GoatOnPony's recent activity
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Comment on The dead economy theory in ~society
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Comment on Do we want to stop all crime? in ~society
GoatOnPony LinkThere's a variety of pragmatic reasons why the thought experiment isn't applicable to the real world: no universal agreement on criminal activity and suitable punishment, no powerful system is...There's a variety of pragmatic reasons why the thought experiment isn't applicable to the real world: no universal agreement on criminal activity and suitable punishment, no powerful system is instantaneous and perfect and impossible to abuse, and figuring out the right proportionality of punishment is just truly unknowable except by some omniscient entity capable of understanding our inner thoughts (hence why it's a popular invention).
But I do want to try and engage in the thought experiment on its more philosophical grounds and propose that even if those practical issues were solved we wouldn't like it. Humans aren't perfectly rational, perfectly computing machines ourselves - we want some slack to be lazy and selfish and getting an unfair leg up even if we don't perceive our behavior as such. We spend the vast majority of our lives as amoral entities in that we don't even think to apply moral reasoning to every thing we do. Trying to coerce people into behaving morally every moment would be exhausting and consume all our mental energy even if there was some outside system which handled enforcement for us.
Separately, if your thought experiment fleshed out into a pretty good anime intrigues you, go watch psycho pass where the police are given a means to determine someone's crime coefficient.
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Comment on 'The report's so stupid': The DNC 2024 autopsy is roiling US Democrats in ~society
GoatOnPony Link ParentI think a self reported single axis poll is misleading tbh. If you poll people on individual policies that are associated with the left (healthcare, gun control, immigration reform, drug...I think a self reported single axis poll is misleading tbh. If you poll people on individual policies that are associated with the left (healthcare, gun control, immigration reform, drug legalization, etc) there's often majority support. On other issues I think there's often underlying values aligned stymied by bad communication. There's not a neat dichotomy or smooth continuum where a moderate is equidistant between left and right. People want principled parties arguing for their interests not politicians who slide around based on poll data.
There's also this notion that Democrats should move to the right, but Republicans get a free pass on their continued movement right. Perhaps chasing their movement and allowing them to control the overton window just results in ceding policy ground rather than capturing any new electorate.
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Comment on The old world of tech is dying and the new cannot be born in ~tech
GoatOnPony Link ParentAI can be a productivity boost while simultaneously being a tool of hegemonic control and coercion. The US isn't going out and holding a gun to people's heads telling them to use AI, but it...AI can be a productivity boost while simultaneously being a tool of hegemonic control and coercion. The US isn't going out and holding a gun to people's heads telling them to use AI, but it certainly can use protectionist economic policy (control over who gets access to graphics cards being a prime example), try to pass inane legislation that prevents states from regulating AI separately to give them an incredibly lax regulatory environment, and in general allow tech CEOs deep deep access to government agencies and lobbying (see all of the tech CEOs standing behind Trump at inauguration). There's a symbiosis here between big tech companies and US power. Tech companies get a lax tax + regulatory environment, government contracts for compute, and the knowledge that the US will back up their foreign prospects just like it has for any other major US economic sector. In return the US government gets huge amounts of data access (FISA, five eyes, etc) and biasing of information flows towards pro American/pro Western viewpoints.
The US is not over as a global superpower and it probably never will be, but it could be very similar to how Russia or England remain as global powers. It's certainly not the monopolar juggernaught of the 90's and 2000s anymore though. It's over indexed on technological overmatch in a way that isn't likely to matter in most conflicts it fights in while absolutely ballooning the budget and leaving itself unable to operate a long term conflict. If the requirement for global superpower is ability to pinpoint first strike a target anywhere in the world, that capability will probably always be retained. At the very least the US will maintain a potent nuclear capability. If the requirement is to enact regime change to promote pro western or at least pro western business interests then the US is not doing so great in the last two decades. Instead of Iraq and Afghanistan (Iraq a costly wash and Afghanistan a costly failure) I'd point to Venezuela as the prime example of the US military retaining superpower status.
