If you have noticed, every independent candidate almost never gets elected. Vast majority of those who say they will "change the country to the better" either never get elected or are ousted early on.
And those who stay change their tune.
I fear that only blackmail-able people with the potential to win elections, get the support, so that they are beholden to someone who ultimately gives them the job (e.g. funding their campaign) and has to return the favor x10 when elected, so promises go out the window and new reality sets in.
Someone tried to create an entirely new country with minimal governance by dumping sand on a submerged reef until it became an island[]. Even then it was quickly co-opted by the nearing statist powers (Tonga) with the blessing of western powers.
So it's not just that the primary process will crush anyone who will seriously roll back government powers. They won't even let anyone peacefully create an entirely new fucking island to try and get away from the tyrants and do it while leaving everyone else alone and not messing with the powers that be.
Isn't that the libertarian paradox in a nutshell, the entire reason why "government" exists? Because in reality, the alternative is "might makes right" and a larger, stronger group will band together and steamroll the smaller and uncoordinated individuals?
Government is might makes right, just with a nice name slapped on it. Minerva was minarchist, not anarchist, but for whatever reason they chose not to defend their country by force. Somaliland and the remains of Rojava come to mind as present-day ~minarchist governments that defended their territory by force and ~succeeded. The point being is these kind of changes won't be allowed by election or peacefully. The primaries stop the election process and the militaries stop the peaceful separation process.
America did have a period of relatively small government intervention at the beginning, but that took a war with Britain. It also had some periods of it during the pre-founding (some of 1600s Pennsylvania and Rhode Island while Britain was occupied elsewhere). Pennsylvania (before it was a state) in particular was basically straight up anarchist for I want to say, about 20 years.
> but for whatever reason they chose not to defend their country by force
When forced off the reef, the founders went back to places like Australia, Manhattan, and London with considerable wealth. Pretty easy to see why that was preferable to possibly dying by firing on the armed forces of another country.
> relatively small government intervention at the beginning,
Yes, the women, slaves, non-land-owners and native Americans all loved that phase! It was paradise on earth and the embodiment of the eternal liberty to which all (*) humans are entitled.
(*) your experience may vary, depending on your membership of various demographics. Some restrictions apply. Please see package for details.
Thank god you mentioned that. You foiled my diabolical plan of introducing slavery as utopia, as clearly imposing slavery is a way to shrink government intervention. No mention of early USA is complete without damning any experiences drawn on it because muh racism/sexism. Nevermind that whittling down to even that point took a war with Britain, which was relatively more free than before when yet still slavery and Indian slaughter was still happening.
Thank god you responded. You have effectively disarmed my diabolical plan of refuting the idea that early American history was some sort of libertarian paradise, by pointing out that I have used the old canard of slavery as if it, by itself, could invalidate the many good things that came from the early, limited form of government.
I have no option other than to lay down my intellectual tools before you and declare you the winner of this battle of the ages. I am humbled by my idiocy in even bringing up the fundamental economic engine of the early American republic, as if it actually mattered at all in the face of the noble, if perhaps a little selfish, goals of those proud young Americans.
I would say relatively true of the southern colonies. New England, slavery import was banned rapidly, slavery itself banned fairly early (some states almost immediately) and it was arguably never a load bearing pillar. Virginia in particular and the southern colonies only avoided starvation by stumbling on tobacco.
I'd also note slavery was also influenced by how land distribution happened in the colonial era. Lands dispersed under more feudal models lent themselves more to slavery and indentured servitude. Lands that for various reasons that were rapidly sold were more likely to end in the hands of small holders without slaves or fewer slaves.
That is a great point. Machine consumes energy of adding goblins in every response. The machine consumes energy on removing goblins from every response. That is a great attack vector. If (wild imagination ensues) an adversary can do that x100 (goblins, potatoes, dragons, Lightning McQueen, etc.) they can render the machine useless/uneconomical from the standpoint of energy consumption.
hi, cool use-case!
Question: do they have to type it, or one can upload an audio
(old people such as me may talk for 5mins about a mini-story vs typing for 20mins, especially if they use a phone vs windows telegram application (typing on a keyboard vs the smartphone).
in which case, do you got a STT 'module' that will pick up the audio, transcribe it, and then 'process' it?
We can't. If someone tries, then they get arrested for doxing, harassing, "causing discomfort", etc. Have you tried to follow a politician around? Do you want to try and track their phone?
That’s a coward’s take, and even if you are taking the middle-ground route there are sufficiently legal ways. You just won’t find much enthusiasm about it among people here because the demographic of this platform is living comfortably.
