The problem I have with good faith debate is that it often falls into a fallacy of "fair-time" meaning we think we have to give the other side equal time. This because obvious with things like the Holocaust. Or when you have a legal person (e.g. RFK Jr.) asking to debate a scientist (e.g. Dr. Peter Hotez.)
> The problem I have with good faith debate is that it often falls into a fallacy of "fair-time" meaning we think we have to give the other side equal time
The Catholic church could have said exactly the same thing at one point. "Why should we even devote time to an argument as absurd as the earth not being the center of the universe?" There are darker examples along the lines of those you give, with beliefs quite opposite to those we have nowadays.
Galileo’s (or rather the Copernican) model was still wrong though. It had obvious flaws and the church was not wrong in keeping their older model of the universe while a better model (Kepler‘s model) was still in the works.
What Galileo was asking the church to do was extremely unreasonable. He was basically asking them to throw a way a model which had worked fine for hundreds of years just because he observed the phases of Venus and moons of Jupiter. I mean would you? Especially for a model which was worse at predicting the motions of the planets.
Had Galileo’s model been better then Ptolemies’ I could see a case for his arguments, but it wasn’t, and there was no reason for the church to take his arguments at equal value with those in favor of keeping the Ptolemaic model.
>At some point you have to hold adult Republicans accountable for their actions. They were warned repeatedly; they chose to ignore the warnings.
The challenge is that with a 2-party system it was take a chance Trump wouldn't be worse than he was the first time, or continue with the Democratic platform, which is not necessarily in alignment with a LOT of people. My personal feeling is that this administration has driven the country off a cliff in a spectacularly fast order. I also think the Democrats positions had us heading for a cliff, but it was at least further away.
Trump ran on solving SOME of the right problems. He and all the Republican leadership unfortunately have NONE of the right solutions. I fear the Democrats will think that a rebuke of Trump this election would be a mandate for many of their polices. It isn't, it is a rebuke of the horrible job Trump has done.
Tax the rich, solve healthcare, take note that our country is in an economic battle with other countries, and realize the best form of freedom is when everyone has economic opportunity and stability. Both parties "say" they want these things, the Republicans outright lie about it and the Dems do nothing.
The physical keys, like Yubico, help with that. However, I have not been convinced that a password manager with unique, strong passwords on all my accounts shouldn't suffice. I don't know why I have to be penalized because other users don't use best practices.
I don't know if that is sarcasm, but a chair I buy is mine to do whatever I want with it. Same goes for clothes, a mattress, paint, or any other non-software enabled physical item. Why does having software/hardware make a difference?
That scene is dying a boiling-frog death. The newest OS that is fully jailbreakable on a sufficiently-modern arm64e device is 16.5.1 (go back a few models to the iPhone X and the current Dopamine beta works up to 16.7.15). There is also a "semi-jailbreak" called nathanlr, which is less full featured and works up to iOS 17.0 on iPhone 15 and prior. There's also TrollStore which isn't a jailbreak, but allows unlimited sideloading with arbitrary entitlements. This tool only functions on the following versions of iOS: 14.0 beta 2 - 16.6.1, 16.7 RC (20H18), 17.0
These OS versions are getting long in the tooth, and apps are already starting to drop support for them.
Because capitalists extend control wherever they can to maximize profitability.
If you want decisions that corporations make to be aligned with the desires of their users, you should be advocating for software/hardware built by consumer cooperatives.
I think this is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory fallacy. There is a correlation to Cook and the performance, but the idea that this was all because of one single guy at the top is survivor bias. For example, other companies didn't fail at outsourcing to China because their CEOs weren't as personally involved as Cook, it was because the team as a whole didn't perform.
Looking today, Trump is as much a symptom as the problem. He didn't get there just because of who he is, he rode on the backs of all the people who voted for him, the state legislators who gerrymandered for him, the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, etc...
Sharks vs. dinosaurs seems indeed an appropriate metaphor.
During Cretaceous, when dinosaurs were at their peak, sharks had already become very similar to the sharks of today, e.g. there were big sharks that differed very little from the white sharks and tiger sharks of today.
Then the dinosaurs have disappeared, together with the pterosaurs and the mosasaurs, and they have been replaced by other animals, but the sharks have continued to live until today with little changes, because they had already reached an optimized design that was hard to improve.