I also think saying that the US expanded a small part of its military power against Iran is a mild understatement or at least not clear cut, the US has thrown a lot of assets at the region and expended much of them in an unsustainable way. Missile and interceptor stockpiles are way down and the gaps in the US navy's ship capacity are visible (not enough minesweepers or destroyers to really do an effective job). It's too early to tell the actual cost but the government asking for an extra $500B for defense is not a good sign. The US can ride on the investments it made in previous eras for only so long before more huge expenditures will be needed to modernize. So far the US has failed in various efforts to modernize military hardware (primarily with several classes of ships but the f35 was a costly success and current efforts to update rifles is... dubious) when a key advantage has been huge technological overmatch.
I don't have a particular view on the EU, I'm an American who just goes to visit sometimes, but the idea that it "reduced their peoples' wellbeing" I don't agree with. If your measure is GDP per capita sure, US is doing better on that metric (which I think is a pretty terrible metric), but in terms of actual wellbeing? The EU seems to be doing just fine on that front, IMO better than the US by a wide margin.
Regarding the petrodollar, the US is not a neutral actor just standing on the sidelines - it's involved itself via sanctions (I think sanctions is probably the biggest one, weaponizing the US economy against those who don't want to play ball), military and economic alliances with Middle Eastern countries, and direct military action to help ensure that countries want to buy in dollars and not another currency. It's not the only factor, perhaps not the dominant factor, but it is certainly a tool that the US has an interest in keeping and does so.
I think my main point is not that the article is right, but more that it's not entirely wrong either. The US government and oligarchic elites are not neutral actors who operate in some open marketplace, they want the scales tilted towards them and take action to do so. The effectiveness of that is tied to the relative strength of the US on the world stage and that relative advantage is sliding, I'd argue sliding fast. The US has spent 250 years working to accumulate leverage in ways small and large across the entire world, unwinding that won't be fast! The last year though has dramatically quickened the pace and made the slide much more obvious.
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Comment on Is British English actually better than American English? in ~humanities.languages
GoatOnPony Link ParentNot a linguist, but languages do have some objective differences but not in measures we'd reliably agree on as having a better direction. For example, spoken languages convey information at...Not a linguist, but languages do have some objective differences but not in measures we'd reliably agree on as having a better direction. For example, spoken languages convey information at roughly the same rate regardless of how quickly it sounds like it's being spoken. Some languages require different pieces of information to be considered, eg. there's languages which encode how reliable a piece of information is (first or second hand) or have more or less tenses or gendered pronouns, but saying any of those features are objectively better is extremely hard. It seems like everyone is capable of conveying or inferring from context all the necessary bits even if their language doesn't require or explicitly encode for it. Some languages maybe make slightly different tradeoffs about what gets priortized.
Also interesting to look at constructed languages which explore a bunch of different features and ideas of languages, but no constructed language has ever really taken off.
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Comment on Spirit Airlines shutting down after rescue talks collapse in ~transport
GoatOnPony Link ParentA working antitrust ecosystem will have more, smaller companies. That will be a more volatile ecosystem with new entrants coming and various ones failing as the margins for companies will be...A working antitrust ecosystem will have more, smaller companies. That will be a more volatile ecosystem with new entrants coming and various ones failing as the margins for companies will be thinner and their ability to absorb significant shocks reduced. If nothing else, more companies existing in a market just means a higher number of companies going under if every company has some chance of failure. In theory, this volatility is good (at least for markets which aren't necessary goods) as new ideas enter and weaker companies fall out. Whether or not the airlines market is working in that theoretical mode I'm not knowledgeable enough to say, so this is more just a comment that more companies failing kinda should be expected under an antitrust regime.
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Comment on San Diego now has so much water that it's selling it in ~enviro
GoatOnPony Link ParentLawns are roughly half of all residential water use, they haven't gone away and are still the largest single source of residential water use, this isn't a matter of 'start installing'. We've spent...Lawns are roughly half of all residential water use, they haven't gone away and are still the largest single source of residential water use, this isn't a matter of 'start installing'. We've spent years nagging people about lawns and it seems to be basically just treading water (pun intended). If you care about lawns insist on apartment buildings and density which will probably have more impact on lawn usage. I also doubt that the years of nagging people about lawns has made them suddenly pro water conservation.
More importantly, the drought crisis(es) in California is not caused by residential lawns. They're about 4-5% of statewide water usage, which is not nothing, but still not enough to make or break the state's water budget in isolation. If we magically snapped our fingers and removed all lawns it wouldn't be enough to cover the shortfall in drought years. I'd love to see lawns reduced, golf courses torn out, and more efficient park landscaping, but I do genuinely worry that it's been made an outsized point of contention relative to the impact it has.
