I was thinking the same thing: how is this any different than Google's operation in America? Big Brother Google already snoops on everything we do, censors information to control/stifle public debate, and regularly reports people to the Gestapo.
The only difference is *what* will be censored or reportable.
This definitely isn't totalitarian technology. It certainly won't be used by the police-state government we don't have to ramp up the panopticon we don't already live in just a little bit further.
I'm sure the Stasi, the Gestapo, Big Brother Google, and the Department of War have no interest whatsoever in this technology. There's zero chance it will be used for evil. It's totally not true that this tech will be irresistible to a repressive government like we don't have.
In summary, there's nothing to worry about. Move along now.
Are you NOT offended by the American Gulag and the kangaroo courts that feed it? Many good patriotic people think it's an abomination to God and man alike - a disgrace to our nation.
"the various institutional checks and balances that countries have built up over the centuries to stop the supreme courts getting far out of line, and with the ultimate sanction of popular revolt if they do"
Hahahahahahahaha! That's a good one. But sounds kinda extremist, so I better flag it.
Emperor Xi's fifty cent army and the Soros-funded "Progressive" troll brigades are going to be outraged - just outraged! - by President Trump's attempt to prevent them from meddling in our elections.
Remember, 95% of inmates in the federal Gulag were coerced into making a false confession ("plea bargain"). They were NOT convicted by a jury of their peers. Their convictions are ipso facto illegitimate, and the kangaroo courts that sentenced them are contemptible.
Thank goodness I don't use Apple products! I compute with confidence knowing that Big Brother Google, Faceboot, Ma Verizon, Red Fedora, Uncle Samsung, and my friendly neighborhood Gestapo office all use only the most *scrupulous* outsourced and H1-B indentured labor.
There's nothing a user can do to remove their data from Faceboot's servers.
Only the US Congress can accomplish that. America needs our own GDPR++ to stop the invasive, abusive business practices that have become commonplace in the tech industry.
Uber's star rating system is dumb as rocks. 5 stars is *exactly* the same as "meh, acceptable". The system is both offensively over-punitive, and provides no means to reward actually-good drivers.
I have a theory about the origin of this system. Uber, like all other companies owned by the Surveillance Valley venture capitalist cabal, is run in part as a jobs program. They will hire any inbred Damaso who's family connections got them into the "right schools", but who were too fucking dumb to get a real job on Wall Street.
The Damasos tend to have zero capacity for subtle reasoning, and spectacularly over inflated egos. They think everything they do is 5 stars: "that sure was a 5 star shit I just took!" Their useless mindset is reflected in Uber's useless rating system.
Some panel of clueless turds decided that ALL Uber service is going to be 5 star service. Not coming to grips with basic reality that average service is going to be... wait for it... average. So they implemented vicious measures to punish drivers who don't meet a statistically implausible standard.
Uber passengers, being mostly decent social people, did not want to see their driver's livelihood destroyed just because a passenger gave an honest review. So now everyone automatically clicks 5 stars, unless there was some big problem.
But maybe it doesn't matter. Uber lost all their actually-good drivers when they repeatedly slashed driver pay. Good work, Uber: you've won the race to the bottom!
[Disclaimer: I have been a regular customer of Uber for years and years.]
I know a little about this first hand, from experiences I choose not to share.
Using real big-F Free Software is orders of magnitude more productive than using proprietary crapware. Many companies running on Free Software generate prodigious economic output. No CTO under fifty wants even to touch âoeenterpriseâ software, much less build business-critical systems around it.
However the men who actually write that Free Software capture almost none of the value they create. Many struggle just to make ends meet. Those who do earn a comfortable (never handsome) income do so at the cost of proletarianization. Work for Big Capital or starve.
Consider the depency chain of a typical production web app. The application code alone may have hundreds of direct and indirect library dependencies. Thousands if it's a Nodejs app.;) Probably a quarter of those libraries are already abandonware. Almost all of them will be abandoned in a few years, because they take time to maintain yet bring no income to their authors.