I read the first 4-5. They either 'provide services' to govs/law enforcement, and/or are ran by govs.
So to answer to your question, Nothing. You can write 100 letters to your senator, MP, mayor, etc. The "system" will serve its purposes. Best case you will get a response that "national security, paedophiles, terrorists, bad actors", etc.
In some regions you can file a GDPR nightmare letter, which will be shut down because of EU DPR ("national security, paedophiles, terrorists, bad actors", etc.)(yes I copied and pasted from above.. there is a pattern here).
Historically (and Harari describes this far better in "Nexus") documentation and bureaucracy was created to exert control. Any information 'must' be captured, stored, processed, assessed, flagged. Before we only had letters and radio. Now we have more letters (bits and bytes/packets). The mechanism is the same. Collect, store, process.
Cross-referencing this with 1984, everything we do/say/send/etc. will never be forgotten, can and will be used against us. Politicians though can 'rewrite' history ('Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.').
IMHO1: Notion is a Confluence+SharePoint+Jira with useless "AI" to quickly create templates.
Anyone who uses it for your made-up use-case is silly, and has no sense of 'segregation of duties' (access).
IMHO2: this is a process/procedure problem, not a technical problem (to quote GDPR's phrase) "..technical and organisational measures necessary to ensure.." this is an organisational problem that you are trying to solve as technical.
I have very recently tried to work with Notion staff in applying basic "compliance" controls, and their input/response was next-to-garbage, with a big "we didn't build it for/like this mate" attitude. E.g. complete lack of "canned reports showing inactive users", "canned reports showing failed login attempts", and so on. One will have to drill though the audit logs, extract the lot, and go excel magic. Other 'within-Notion' solutions are (politely) 'inaccurate'.
Overall it is a GRC/Privacy nightmare and I am happy to not be a user of this any more :)
It's Ukraine. Are you aware of the "banks' debt collectors"? They had thugs knocking on your door (and your face) for an overdue loan payment; they would _of course_ use violence/torture to extract information.
Fun fact, I was internal auditor in a bank (I will not specify the year(s) for safety/privacy). We did the due diligence and ended up buying a Ukrainian bank. Part of the 'collections' was really to smash people's faces. Believe it or not. But sure.. you know best.
Yup, I feel like Ukraine has been trying to break away from the society is a meat grinder culture of Russia for a while and the war has made if clear who's on what side locally.
My only qualm with them is their not so great support for gay people, but then during the war ofc the party line is now they love their gay soldiers. Would have been nice to see more action around that beforehand but I get it. Even other first world countries still have plenty of problems as a gay person, especially gay men.
I remember Steve Gibson saying some years back that the only reason USA doesn't (cyber-)'attack' Russia's train infra is the inability to 'hide the traces' of the attack, and it would be 'easily' attributed/mapped back to the USA causing (political) issues. Well, Ukraine doesn't have 'that' challenge.
On the other hand (and I'm not defending a drone company), anyone that has a business should know by now that ransomware (with our without deletion) is a real thing, and it's not an 'if' question, it's a 'when' question.
I have never worked with/for a Russian company, so it would be interesting to hear/read from someone who has, how 'well organized' are they? GRC-wise. Assuming that someone would run the COBIT framework on them (Russian companies), would the 'average' be 'ok' or it's a big mess (kinda like working for an EU company in early 00's)?
> I remember Steve Gibson saying some years back that the only reason USA doesn't (cyber-)'attack' Russia's train infra is the inability to 'hide the traces' of the attack
This is not a real reason. This explanation hides the real reason: Russia is a valuable geopolitical partner for USA. Regarless who are in power in USA - all presidents tried to make deals/contacts with Russia.
There is no value for USA in getting Russia loose this war, have internal instability or split in 20-ish national states.
USA wins more from russia being as it is today with all it blood, suffering and hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by the regime thrive for survival.
Actually USA are afraid to push too much to cause internal issues in Russia. And russian ruling class knows that.
I guess another reason is that there isn't too much IT infrastructure that Russian trains depend on.
There are ticket sales systems for people being transported, but much is freight trains, and if there was an easy way to disrupt that, you can be sure that Ukraine would've done it by now, because the Russian military heavily depends on rail-based supplies.
I did work for a Russian financial multinational just before COVID-19, as a native Russian speaker, and it was a free-for-all mess interally. The IT side had a load-bearing, old-school sysadmin type with a personality for heroics.
I fear that only blackmail-able people with the potential to win elections, get the support, so that they are beholden to someone who ultimately gives them the job (e.g. funding their campaign) and has to return the favor x10 when elected, so promises go out the window and new reality sets in.