This is more like antibiotics resistance rather than vaccines. With vaccines regular people are the total group of recipients and everyone really does need to do their part. With antibiotics, the vast majority of usage is on farm animals, so pestering people about responsible usage of antibiotics is a drop in the bucket compared to what we need to be tackling which is farm animal welfare. I don't want to completely minimize self responsibility, but some battles are more about the systemic factors than any individual action can meaningfully make.
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Comment on San Diego now has so much water that it's selling it in ~enviro
GoatOnPony (edited )Link ParentI think there's a distinction worth drawing between a few overlapping elements around water conservation: cultural water use practices to maintain and improve efficient usage of water building...I think there's a distinction worth drawing between a few overlapping elements around water conservation:
- cultural water use practices to maintain and improve efficient usage of water
- building political will to fix structural issues
- shaping the narrative about what the issue is
Instilling discipline in people about the first doesn't necessarily help the latter two. Much of the time focusing on the individual water practices actually hinders those goals by having people focus on individual footprint instead of the industrial/agricultural footprint, similar to discussion about carbon footprints. Discussion about where water is sourced is an element to building the political structure in as much as we can get people to care about the majesty and ecosystem importance of waterways, but that's not usually the messaging I hear.
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Comment on San Diego now has so much water that it's selling it in ~enviro
GoatOnPony Link ParentThe crazy thing to me is that overall (total, not per capita!) residential water usage has gone down/stayed constant in California despite the population doubling. Urban water use is also a tiny...The crazy thing to me is that overall (total, not per capita!) residential water usage has gone down/stayed constant in California despite the population doubling. Urban water use is also a tiny portion of water usage in the state relative to agricultural use. Southern california is a little different in that residential use is higher and there's less agriculture, but still the trend AFAIK is a lot of population growth without much change in water usage.
This is part of why I'm always annoyed that we worry so much about drought in the state when residential use is already very efficient (excepting perhaps lawns). While agriculture has also gotten more efficient it's still the biggest user and has way more space to change, primarily to stop growing water intensive crops like alfalfa, almonds, or rice.
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Comment on What steps can the average user do to secure their data privacy? in ~tech
GoatOnPony Link ParentIt's very hard to maintain privacy without security, so I don't think they're neatly separable concerns. That xkcd comic is overused IMO. There's a meaningful category of threat modeling where you...It's very hard to maintain privacy without security, so I don't think they're neatly separable concerns.
That xkcd comic is overused IMO. There's a meaningful category of threat modeling where you assume the bad actors are malevolent enough to use restraint but not going to torture you, ie. regular cops and not the CIA or even a random pickpocket who will flash a phone at your face as they run away but won't beat you up in a busy area. In the US a biometric passcode is not as protected and you can be compelled to unlock a device with a fingerprint/face scan as part of a search and they're not going to bust out the wrench for a passcode. Courts in the US hold that forcing a passcode would violate the fifth amendment so there's additional legal protections. As for the periodic requirement to use a master password, that doesn't help very much, police and criminals have tools to keep a device awake indefinitely after one unlock. Better is to know how to put the device into lockdown mode and do that whenever you are in a place likely to involve police or pickpockets.
Having said all that, I think the better approach is biometric on the device itself (and know how to put the device into lockdown mode anyway) and then use individual apps which require a passcode/pin to access ala signals PIN.
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Comment on What’s the best 3D-printed thing you have? in ~talk
GoatOnPony LinkI really enjoy one of my first prints which fixed a door catch in my apartment. It's just a simple extender onto the strike plate to help the door latch actually catch and keep the door closed. It...I really enjoy one of my first prints which fixed a door catch in my apartment. It's just a simple extender onto the strike plate to help the door latch actually catch and keep the door closed. It helped establish the magic of being able to fix a real world problem in a direct, lasting way.
I also have a few prototypes of a tinker toy esque connector to join cardboard strips into a structural form. It never worked particularly well, but the idea of taking card board boxes, cutting them into strips and then making a giant version of tinker toys is just so appealing to me!
