My mental model of a browser is the same as of any tool, as a hammer, purely defined by its technical capabilities to do a job, like to display a website and offer basic functionality like for saving a bookmark.
The very idea of an entity called "we", an anonymous and ever-changing cast of people managing "responsible defaults" and "simple tools to manage your data" and communicating it on their terms, making me try and keep up, is alien to this idea. They lay their hands on our data; want to know how exactly? Follow several links to this page:
The page in its tone trivializes the entire deal and is just another EULA and as such could just as well be presented in a small textbox in all-caps. It's more than the average user will ever read, and way too vague anyway.
"Be informed about what data we process about you, why and who it’s shared with (that’s this Notice!)" they say, but
...how about you show the entire dataset compiled about any user with information who is using it and for what exactly (excluding truly secret law enforcement requests). Everyone involved would be mortified with shame.
I consider a browser as similar as a complicated curl with GUI. Therefore:
- when I see that browser does not allow playing video in the background (youtube on mobile phones)
- when my browser disallows me blocking certain things
- when my browser prevents me from taking screenshot of things I can see on it
... it really angers me, as I feel betrayed. Of course, nowadays, web applications tend to get complicated and hide everything behind 'obscurity-security'; however, this should still be code that is a guest on my device, not me being a guest on their device running their code. I consider it extremely impolite behaviour.
You can actually play YouTube in the background with Firefox on Android. There is two ways,
1. Put the video in full screen mode and then press the system home button, this enabled PiP.
2. Start the video, click onto another tab in Firefox (this will pause the video) but then with that second tab active, open the tab switcher and press the play button beside the other tab with the video. Then it will play in the background until you interact with the tab again.
> - when I see that browser does not allow playing video in the background (youtube on mobile phones)
The browser supports it just fine. Youtube itself disables that functionality (to try to push you to Youtube Premium). You can install an addon from the recommended addons to fix that.
> - when my browser disallows me blocking certain things
The only thing I remember Firefox blocking from meddling with is pages like mozilla.org and their addon store. Which, for security reasons, makes a lot of sense.
> - when my browser prevents me from taking screenshot of things I can see on it
That's a setting, though, isn't it? Unless you mean the optional DRM support Firefox has. You can disable that permanently if you don't like it, though you won't be able to visit many DRM-based websites. I've configured my browser to request permission before playing DRM based content and you'll be surprised how often the permission prompt pops up on websites that host normal (non-TV) media.
Have you tried to watch YouTube in Chrome on android? It will turn off once switched to a other app or tab and it can be prevented. Prevented only on Firefox (with add-on). While other web pages like sound cloud will still play in background.
The only reason YouTube premium's background playing is possible as an additional feature are the limitations imposed by the Google company on the android and Chrome themselves. In other words Google built up the "open source" environment to make this exactly possible. They limited us from our phones and now they are selling features that never have been features - they were normal behaviour
If only free and enlightened individuals could, through their choices in a market in which everything is allowed, spawn such a diverse set of solutions, or allow true self-help, that every need is met...
...rather than everything consolidating under a few big players who leave few realistic alternatives, who confront users and customers with conflicting and hard to identify or quantify problems. There might just be 3 unreconcilable goals like:
- not allowing Google/Chrome to own the internet outright
- have privacy for oneself and others who don't "opt out"
- have a browser that is established enough to work on most websites
and you can't tell me what browser to use.
The same issue is present almost everywhere you look: All products have such massive permutations of health, energy, waste, sustainability, ethicical and economical parameters that making a decision is almost impossible for any well-informed individual, let alone for enough people to steer change in any meaningful way.
If you maintaing this sort of "Libertarian" view, make sure you're not inadvertendly serve the interest of corporations that would like to not be criticized nor regulated.
Mozilla needs to pay their developers. Donations alone don't cover the wages. The way money is divided is rather suboptimal at the moment in my opinion, but most of that money comes from Google, which may be ruled illegal in the coming months if the antitrust case against Google pans out well, leaving a hole where 86% of Mozilla's funding used to be. They _need_ to make money.
Developing browsers is very expensive. Currently, the only people doing that are Google+Microsoft (Blink), the megacorps in it for the ad money, Apple, in it for their own independence, and Mozilla, trying to be a third party. Forks are made constantly by individuals or small teams, and are often lagging behind in quality, maintenance, and security; Palemoon simply cannot keep up with Firefox, KHTML is effectively broken, and even the maintained Gnome fork of WebKit has tons of issues that make it hard to use it as a daily driver.
Everyone wants a super duper privacy friendly browser that only does browser things and preferably only works on their personal requirements, but nobody wants to actually spend time and money to develop one. I hope Ladybird turns out well, or maybe Servo will get revived into a functional browser, but how those browsers will be developed and distributed is entirely up to those browser vendors.
You can use whatever browser you like, but unless you're paying a significant sum for it or are part of the dev team, you'll have to succumb to the terms under which the browser is made available. I'd rather have parties like Mozilla funded by donations or independent government funds than by big tech, but nobody is willing to spend the millions necessary to catch up to Chrome just yet.
> but unless you're paying a significant sum for it
In fact, zero donations cover wages, and AFAIK nobody is paying for it, because Mozilla does not provide any way for users to give money to Firefox. You can't blame users for not taking an option that was never given.
I think in general, no major liability issue will come up:
- if everyone is doing it, you can't really fault anyone
- on some level we are, or will be, kinda dependent on that AI and opting out will probably be made unpleasant via dark patterns as usual
- no pushback to every piece of software, including at the operating system level, slurping all the keystrokes and data, let alone the data that's already in the cloud
- big tech knows everything about us but to my surprise no major public leak has happened, i.e. one where you really can see your neighbor's private data without buying leaked data from someone on the dark web or wherever
- things are moving too fast, and you don't know if you can afford to have your programmers not use tomorrow's AI, for example, so your "bans" will have to be soft etc., this limits the potential pushback and outrage
While we're bashing economics, something I truly miss is that no new high level economic systems are being discussed prominently. As important as fusion in physics or cancer treatment in medicine, we badly need to explore and discuss something beyond the heavily ideologized systems of capitalism, communism and feed this to politics to communicate these potential options to the voters. Say, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism, which is old and half forgotten. It appears as economics is kind of muted, students and professors beholden to an ideology themselves or feeling the need to appease potential employers who are usually politicized institutions with no room for intellectual curiosity. What else remains in terms of practical economics besides determining the inflation rate (oops, that one is also politicized)?
People love to talk about ideology, but is what what economics should be about? Every major economy on the planet is a mixed economy. In China, government expenditure and revenue are 33.1% and 25.5% of GDP respectively. In the US, the corresponding percentages are 38.5% and 32.9%. Neither totally free markets nor planned economies seem to work, and empirical research obliges economists to look at the economies we actually have.
I think Piketty does kind of do what you're talking about -- and though he makes a good case, I think when he argues for concepts like universal inheritance, that's more an act of political advocacy than economic scholarship. It's for the economist qua economist to study/analyze the conditions under which the rich get richer, or where class mobility decreases, etc -- but it's up to people and governments to choose what they want society to look like.
