That seems to be the trend. 'If you're not a facist, you're a nazi' looks to be the hip discourse lately. I have never been more happy, or genuinely nervous to be unaffiliated with any political movement burdened by other members.
Still though, remember the left, the right, the facists, the nazis, the whigs, and even stalin all think they were doing the right thing, and saving humanity by making hard choices at the expense of others. Power, no matter how it is held, can and will bulldoze the powerless, no matter who they are.
What a great write up. The bill is rather dangerous, and I’m immediately suspicious of anything claiming to help children in the context of legislation.
FOSTA/SESTA is a horrible law and it has done a lot of damage.
A cynical person would say that this is because the stated targets weren't actually the targets, just like with this act. (Stated targets: sex traffickers, real targets: tech companies offering e2e encryption)
Yes, IMO FOSTA/SESTA were deliberately malicious and yet another successful attempt to force puritanical ideals upon our citizens, regardless of the damage it would cause.
The senators who initiated the bill are not dumb. They knew exactly how it would play out.
There was plenty of warning of the effects of these bills on sex workers. Legislators at best ignored them, and at worst were happy for these side effects, depending on where they sit of the political spectrum.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I can see how this would apply to a platform providing end-to-end encryption and how restricting that is a bad thing. What's to stop someone from using, e.g. PGP in an email? Isn't that outside the scope of this?
... or maybe the Attorney General can declare that a service that allows PGP-encrypted communiques is in violation and will lose its 230 protections. The law as constructed is way over-broad.
I believe it’s too late. In my opinion the current political climate has fueled outrage culture and from my perspective things have gone from bad to worse.
Telling people you're doing something, but giving them no other options, isn't good enough.
There are roads near me which do "toll by mail" where they snap a picture of your license plate, and then bill you the toll even if you don't have EZ-Pass. There are signs which announce this, but unless you're planning to drive 90 minutes out of your way, those sections of highway aren't avoidable.
Even if there are other viable options, the average citizen doesn't really understand the implication of losing their privacy, so they can't make an educated decision about whether to give it up. A simple sign doesn't solve that fundamental problem.
Sure, it's a step in the right direction, but you said "I'd be content with...", i.e. you're content with stopping there, which isn't nearly a good enough spot to stop.
So in the end people who don't want to be tracked in their movement by the government only have the option to drive through small back-in-the-woods roads, while the new "highway toll" is to have your data harvested?
I think this is a intrinsically misleading article. The CDC and WHO are conservative because they can’t afford to cry wolf. Some no name startup can make arbitrary claims and then argue in hindsight.
“Toronto startup whose AI-driven health monitoring platform analyzes billions of data points. Launched in 2014, the venture alerted its clients to the outbreak on Dec. 31, well ahead of notifications from the World Health Organization and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
Someone was better at persuasion than engineering and got approval to put it into production, ignoring potentially negative A/B test results or flawed feedback methodology.
I’m not willing to pay anything. The internet was built on good will, fun, and generally good intent.
Now that it’s a mechanism of commerce it’s attracted the worst of the worst who have no ethics. Ethics courses will be taught in response to bad actors, not in anticipation of.
I’m aware the cats out of the bag and all of the high paid engineers need to make a living somehow. I just don’t think it’s about the consumer anymore, if it ever was. It will get worse before it gets better and I’m checking out.
I’m an older engineer and going to school for HVAC/R. I plan to do it on the side and eventually start a business. I’m pulling the rip cord.
One thing I will say about the blue collar world: they’re better about ego management. Many young engineers I meet are highly paid and treated well, sometimes rarely disagreed with. I can’t help but think that fosters some bad habits.
I’m so sorry to hear you have such a dark outlook. I totally agree, those companies are not about the consumer anymore, but that’s fine. That’s their problem.
I see computers and the internet as an extension of ourselves, and so they still allow us to communicate with whoever and whatever we want. I’m so glad this community exists and we can express that.
The worst part should already be over, you just joined hn. I’m also all about good will, fun, and generally good intent. And if you do something cool but it’s costing you something, let me know how I can chip in.
This brand of techno-optimism is so tired. Who today still believes the old facebook line about connecting more people? It didn't work and it enabled automated surveillance on unprecedented scale.
I agree, but a reminder to not allow evil companies like Facebook to take away our optimism. Just because they didn’t make the world a better place does not mean a better world cannot be made. What it does mean is their funding and business model probably isn’t the right way to go if you’re still an optimist.
There are still many wonderful niches on the web, and by going there - while avoiding the bad stuff - we strengthen them so they don't disappear as well. As techies we have an opportunity here to bring them more to the front, by the technology choices we make and the projects we contribute to, the awareness we raise.
