> Since others are not saying it, enforcing this will immediately cause havoc as any number of citizens do not have ready access to any document proving citizenship.
I didnt have all the documents available for my Real ID which has quite the requirements. In the limit, at least as many as any other citizenship proofing task. We can assume the greatest difficulty would be for the homeless.
It took me ~15 minutes on the social security admin website to get a card ordered to me because mine is lost somewhere in a safe. I had it sent to my house, a PO box, homeless shelter, or any other location would work too. Can be done via a library if you're homeless. Zero excuse.
It took me ~20 minutes to figure out which hospital I was born at and get a copy of my birth certificate shipped to me. See above. Likely marginally more difficult for a homeless person. Not terrible difficult though if you're not so cracked out you don't remember even the state in which you were born. Again, zero excuse.
It took me ~30 seconds to find a document to prove my current residency. Trivial for a homeless person as well. Zero excuse.
Again, in the limit, the government should provide an easier way to do this. But the pearl clutching over the difficulty is to vastly overstated.
This is simply a fantastic excuse to not require citizenship for yet another thing. Something absolutely unheard of in other western countries. I'm beginning to think all of this avoiding proof of citizenship has an ulterior motive.
The point is that there are hundreds of millions of consumer bank accounts in the US, and it's not clear that Treasury appreciates the turmoil they are proposing. The country has not had a debate over this, it sounds like it might just drop out of the sky one day and create unnecessary chaos.
We can use the rollout of Real ID itself as a gauge. Executives of both parties, and several Congresses, landed on 20 years as an appropriate rollout time to do so smoothly. And that's basically only needed for air travel, which most Americans do not do in a given year.
It's not crazy to ask that a more disruptive change be subject to more scrutiny and deliberation about its rollout.
In your case, everything was straightforward, you already have a license, and your bank is local so you can walk in and show your ID, awesome for you. But over hundreds of millions of people, every edge case will present. (Is it okay for banks to freeze assets of people in hospitals who are unable to perform the necessary steps and present themselves at a bank? Inmates? How are joint accounts handled? What counts as bank account? What happens to money currently held legally here by foreign nationals?)
The one that might affect the most people here: if you have to show ID, presumably the bank has to be able to authenticate it against your person. Which means an in-person visit. This would be bad if you are one of the tens of millions of Americans whose primary bank does not have any branches in their state of residence. I bank at my alma mater's credit union, even though I have not lived in that state for decades. Would I need to travel there to show my ID or have my account frozen?
Again, a bipartisan set of Congresses and Presidents landed on 20 years to rollout when the only real penalty would be some people would not be able to board a plane when they wanted to, without extra scrutiny.
A botched rollout of this could lead to unpredictable financial calamities as rents and other bills go unpaid, etc.
There is simply not an emergency here, we don't have to upend our financial system pretending there is. The ulterior motive here is to preserve the stability of our financial system while making changes.
Copying intellectual property is not piracy. This term was co-opted by big industries to insure the cash cattle continue to pay. Piracy has a very specific sting to it. This was a deliberate choice. We don't call burglary "piracy", yet if we relax the definition enough to include IP theft, it is also piracy.
GabeN also had the wrong take in that it's a "supply problem" or whatever nonsense he said. GabeN is in fact an industry plant and owns one of the strictest IP protection platforms on the market. Why people buy on steam when they can ban you for almost anything and take everything you've ever rented (you dont own anything on steam). Thousands of dollars of games gone with a ban. In any normal world this would be tantamount to grand theft and a small business owner would actually face real prison time for it.
You can't "steal" something that isn't gone when it's stolen. If I walked into a house, took a necklace, and left an exact unaltered copy I'd at best be charged with a lesser crime that didn't include theft. But if you copy movies/music/software you're liable to have your entire life absolutely financially and possibly criminally ruined.
The government of the US is hardly a government for the people, by the people. It's strictly designed to enrich the few and consume "human resources".
>Copying intellectual property is not piracy. This term was co-opted by big industries to insure the cash cattle continue to pay.