My impression is that economics is like voting. We have a dozen different alternative structures that aim to fix many of the most obvious issues from centuries of use. but no government system has an incentive to shake things up to such a degree.
We have a gigantic broken window, but the house still works. And ofc my government system has generally had a reactionary response rather than a preventative one; nothing gets done until it's too late and many people die.
I think access to that much capital as assess to strategic resource, not as wealth for individuals.
At that level of wealth, it doesn't make sense to think about fancy cars and mansions and living an extravagant and luxurious lifestyle. At that point, you got it made.
However, if you're talking about building something meaningful, that's a different matter entirely. That requires far more capitals than what is required to sustain a person indefinitely. There are shows that I would love to revive and reboot, such as Stargate. There are researches I want to do or fund, such as research into 3D printing, or do long term research grants so that people can do meaningful work.
The money's not for living. It's for projects. If your personal projects don't require that much money, you can always give it away to fund other people's projects.
I agree with you that great wealth can be used to fund meaningful research and development. Unfortunately, as we have seen, great wealth is used to distort society to reinforce their ability to hold onto wealth.
I was commenting on people bemoaning about billionaires being too rich, with the implication that billionaires shouldn't ever need that much money.
I don't necessarily agree with the idea of cutting basic research programs and how it's actually structured(short termism, prioritizing novel results over building solid foundation, etc).
Somehow people making these sort of hypotheticals about billionaires spending or dispersing their money always make a mistake like this.
"Jeff Bezos has 300 billion dollars. There are 300 million people in America, so he could give everybody a million dollars."
For fun, calculate how long the billionaires of America could fund America's social programs if they were taxed at 100%. If you ask people this, the off-the-cusp estimates are usually something like a thousand years, a century, some huge number like that...
Sure but those hypotheticals are just poorly thought out ways to visualize the imbalance. Another way to do it would be saying "Jeff Bezos has 300 billion dollars, that is 300 thousand millions. There are 300 million people in America, so $1000 has been taken out of every American's share of the national wealth and reserved exclusively for Jeff Bezos". Repeat that for every billionaire in the US and you should be able to demonstrate quite the imbalance.
Of course that assumes you think Earth's and society's (or at least the US's and Americans') resources should exist for all humans (or Americans) and the ideal balance would be based on as little as one needs and as much as one can contribute, i.e. literally how early human communities operated and how human communities still often operate outside economical contexts (e.g. after a natural disaster). You can say that model doesn't scale but I don't see a good argument for why that should be a reason to use a completely different model unless you're literally among the few people it disproportionately benefits (if you ignore how ruinous it usually is to them too at a human and interpersonal level because of how much it alienates them from almost anyone else around them).
That’s also misusing maths though because Amazon is a global company so really you should divide by 8 billion or at least a couple of billion.
As a Brit I think I’ve derived significantly more than $1000 in value through Amazon’s existence as compared with the status quo beforehand, and that’s exclusively counting the shopping part and not anything else they do. You can ask the question about whether it would have happened anyway in a communist paradise or whether Bezos gets the correct percentage of the reward but I mean, it actually is a very useful thing.
Similarly with Apple and Google and so on. These companies make things that people for the most part choose to use.
This whole argument also assumes there is something called "Americas National Wealth" and that its a zero sum game where there is x dollars to be distributed around to everybody.
Capitalism is not a zero sum game, and people can choose to turn effort into wealth or they can choose to sit around and do nothing.
Yeah. I feel as if there's a (small, but growing?) group of people out there who just sort of see, ok, well, everyone isn't as well off as I think they should be, so those who are doing well must just be hoarding everything. Which really just doesn't make sense at all.
It's usually based on nothing other than pure vibes.
It could theoretically be true if e.g. some billionaire just decided to buy up a load of houses and leave them empty just to piss people off, but whilst theoretically they probably could do this (e.g. if I back of the envelope it, Elon actually has enough net worth to offer everyone in my hometown double the market value of their house and then just leave them to rot without even renting them out), no-one actually does.
Except he does not. His assets are valued at 400B, provided that he pinky swears not to try to actually sell them, in which case they will be worth much, much less.
He can only share his shares and assets at 400B if the market thinks they're worth 400B, and if there are enough buyers for all 400B. And once he starts selling, the market might re-evaluate the worth of the shares.
Isn't Twitter a good counterpoint? I vaguely recall Musk had a hard time liquidating shares to buy it?
That is the meaning of what I call orderly liquidation. Sales are usually structured in order not to crash the market.
That being said, just because you need to structure a big sale does not mean it can not be done, or that you can not leverage your asset to have cash available at short notice. For instance, a loan with your actions as collateral will let you structure your divestment over years for a very moderate price.
Again, what I’m describing is not science fiction, it’s litterally what happened with twitter.
Imo it would be a harder challenge to find valuable stuff to buy than to divest orderly.
> Isn't Twitter a good counterpoint? I vaguely recall Musk had a hard time liquidating shares to buy it?
From what I remember, the issue was more along the lines of him making an offer without thinking it would be accepted, and then be under the gun because he was not prepared. Even then, he eventually found a reasonable financing scheme.
Selling a billion dollars of amazon via blocks etc with limited market impact? Probably doable if not super cheap.
3-400b? No way. There isn't capacity, you would cause a massive dip in prices. The timelines you would have to exit over would be very long, so disclosure also causes market reaction.
Loans work to an extent, but you get risk adjusted and eg 1bn of amazon stock is pretty low risk whilst 100bn is high risk. Concentration/size vs market cap and adv matter.
You can do it all, at a price, but it would be a lot lower than the current stock price for obvious reasons
If Bezos declared he was selling all his amazon stock - the market would react badly. Both due to the scale of inventory and the implications of his alignment and investment.
Dimon sold some stock and it was front page news, and it wasn't that much.
I'm pretty sure that he didn't liquidate $50bn in stock to get the money for buying twitter. (That $50bn includes the 20% capital gains tax, that leaves $40bn in cash)
The (US) economic system isn't economics, anymore than the (US) political system is political science. You're conflating the instance of one particular system with the study of those systems. You're also confusing economists with actual representatives who pass laws. Might as well blame climatologists for climate change.
This is not true and is a very common misunderstanding of modern wealth.
Elon Musk owns hundreds of billions worth of stock.
First, the value of those stocks varies from day to day. He can gain or lose billions of dollars in "net worth" on any given business day.
Second, he is not free to sell that stock however and whenever he wants; he has to get approval from the boards of his various companies and is limited in the timing and amounts he can sell. Additionally, selling large amounts of stock causes the price to drop, AND dilutes his ownership in, and therefore control of, those companies.
I think a lot of people have this stupid idea of Scrooge McDuck swimming in pool of cash, when they think about billionaires. That's not how it works, for most billionaires (I'm not sure about middle eastern oil royalty).
In reality, businessman billionaires have most of their wealth in stock, and it is not liquid, and they borrow against the stock (i.e. use the stock as collateral for personal loans) and sell small percentages of it to finance their lifestyles.
If you created a company, and it became wildly successful, and it was publicly traded, who should "own" the company? Should you be forced to divest, and therefore cede control to people who had no involvement in the company's initial success? Is that good for founders or for companies? How does it benefit society?
