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That's not inherently true. If there were a way to reliably destroy all the sock puppets, we should, and the world would be better off. For instance, reliable bot detection, or mechanisms by which major social networks could detect and prohibit bot-like activity that isn't labeled as such.

charge one penny for every post. most people can afford it. bots become less cost effective and you'd be able to trace the source of funds.

This is a nice idea, but we already know that organized criminals and state actors have no problem spending money to make money (or influence public opinion).

On top of that, social media isn't like email where a potential transaction fee increases the cost per person reached - a single post on a hot topic could get millions of views.


Even if they could afford it, they won't. The UX friction of charging money would send engagement off a cliff, even if the nominal charge was $0.

Only half joking, I feel like the majority of comments on the internet are garbage and not worth the time to read, and increasing friction with a nominal charge isn't necessarily a terrible thing.

It's a good thing for most people, just not the "platforms" trying to show growth.

that's why it should be mandated by law for national security reasons!

A major part of this problem is teachers who treat "student knows something I don't (or aren't prepared to teach right now)" as a status challenge to be rapidly obliterated, rather than as an opportunity to encourage a student.

Many, many adults are extremely emotionally unprepared to accept the possibility that they may be wrong and a child may be right; they start from the assumption that this is an impossibility, and reason backwards from there.

Or, in the case where they do in fact know that the child is right, they nonetheless decide to prioritize asserting authority over demonstrating how a mature adult should handle being wrong. And thus do students learn bad examples of what to do when they're wrong.


Or just...not have students at wildly different levels in the same class.

At high school and more so in universities, there are distinct classes at different levels, and prerequisites for those classes, and students at different levels. Bring that system to all grades, rather than just having "age N = grade X" as one giant class with pressure for uniformity.


> Every place I've worked with was amenable to these terms

What is the largest company you've successfully gotten to agree to these terms?


It's got to be easiee for a larger company to agree to. What would you be inspired to make that doesn't compete with an existing product if you work at big tech? It feels like they have products in all spaces.

Large companies tend to have very conservative legal departments, and be less supportive of exceptions and more willing to just not hire someone who has requirements outside their perceived norm. The question would be whether the company has ever established an exception path, typically by having a high-level hiring manager insist and running it up the chain.

Early on there was a lot more salvaging and makeshift components, and "I know someone who knows someone". Nowadays, though, I think the channel gets more than enough support that the answer is "I spent $12k and bought it".

It's nilered so it would be more like "I spent 12k....and bought it".

Hahaha I heard his voice when I read that a second time.

Exactly. There is absolutely a threshold of money that will get me to implement FIPS. There is no threshold of money that will get me to say it's a good idea that has any value other than getting the (singular) customer that demands FIPS.

The core idea of FIPS doesn't seem terrible at first glance: a validation program to ensure known attacks are protected against.

The obvious issue is that known attacks have progressed significantly faster than FIPS has been updated, so in practice it doesn't defend against actual attackers. Compliance-based security pretty much always falls into this trap, and often is even worse because compliance with the standard is considered the maximum that can be done instead of the minimum that must be done. FIPS' fatal flaw is that in many cases it mandates a maximum security level that is now outdated.

It's a lot like building or electrical codes: if they're treated as the minimum as intended things stay safe, but if they're just barely complied with then buildings tend to fall down and/or catch fire.


How's the quality of the stylus? Have you found good software for handwriting, both in general and atop existing documents?

For hand-writing, I just use the provided tools (Notebook and Reader). Notebook is OK, Reader is interesting but glitchy (it's their own software I think), but I'm sure Android ecosystem has solved these problems already - I just didn't yet feel the need to invest my time in discovering the best tools.

I think it's a standard Wacom stylus. I like it overall, the writing is pretty fluid.

> Sennaar didn't gel with me, because language-based deduction imply an "arbitrariness" ("wobbliness"?) and mis-interpretations.

I definitely found the misinterpretations entertaining. It seems like they went to some amount of effort to anticipate potential misinterpretations, such that discovering those misinterpretations later would lead to amusement.


> Apathetic non-voters

An important thing to keep in mind in American politics is the massive amount of voter suppression. Not voting doesn't inherently mean you were lazy or apathetic. It may well mean your vote was suppressed by any of a hundred tactics. Closing polling places in blue regions, requiring in-person voting on-the-day, restricting early voting, restricting vote by mail, failing at sending people ballots, spuriously dropping voter registrations...


> requiring in-person voting on-the-day

Exactly three states don't offer early voting to all voters [1] and none of those three were battleground states.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/map-early-voting-mail-ballot-st...


It would be a tall feat to suppress close to a third the population from voting!

All that is true, and to a great degree the reason why the concept of "swing states" (or rather the "non-swing states") even exists.

It does not explain however why almost all the swing states aligned with Trump this time.


20M is too much of a number to be attributed to voter suppression alone. I think the main issue here is still apathetic non-voters.

20M ballots is not the same as 20M voters. I don't understand where those 20M people went. Kamala checked a lot more boxes than Biden.

Emulation is legal, per established case law. Sony v Bleem, Sony v Connectix, Sega v Accolade.

There are legal issues around how to legally obtain emulatable copies of the games you own, but emulation is absolutely legal.

(This is not a commentary on whether the emulators in question were careful in every other way.)


I know some instances of emulation have been resolved to be fair use.

Still, Nintendo's motive is to defend their IP.

Even if the lawsuits go nowhere, it still works for them.

See, https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/switch-emulator-ryuj....

If Nintendo's IP wasn't involved they wouldn't give a rat ass about the emulation scene.


They worked for Sony, too, by driving emulators out of business. But that doesn't make it illegal; it just means the infliction of massive legal defense costs are an effective tactic.

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