8 ms·

My car has limits the government puts on it - it has to shut off it's engine to reduce fuel consumption to hit a government mandate. My shower doesn't use as m

My car has limits the government puts on it - it has to shut off it's engine to reduce fuel consumption to hit a government mandate. My shower doesn't use as much water as I'd like, as the government mandates a flow restrictor. Why not printers?

p0w3n3d 2y ago
Why not toilet control - if you have not enough fiber in your ... the electronic money you have on the bank account won't be able to buy you more meat, suggesting vege instead. But where is the limit of freedom? Where is the border we should stop before or fight for it somehow?
- LadyCailin 2y ago
  Every “freedom” has two sides. Positive and negative freedom. You don’t have the freedom to dump nasty chemicals into bodies of water (lack of positive freedom), but I have the freedom to not have carcinogens in my drinking water (negative freedom). Some examples are clear cut, in the sense that we as a society surely all agree on where the line should be between positive and negative, but all examples need to be discussed on an individual basis, because they’re all different in terms of where we draw the line. But you can’t use the slippery slope argument here, because the slope works in the other direction too for any given example, the more positive freedom you have, the less negative freedom you have.
  - biofox 2y ago
    This is a refreshingly balanced take, which seems to frequently get lost in discussions. The more I think about policy, the more it resembles a multi-objective optimisation problem.
    - AtlasBarfed 2y ago
      Libertarianism is bunk because of this. It's not about freedom, it's about your freedom and no one else's. Libertarians say they are anti regulation, but I ask them if I can murder them to steal their property. Apparently they are all in favor of that regulation. Similar to anti gun control people. Ok, I'm your neighbor, can I arm myself with chemical and biological weapons? Or a conventional bomb that will definitely destroy the entire block? Hm, funny, they are in favor of some gun control.
      - cooldrcool2 2y ago
        Neither on of those examples are guns. Also a libertarian wouldn't just accept you murdering them, they would obviously attempt to defend themselves. Your arguments are kind of weak.
        AtlasBarfed 2y ago
        The second amendment is the right to keep and bear arms allegedly. You know if you're a well regulated militia. Anyway everything I listed is arms. If you want to be literalist as to the actual arms of the second amendment, then nobody should be armed with anything but a breech loading musket.
  - zkry 2y ago
    Surely though limiting the government's positive freedom of ubiquitous surveillance, like this example of printers, is something that I'm sure would be resoundingly popular in a democratic society. This seems as clear cut as limiting the freedom to dump toxic chemicals into water supplies.
    - pbhjpbhj 2y ago
      An adaptation of printers most people never notice and which has been used to help catch criminals? I don't think you'll get the support you're expecting from the general public. How is it anything like having your water supply poisoned. The printer thing doesn't noticeably affect anyone negatively unless they commit substantial crimes. Indeed it likely reduces costs of tracing the origins of printed material when that's important in a criminal investigation.
      - swiftcoder 2y ago
        > The printer thing doesn't noticeably affect anyone negatively unless they commit substantial crimes I'm not sure we have as universal agreement on what constitutes "crime" as you imply. Several whistleblowers have been convicted on the basis of printer watermarks - some of us certainly will fall on the side of preferring the existence of said whistleblowers in the federal government.
        vasco 2y ago
        People generally don't care about making policy based on what is going to affect a whistleblower. The policy is done for the normal case. I'm not sure how much support you'd get on any issue if your argument is "but what about whistleblowers" other than in single-issue niche groups.
        jonhohle 2y ago
        25 years ago the “hacker” community was more libertarian and would have been horrified at the idea of devices tracking individuals for some anomalous safety goal. Some of those same people developed the surveillance state and the generation that followed thinks we should all wear Meta glasses at all times for “safety”. Meanwhile the advertisers and authoritarians behind them are snickering.
- mejutoco 2y ago
  When I was a kid they told us: your freedom ends where somebody’s freedom starts. I still think it is valid and insightful.
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    > When I was a kid they told us: your freedom ends where somebody’s freedom starts. I still think it is valid and insightful. When I was younger, I thought this was a good idea. The problem with this rule is that where the boundary between "individual freedom" and "somebody else's freedom" lies varies a lot between different people (and cultures).
    - mejutoco 2y ago
      I thing the human rights declaration is a good baseline that is universal.
rightbyte 2y ago
Seems strange to comparing resource saving to spyware? Potato potatoes I guess.
- themaninthedark 2y ago
  Auto idle shutdown saves on gasoline but comes at the cost of increased starter wear.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Ye I don't like start stop for that reason. I don't trust the manufacturer to make the starter more robust to handle the increased wear.
nialv7 2y ago