You're missing the factory for the dandelions growing in the parking lot. Weird niche personal pages and projects are just distractions from the massive power struggle that is being fought by corporations and governments for the minds and personal data of every human on earth.
There’s a massive power struggle indeed, but if you look who’s really behind those organizations, you’ll see people just like you and me, imperfect minds in funky bodies that came from the same place we all once did.
World leaders and CEOs go to bed every night just like us, they speak, poop, and reproduce at the same rate as everyone else. Corporations and governments are nothing more than contracts to benefit those very same people, us. Even though there’s not an equal benefit to everyone involved.
If those contracts fail, and our freedom and liberty is at risk like you say, we ought to renegotiate. It seems, if you listen carefully, that’s what the world is currently choosing to do.
I love how you phrased that! I’m also tired of what’s going on. These corporations allow groups of people to compete for our attention just like individuals. Some giants we created are now getting in our way so much that people are starting to notice, and we are far from passive creatures.
It’s still possible to disconnect. It’s still possible to choose what you see or say, and it’s still possible to focus your energy on something you believe in. As long as you’re not tired of that, I‘m optimistic.
>The internet was built on good will, fun, and generally good intent.
The main catalyst for the internet was the fear of nuclear war, as exemplified in this influential RAND paper from 1960 [0], which led to the investment in ARPANET. I'm not disputing good will and good intent, but I don't think fun had much to do with it.
By the time you get to the opening up of the internet to mere non-defence mortals, there was plenty of fun.
There was a beautiful sweet spot between the earliest ISPs around 1990, and the end of fun once the effects of the mid 90s ending of NSF's ban on commercial activity fully kicked in. Probably late 90s/millennium as the first dot com boom turned into full on idiotic bubble.
I would definitely pay, but not through a middleman like google. We need to return to a decentralized, peer to peer internet where media companies are not beholden to advertisers (a very old problem). Technology presents the first real chance to implement this. A non-trivial part of the media’s (eg newspapers, news sites, cable news) is due to advertising, including “cancel culture” itself (the name dates back to pressuring advertisers to pressure media to cancel tv production, although the word has gained life of its own).
I listen to a podcast called the No Agenda Show that has sustained itself for about 10 years on a value for value model. Listeners donate what they want and there are never any ads. I think the model is applicable elsewhere. Granted it won’t make someone rich but someone can make a living.
I am not sure that a pay what you want model would work, but I want options dammit, and I would hazard a guess that content creators do too—just look at the wonderful, nearly complete lack of ads on patreon content.
I didn't go to HVAC school, but I have been moonlighting w/ a friend's HVAC business since 2002 for the exercise & appreciation of hard labor. That was well & good, and in time I was making decent, seasonal money working for someone else when not servicing IT needs of SB clients. Around 2008, as many of my clients were closing shop, I crossed paths with a "controls" guy and he showed me how to meld the technical & the labor to make as good money, if not better, as sitting behind a keyboard and playing whack-a-mole security full-time. Between pulling runs, provisioning controllers, solving failures and putting it all into comms I get all my mental, physical & financial needs met. I couldn't recommend it enough for anyone tired of the sedentary life at the keyboard. The only downside is I am still reliant on corporate managers & NOC engineers who have no clue how their products work in the field. YMMV.
Awesome advice, thanks. I’m happy to buy some stuff on eBay and play around.
Any suggestions? How about programming software? Readily available?
I recently picked up a Asco 300 w/comms module for my standby gen, DSE800 to control the engine, and a Siemens 9610 for consumption analysis.
I’m working on controls for load shedding now. I put shunt trip breakers on my water heater and it’ll kick off when on standby since I don’t have enough power, as per NEC.
I’m also working on a modulating valve controlled by the temp delta of my tankless water heater. Sometimes it can’t keep up and I’d rather slow down flow for a shower instead of letting it throw an error, resetting, and annoying people in the shower.
Most of the equipment & software I work with is owned/licensed by Honeywell and is proprietary, aka pricey. Older equipment can be found on reseller sites, but the developer software is expensive to license & hard to come by outside of the HON ecosystem.
If you go down the rabbit hole, check out Tridium, aka Niagara AX. Most(all?) of the big controls platforms are built on the Niagara framework.
Also, maybe contact contractors of Johnson Controls, Carrier Controls, Novar Controls, etc for more pertinent info.
I had a similar circular issue with Google. I solved it by shoulder tapping my GCP sales rep who pulled some strings. Luckily my company spends quite a bit so I had a back door. Without that or a twitter following I think you’re fucked.
