Hi all, I am currently on the hunt for some nice newsletters for my email. I ran into "Big" by Matt Stoller on here and I really enjoy it. I guess I am looking for something in a similiar enomonic, political, or macro vein, science works as well. Any and all recommendations are welcome.

There's a conflict in my mind that I would like others' perspective on.

On one hand, I like privacy. For example, I use Signal as my primary messaging service because I like the idea that the end-to-end encryption keeps my conversations private. It feels right that someone shouldn't be able to look over my shoulder when I'm communicating one-on-one with friends and family.

On the other hand, I also like deplatforming. I believe strongly in the idea that inhibiting communities that espouse fascist or other anti-social beliefs is a key lever in keeping their ideas from gaining social traction.

Unfortunately, I feel like there's a tension between these two ideals. Private platforms can conceivably allow for the inviolable platforming of hateful groups because they can then exist without social oversight or accountability. But maintaining some sort of oversight also feels wrong to me because it's fundamentally invasive?

I don't know what to make of this, as I do think we should be encouraging greater privacy on an internet where our actions are being scooped up wholesale for the benefit of large tech companies, but I also worry about how increased privacy measures will enable bad actors. Anyone have thoughts on this or want to help me sort this out?

Here in 2019 the overwhelming majority of all currency is virtual and commerce on any appreciable scale occurs electronically. But consider a sci-fi/space opera setting where reasonably fast FTL is commonplace, but FTL communications are not possible. Obviously one could still "communicate" at FTL with a courier, but you would still be limited to the speed of the courier ship. You certainly wouldn't have instantaneous communication between star systems, meaning there can be no interstellar electronic banking: transactions would take years to complete.

The Traveller tabletop RPG uses exactly this setup: FTL travel is common, FTL communication does not exist. In Traveller you have the Third Imperium minting currency that is accepted essentially everywhere, the currency is Imperial Credits and they're printed on polymer bills. The result is an effectively cash-only economy.

But what if your setting has no centralized government? Do people revert to using gold? Are there fleets of merchant ships schlepping precious metals around the cosmos, as if the American Old West has been transplanted into space? Would they come up with a cryptographic solution? Could something like a blockchain work without instantaneous communication cross the entire network that accepts the cryptocurrency?

What if quantum computing is widespread in your setting, rendering most forms of encryption obsolete? That would seem to eliminate the blockchain based option, FTL comms or not, and once again send us back to needing a fiat currency, or a gold standard.

20 years ago I saw a computer scientist on TV saying that operating systems should come up with a better way to organize and present files, something that took into consideration the files we used the most and the ones we were likely to use again. Not just a recent files menu, but some form of AI prediction that would prepare our desktops with little intervention. This, of course, didn't happen, but I think about it from time to time. I would love to have an AI that would understand my workflow and do a bunch of things for me.

This is obviously way too advanced as an answer to this thread, but I'm curious: what did you expect to already exist in the field of computer science, but simply didn't pan out?

Mine is: do others see the same colours that I do? As in, is my "green" the same as your "green"? Or would my "green" look "blue" to you? I like this one because it's completely possible, points out the plasticity of our minds and makes a distinction between sensation and perception. There are variations of this but I like it formulated as such. It's my favorite because it was also my first foray into the philosophy of consciousness and I'm often reminded of it when in an altered state of consciousness (e.g. by psychedelics).

Your favorite experiment can be whatever: either something that has affected you deeply / changed your life or just something fun and amusing to think about.