Without weighing in on the merits or morals of copying intellectual property, the term 'piratical booksellers' was used in a British House of Commons speech by Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1841. (The speech itself is superb and well worth reading. I included one passage below.)
"At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot… Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create."
While I also find various approaches and reasons behind IP governance dumb, copying IP is piracy. In practice, copying some things is unlawful, regardless if we think it shouldn't be or if piracy once only referred to naval burglary.
If you copy a book in a bookstore, or leave a perfect synthetic copy of a natural diamond you take, you'll likely be charged with something. Digitally, that's much a clearer legal charge because copying is easier. So, neither is theft, but that doesn't make it lawful either.
There are valid reasons for enforcing IP rights digitally, because "all content should always be free" doesn't pay the bills when all you (can or want to) do is produce content. No existing society agrees that content producers should be subsidized, so in a society dependent on "earn for yourself", content producers shouldn't be punished.
But the punishment does exceed the severity of the "crime" by a lot, I agree.
Piracy started as a term directly related to theft. Its use in the modern age for copying is also an attempt to frame the activity as theft, even though there is no action that can reasonably described as theft. Copying leaves the original right where it was, so no theft has taken place. I'm not saying that violating copyright is OK, just that the terms we are using to describe the wrongness are willfully dishonest. The punishments are also not fit for the crime, but that's another matter entirely.
Look, I'm not even claiming that piracy is a good term for it, or that the association between theft and copying wasn't pushed in pro-IP campaigns. But for the past 20 (or 30?) years, piracy has been the word everyone uses for this type of activity.
My point is: even if you changed the word, and explained the difference to everyone who couldn't distinguish between (A) literal theft of a physical object, and (B) a replication of some sequences of binaries, you're still not addressing the real question.
And the real question is: Why shouldn't an author have an option to protect their IP, physically or digitally? What's the difference between copying a physical book and a digital book without author's approval, from the point-of-view of an author trying to get paid for every copy?
I'm personally a fan of alternatives to IP-based earnings and earning enforcement, but I don't see how that helps any author trying to make a living from their content in the world where there are very few alternatives.
My imperfect solution would be to implement some sort of compulsory licensing system that lets people copy at will for reasonable prices, and comes with a more sensible penalty system for violators. People should get paid for their work, but the system we have for that now sucks for everyone but the middlemen / IP squatters.
To call Steam one of the strictest IP protection platforms is so laughably innacurate, it's basically wrong. Its DRM is trivial to bypass (specially compared to others), and I have yet to see a case where they banned someone for something stupid in a way that made them lose access to their library.
Otherwise, I agree with the spirit of your comment.
Commissions, grants, advertisements, sponsorships, donations, teaching... There's already an enormous ecosystem of artists and authors who work outside of the copyright realm (blog writers, substackers, social media artists, youtube creators, soundcloud rappers) and who make money enough to pursue their passion and whose business model would be totally unchanged if copyright were abolished entirely tomorrow. When their work is downloaded or shared or copied or linked or edited or remixed they appreciate it and see it as a multiplication of their artistic impact.
It's not necessarily incompatible: authors can make money in ways that don't depend on enforcing IP or even the number of books sold. For example, Patreon, Kickstarter, government subsidies, payment for number of books written, grants, etc.
However, all those other ways are more difficult to set up, and can be risky for the funders, so IP enforcement is the least-worst solution.
This isn't so relevant but Steam is actually very annoying to use. No easy settings to disable some of the overlays. I played Final Fantasy 7 and it was some gimped out graphics version, although SE (Square Enix) is also a kind of litigious company
Steam only adds one overlay (which is pretty easy to toggle off). if you have another graphic change or overlay it's the devs or publisher who added it
There's a per game toggle for their UI overlay basically and you just need to uncheck a box
> GabeN also had the wrong take in that it's a "supply problem" or whatever nonsense he said.