There is a difference between government limiting what your device can do, versus government monitoring what you use your device to do. Sure your engine may shut off to save fuel, but once you have finished driving and left your car, it no longer has any power over you. But tracking dots can forever be used to link a piece of document to your printer. Good luck shredding everything and never let anything you print leave your control.
gambiting 2y ago
>> it has to shut off it's engine to reduce fuel consumption to hit a government mandate. I've not heard of any car where you can't turn this off. There is no switch anywhere to turn off watermarking in your printer.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Is the engine shutoff the government mandate, or is it an implementation by the manufacturer to reduce fuel consumption and thus emissions? I mean I get the comparison - government requires your car to have a seatbelt and your printer to have identifiable dots and your scanner to be unable to scan money - but in the case of engine shutoff it's more the manufacturer's idea. I don't know who came up with the xerox code though.
pbhjpbhj 2y ago
>has to shut off it's engine to reduce fuel consumption Which government, what car feature? It sounds like idling shutoff that saves you money, reduces pollution, and reduces fuel consumption, eg when you stop to wait for traffic lights?
- bdavbdav 2y ago
  Every western government pretty much.
- randunel 2y ago
  You cannot buy a car in Europe without: - lights permanently on ("safety", definitely not for your ability to get lost in the dark) - continuously stores logs of speed, brakes, seatbelts, signal, vehicle inclination, GSM connection etc ("safety", called "black box" in Europe, also warns the driver when local speed limit exceeded) - permanent GSM connection ("safety", definitely not for tracking, pinky promise!) - continuously monitoring the driver's head/face ("safety", called driver drowsiness warning) - engine turns off when stationary (the default setting can't be changed by the user, but by a car service with the right tools) - car brakes on its own ("safety", but it's so bad I turn it off every time I power it on, it brakes when someone nearby but not right in front of you slows down, cannot be disabled permanently) - signals left/right at least 3 times
  - PeterStuer 2y ago
    You can. You just wouldn't be allowed to run it on the public road.
  - jpc0 2y ago
    - mandatory seat belts - doors that close and remain closed - airbags None of the things you mentioned are particularly an issue with the regulations, they legitimately assist in situations where they are meant to assist. If some feature is mildly inconvenient to you but saves the life of another human being then I feel you can live with the inconvenience. If you made an argument about subscriptions for heater seating or carplay or some nonsense then you have a valid argument and is in the same line as DRM, mandated actual safety feature not do much.
thatcat 2y ago
those are limits on squandering community resources. this requires you to use your resources (ink) for no benefit to you. to continue the bathroom theme it would be more like requiring your toilet to add rfid tags to your poops to track them downstream.
nosioptar 2y ago
The yellow dots requirement means you can't print black and white without yellow ink. If the government is going to require this, they need to subsidize the yellow ink that I never use, but have to constantly replace.
- redundantly 2y ago
  If you're never doing color prints, get a b&w printer.
- Clamchop 2y ago
  Does it? Monochrome printers exist. It must either be the case that it's not viewed as necessary in this case, or there's some other way of encoding this information in black and white that color printers could use when not printing in color.
kmeisthax 2y ago
Printing something onto paper should not be a blanket opt-out of the 4th amendment. As far as I understand it, the yellow dots thing comes from the US government stepping on the toes of Xerox and getting them to jump. Same thing with Biden getting COVID misinformation removed or Trump getting the entire tech industry to lurch to the far-right overnight. Both of those imperil the 1st Amendment[0], and the yellow dots imperil the 4th. Now, let's look at the two other examples you provided. Automatic engine shut-offs[1] and water flow restrictors may be annoying, but they do not imperil constitutional rights like the watermarking dots do. If we were talking about the US government mandating tracking chips in every car, then it would be like the watermarking dots. Of course "government mandated tracking chips" is old news. The stuff of conspiracy theories. You might even be able to sue the government to stop it. The current meta regarding getting around the 4th amendment is using industry to violate people's privacy for you. Industry will happily violate people's privacy on their own, because there's money in spying on people, so all the US government has to do is buy from private spies[2]. And because this is 'private' action, 4A stays untripped, because our constitution is a joke. [0] Not nearly to the same extent, of course. Biden bruised 1A's arm, Trump wants to dump gasoline on it and light it on fire. [1] My mom's Tuscon has this 'feature' and it's genuinely annoying. First thing you do when you use the car is shut it off so that it doesn't get you T-boned trying to save gas. [2] This knowledge has been public domain since at least 2011: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/social-media-is-a-tool-of-the-cia-seriously/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/social-media-is-a-tool-of-the-c...

p0w3n3d 2y ago

Why not toilet control - if you have not enough fiber in your ... the electronic money you have on the bank account won't be able to buy you more meat, suggesting vege instead. But where is the limit of freedom? Where is the border we should stop before or fight for it somehow?