Also note that profitability influences stock price, so taking away control from the people who made a company profitable, has a high likelihood of making the company less profitable, which in turn will almost certainly result in each stockholder becoming poorer. Remember that most stockholders aren't Elon Musks, they're John Q. Publics with a 401(k).
> Also note that profitability influences stock price, so taking away control from the people who made a company profitable, has a high likelihood of making the company less profitable, which in turn will almost certainly result in each stockholder becoming poorer.
You're looking at the world as a poor person. If you had Elon's brilliance you'd probably quit after you made $5 million dollars or so and definitely after you sold Zip2 back in the 1990s and spent the rest of your life on the beach. The only reason he's still working as hard as he does is not because he wants to spend that on himself. He wants the glory of going to Mars and having a positive impact on humanity and that requires control of the activities of large companies like SpaceX, etc. which requires ownership stakes in those companies that are valued in the billions.
One of the reasons that he campaigned so hard for Trump is that Kamala's proposed wealth taxes on unrealized capital gains were going to take his companies from him and he'd have to sell to Vanguard or Blackrock, who would give control of the companies to Boeing-tier mediocrity which would mean that we'd never get to Mars. There have been so many companies where the founders sold out and retired because they had enough money and they got bought by big conglomerates who destroyed those companies with mediocre management and neglect. This is the great thing about Elon, he just keeps building and leveraging all that money to create bigger and bigger companies using his creativity and management ability to achieve his goal of launching an era of space exploration.
It's the most likely interpretation toe because it fits the known facts.
Ungenerous interpretations don't make sense and don't fit the known facts.
Musk isn't hiding his intentions. He's blasting them. He wants to make humans an interplanetary species. He wants his name to be associated with that for millennia. I don't see anything wrong with that and have trouble understanding why people hate him souch for it.
- his work pracices at all his companies are that of an imbecile manbaby. There are very public reports of this for Tesla and SpaceX, at the very least.
- his "hyperloop" plan delayed a proper trans-state transportation system for a decade+
- he proceeded to further ruin twitter and be completely contradictory on his whole "free speech" advocation
- he literally tried to buy votes for a national US election. Then admitted his lottery was never a fair lottery (i.e. fraud). Pretty much knowing any lawsuits after the election was a cost to do business.
- and his punishment? being a part of a stupidly named cabinet organization that will probably do the opposite of its stated goals, given his history.
Those are just off the top of my head.
What reasons do I have to like Musk? Because he didn't screw up SpaceX as hard as NASA was screwed by the federal government? That he was first to market for American EVs (because US was too busy defending oil and ignoring that other countries were pushing ahead)?
Some people don't want to be an interplanetary species at the expense of more urgent priorities; to them it isn't compelling that an ambitious man wants to immortalize himself using concepts from the science fiction of his childhood
It ain't deep. He wants to influence American policty to get more money for whatever personal ideals he has. This isn't mind reading so much as reflecting on his actions from this year alone.
> He wants to make humans an interplanetary species.
Sure, that's one of the things he wants to do. But his actions don't demonstrate that this is the primary thing he wants to do.
You can't build a sustainable colony on Mars without establishing a sustainable supply line until it reaches self-sustainability. Given what we know about Mars at this point, we're easily centuries away from achieving self-sustainability on Mars even if we fully committed to this goal right away. This means it's not just a cool tech problem, it's a logistics problem and logistics are boring. There's a reason Musk has repeatedly said he merely wants to make it possible to colonize Mars, not that he wants to do it. He's also smart enough that he doesn't want to go there himself because he knows it would mean dying in a barren wasteland even in the best of cases. Musk doesn't want to do the digging, he wants to sell the shovels.
If we want to build up the supply lines to colonize Mars, we at the very least need not just cool space tech but also boring stuff like a permanent supply base on the moon. But the moon has become boring ever since the end of the Space Race and building a supply post on the moon is - again - a boring logistics problem first, not a cool space tech problem. And because it's boring, it's far easier to see the big problems with it (all of which not only hold true for Mars but also do so to a much greater scale): any supply lines you build to the moon require supply lines on Earth first.
If you want sustainable supply lines in space, you have to build sustainable supply lines on Earth. And to have sustainable supply lines on Earth for space, you need a sustainable source of surplus resources. And even if we ignore the social implications of generating such "surplus" when millions live in abject poverty, this can only work if we prevent climate change from spiraling further out of control because it's difficult to run a business when the economy has collapsed and even more difficult to get work done when all the workers keep dying (presumably dying consumers are a smaller issue if we only consider valuations not revenue).
Tesla initially produced four reasonably mass market EVs but the most Musk contributed to them personally concept-wise was the childish naming scheme to spell out "S3XY". This was followed by an electric semi that is largely forgotten after the initial hype and the Cybertruck which literally isn't considered road-safe in most countries and hardly qualifies as "mass market". Despite promising FSD for years, the best Tesla has demonstrated since were robotaxi concept cars that again don't seem to have been designed with mass market use in mind. As for FSD and robotics: again Tesla hasn't yet demonstrated any ability to come anywhere near Musk's promises. So contrary to the popular narrative Tesla is not "building an EV future" - not that it would be helping address climate change even if it were because that would require a focus on mass transport.
Which brings us to the next thing: the Boring company. Again Musk's narrative sold this as an important step in preparing for Mars because if water is underground on Mars we'll need a lot of tunnels but the company is best known for its many projects announced and subsequently cancelled or abandoned across the US - and the Las Vegas "Loop" which is a claustrophobic underground shuttle service with gamer lights and mostly exists because Elon Musk hyped the idea of a (high speed vacuum tunnel) "Hyperloop" to - and it's worth pointing out that he has literally admitted as much since - preempt plans to build a public highspeed rail system.
What else was part of the narrative? Oh, right: SolarCity. Again Musk bought a company and claimed it was part of a plan to colonize Mars because we don't have fossil fuels on Mars so certainly the future must be solar - and of course those Tesla Superchargers need to be charged somehow, too. The company was eventually folded into Tesla (as Tesla Energy) and has shifted from mass market solar panels to making most of its revenue from batteries and selling primarily to big customers.
SpaceX at least largely does what it says on the tin if you ignore that it mostly still exists because the US government all but abandoned direct investments in space travel and SpaceX managed to collect a number of lucrative government contracts by controlling a de-facto monopoly position. Starlink also mostly seems to exist to exert an uncomfortable amount of political power over the governments that have bought into it (as the Ukrainians had to find out the hard way).
Elon Musk has an almost obsessive hyperfixation on the letter X and the idea of colonizing Mars, yes - he's autistic. But that doesn't mean everything he does he does in service of that goal. It doesn't even mean he actively contributes towards that goal in a meaningful or well thought out manner. It doesn't explain why he decided to father an uncomfortable number of children with an even more uncomfortable selection of partners (especially when it comes to business partners and employees) or why he's extremely selective in which token child he decides to shower with praise and attention (if not his own then at least in public appearances). It doesn't explain why he actively sabotages more climate friendly public mass transit projects to favor unsustainable individualized transport deliberately designed in such a way it can not be accessible to most. It doesn't explain why he decided to make a great show of "leaving the left" and presenting himself as "anti-woke" just in time when a big hit piece on him was about to be published because of his inappropriate behavior toward women. Etc etc. None of that logically follows from the goal of making humans an interplanetary species except in the most trivial of ways (i.e. stranding a person on Mars would technically make humans an interplanetary species for as long as that person survives).