It is a supply problem. Steam regional pricing and game passes have demolished piracy in countries where people wouldn't have dreamed of paying for a game 15 years ago. And so did Netflix for a while with video, but then everyone had to jump on the bandwagon and now piracy is flourishing again.
I care more about how it's warming people up for more age verification and other censorship laws. I don't really care what happens to porn producers. Most of which are exploitative, abusive, and many times downright criminal. There is a non-moral argument to specifically target porn. Your libertarian argument falls flat on it's face when you start looking into who owns the majority of porn and what they've been known for. Extend this to OnlyFans, which simply turned pimps into shareholders. This is of course the fundamental problem with libertarians in general. They stand for absolutely nothing ("allow everything" is not a stance) which makes them simultaneously the worst ally to have and a formidable enemy to societal security.
The moral argument however is worth considering. Numerous well cited studies have discussed the deliterious effects of porn consumption. Porn (over)consumption directly correlates to loneliness, especially among males, for example. It also correlates to poorer relationship outcomes, increases in the rate of STDs, and other interpersonal issues. In general, porn is no different than any other drug with all the downsides associated.
We cannot say the same for "mainstream entertainment centered on murder". Murder in general has trended down year over year since the 60s. One would be able to make a stronger counter argument: the exposure to violent media has possibly made violence less appealing. You are bordering on using "violent video games create violent people" as proof we should not view porn differently. These are not the same argument as shown by a trivial search of elsevier.
You’re going to be so shocked to find out the tracking device the government tricked you to put in your pocket is even worse. Police can run geofenced dragnets whenever they want, and all you got was the ability to shitpost on the Internet.
You’ll be even more shocked when biometric login isn’t protected by the 5th amendment. Possibly, even more shocked when you find out about XKEYSCORE.
ALPR is bad, of course, but in terms of actual invasion of privacy there are far bigger kraken sized fish to fry that we have accepted as just… completely normal and even necessary to function in our society. It’s only natural that they continue to push the boundaries. Almost like giving up rights for security has consequences we were warned about 250 years ago.
I won't be shocked (I don't have biometric logins enabled, thankyouverymuch), but does that mean I just celebrate it, or give up in all circumstances? I'm not yet a kicked dog, in either behavior or attitude.
Unless something has changed (or I'm simply clueless), it's not quite so trivial to ask where my phone was on January 30th. Camera surveillance is not time-limited.
It’s quite common for cell phone carriers to provide law enforcement with historical records of which towers a phone was connected to at specific times. Also the phone itself stores detailed location history, including which wifi networks it connected to, allowing police to get someone’s movements if their phone is seized as evidence. Police can even use battery temperature history to get an idea of whether the phone was on someone’s body, outside in the heat/cold, etc.
This is recipe to be track locked and miserable. It’s the exact path I have taken over my unfortunately long career as an IC. Now I’m too useful doing bullshit work, tied with a golden ball and chain, and have no hope of ever seeing a management track/easy job. I’m currently planning my exit from the field as I am becoming too interested in actual life to learn frameworks, do bullshit 8 tier 3 month coding interviews, and collect experience to write CRUD bullshit for the next 10 years.
The real advice to aspiring engineers who don’t want to have trouble sleeping from years of pagerduty and high blood pressure is to work in middle management as soon as possible. Forget IC work. The rewards are so much less than the morons who manage. Unless you are at a major dev first company (if you have VCs you aren’t) your manager will always outearn you by a large margin, have an easier life, and way more leeway. Every company I have been to only middle management converts to the VP/C level jobs where you do virtually nothing all day but waste everyone’s time. This is the ideal job. The absolute wastes of precious air in management have the life you want.
If you’re like me and followed this terrible advice decide on an amount of money that is good enough and then decide on how much competence that buys. Volunteer for nothing beyond that, game the ticketing system, use as much vacation as you possibly can without a PIP, vibe the shit out of even the most trivial amount of work, and fuck off once your house is paid off and accounts are appropriate for retirement in T+30 years. Use that time to take up goat herding, wood working, or conservationist work.
