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I don't think that you can practically expect to tax speech.

You can tax reach though.

It's not apparent that this apple mdm will do internal distribution or just provide for encouraging a set of installed apps already on the app store. If it does, that would be the biggest reason for me to jump to the free product.

Microsoft is not going to let you continue using Windows 10 under any circumstances.

They cannot fucking stop me. $2500

A simple question with a simple answer: as it has done since the inception.

If a kid wants to sneak some porn, he's going to have to hide his digital nudeymag under his digital mattress, and when it's discovered, he'll have to accept his fate as decided by his parents.


What about online alcohol sales?

They can show their ID to the delivery person, or the kids will have to learn how to drink it over the internet.

Same. Proof of eligibility is furnished on delivery, just like it is now.

This is better framed as something like "know your actor." The goal is to have everything attributable to a natural person. Nobody wants that, though, so we have say that porn isn't for kids. (Now, there's a lot of disagreement about that, but that's another matter.)

That's correct, but what does a driver license have to do with it? A state-issued driver license is one document that can serve as identification. There are plenty of others, including those that are solely for identification. Are you unintentionally conflating them, or are you suggesting that there a eligible people who are unable to get an identity document?

When I hear this argument ("better the government do it than a private company") I recoil. The government is sovereign, only accepts lawsuits at its discretion, and can use violence to get its way. We also know for a fact that it abuses its powers and conducts surreptitious unlawful campaigns against its citizens.

I'm not on board with any of it, but the last thing I want is the government to control it.


The government is also, at least theoretically, democratic and accountable to the population.

Meta on the other hand is a dictatorship run by Zuck that's only marginally accountable to stockholders (which are only a small subset of the population).


They're still accountable to customers/users. If you don't like their products, don't use them. I don't.

The unfortunate thing about this lobbying effort is that it's making the government accountable to Meta, which is the worst of all worlds.


You know meta keeps a shadow profile on every person who is know to every one of their customers, right? So even if you don't use it, they almost certainly have you in their system.

At least when the government is working, there are controls around what they can collect, what they can do with it, and who they share it with. And what they cannot do with it.


There aren’t really. The NSA keeps a shadier profile on you too, and the information Meta has is a subset of that. Snowden disclosures showed that.

Right. It's theoretical. We have hard proof that it's not, though. The second part is that the government can compel it. I am free to ignore Zuck.

When the government is working as intended, and have not abdicated their duties to the people, the government at least has controls over what they can and cannot do. Yes, they have a monopoly on violence, but they also in theory have lots of controls.

For example, the government cannot silence your speech, but a private company can. The government cannot share your data with others, a private company can.

Unfortunately the government has abdicated their duties and so you think they are worse than a private company.


I get all of these hypotheticals, but, again, we know that it's not true. The government routinely collects and shares information that it shouldn't. We can't talk about it like it doesn't because it was designed not to. We have to contend with reality.

But we also know that Meta routinely collects and shares information that it shouldn't.

At least the government shouldn't on a theoretical level?


I don't understand the fascination with pretending. System A is bad. System B is worse. System B theoretically shouldn't exist yet it does and there's nothing you can do about it, so now you're advocating for B. What's the rationale?

Systems A and B are equally bad in practice.

System A is that way by design . System B is that way despite the intended design.


They're not equally bad. You can disagree, but you'll have to convince me by argument. I've already laid out mine.

I think we already laid out our argument too. A private company can do whatever they want with your data. They can sell it, exploit it, and block you from accessing it.

The government can do none of those things. They can't deplatform you. They can't exploit your data or sell it. They can't block you from it.

At least by design.

By design, having the government responsible for verifying your identity is far superior than having private companies do it, because by design they have to be truthful and forthcoming.

The flaw is that the system is failing and so right now the private system and government system are equally bad.


I agree with everything you said when considering your caveat that the government needs to act lawfully and in good faith. I also appreciate that you have probably dealt directly with similar matters. Since the government has demonstrated that it won't comply, though, I am unwilling to go in that direction, and I guess in that way we see it differently.

We might just not have the same government. I'm not American and to me this isn't a failure of government as a concept, but your government as an implementation, if that makes sense.

We're talking about an American bill. I'm glad your government is abiding by its laws, though.

For recording instantaneous events, that's usually sufficient. It's often not enough for scheduling. You can always present UTC or any other zone relative to some other zone, but you need to know that zone. Maybe you're going to a conference in another region and you want to know the time of a talk in that zone because that's more important than your zone. You either need to couple the zone with the time itself, or you need to refer to it. There are good reasons either way. Having an atomic time+zone type is basically trading space for time. When its embedded, you can just use it, which can be better than assuming UTC and then looking up the zone based on, say, the location of the venue.


From his Oxford bio: "To assist in efficient look-up of words in a dictionary, he discovered the well-known sorting algorithm Quicksort."

I always liked this presentation. I think it's equally fine to say "invented" something, but I think this fits into his ethos (from what I understand of him.) There are natural phenomena, and it just takes noticing.


That's a tiny fraction. Most people write because they're told to write.


Are you talking about children or students? I think most people write because they want to communicate.


Children and young students, certainly. Adult students: almost 100%. If writing is your job, then by definition, and your problem is more often finding something to say, not writing it.


You’re not counting all the office workers who have to write reports or emails, or all the scammers who write those websites to manipulate SEO or show you ads.


If you fall into the camp of office workings needing to write reports or emails, maybe think twice about putting your name on AI garbage.


Everyone should think twice about putting their name on AI garbage, or garbage of any kind. But wishing doesn’t stop it from happening, especially when companies are explicitly selling you on doing just that. Remember the Apple Intelligence office ads?


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