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Comment on I made a website with free and low-cost resources for web development, game development, privacy, graphics, small web, etc in ~tech
GoatOnPony LinkThis is an awesome resource! Thanks for putting it together and sharing - I'll have fun looking through them! Some quick suggestions for additions: Maybe mention static site generators? Creating a...This is an awesome resource! Thanks for putting it together and sharing - I'll have fun looking through them! Some quick suggestions for additions:
- Maybe mention static site generators? Creating a whole website whole cloth from html can be intimidating whereas an SSG is just markdown -> run SSG -> push to host
- I've been digging into gemini (no, not that gemini, this gemini) using the lagrange browser and visiting gemini://skyjake.fi/~Cosmos/ and gemini://warmedal.se/~antenna/
- I like this little project: wander console which is like a decentralized stumbleupon (if you remember that website) and very easy to host given an existing static site. If anyone does pick this up let me know and I'll add you to my console
- Please mention RSS! RSS is soooo good and lots of websites still have feeds. Being able to get people's blog posts delivered in one place is :chef's kiss:. I good reminder that I need to put my opml file up on my website to help share around TTRPG blogs that I'm aware of
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Comment on Medium term cold storage options? in ~comp
GoatOnPony Link ParentI'll admit that I didn't look super hard when I set it up since I knew I wanted tailscale to access other services running on the NAS, but you're right you can use the syncthing community run relays.I'll admit that I didn't look super hard when I set it up since I knew I wanted tailscale to access other services running on the NAS, but you're right you can use the syncthing community run relays.
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Comment on Medium term cold storage options? in ~comp
GoatOnPony Link ParentI have the same setup of syncthing + tailscale and the tailscale is there so I can give syncthing a magic url/IP address which can reach my NAS/desktop which live behind a potentially changing...I have the same setup of syncthing + tailscale and the tailscale is there so I can give syncthing a magic url/IP address which can reach my NAS/desktop which live behind a potentially changing residential IP. Similarly if I'm out and about with my laptop and phone the two can sync even if I'm on some random network and therefore given some unknown IP address.
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Comment on No one can force me to have a secure website!!! in ~tech
GoatOnPony LinkI like the video and I like Tom, super interesting and accomplished person. The video is provocative and that provocation is useful in that it's useful to ask people to re-examine the base...- Exemplary
I like the video and I like Tom, super interesting and accomplished person. The video is provocative and that provocation is useful in that it's useful to ask people to re-examine the base assumptions every once in a while. Laying out my own biases, I work in areas related to security and privacy but wouldn't consider myself an expert. Having said all that, I have a fair number of disagreements with Tom's complaints.
First, Tom lumps https and warnings about https in with other user hostile design to lock people into specific vendors. This is a category error - not every annoyance is vendor lock in or bad friction put there maliciously to extract something from users. No company wants to deal with HTTPS and if they didn't think it necessary they would not have it. Chrome and other browsers added those frictions because it addressed real user harm and mitigated actual attacks (ISPs inserting ads into web pages, public wifi snooping, government data collection, phishing attacks). I'm fine with quibbling about how the interstitial should look (I hate that the proceed is pushed to behind advanced too), but ultimately I do buy that users need some protection from taking unwittingly risky actions and that the friction does more good than harm.
Second, Tom seems to believe that because a server could be compromised or MITM'ed during ACME to establish domain ownership that this is hypocrisy and equivalent to any other MITM attack later on. I'm not particularly convinced by this argument, forward security is still good and website owners are in a much better position to notice and correct that attack than a random user. Users also face different MITM adversaries than server owners do. I'm not setting up a server over public wifi, but users will connect to the website from there. Making any MITM attack harder to accomplish seems like a very worthy goal to me.
Third, Tom downplays the connection between security and privacy. Banks are not the only sites that need security. You need security in order to have privacy and even a static site should still protect outsiders from seeing what content was accessed.
Fourth, there's a fair bit of bashing of CAs. I agree that CAs have bad track records and should be policed better. I also don't like the hierarchical nature involved. But, trust on the internet is hard and this is hardly the only hierarchical or centralizing portion (DNS, ISPs, browsers, search, social media network effects). Relative to other effects CAs are pretty unimportant. The internet is a giant game of picking entities to trust who then delegate that trust out further. I don't think there's any unequivocally better alternatives, let alone better alternatives for non technically savvy users. It's impressive that we at least get the level of control to pick who we root our trust in. If users pick Microsoft or Google or Apple or Mozilla as that entity then that's a valid choice and likely far better as a practical matter than asking users to make individual decisions about trust on the internet. If Tom wants to pursue different sources of root trust, he's able to do so.
