In Latvia we've had digital id for close to 20 years. Banks mostly use their own auth, some rely on digital id. No travel service has ever wanted me to use digital id, let alone any other kind of shopping. What we use it for is access to government resources, and signing digital documents. I trust this system WAY more than whatever some company comes up with.
> No travel service has ever wanted me to use digital id, let alone any other kind of shopping
Yup, until they are regulated to do so in case you buy booze, porn, metal detectors, crossbows or who knows what else. And until silversmith tries to dodge the draft but he accidentaly bought some booze woth his gov eID to party with friends.
No limitations during corona? Remember travelling through your neighbour during corona and was treated worse than a ww2 jew in germany due to not having the authoritarian corona passport.
This is what our every day will be like, when the state has internalized the enormous power of a 100% controlled digital ID. Bye, bye, freedom of thought.
You are most likely referring to the EU covid certificate. It functioned as a proof of vaccination or recent negative test, and yeah, that was required for travel at one point. And even then the verification end was `(code: string) -> valid: boolean` function, no personal data was accessible at validation point. It used the digital ID as SSO for accessing your records, so you could save / print the verification code, usually in form of a qr code. I know all this, because I'm friends with people that worked on the Latvian part of the system, and we spent long chat sessions discussing how to best do it in the least privacy-intrusive way.
If you were from outside EU, I fully believe the experience was subpar. 99% or more of verifications went through the EU system, and if you showed up with different kind of documentation, the people tasked with verification "at the edge" might not even know if it was valid form of proof.
Overall, I struggle with being outraged by the concept of digital ID. It's just a digital form of "show me your passport please". We have had physical national ID (mandatory from certain age!) for as long as I can remember myself. The state knows I exist. If a madman gets put in charge, lack of unified digital ID is not going to prevent airport style passport gates being erected around the booze stand.
I think what is happening is a rather philosophical rejection of the mere idea that the government should affect ones life in any way for any reason. Somehow all the laws that existed before are below the baseline, so they kinda fine, but the new things -- those cause outrage.
Then comes this post-hoc rationalization about how it will inevitably be abused, Jews in Nazi Germany, apartheid and chips under the skin.
IP_7 means it's ok with water immersion for up to 30 minutes, down to 1m. You can go swimming with an IP_7 rated device.
IP_8 is "more than 1m, more than 30min water immersion" rating.
"outdoors in the rain" needs IP_5 rating if you want to be safe. You do not need a dive watch to go out in rain.
Even non-waterproof devices are not exactly made of sugar. My first iphone was a 3gs. I want running with the device in an armband. My rain precautions were plugging in 3.5mm earphones, and pointing the charge port downwards. Regularly got caught in rain with it, and the device was completely fine two years later when I sold it.
The ability to be at peace, in my world view, stems first and foremost from the ability to be at peace with yourself. Being able to look in a mental mirror, and accepting the image staring back as yourself, warts and all. It's not exactly liking every last imperfection, rather not feeling guilty for not measuring up in all aspects to the ideals of a society or dreams of your younger self. Accepting that you are not the universal paragon and probably never will be, all the while not giving up on the idea of improving yourself.
Only when one can be locked in a room with oneself for a measure of time and not get in a fight, can we talk about being at peace with society and other external factors.
I'll second your feeling on Annihilation trilogy. To me, the whole message boiled down to "my life kinda sucked, and now it sucks even more". The phenomenon ostensibly at the center of everything seems to take back seat to protagonists being bummed about it existing / their lives in general.
How so? Good bit of my global claude.md is dedicated to fighting the incessant attribution in git commits. It is on the same level as the "sent from my iphone" signature - I'm not okay with my commits being advertising board for anthropic.
> Blog post written, PR'd, and merged in under 3 minutes.
It's close to or even faster than the time it takes me to read it. I'm struggling to put into words how that makes me feel, but it's not a good feeling.
I believe it's less about politeness and more about pronouns. You used `who`, whereas I would use `what` in that sentence.
In my world view, a LLM is far closer to a fridge than the androids of the movies, let alone human beings. So it's about as pointless being polite to it as is greeting your fridge when you walk into the kitchen.
But I know that others feel different, treating the ability to generate coherent responses as indication of the "divine spark".
I removed my anecdote and flash wear explanation, because of cranky folks like yourself.
The corrosion inhibitors in petrol engine oil get fully depleted within about a year with most brands. One may certainly sell the machine before you see acidified lubricant related problems, but the motor will not reach its full operational lifespan ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve .)
I do agree that anyone with a CVT style transmission likely won't have to worry, as that entire section will probably need replaced before you see significant hydrodynamic bearing damage.
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