In the short term this is great for companies. They pay nothing and get a lot of value. Free (like beer) software = profit! The capital owners would just as soon get rid of the free like speech part of Free Software. Thankfully we have some bold and incorruptible champions, like St Richard of Boston, standing up for software Freedom.
In the medium term this situation is a maintenance and security nightmare. Our production applications are like houses of cards. Propped up atop layers and layers of increasingly unmaintained software. At first we can work around this. We replace components that have become unsupported, either with newer FOSS components, or with home rolled software.
In the long run this is a potential disaster. More and more FOSS projects, having failed to provide material support to their maintainers, fall into abandonment. At some point the rate of abandonment surpasses companiesâ(TM) ability to keep up with maintenance. Rot starts to set in. Like aggressive termites or an invasive mold. The profit-generating superstructure sitting on this rotting base starts to become shaky, unstable.
I don't know how to fix this mess. At a high level we must either figure out how to ensure authors of Free Software area able to earn a good living *for their Free Software work*, not incidentally to it. Or we must accept a permanent secular decline in software development productivity, because the rich commons of Free Software will have fallen into ruin.
So you want to impose a totalitarian Social Credit system on the American people. Except yours will Corporate Progressive flavored instead of China's Communist Party flavor.
On one hand - haha-ha-haha, this WILL backfire on you. Enjoy being censored, deplatformed, deemployed, and unpersoned by a dystopian weapon of your own creation.
On the other hand - I don't want to live in a country where everyone who disagrees with me is silenced. No matter how bad their ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
And they're not really suckers... 'cuz they're just squandering QE money Uncle Sam have them for free.
I was thinking the same thing: how is this any different than Google's operation in America? Big Brother Google already snoops on everything we do, censors information to control/stifle public debate, and regularly reports people to the Gestapo.
The only difference is *what* will be censored or reportable.
I wonder how many millions are spent each year by various political factions to troll, crapflood, and astroturf Slashdot?
Nothing to see here.
This definitely isn't totalitarian technology. It certainly won't be used by the police-state government we don't have to ramp up the panopticon we don't already live in just a little bit further.
I'm sure the Stasi, the Gestapo, Big Brother Google, and the Department of War have no interest whatsoever in this technology. There's zero chance it will be used for evil. It's totally not true that this tech will be irresistible to a repressive government like we don't have.
In summary, there's nothing to worry about. Move along now.
Are you NOT offended by the American Gulag and the kangaroo courts that feed it? Many good patriotic people think it's an abomination to God and man alike - a disgrace to our nation.
YOU could do that...
Afaik Google is not currently censoring links to EU legislation.
In Soviet Europe, the news reports you!
Perhaps the totalitarian Progressives who control Google have created such a hostile work environment that most of the talented programmers have left.
"the various institutional checks and balances that countries have built up over the centuries to stop the supreme courts getting far out of line, and with the ultimate sanction of popular revolt if they do"
Hahahahahahahaha! That's a good one. But sounds kinda extremist, so I better flag it.
So anything critical of totalitarian financialism will be labeled extremist. Thanks for the clarification.
Emperor Xi's fifty cent army and the Soros-funded "Progressive" troll brigades are going to be outraged - just outraged! - by President Trump's attempt to prevent them from meddling in our elections.
Remember, 95% of inmates in the federal Gulag were coerced into making a false confession ("plea bargain"). They were NOT convicted by a jury of their peers. Their convictions are ipso facto illegitimate, and the kangaroo courts that sentenced them are contemptible.
Unwashed lumpenprole anarchists vs capitalist running dog Progressives.
Is it not delightful to see one's enemies fight?
Thank goodness I don't use Apple products! I compute with confidence knowing that Big Brother Google, Faceboot, Ma Verizon, Red Fedora, Uncle Samsung, and my friendly neighborhood Gestapo office all use only the most *scrupulous* outsourced and H1-B indentured labor.
Scrupulousity FTW!
Yet...
In Soviet America, Facebook deletes you!
There's nothing a user can do to remove their data from Faceboot's servers.