The hate (if you just want to lump all criticism or distate into that label) Elon Musk gets is not "because he wants to make humans an interplanetary species", he gets it for the things he does. And in many cases what he does is actively damaging to his stated goal.
You're still assuming having a "primary goal" means one's actions have to be aligned with achieving that goal.
I didn't say "making mankind an interplanetary species" isn't his primary goal, I said that it's not the primary thing he wants to do. What he seems to want to do is be rich, father an absurd number of children with different women and be cheered on and celebrated by his fans and sycophants. He literally bought Twitter on a whim because he liked the attention he got there. He's obsessed with appearing "cool" ever since people called him "real life Tony Stark" and he let it get to his head even though his popularity massively took a nosedive shortly after.
Yeah, all his antics in buying/posting on Twitter and his pushing of the Cybertruck, BS androids, "hyperloop" etc are totally part of a grand mission in the service of mankind, and not the acts of an obsessive, socially mal-adjusted narcissist.
Gwynne Shotwell is more responsible for SpaceX's operational success than Elon will ever be, she's clearly done a great job of managing up and letting him take the "glory" he so desperately yearns for, but all he really provided was the initial vision and money. Not to understate that contribution, but his supposed "brilliance" is pure marketing. We've seen what happens we he actually gets meaningful operational control of a company (Twitter) and a product (Cybertruck), and it isn't good.
We've already sent probes to Mars. There's no reason to send people other than to show we can. It's extremely uninhabitable...like Antarctica is a paradise in comparison with water, air, and a lack of radiation. We have nowhere near the technology to terraform Mars either. I guess you could dig someone a cave and send them some nuclear batteries and a bunch of prepackaged food, but what's the point?
Elon is an oligarch plain and simple. SpaceX is impressive, and I'm a big fan of NASA's research, but let's look past the marketing of him trying to save the human species or whatever.
I do think humanity may have to settle another world (or move to a post-biological existence where we can just park our satellite brains around a star for energy), but this is going to take a lot of scientific advancement over many centuries. Elon's plan would make a lot more sense if Mars was an Earth 2.0 and we just needed to move a bunch of people there, but it's not and even if we do find something really close to Earth with JWST, it would take centuries to get there. In short, our best approach is to save the planet we already have and continue funding scientific research.
> There's no reason to send people other than to show we can.
That is true for lots of other things. What's the point of building the Taj Mahal? What's the point of running a marathon? What's the point of getting the world record for the longest time spent underwater? Just to show that we can.
> Elon's plan would make a lot more sense if Mars was an Earth 2.0 and we just needed to move a bunch of people there, but it's not and even if we do find something really close to Earth with JWST, it would take centuries to get there.
I agree that we probably won't be able to have a viable Mars colony in our lifetime. However, I do think that the pursuit of that goal will result in lots of useful inventions; just look at what SpaceX has accomplished already.
Making a reusable rocket is not the same thing as a sustainable settlement in a hostile environment. I mean sure ...why not other than it's a huge waste of resources.
Musk aside, I think there is huge value in knowing how to sustain human life indefinitely without the earth. In fact, I think its inevitable that humans will need to leave earth at some point in our future.
It may simply be as a result of population and overcrowding, it may be to flee war and persecution. I think there is a small chance we have already made changes to our atmosphere that make life here incompatible with humans.
Its possible that within just a few hundred years, humans need to live entirely within climate controlled environments. If I had Musk level money I would be working on this now.
it may be a hot take, but yes. A lot of humanity has indeed been ways to show off how big someone's dick is, or as a dick measuring contest.
The moonlanding was an amazing but ultimately useless landmark in the grand scheme of things. Very little of the tech used back then is useful for a practical space supply line. The ability to launch out of our atmosphere and later put sattelites into orbit was 90% of the worth of such resarch 60 years later.
We've already sent probes to Mars. There's no reason to send people other than to show we can. It's extremely uninhabitable...like Antarctica is a paradise in comparison with water, air, and a lack of radiation. We have nowhere near the technology to terraform Mars either. I guess you could dig someone a cave and send them some nuclear batteries and a bunch of prepackaged food, but what's the point?
People always look at this with hard nosed pragmatism. That's the wrong lens to view Space colonization. It's a vision and a dream.
In answer to your question, it is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how much money musk has, or you have, or bezos has, or the government has. What matters is where that money is invested.
If musk was using his money to bang hookers on solid gold yachts, fine, complain about it. But he isn't. He doesn't even own a house.
Stop worrying about another man's dollar and start worrying about being a better and less covetous person.
Elon is clearly using his fortune to enact wide scale societal change. He's currently chilling in the president-elect's house and chatting with foreign leaders. How Elon spends his money shouldn't be my problem, but he's dead set on making it that.
he apparently has a personal axe to grind against transgenders thanks to his daughter. he's also placed himself in charge of some kind of widespread government defunding program with decreased regulations for his businesses at the top of the agenda.
well you're making a horrible argument of it. All you seem to be doing is saying "he's doing good things" and you dismiss any disagreement with "well what do you think he's doing?" with no further discussion.
Musk is a great argument that while the government is inefficient, they are still beholden to laws and people. Musk isn't. Tax him to high hell.
"unused memory is wasted memory" is a meme, technically true from a narrow point of view, but leading to bloat and encouraging bad practices. A little bit of care could shave off orders of magnitude of memory use, as well as performance, which could ultimately allow for cheaper computers, sustainable use of legacy hardware and keeping performance reserve for actual use. In reality, I the idea of increased efficiency by using more memory ultimately leads to software requiring that memory that used to be optional, and software not playing nice with other programs that also need space. Of course even with the idea to have everything ready in memory, software is not generally snappy these days, neither in starting up and loading even from fast SSDs and during trivial UI tasks. Performance and efficiency is also generally not something that programmers regularly seem to consider the way real Mechanical-, Civil-, or Electrical Engineers would when designing systems.
I accept trade-offs concerning development effort and time-to-market, however the phrase "Unused memory is wasted memory" does not seem appropriate for a developer who's proud if their work.
I think a lot of this comes down to semantics confusion for most people. Intuitively one would assume "unused" memory would be the inverse of "used" memory, with not everyone thinking what even counts as "used" or "unused" in the first place. In reality on macOS/Windows/Linux "used" memory is counted as a specific type of usage (e.g. processes/system/hardware), cached things are counted as cached, and there are multiple ways to refer to which "unused" portion you mean (e.g. free vs available) as well as anywhere between a half to several dozen ultra specific terms to break things up further with which probably don't matter in context.
Once you clear the semantics hurdle it's surprising how much people are in agreement that "used" should be optimised, "cached" should fill as much else as possible, and often having large amounts of "free" is generally a waste. The only remaining debate tends to center on how much cache really matters with a fast disk and what percentile of workload burst should you worry about how much "free" you have left after.