LadyCailin 2y ago
Every “freedom” has two sides. Positive and negative freedom. You don’t have the freedom to dump nasty chemicals into bodies of water (lack of positive freedom), but I have the freedom to not have carcinogens in my drinking water (negative freedom). Some examples are clear cut, in the sense that we as a society surely all agree on where the line should be between positive and negative, but all examples need to be discussed on an individual basis, because they’re all different in terms of where we draw the line. But you can’t use the slippery slope argument here, because the slope works in the other direction too for any given example, the more positive freedom you have, the less negative freedom you have.
- biofox 2y ago
  This is a refreshingly balanced take, which seems to frequently get lost in discussions. The more I think about policy, the more it resembles a multi-objective optimisation problem.
  - AtlasBarfed 2y ago
    Libertarianism is bunk because of this. It's not about freedom, it's about your freedom and no one else's. Libertarians say they are anti regulation, but I ask them if I can murder them to steal their property. Apparently they are all in favor of that regulation. Similar to anti gun control people. Ok, I'm your neighbor, can I arm myself with chemical and biological weapons? Or a conventional bomb that will definitely destroy the entire block? Hm, funny, they are in favor of some gun control.
    - cooldrcool2 2y ago
      Neither on of those examples are guns. Also a libertarian wouldn't just accept you murdering them, they would obviously attempt to defend themselves. Your arguments are kind of weak.
      - AtlasBarfed 2y ago
        The second amendment is the right to keep and bear arms allegedly. You know if you're a well regulated militia. Anyway everything I listed is arms. If you want to be literalist as to the actual arms of the second amendment, then nobody should be armed with anything but a breech loading musket.
- zkry 2y ago
  Surely though limiting the government's positive freedom of ubiquitous surveillance, like this example of printers, is something that I'm sure would be resoundingly popular in a democratic society. This seems as clear cut as limiting the freedom to dump toxic chemicals into water supplies.
  - pbhjpbhj 2y ago
    An adaptation of printers most people never notice and which has been used to help catch criminals? I don't think you'll get the support you're expecting from the general public. How is it anything like having your water supply poisoned. The printer thing doesn't noticeably affect anyone negatively unless they commit substantial crimes. Indeed it likely reduces costs of tracing the origins of printed material when that's important in a criminal investigation.
    - swiftcoder 2y ago
      > The printer thing doesn't noticeably affect anyone negatively unless they commit substantial crimes I'm not sure we have as universal agreement on what constitutes "crime" as you imply. Several whistleblowers have been convicted on the basis of printer watermarks - some of us certainly will fall on the side of preferring the existence of said whistleblowers in the federal government.
      - vasco 2y ago
        People generally don't care about making policy based on what is going to affect a whistleblower. The policy is done for the normal case. I'm not sure how much support you'd get on any issue if your argument is "but what about whistleblowers" other than in single-issue niche groups.
      - jonhohle 2y ago
        25 years ago the “hacker” community was more libertarian and would have been horrified at the idea of devices tracking individuals for some anomalous safety goal. Some of those same people developed the surveillance state and the generation that followed thinks we should all wear Meta glasses at all times for “safety”. Meanwhile the advertisers and authoritarians behind them are snickering.
mejutoco 2y ago
When I was a kid they told us: your freedom ends where somebody’s freedom starts. I still think it is valid and insightful.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > When I was a kid they told us: your freedom ends where somebody’s freedom starts. I still think it is valid and insightful. When I was younger, I thought this was a good idea. The problem with this rule is that where the boundary between "individual freedom" and "somebody else's freedom" lies varies a lot between different people (and cultures).
  - mejutoco 2y ago
    I thing the human rights declaration is a good baseline that is universal.

rightbyte 2y ago

Seems strange to comparing resource saving to spyware? Potato potatoes I guess.

themaninthedark 2y ago
Auto idle shutdown saves on gasoline but comes at the cost of increased starter wear.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Ye I don't like start stop for that reason. I don't trust the manufacturer to make the starter more robust to handle the increased wear.

