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In a better world, disparagement would not legally refer to the dissemination of factual accounts.

In such a world it would only add to penalties for proven libel.

It’s a pretty simple concept: if the truth hurts, you’ve got no one but yourself to blame.

NDAs theoretically should never be able to paper over illegal actions. In a similar vein, non disparagement clauses should not be able to paper over the publication of legitimate insider experience of terrible — even if legal — behavior.


Can you clarify what you mean? The linked website makes it seem that the majority MEPs of the supporting countries are on board. Are all of the (listed as) supporting countries currently under conservative governments?

The majority of the MEPs are not onboard mandatory scanning, otherwise that would've been passed already.

The site is conflating mandatory scanning with voluntary scanning (status quo). The upcoming vote is about continuing the voluntary scanning (which would otherwise expire).


The "voluntary" scanning is still mass surveillance of private messages. We as technologist tend to rely on technical methods to protect our private data. But non-technical people should also enjoy confidential communication, even if they don't actively protect their conversations.

> voluntary scanning

What is that? A setting in OS?


Service could voluntary opt-out, like Pavel Durov did.

To quote the banner on said website:

> The Conservatives (EPP) are attempting to force a new vote on Thursday (26th), seeking to reverse Parliament's NO on indiscriminate scanning.

The vote itself is being forced by the EPP. This article by an MEP has more info: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/the-battle-over-chat-contro...


This does not mean that only EPP supports the bill, though.

No, but it does mean the attempt is attributable to them.

There are two elements to the EU

The Council, which is headed by the government of each member state in equal measure - similar to the Senate in the US

And Parliament, which are directly elected by the people, with each member state having representitives in proportion to their population, so Germany has far more than Ireland. This is similar to Congress.

Now this site says Germany supports it, but then says that MEPS

> 49 oppose, 47 in favor (45 confirmed, 2 presumed based on government stance)

I would thus infer that the "most member states" refer to the national governments (that were elected by their population) position and not the direct MEP position.

However a quick look at the json it's loading and I can't see

Now as the parliament has blocked it, a grouping, the "EPP" (Think Ronald Reagan type republicans) is trying to use their influence to bring it back to a vote.

> "The Conservatives (EPP) are attempting to force a new vote on Thursday (26th), seeking to reverse Parliament's NO on indiscriminate scanning. This is a direct attack on democracy and blatant disregard for your right to privacy."


Is that fair? Ireland should surely have a say the same way Germany does in parliament too, if it's affecting Ireland just as much. If one considers countries as units.

That's the whole idea, the parliament doesn't.

The Council is the representation of the countries. The Parliament of the people.


I get it.. my question wasn't exactly what I meant to ask. I meant isn't there some kind of compensating factor. So that a country with a 100 million doesn't completely and utterly outshine a small country of 4 million, even in the parliament?

Or is the idea that the Council is sufficient to achieve this?


I actually think the Council is more than sufficient to achieve this, we kind of see the opposite problem way more.

Hungary, a country of 9M people, keeps vetoing stuff the rest of the Union wants to do. 450M people, held back by the despot ruling over a tiny fraction of them.


Is it fair that California has more congresspeople than North Dakota?

Parliament is the unit which represent the people

Council (which is 1 country 1 vote) is what represents the countries.


Yes it's fair that it has more to a degree, but North Dakota can't have literally proportional since it will completely swallowed up on Congress. How does this work in the US?

Why shouldn't it be swallowed up? Why should a persons vote in North Dakota be much more powerful than one in California?

Because if you consider each state to be a "country"... these states didn't sign up so that they could be swallowed up by another state having a very high population growth.

That said, California is generating more GDP so obviously I'm not arguing that they should be completely equally represented 1:1


Considering that Steve Jobs came with NeXT, the general consensus has been that their recovery would not have been nearly as significant.

The real what-if for me is pondering what might have been had HP and other vendors not caved to the Wintel cartel in abandoning their plans to include BeOS as a preinstalled OEM option. Microsoft was sued by Be in civil court and Be won their case, but it was too little too late.


Jobs worked on NeXT and Jean-Louis Gassée was working on Be. Gassée had brought the world the Macintosh Portable and the IIfx, and he started the Newton project which had the effect of keep ARM alive.

When Gassée left Apple, he took many of Apple's best with him. If we want to know what Apple would have looked like under Gassée, I think it's easier to look at how many products he killed. Much of Apple's leadership was trying to force budget computers like the PC industry was building. Gassée would have none of it. He was focused on exceptionally good hardware married to exceptionally good software, knew the handheld devices would be vital in the future, but he didn't like boring things. I imagine that Apple built around Be would have delivered many of the same things, but wouldn't have become just plain brushed aluminum everywhere.

The curious part would have been the OS. BeOS and NeXT are wildly different.


It may be interesting to note: according to the prices on Amazon for books that are out of print in mass market format, there is a significant demand among fans of the form factor.