Is that generally how unused memory is used, and will this kind of "cache" be released if another application truly needs it to load actually vital things?
Using memory doesn't have to be about badly written software though, there's many legitimate use cases for actually using your memory to make your experience better.
My comment has not suggested that there were no legitimate cases for using more memory.
It's too easy, and happening too often on HN these days, to reply with a low-effort contrarian statement without engaging with the central point of the argument.
It appears that sentiments that downplay or dispute the health risks are growing in large social media bubbles, with strong effects on the real world. Efforts to push back on serving unhealthy food are undermined, doctors discouraged from discussing weight with their patients as a personal and sensitive issue; overweight models validate unhealthy body compositions. This surely has to please the food industry, which is as culpable as the tobacco industry in harming peoples health.
I would propose a concerted effort through mandatory levels of food quality that is served to the public (e.g. schools, hospitals), funded by a higher tax on sugary atrocities, limits on sale of sugary food and drinks to children, and an outright ban on any substance designed to create cravings.
I believe the "artificially cheap simple carbs" is a secondary effect, with the primary effect of making corn cheap due to national security reasons. So before removing the subsidies, you'd want to have a plan for managing that risk.
The subsidies predate the "great grain robbery" where farmers sold large stockpiles to the Russians, which helped Nixon secure election victory. Before that, as part of the New Deal, was the Agricultural Adjustment Act which literally paid farmers to destroy livestock and not use land in order to boost prices for farmers. Strictly speaking, I don't think this was a case of national security.
Today it's just a case of entrenched interests: large key midwestern farmers would stand to lose money, whether you have a tax or reduce subsidies. They stand to gain more by not mitigating obesity rates.
Mind you they could diversify away from corn. If consumers eat whole grains or meat instead of sugar, that's still money for farmers. But it would entail growing pains.
I think tradition is certainly part of it, but I think that take misses some important nuances. A few:
- agriculture isn't necessarily fungible. Land that is used for one product isn't immediately capable of being used for another, or at the same value (monetarily or calorically)
- A large part of corn production is used for feedstock. That means there would be systemic issues in the production of meat if it had major disruptions. That's another reason why you can't just swap corn for meat production.
- subsidies sometimes trade efficiency for stability. This isn't always a bad thing. A volatile market can make farmers lose their hat. A significant amount of farmers are generational, meaning there aren't a lot of people starting out unless they grew up farming.
- corn isn't just about food. Part of the national security element is fuel (ethanol). Again, recognizing the inefficiencies, this is more about stability. Other agricultural products can be used for fuel (e.g., soybeans for diesel) but the distribution of fuel needs and agricultural capacity is not in their favor.
- I'd put this in the "tradition" bucket but there are political concerns. Politicians have to place nice with places like Iowa because of how political primaries are structured.
> agriculture isn't necessarily fungible. Land that is used for one product isn't immediately capable of being used for another
Key word being "immediately". That's right, but substitutions do exist. Hence, growing pains.
> A large part of corn production is used for feedstock. That means there would be systemic issues in the production of meat if it had major disruptions. That's another reason why you can't just swap corn for meat production.
Globally, soybeans are more often used, and these can (and do) grow in the US. Notwithstanding, you can just keep growing corn without subsidy - meat prices would go up. That could be politically contentious, but less total meat consumption could lead to better health outcomes.
> subsidies sometimes trade efficiency for stability
Leaving aside the question of balance, pros and cons:
Farmer stability is not inherently contingent on corn subsidy. Even if we wanted to keep subsidies as a constant, you can subsidize something else.
> part of the national security element is fuel (ethanol)
This doesn't require subsidy. The US produces more than half of the world's ethanol fuel. Notwithstanding that, fossil fuel extraction has also grown through fracking. I don't see the security angle at all.
I think we disagree that soil is fungible for growing crops. Even if I were to steelman your stance, it still requires considerable inputs to do so. All of this ends up making food cost more.
Similarly, I think making HFCS more expensive isn't likely to make foods less calorically dense. What it will do is make them more expensive as manufacturers put use more expensive alternatives.
I do think your ethanol stance is a circular argument. The US produces a lot of ethanol because of the subsidies, so it doesn't make sense to point to that production level as a reason to get rid of subsidies. Fracking is a good counterpoint, but also a politically contentious one if your stance is that the US should ramp up fracking to offset agricultural subsidies.
I certainly agree that subsidies have inertia that's hard to overcome. (My favorite example is the alpaca subsidy that was implemented for warm-weather clothing for the Korean War that stayed on the books until the 1990s). I also agree they need to be tailored to the current environment.
The bulk of your point seems to be we can get rid of subsidies in exchange for higher and less stable food prices. Historically, our food is quite cheap today but I find the idea that the proposed solution to obesity is to make food more expensive not very palatable (ha). I personally don't think that is a good tradeoff because my position is it's calories and not HFCS that is the largest contributor to the obesity problem. My OP was not saying "keep subsidies" but rather "be aware of the systemic effects of getting rid of subsidies". I think there are lots of arguments to get rid of corn subsidies, but I find the obesity one pretty weak. So the simple solution of "just get rid of subsidies" will create all these negative consequences that need to be managed for something that isn't likely to move the needle much on obesity. That doesn't seem like a great tradeoff and I'd label it as one of those simple solutions that sounds great as a sound byte but isn't particularly pragmatic. Going back to the original point, if your goal is to make food more expensive to curb obesity, there are probably more straightforward and effective ways of doing so that don't have all those additional factors.
The only way that take makes sense to me is if you think there is something unique about HFCS that leads to obesity compared to other sweeteners when controlled for calories. I don't think the science supports this.
> I think we disagree that soil is fungible for growing crops. Even if I were to steelman your stance, it still requires considerable inputs to do so. All of this ends up making food cost more.
To transition, yes. This is an upfront cost that can be alleviated, food does not need to cost more after-the-fact. Trump haphazardly paid off farmers in his previous tenure, it happens.
> Similarly, I think making HFCS more expensive isn't likely to make foods less calorically dense. What it will do is make them more expensive as manufacturers put use more expensive alternatives.
That is the point, I think. Those particular foods are calorie-dense.
> so it doesn't make sense to point to that production level as a reason to get rid of subsidies.
Unless you think production levels would fall to pathetic levels on the global stage, and that this production-level is essential, I don't see why not.
> I find the idea that the proposed solution to obesity is to make food more expensive not very palatable (ha).
Specific foods, to be clear. Packaged products with added sugar would be affected. Meat does not have to be if the new policies account for it.
> it's calories and not HFCS that is the largest contributor to the obesity problem
non-satiating (nil fiber + protein) caloric-dense foods facilitate higher calorie consumption. Sugar is not the only vehicle for this, but it's part of the equation. Sugary drinks deliver lots of calories for very little satiety, for example. Other vectors are flour + fat + salt, fried foods.
I agree that "just get rid of subsidies" can be overly simplistic, but it belongs in the conversation. The point is that cheap and highly-available highly-promoted junk food creates a perverse incentive for consumers to eat more of it at the expense of their health. It's everywhere, including school cafeterias.