nialv7 2y ago

There is a difference between government limiting what your device can do, versus government monitoring what you use your device to do. Sure your engine may shut off to save fuel, but once you have finished driving and left your car, it no longer has any power over you. But tracking dots can forever be used to link a piece of document to your printer. Good luck shredding everything and never let anything you print leave your control.

gambiting 2y ago

>> it has to shut off it's engine to reduce fuel consumption to hit a government mandate. I've not heard of any car where you can't turn this off. There is no switch anywhere to turn off watermarking in your printer.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

Is the engine shutoff the government mandate, or is it an implementation by the manufacturer to reduce fuel consumption and thus emissions? I mean I get the comparison - government requires your car to have a seatbelt and your printer to have identifiable dots and your scanner to be unable to scan money - but in the case of engine shutoff it's more the manufacturer's idea. I don't know who came up with the xerox code though.

pbhjpbhj 2y ago

>has to shut off it's engine to reduce fuel consumption Which government, what car feature? It sounds like idling shutoff that saves you money, reduces pollution, and reduces fuel consumption, eg when you stop to wait for traffic lights?

bdavbdav 2y ago
Every western government pretty much.
randunel 2y ago
You cannot buy a car in Europe without: - lights permanently on ("safety", definitely not for your ability to get lost in the dark) - continuously stores logs of speed, brakes, seatbelts, signal, vehicle inclination, GSM connection etc ("safety", called "black box" in Europe, also warns the driver when local speed limit exceeded) - permanent GSM connection ("safety", definitely not for tracking, pinky promise!) - continuously monitoring the driver's head/face ("safety", called driver drowsiness warning) - engine turns off when stationary (the default setting can't be changed by the user, but by a car service with the right tools) - car brakes on its own ("safety", but it's so bad I turn it off every time I power it on, it brakes when someone nearby but not right in front of you slows down, cannot be disabled permanently) - signals left/right at least 3 times
- PeterStuer 2y ago
  You can. You just wouldn't be allowed to run it on the public road.
- jpc0 2y ago
  - mandatory seat belts - doors that close and remain closed - airbags None of the things you mentioned are particularly an issue with the regulations, they legitimately assist in situations where they are meant to assist. If some feature is mildly inconvenient to you but saves the life of another human being then I feel you can live with the inconvenience. If you made an argument about subscriptions for heater seating or carplay or some nonsense then you have a valid argument and is in the same line as DRM, mandated actual safety feature not do much.

thatcat 2y ago

those are limits on squandering community resources. this requires you to use your resources (ink) for no benefit to you. to continue the bathroom theme it would be more like requiring your toilet to add rfid tags to your poops to track them downstream.

nosioptar 2y ago

The yellow dots requirement means you can't print black and white without yellow ink. If the government is going to require this, they need to subsidize the yellow ink that I never use, but have to constantly replace.

redundantly 2y ago
If you're never doing color prints, get a b&w printer.
Clamchop 2y ago
Does it? Monochrome printers exist. It must either be the case that it's not viewed as necessary in this case, or there's some other way of encoding this information in black and white that color printers could use when not printing in color.

kmeisthax 2y ago

Printing something onto paper should not be a blanket opt-out of the 4th amendment. As far as I understand it, the yellow dots thing comes from the US government stepping on the toes of Xerox and getting them to jump. Same thing with Biden getting COVID misinformation removed or Trump getting the entire tech industry to lurch to the far-right overnight. Both of those imperil the 1st Amendment[0], and the yellow dots imperil the 4th. Now, let's look at the two other examples you provided. Automatic engine shut-offs[1] and water flow restrictors may be annoying, but they do not imperil constitutional rights like the watermarking dots do. If we were talking about the US government mandating tracking chips in every car, then it would be like the watermarking dots. Of course "government mandated tracking chips" is old news. The stuff of conspiracy theories. You might even be able to sue the government to stop it. The current meta regarding getting around the 4th amendment is using industry to violate people's privacy for you. Industry will happily violate people's privacy on their own, because there's money in spying on people, so all the US government has to do is buy from private spies[2]. And because this is 'private' action, 4A stays untripped, because our constitution is a joke. [0] Not nearly to the same extent, of course. Biden bruised 1A's arm, Trump wants to dump gasoline on it and light it on fire. [1] My mom's Tuscon has this 'feature' and it's genuinely annoying. First thing you do when you use the car is shut it off so that it doesn't get you T-boned trying to save gas. [2] This knowledge has been public domain since at least 2011: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/social-media-is-a-tool-of-the-cia-seriously/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/social-media-is-a-tool-of-the-c...