Only the US Congress can accomplish that. America needs our own GDPR++ to stop the invasive, abusive business practices that have become commonplace in the tech industry.
Uber's star rating system is dumb as rocks. 5 stars is *exactly* the same as "meh, acceptable". The system is both offensively over-punitive, and provides no means to reward actually-good drivers.
I have a theory about the origin of this system. Uber, like all other companies owned by the Surveillance Valley venture capitalist cabal, is run in part as a jobs program. They will hire any inbred Damaso who's family connections got them into the "right schools", but who were too fucking dumb to get a real job on Wall Street.
The Damasos tend to have zero capacity for subtle reasoning, and spectacularly over inflated egos. They think everything they do is 5 stars: "that sure was a 5 star shit I just took!" Their useless mindset is reflected in Uber's useless rating system.
Some panel of clueless turds decided that ALL Uber service is going to be 5 star service. Not coming to grips with basic reality that average service is going to be... wait for it... average. So they implemented vicious measures to punish drivers who don't meet a statistically implausible standard.
Uber passengers, being mostly decent social people, did not want to see their driver's livelihood destroyed just because a passenger gave an honest review. So now everyone automatically clicks 5 stars, unless there was some big problem.
But maybe it doesn't matter. Uber lost all their actually-good drivers when they repeatedly slashed driver pay. Good work, Uber: you've won the race to the bottom!
[Disclaimer: I have been a regular customer of Uber for years and years.]
Patents stifle innovation.
End software patents now!
I wonder if it was a MongoDB instance. IIRC their security model defaults to wide open to the world.
I know a little about this first hand, from experiences I choose not to share.
Using real big-F Free Software is orders of magnitude more productive than using proprietary crapware. Many companies running on Free Software generate prodigious economic output. No CTO under fifty wants even to touch âoeenterpriseâ software, much less build business-critical systems around it.
However the men who actually write that Free Software capture almost none of the value they create. Many struggle just to make ends meet. Those who do earn a comfortable (never handsome) income do so at the cost of proletarianization. Work for Big Capital or starve.
Consider the depency chain of a typical production web app. The application code alone may have hundreds of direct and indirect library dependencies. Thousands if it's a Nodejs app. ;) Probably a quarter of those libraries are already abandonware. Almost all of them will be abandoned in a few years, because they take time to maintain yet bring no income to their authors.
In the short term this is great for companies. They pay nothing and get a lot of value. Free (like beer) software = profit! The capital owners would just as soon get rid of the free like speech part of Free Software. Thankfully we have some bold and incorruptible champions, like St Richard of Boston, standing up for software Freedom.
In the medium term this situation is a maintenance and security nightmare. Our production applications are like houses of cards. Propped up atop layers and layers of increasingly unmaintained software. At first we can work around this. We replace components that have become unsupported, either with newer FOSS components, or with home rolled software.
In the long run this is a potential disaster. More and more FOSS projects, having failed to provide material support to their maintainers, fall into abandonment. At some point the rate of abandonment surpasses companiesâ(TM) ability to keep up with maintenance. Rot starts to set in. Like aggressive termites or an invasive mold. The profit-generating superstructure sitting on this rotting base starts to become shaky, unstable.
I don't know how to fix this mess. At a high level we must either figure out how to ensure authors of Free Software area able to earn a good living *for their Free Software work*, not incidentally to it. Or we must accept a permanent secular decline in software development productivity, because the rich commons of Free Software will have fallen into ruin.
"Europe is ahead on this topic"
Yes, Europe is far ahead of America at restricting freedom of speech and criminalizing political dissent.
"Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation."
So you want to impose a totalitarian Social Credit system on the American people. Except yours will Corporate Progressive flavored instead of China's Communist Party flavor.
On one hand - haha-ha-haha, this WILL backfire on you. Enjoy being censored, deplatformed, deemployed, and unpersoned by a dystopian weapon of your own creation.
On the other hand - I don't want to live in a country where everyone who disagrees with me is silenced. No matter how bad their ideas.
Arbitrarily and capriciously, of course.
Thank you. I appreciate your thoughtful answer. I will think about what you said.