Any large-scale national solution invariably entails some kind of deterrence. Either junk food costs more, or is less available, or healthier alternatives are actively promoted and cheaper ($$$, I would throw education in this category too). Pick your poison.
Ostensibly, cutting spending would be more popular with voters in general than increasing taxes and spending. Also, falling tobacco smoking rates are a major success story which can be attributed primarily to sin tax (high prices), eliminating advertisement, and educating the masses.
>Unless you think production levels would fall to pathetic levels on the global stage, and that this production-level is essential, I don't see why not.
A few reasons: 1) again, it's partly a national security issue. Under crisis, "global supply" is a concern; just ask Germany after trying to turn away from Russian fuel supply 2) Infrastructure has a relatively large lead time; we can't just ramp up production on a whim. 3) It's odd that you point to global supply as the rationale while simultaneously advocating the largest global supplier severely reduce production. Again, that feels like circular logic. Ie "The US doesn't need to produce ethanol because the world has so much ethanol production." No, the world has so much ethanol production because the US produces a disproportionate amount. Remove the latter and the argument doesn't hold.
I don't think we disagree that making food more expensive can change eating habits. I think we disagree on the most effective vehicle for that.
Look at it this way: we both seem to agree that calories are the problem. Your argument hinges on sweeteners being a proxy for calories, and HFCS being a proxy for sweeteners, and agricultural corn being a proxy for HFCS. You're targeting something that is three levels of abstraction away from what you actually care about. My position is that it makes more sense to target what you're actually after: calories.
If your stance is getting rid of corn subsidies is administratively simple compared to targeting calories, I think I disagree mainly because of the administrative burden of all the other effects we've discussed.
I don't disagree that deterrence is part of an overall strategy. I'm simply pointing out that one should be wary of the tradeoffs. Policy is about prioritizing, and IMO there are likely more pragmatic approaches with less tradeoffs that need to be managed.
I'm not convinced of the strategic importance of ethanol in the grand scheme; the US produces more of it because the subsidy creates that incentive. Incentive structures can change, entrenchment just makes it less politically viable.
> You're targeting something that is three levels of abstraction away from what you actually care about. My position is that it makes more sense to target what you're actually after: calories.
It's not abstracted away as healthy eating is concerned. Overconsumption is downstream.
You haven't elucidated how you'd merely target calories through policy, but leaving that aside, a) by default people do not count calories nor would they as a measure to protect against weight-gain, b) it's redundant given a whole-foods diet, no one becomes obese from too much broccoli, chicken breast and lentils, c) for those looking to lose weight, mere calorie counting absent leveraging satiating foods and eschewing junk is woefully ineffective in practice, because of lack of sustainability. Dieters typically do lose some weight, then gain it back. Not only is it difficult to adhere to, it's difficult to eyeball calories on a plate, particularly when they're processed foods, such that they'd have to weigh everything on a scale indefinitely.
Encouraging healthier eating patterns solves several problems at once. It protects against overconsumption, and against disease, which would lessen a burden on the healthcare system. That seems quite pragmatic to me. What's at stake is certain corporations stand to make less money, and corn farmers sell less.
Whether through change in diet patterns or "just eating less" as you might posit, if on the national scale people did end up consuming fewer calories and lose weight, then they'd more than likely consume less sugar/HFCS. The end result is still that a healthier populace == selling less corn. We can't discount any and all policy on the conceit that inconveniencing corn farmers is not acceptable.
>I'm not convinced of the strategic importance of ethanol in the grand scheme; the US produces more of it because the subsidy creates that incentive.
Yes, that's the intent. Whenever you subsidize something, you get more of it. If you're looking for strategic rationale, the US relies much more on gasoline than, say, the EU. Couple that with the fact that US strategic oil reserves are at the lowest levels in 40 years, that only leaves about a month of fuel in the reserve at current usage. Meaning, there is a strategic need to have the infrastructure in place to supplement fuel supply if needed. Even if we don't need it now, the lead time for building out infrastructure is long enough that is makes sense to have slack capacity in place now.
>It's not abstracted away as healthy eating is concerned. Overconsumption is downstream.
Corn subsidies are abstracted away. They're related, but not directly considering the other uses of corn. Irrespective of that point, I think we may have lost the thread here. We don't seem to disagree on the central premise that overconsumption of calories is the root issue. The original claim was that a sugar tax would help remedy this issue. The counter-claim was that removing corn subsidies would be a better approach than a sugar tax.
My point is that the counter-claim is lacking nuance, and ignores all the second order effects. I'm not against removing subsidies, but I would want someone to acknowledge how they would mitigate the negative knock-on effects. What you've presented is a bit hand-wavy for my taste, implying we can just swap this crop for that and ignore concerns related to strategic fuel, agricultural stability, and costs. In the context of all those secondary and tertiary impacts, it seems like a direct tax (like a sugar tax) is preferential. I probably wouldn't limit it to just a sugar tax though, and would look to target other food that leads to overconsumption (including those that aren't disproportionately affecting lower socio-economic groups), and ideally making healthier choices less expensive if we're making the others more costly.
My point is that every approach has second-order effects, there's no free lunch. If you pick one approach, then you're dealing with the externalities.
> In the context of all those secondary and tertiary impacts, it seems like a direct tax (like a sugar tax) is preferential
Not to voters. Taxes are unpopular, ending a subsidy to a small powerful cohort would be relatively more popular (in terms of messaging I mean, the end result would still be that consumers pay more for sugar, but of course the govt spending less frees up spending for other things). However, farmer support is right-coded which would lead to opposition by right-wing pundits and media.
It's a toss-up. A tax could be effective, but I don't agree that it's necessarily more viable or palatable. It's probably less-so. Hence I would pitch ending or curbing the subsidy.
We agree that it's always about tradeoffs. I just think there are probably more complex and less transparent (and potentially negative) tradeoffs with ending subsidies if the goal is reducing obesity. It doesn't mean subsidies are good, but just that they are more loosely aligned with obesity than you let on.
I just don't see how it's a more effective strategy given the fact that it's a much more complicated apparatus to do the same thing (raise prices on food). Your position seems to be, stated differently, that higher prices lead to a deterrent to overconsumption and that reducing subsidies is the best way to increase prices. Logically, I can’t find a way that is a better mechanism than affecting prices directly and in a more targeted manner with less tangential effects. It reads to me as a way to find a rationale to go after a particular policy one doesn't like, rather than being focused on the problem at hand (obesity).
Most corn is actually farmed for meat production (beef, pork, and poultry) not human consumption. I doubt the farmer cares if their corn goes to a human or a cow, so long as they get the best price, and uncle sam fills in the rest.
Any politician that does that will be subject to a relentless disinformation campaign alleging they're taking food from hungry families, regardless of any factual basis or quality of outcomes.
I still feel like the root causes are not well known. Blaming sugar is the current trend, but this article talks about weight, American have a fat heavy diet as well, which is very high in calories. Sure, cutting our sugar helps you lose weight, but did sugar cause you to eat all those calories or was it fried food? Who knows?
Then there are processed foods, is that actually the culprit? Or is it really sugar?
Then some things are confusing, someone else linked to a study that showed that "lowest All-cause mortality is at a BMI of 25". Well that's verging on overweight, so people with "healthier" BMI have higher rates of death, weird.