Every company is a bit different. There's IC's where I work making more than some managers.
The author suggests that nobody is going to come tap you on the shoulder and let you know it's time. Well, that's what happened to me where I am at now - hired at bottom level, regularly promoted, now at top level. Took 6 years to get to principal. Granted, my group is not SWE's, it's more like an Architect role.
What I learned having made principal is that the yearly bonuses can be lower, because expectations are so high. I got bigger bonuses at a lower title, because I was exceeding the expectations of that role by so much. Apparently principal's have such high expectations you almost never get beyond the target bonus for your role. Then there's the stress from all the layoffs across tech - a lot of Principal level people where I work got cut over the last ~2 years, presumably to save on costs. I almost wish I'd stayed at the lower level to get bigger bonuses, lower salary and higher job security. YMMV.
There are so many diseases that can be solved if money isn’t an issue. The problem is even if this wealthy guy cures his own cancer the treatment will never be available to us. We still do not have cheap genetic targeting and immunotherapy. The average person will be bankrupt just from the discovery.
I’m of the opinion most types of cancer can be targeted and cured. There’s just not enough money in it to produce the cure. The entire industry is locked behind a paywall.
I'm not sure my position on 2A but it seems you're making a pretty big leap to connect them.
Guns kill others. To me, that's a big difference. Gambling does not, only indirectly, you gamble your money away your family doesn't eat. But if you're going indirect than anything fits. Cars kill more than guns.
You could argue the similarity is that some people can be responsible with guns and others can't but you're back the previous point. Irresponsible gun use directly harms others. Irresponsible gambling at most indirectly harms others.
Just some context because gun violence studies are probably the most manipulated data sets in history. The two numbers (auto deaths and gun deaths) are pretty close to each other and different policies can and do push one above the other.
- Most of those gun deaths are suicides and the vast majority would happen anyway without guns.
- This wasn't true before about 2015 and the change (increase in non-suicide gun deaths) over the last decade is largely the consequence of 'defund the police' policies.
- 90+% of gun violence happens in about 4 urban zip codes, all of which have some of the strictest gun control laws in the US.
There is a reason you have never heard a criminologist rail about guns (its usually a sociologist). The data points to problems with other policies. Also gathering the data honestly is difficult; people stop reporting types of crimes when the police stop investigating those types of crimes.
PS A "curve-off" public welfare policy is far more effective than banning guns.
Not to get into a gunfight in the gambling hall, but:
> Most of those gun deaths are suicides and the vast majority would happen anyway without guns.
Apparently any form of obstacle between a suicidal person and their gun greatly reduces successful suicides.
Things like the gun being in a safe that McSuicidepants owns, operates, and can get in with a fingerprint. Things like the bullets being on the other side of the room.
Largely a problem of VCs and shareholders. After my 12th year of "we'll get around to bug fixes" and "this is an emergency" I realize I am absolutely not doing anything related to engineering. My job means less than the moron PM who graduated bottom of their class in <field>. The lack of trust in me despite having almost a life in software is actually so insulting it's hard to quantify.
Now I barely look at ticket requirements, feed it to an LLM, have it do the work, spend an hour reviewing it, then ship it 3 days later. Plenty of fuck off time, which is time well spent when I know nothing will change anyway. If I'm gonna lose my career to LLMs I may as well enjoy burning shareholder capital. I've optimized my life completely to maximize fuck off time.
At the end of the day they created the environment. It would be criminal to not take advantage of their stupidity.
same experience here. trust deficits so rampant i question if ive ever been right once in my career. dont forget the lack of the word 'iterate' in the decision makers vocabulary. and as soon as the word sunset is uttered you know your in for a bumpy ride once again
Many of the things you mention are also tools that many people use in a professional context which mostly doesn't work if you try to be anonymous. Yes, some people choose to be pseudonymous but that mostly doesn't work if your real-life and virtual identities intersect, such as attending conferences or company policies that things you write for company publications be under your real name.
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