around saying that the current system is necessary.

That's a little backwards: something like the modern state might emerge from groups of people living in any number of ways. Clans/tribes don't emerge from the lack of a state. The state as we think of it is very recent in human history, after all.

Also you originally referred to the "problems of governance in Afghanistan" which I took to mean the warlordism, violence, suppression of women and so on. I was pointing out that these problems are more tied to the specific cultural and religious history of that area. If by governance problems you were instead referring to the strictly administrative or bureaucratic challenges you might encounter trying to, for example, organize a collection of peaceful worker communes, then I misunderstood.

I'm not sure what you mean by illegal border crossers. Do you mean U.S. citizens who sneak back into the U.S.? It actually never occurred to me that was punishable (instead of just a bad idea) but it looks like it is. I learned something new.

By the way, if you haven't seen it, you might like this old favorite of mine: "Born in East L.A." with Cheech and Chong, parodying Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFUFw1GH6ic. I was going to it's funny but in light of this discussion, maybe not. Not as funny, anyway.

Thanks for sharing.

According to the article, millions of kids who are getting free food from the schools won't be after June. So going forward the "local funding" for some kids will be out-of-pocket from lower-middle-income parents, and for other kids "local funding" will be going hungry. I don't think this is how things should be but if you disagree, all right.

You don't need Leviathan to do that. You could have a cultural custom so that anyone reaching a certain level of power or wealth or social status must give enough of it up to come back to the normal level.

Many people in Afghanistan have a long, specific religious and cultural history supporting, among other things, patriarchal organization. We shouldn't think of the current situation in Afghanistan as the natural outcome of any random large group of people existing outside a modern nation-state.

People can mutually agree to relationships based on roles. Multiple groups can network with each other and make further agreements, or one group can voluntarily decide to model parts of itself after another.

I don't think most anarchists would complain about senior bakers, or senior/elder/educated people generally, sharing advice, if that's what you mean, as long as all relationships remain voluntary.