A few days ago a study showed that sugar intake from pastries, ice creams, chocolate and candy reduced your risks of 7 cardiovascular diseases. What's going on?
I say that as someone that's normal weight. I can understand some counter-reaction being wishful thinking, or part of body positivity movements, but objectively when I look at what we know, it's still quite fuzzy.
Having said that, I would not mind over-enforcing in this case. I'd love it for portion sizes to be smaller, for processed foods to be phased out, for sugar content to be lowered in packaged and restaurant products, for deep fried foods to be less common, etc. And ideally, for what we do know is healthy, vegetables, fruits, lean meats, fish, poultry, often the least refined as possible, to be both accessible, convenient and cheap.
Anecdotally, I feel like I can consume way more calories from carbs than fat or protein. I burn out on the other two way faster, and stay satiated longer. Though I agree deep fried is probably second to sweets.
I think there's something to be said about what we take with the food.
I mostly cook at home, and if I have meat, I'll only season it with some herbs and have some steamed vegetables or baked potatoes with it. If I have ham or similar, I'll eat it raw. This leaves me feeling full for the afternoon.
But having a similarly sized piece of meat at a restaurant, which usually comes in some form of sauce (which I don't go out of my way to eat), will leave me hungry almost as soon as the meal is over.
Anecdotally, when I stopped going to the office every day and switched to home-cooked meals as described above, I pretty quickly lost some weight.
I feel that will depend on what you prefer eating to some extent no?
I admit carbs, especially simple ones, can leave you hungry. But when you calorie count, you really start realizing how killer fats are. A slice of cheese, the oil or butter you cooked things in, a handful of nuts, it's crazy how much calories those have.
Fries for example, are so high calorie, because of all the fat in the batter and oil.
For almost any problem people care about enough to discuss on a forum like this, it's a fools errand to try to determine "which" way causality goes. It goes both ways. You can't isolate the cause. It's a feedback loop which is what makes it persistent and hard to solve and ergo worth discussing on a forum.
I have told plenty of friends and family that they are fat gross slobs and need to lose weight, and that is the cause of many of their non-specific maladies that doctors can't seem to pinpoint. Sometimes you need to sit someone down and level with them, I'm not going to pretend.
> I have told plenty of friends and family that they are fat gross slobs and need to lose weight, and that is the cause of many of their non-specific maladies that doctors can't seem to pinpoint. Sometimes you need to sit someone down and level with them, I'm not going to pretend.
Key question: are they cured now after you were a jerk? What was the ROI on relationship damage per pound lost?
Great question - it has worked sometimes. I don't just do it for the fats. I had a serious discussion with one of my best friends who narrowly escaped a DUI after successfully beating the patrolman's tests and lucking out when they didn't have a breathalyzer, and he stopped drunk driving. Another time I told my friend he was a fat, disgusting lard and he successfully slimmed up and hit the gym more. So it depends.
Sometimes if you just outright tell someone they are making huge mistakes in the bluntest terms it can shake them, when they know you are their friend.
You're having this conversation as if I'm against having honest conversations with your loved ones.
Actually this conversation is about what is an effective intervention for our obesity epidemic, and there's pretty much zero evidence that "tell the fats they're making a huge mistake in the bluntest terms" is a meaningful intervention at any scale that matters.
OK well if they are disgustingly obese, gross, and dying of being fat, which is 100% preventable by not eating a ton of gross shit, then looking them straight in the eye and saying "You are not only an unattractive obese blob but also about to die" sometimes works
Some people may need to be told that, much like some alcoholics are in denial about their condition. But many other fat people know they have a problem, are trying to solve it, and are struggling because it's incredibly difficult to overhaul your lifestyle (even with help and resources). While telling the first group of fat people "hard truths" might be what they need, it will simply demoralize the second group and might get them to stop trying. It's not as simple as you're painting it.
There are voluminous materials and studies explaining why obesity will kill you. Is there a study that compares being addicted to alcohol vs. being morbidly obese? Maybe they should switch the chicken wings for vodka
There is a middle ground, and I agree that there are some people that have gone too far.
I think body positivity, validating those choices with models that represent more people is a good thing. As a society we should not be judging someone for their choices or making medical claims about their bodies when we don't know their story.
But I also see the extremes of just ignoring it, not even wanting your doctor to talk about it. (I do realize that there are some exceptions to this like when it comes to eating disorders) I don't understand this. I want my doctor to tell me everything, hell I will overshare in the hopes that something is a thing that needs to be addressed.
I have also personally seen a subset of people that push back on anyone wanting to loose weight. I have lost about 45 lbs over the last year (still not at my target weight but I am very close, about 5-10 lbs off so really not stressing and for context I am 6'5). A friend I have not seen in a while recently gave me a hug, commented that I was loosing weight and asked me "Why". I was put off by it, because why is that even a question? You would get mad if I asked why you were gaining weight.
My point here, there is a middle ground and there is a right and wrong place to address this. Society shaming someone isn't the right choice and ignores that we don't know what is really going on with someone.
As usual it comes down to the increasing individualism, that rejects any overarching societal guidance in favour of judgement-free self-expression ("body positivity"). This removes any collective bargaining or collective action (some of which I proposed in my parent comment) and exposes the individual to systemic risks (food industry making people fat, medical industry giving them a pill to feel better), unless the individual is equipped with enough of Bourdieu's social capital to navigate the pervasive health risks of the modern food supply. Allowing this minefield in place is also a convenient way to maintain class, leaving the unwashed masses hampered by health issues (like diabetes), reduced cognitive function and less attractiveness.
> I think body positivity, validating those choices with models that represent more people is a good thing. As a society we should not be judging someone for their choices or making medical claims about their bodies when we don't know their story.
I’m slightly overweight and an ex-smoker. For years, nothing seemed to help me quit—high taxes, indoor smoking bans, health risks, and so on didn’t diminish my desire to smoke. I tried quitting a few times for financial and health reasons, but it never stuck.
What ultimately got me to quit was social stigma, especially after having kids. The stigma around smoking has grown over the years, but it reaches another level when you become a parent. Other parents didn’t hesitate to judge me for smoking, and I realized there was no way my kids wouldn’t face social consequences because of my habit. That was the push I needed to quit.
I do believe it’s wrong to judge people for their choices, but at the same time, I sometimes wonder if we’re going too far with body positivity. I don’t have all the answers, but I’m grateful for the stigma surrounding smoking—it helped me make a positive change.
I know a few people who lost weight and got super fit out of body positivity movements.
In general, the body positivity movement I've seen is about respect, encouragement, and support. It's not about encouraging bad habits, but being inviting to those who feel ashamed and would normally avoid going to the gym, a dance class, or to ask advice about healthy eating, etc.
There's been a lot of misdiagnosis due to doctors just thinking it's a weight issue. I think that's one of the reason people have an issue with doctor's handling of weight.
The other area is that it often ignores that the patient is already actively aware, and trying to combat their weight gain. The doctors are not being helpful by just stating the obvious.
Lastly, many doctors are kind of outdated in their knowledge, they'll recommend old diets that are not as effective anymore, or they won't encourage exercise, just diet, or they won't consider family history, and so on.