I used to prefer trades but have gone all in on mass market editions. They just feel better in my hands, especially larger volumes. Plus I can stuff it in a coat pocket on my way out the door.

And FWIW, I’ve found that the “printed by Amazon” editions have actually been higher quality than recent offsets. For example, the newest editions of Hitchiker’s Guide seem to have been laid out without any regard to the inner margin. It’s fiddly to read the first word on each line.

Meanwhile the Star Wars Legends mass markets fulfilled by Amazon in Italy and France have thicker, brighter, paper and clean margins.

For the mass market format, I have to take what I can get, and I’m glad that there are still reasonably priced editions available.


The Saturn was the bestselling Sega console in the Japanese market by a wide margin, so I’m not convinced that SoJ was the party pushing for a new console.


They wanted a console they could write a full-3D Sonic game for, the Saturn couldn't quite do such a game justice.


Where can I read this certainty of destroyed biodiversity? That sounds like an extremely unsupported position, considering that the Amazon has the highest rates of biodiversity today.

The continued belittling of indigenous forestry practices contributes to out of control wildfires.



> The forest itself, paleo-scientists of all stripes say, is much more domesticated than previously thought.

This implies that the biodiversity is a result of (or, at the very least, supported by) the indigenous practices, which is a far cry from your claim that biodiversity suffered from those practices.


have you actually read anything? indigenous were pointed as responsibles for cultivating dominant species which had an impact and shaped the flora. the last website i published is a whole book showing how its rich biodiversity happened over multi million year processes. it also points out the impact on the "funneling" of species indigenous occupations had

i still think despite their impact, they were exemplar compared to what we had on the rest of the world (but i never studied Asia). but it's not like they were magicians that had no impact on anything and lived in complete synergy with nature by increasing biodiversity. and if you think cultivating biological dominant species across a forest has no impact i suggest you to research on the many examples of alien flora effects on various ecosystem on modernity or even try to throw some Hawaiian Baby Woodrose somewhere out their native land to check how much these species take over anothers. they probably killed and reduced species expression to settle themselves there. but cest la vie. living has an impact after all


You said certainty but now you say probably. Which is it?

I never claimed that they had no impact, but it is clear that the impact tended towards neutral to positive because: a) the forest was still there; and b) it had the higher rate of biodiversity in the world.

Indigenous burns in California are recognized as being a net positive for the old growth forests and the biodiversity within. It doesn’t take a lot to extrapolate that the same was true in the Amazon.


To state it a different way: yes, of course and without doubt their very presence affected biodiversity.

But you were talking about their practices, which tended towards custodial over exploitative. And overall these practices clearly supported biodiversity as a whole, otherwise we wouldn’t note the biodiversity of this region as anything special (see again the quote I took from your first article).

I apologize anyway for my slightly combative tone. I appreciate the resources you shared even if I haven’t had time to absorb them in full yet.


i'm just typing the way i de-romanticize them. we don't know much about their culture nor how much effected Amazon's biodiversity. what if it had twice the amount of species before their extensive practice of growing hyper dominant species? 11,000 years of human settlement on a land that evolved for millions of years in various separated isles that later got together via geologic events (thus the rich biodiversity of the region) can have a great impact

from the very 1° comment i made i typed a (probably) when i touched this subject. if Europeans took indigenous knowledge to their land, maybe Europe forests wouldn't be ripped out. maybe it wouldn't work because their ecosystem. who knows. i'm not comparing indigenous people to anyone, i'm just trying to reflect they weren't magic saints of the forest as people portray. as a vegan i also dismiss a bunch of their living practices

also California has nothing to do with the Amazon. that land catches fires naturally by lightning. various places that this phenomena happens evolved to deal with it. have you ever been to Amazon? it's so humid. regions of "terra preta" (indigenous practice of making the soil fertile, which involves burning) allowed them to grow various stuff but again, they were into hyper dominant species not expanding the forest (i guess). and as far i researched, terra preta regions are less than 2% of the whole Amazon forest


Fair points and thank you for expanding.


If you aren’t reaping of sowing, your labor isn’t in the fields anyway.

People don’t understand that there are ebbs and flows to a farming life. There is always work to do but no one is out in the fields much unless it’s harvest or seeding times.


Many crops are not hands off. wheat chokes out weeds, but you need to weed the garden. You need to water crops in a drough - if you could get water (from a well or river). rice needs a lot of labor to manage water levels


Sniping means that bidders may have decided to put in a higher ceiling in order to avoid losing at the last second.

If there was never a worry about this, they could bring out (and decide) that ceiling only after being outbid.


The postmark must be on or before voting day. I cannot fathom how people have bought into this idea that they can be sent after the preliminary voting has happened.


A bedroom produced song versus a major-label, famous-studio song can have insane differences in price.

It’s always been a requirement to make it up in volume of spins. I don’t see how this is any different.


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