Ultimately, I'm sympathetic to the general complaints about centralization and some of the specific complaints about HTTPS in particular, but I don't like the framing.
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Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime
GoatOnPony Link ParentIf you liked the lgbtq elements of TWFM, have you watched the show its plot is based on/lifted from, Revolutionary Girl Utena? Knowing that the plot is based on Utena, which is much older and much...If you liked the lgbtq elements of TWFM, have you watched the show its plot is based on/lifted from, Revolutionary Girl Utena? Knowing that the plot is based on Utena, which is much older and much more surrealist, helps with knowing why the plot is so all over the place at times.
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Comment on Government-appointed Norwegian Nuclear Committee says no to nuclear power – should build up expertise that will make it easier to make such a decision in the future in ~enviro
GoatOnPony Link ParentI'll add another issue with nuclear power that I don't see discussed much which is that uranium mining is concentrated in Australia, Canada, Russia, and Kazakhstan. While Australia and Canada...I'll add another issue with nuclear power that I don't see discussed much which is that uranium mining is concentrated in Australia, Canada, Russia, and Kazakhstan. While Australia and Canada would be a 'safe' supplier to Europe, the world is a topsy turvy place right now and having a large portion of your power come from imported sources (whether that's oil or LNG or anything else) doesn't seem like a good bet. Solar, wind, and battery storage are much more sovereign (and decentralizable) power sources.
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Comment on Nation's largest urban battery is being built in Daly City, California in ~enviro
GoatOnPony Link ParentWhy do you think we have a long way to go before we roll out grid scale battery? I ask since we're already in the midst of that transition, the US added 19 GWh of battery storage last year and the...Why do you think we have a long way to go before we roll out grid scale battery? I ask since we're already in the midst of that transition, the US added 19 GWh of battery storage last year and the pace is only growing. Battery + solar seems to be the cheapest and cleanest way to transition the energy system over and it's only going to get cheaper and safer.
I'm not sure I follow all the bits of the later portion of your comment, but battery fires are much less frequent and probably significantly better than either of the ongoing air pollution, CO2 emissions, or environmental catastrophes caused by fracking, oil spills, pipelines, massive human risks during transit, etc. Oil and methane (I dislike the term 'natural gas') extraction and consumption have had world changing impacts, so I'm firmly in the camp that solar and batteries are necessary and better than the status quo.
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Comment on Software job openings surge this year, defying AI fears in ~tech
GoatOnPony LinkI wish there was more analysis of where these job openings are coming from within the tech industry and what types of jobs (in particular pay and seniority) are open right now. There's been plenty...I wish there was more analysis of where these job openings are coming from within the tech industry and what types of jobs (in particular pay and seniority) are open right now. There's been plenty of recent large layoffs going on, so the tech industry has /something/ going on. Oracle and Amazon both have had 10k+ person layoffs this year already and https://www.trueup.io/layoffs, the same place generating the job opening data, also shows a steady rate of layoffs within tech. That suggests a more complex answer than just tech is back to it's normal growth. In terms of AI fears for software engineering, I expect people to care as much or more about the pay, working conditions, and job stability as the single metric of number of openings.
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Comment on Surf Social (from the makers of Flipboard) in ~tech
GoatOnPony Link ParentI knew I shouldn't have used the term protocol without having a more baked proposal... But I guess I'll still respond more even if the protocol suggestion wasn't actually the thrust of my original...I knew I shouldn't have used the term protocol without having a more baked proposal... But I guess I'll still respond more even if the protocol suggestion wasn't actually the thrust of my original post. I was suggesting being able to convert everything into RSS, not a new meta protocol.
My desire is that a central service like surf.social shouldn't need to exist. I jumped the gun on assuming there were technical rather than social reasons for it. I want to accomplish whatever surf.social is doing from within the RSS readers I already use. On reflection I think that's already possible, just maybe cumbersome, so this was ignorance on my part of how to accomplish it.
That logic feels equally applicable to capitalist systems. Most people want stuff and inequality denies it from them, necessitating force to protect said assets. And that is on a more ongoing basis. America has the fifth highest per capital incarceration rate after all.