In those cases, your "doctor bringing it up" can actually just lead to more weight gain, because it can create increased cortisol level from stress and worries, make you more depressed, and so on, which won't help you lose weight.
I agree that what you're saying is a problem but if your doctor is not handling anything about your health properly why are you not finding a new doctor instead of saying you don't want to talk about something?
And I am not saying that your doctor needs to constantly bring it up, but at a yearly physical I would expect that anything that could be contributing to other issues or my health in general would be brought up no matter how many times it was brought up. There are exceptions to this that I would generally expect the doctor to know and you not needing to ask it.
I mean replace weight with any other thing that could (not saying it's easy or possible for everyone) change and it sounds ridiculous. I cannot imagine a doctor respecting being asked, I don't want to talk about me smoking. Or sitting all day for work, or other risky behavior. It's all part of your entire health picture.
I think it's a matter of tact, that not all doctor will have equally. How they approach the topic, how compassionate they are when doing so, and how much they pester you about it.
> I would propose a concerted effort through mandatory levels of food quality that is served to the public (e.g. schools, hospitals)
The issue I've found is that it's much easier (= cheaper) to have tasty-enough food which is actually "junk". I love me some broccoli or other random steamed veggies with a steak. But when I was in school, these things were horrendous. Everything was a soggy, slimy mess. So fries it was, almost every day, except when they had pizza.
And since this was in my formative years, I can understand how people learn to associate "eating healthy" with that atrocious thing nobody wanted to get close to. So they will tend to gravitate to what they remember as being reasonably tasty.
It was my case, too, until I got fat and tried to do something about it. Which allowed me to discover it's not that much more work to make a tasty meal, which I actually like better. But it does take longer than throwing two frozen burgers in the microwave and calling it a day.
* Are uncomfortable on public transit, in public places like theaters, etc as the seats are designed for someone much smaller than you
* Can't get into relationships
* Get social feedback ranging from well meaning (but still embarrassing) to downright cruel on a regular basis
In discussions like this, someone always says "the solution is to shame people" as if it's some kind of picnic to be fat. It's not - it's fucking miserable. And even with all that people are still having a hard time taking control of their lifestyle. Shaming people even harder isn't going to accomplish a thing.
America got fat from a culture of fat shaming. So like, we know that doesn't work. Or at least this is not how I see the cause/effect.
To me, it appears that being fat was unacceptable and shameful culturally, but everyone still got fat, and insanely fat even. And once so many people were fat, they started to campaign against the fat shaming.
So fat shaming could actually be seen as having caused the issue.
I think being able to openly talk about the difficulty, challenges, and struggles of weight gain/loss, recognizes the people's struggle, encouraging weight loss, promoting methods and mechanisms, etc. might be more effective.
From the research I've seen, this is also supported by it. Fat shaming can cause increased stress and cortisol levels, emotional eating, avoidance of exercise (especially in public), depression and anxiety, and avoiding medical care due to fear of judgment. Which all in-turn contributes to weight gain.
We have two places that fat shamed, one got fat, one stayed lean. That tells us fat shaming doesn't seem to be a factor in getting fat or not.
But the place that has low level of obesity still fat shames. Where as the place where everyone is fat stopped fat shaming. So that seem to show that when the majority is fat, fat shaming tends to stop.
I'm referring to this: America got fat from a culture of fat shaming and your last paragraph. Now you're saying that it doesn't seem to be a factor, which completely contradicts your earlier claims.
I can't figure out what you're trying to say, sorry.
Interesting because Pigouvian taxes have a long and storied history of being extremely effective while your proposed solution has... zero evidence of effectiveness?
Open source is not a gift economy, and is in fact a different, and long established social contract. Never has this misplaced metaphor been used to describe open source, nor do the contributers demand any return that amounts to an "entitlement to future gifts".
Is it though? Microsoft .NET has telemetry that you always have to opt out always. Dark patterns like this setting not sticking but being overridden after an update, and of course the shell command that you kinda have to google each time, where you set a parameter to "1" and get no verification that you have indeed successfully disabled telemetry come with the territory (of software vendors not respecting the user much)
Which is a great idea if we ignore all other issues in academia, e.g. pressure to publish etc. Taking such a hard-line stance I fear will just yield much less science being done.
You used to find amazing information on the internet back then. It is quite likely that someone else had already worked on a similar topic and blogged about it in a very searchable way. Without good search that kind of online culture died out.
While we do have a video tutorial culture that exceeds what we had back then in many ways, and to be fair that technically happened under Google's umbrella (Youtube), destroying search and with it a lot of the open internet, will not only be Google's downfall, it's also a silent tragedy.
Actually, measured by what a global online population could have achieved, with human information truly at anyone's fingertips, with infinite communities forming all over the place instead of in non-searchable Discord and monoculture Reddit ... this might be one of the main tragedies ever.
You appear to be in favour of said Guild trying to change the cultural expectation for more copyrights, now extending to human movement. Needless to say this evokes the image of corporations like Disney ending up with those copyrights and going after people doing the zoomer dance long after the Mickey Mouse copyright will have expired. Are those worries warranted?
Not really, but then again anyone can basically argue the interpretation of anything in law. I would say that in many other professions creators have been paid for their works long after they've been created, but choreographers have basically been shafted for a long time, usually only being paid a daily or weekly rate for the original creation.
I found this interesting article about a very well-known choreographer and his quest to copyright his works, including his famous "Single Ladies" choreography for Beyonce: https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/jaquel-knight-bey.... The thing I find weird/ironic about this is that the Single Ladies choreography famously copies a lot from Bob Fosse's "Mexican Breakfast" (the article I linked talks about this in detail). While I personally agree with the quote from the article, "You see the three ladies, you see the inspiration — but the funk, the stylized movement, they’re extremely different. I mean, how I got here as an artist is being inspired by those who came before me", in terms of copyright law, I think there is much more similarity between Mexican Breakfast and Single Ladies than there is between, say, the song Blurred Lines and Marvin Gaye's Got to Give it Up, which Blurred Lines was found guilty of infringing.
I also found it annoying that the article I linked stated "For a Black creator in an industry that has long appropriated Black culture..." but then goes on to argue that the amount of copying done from Mexican Breakfast is just "the creative process". To be clear, I think it is part of the creative process, but it's annoying the author can see none of the hypocrisy about taking about "cultural appropriation" while then devoting paragraphs to how the copying of Mexican Breakfast is somehow totally different.
The very idea of an entity called "we", an anonymous and ever-changing cast of people managing "responsible defaults" and "simple tools to manage your data" and communicating it on their terms, making me try and keep up, is alien to this idea. They lay their hands on our data; want to know how exactly? Follow several links to this page:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#notice
The page in its tone trivializes the entire deal and is just another EULA and as such could just as well be presented in a small textbox in all-caps. It's more than the average user will ever read, and way too vague anyway.
"Be informed about what data we process about you, why and who it’s shared with (that’s this Notice!)" they say, but
...how about you show the entire dataset compiled about any user with information who is using it and for what exactly (excluding truly secret law enforcement requests). Everyone involved would be mortified with shame.