Besides the sharks, during Cretaceous there already existed along the dinosaurs other 2 groups of big predators that have changed little since then, crocodiles and big constrictor snakes similar to the pythons of today.
Therefore all 3 (sharks, crocodiles and big constrictor snakes) are examples of locally optimum designs that have been reached more than 70 million years ago, without needing after that any major upgrades.
> It is not illegal to ask a user's age in the US online.
Note that this is not what I said. You overgeneralized it - I will assume without bad intention. The question is if it's illegal to require porn companies to verify the age of their users.
> Can you let us know what your source is?
The Free Speech Coalition and Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson of the Supreme Court, to start. That was their minority opinion in the suit filed against Texas for requiring online porn companies to verify the age of users. The plaintiff argued it was a violation of the first amendment - it is a common argument.
The argument against the legality of these laws has always been highly suspect. There is a common sentiment that these laws are not good - but when pressed to explain why they aren't legal you get crazy arguments like this, that it violates the first amendment.
You should try to engage with the substance of the post.
The claim made by some is that its illegal to require porn companies to do age verification due to the first amendment. It's really the only legal theory I've seen that supports the claim that the Texas law and others are unconstitutional. The rest just amounts to "it's bad so they should rule against Texas and others."
If his comment was based on some different understanding lets state it so we can clarify, but I think I already have. Of course its not illegal to ask someone's age on the internet. Is that truly what you believed I was saying?
I was just trying to explain the confusion of the original response, I'm not interested in the topic. They originally said "it's illegal for a company to verify someone's age", but their follow up post was "it's illegal for the government to force companies to verify age"
I don't think the point is that the transition isn't difficult. It is that there is an overall benefit that outweighs the challenges of the transition.
The sad part is that industrializing societies have not been very good at reconciling the benefits with the costs. The benefits first go to a select few and have seeped out to the masses slowly. Railroads in the US are a good example. The wealth accumulated by the Vanderbilts, Hills and Harrimans, did not get redistributed in any kind of equitable manner. However, everyday people did eventually gain a lot of benefit form of those railroads through economic expansion. (None of which address the loss of the native Americans, whose losses should also be part of the equation.)
My impression is that the transition is such an open-ended process that you can’t really call it that. It’s unclear if and when the challenges will be overcome.
> I don't think the point is that the transition isn't difficult. It is that there is an overall benefit that outweighs the challenges of the transition.
In the abstract, sure. But not when you're on the receiving end. It's like with NIMBYism: we all roll our eyes at NIMBYs until it's actually our own backyard. You're not going to convince a coal miner that they're better off learning to code. You're not going to convince a software engineer that they're better off in the mines.
I can refuse a very specific email configuration, but there are so many simple variations, it isn't all that effective. Tons of cold email providers have you first buy 100 domain names, warm up the IP's with bots, and then send the same emails from a variety of email addresses/domains/servers. I think the question is does this low barrier to entry really outweigh the added challenge of allowing low volume actors host their own systems?
(steps on soapbox) And as long as we are talking about SPAM, why in God's name if I block a text message and then the phone number from ringing is there an additional block required to prevent voicemail? Oh, I see, it is so Verizon and others can charge me to block voicemails. Even on Google FI, if I block a number on Messages it doesn't carry over to calls which doesn't carry over to voicemail. Enshitification. (steps down)
If you are trying to stop monopolization, then having a large organization/government swarm the protocol gives them an effective monopoly. Being able to put a drop of clean water into an ocean of corruption is not really a working system.
If it doesn't have an attention-seeking-for-profit game built into it, there's no motive to flood it. If no one directly follows the bots, or anyone echoing the bots messages, and there's no algorithmically generated feed, there's no problem.
IRC is pretty good, and it survived the Freenode takeover by simply letting everyone know things are moving over to Libera.
Bluesky is awesome if you just ignore the "Discover" tab, I wish they'd just get rid of it. Librem One did something similar with Mastodon, it was peaceful.
After the initial excitement of finding decentralized platforms like that, I personally realized I don't care much for that type of interaction with people, so I don't use any of them very often. Same way I don't use my phone much, but it's there when I want it. Like a utility should be.
The motivation to advertise, track, remarket, and exploit is always there. If I started getting all my news via Bluesky, I would have to allow various businesses to reach out to me. Sure, I can have a separate account for that, but that just segments my comms.
Mind you, we are talking about using these protocols for the general public, not savvy hacker news readers.
