technobabbler

15 ms·

91.
by technobabbler 5y ago
Sorry, but I have to disagree. It IS elitist, the sort of law that a detached lawmaker would make, with no concern about its impacts on regular people. Again, do we outlaw beef consumption, road trips, flying, older cars, leaving the lights
92.
by technobabbler 5y ago
As you wish.
93.
by technobabbler 5y ago
> She had a background in forensic accounting, was instrumental in getting a particular state senator convicted of corruption, and lost the support of the state party in the process. You point out a different, and arguably way more impor
94.
by technobabbler 5y ago
Sorry, I was editing my post while you replied, so you didn't see the bottom update. For what it's worth, I grew up in a polluted city, studied climate science in school, and work in renewables. It's not that I don't thi
95.
by technobabbler 5y ago
Are you talking about the air pollution from idling? It's elitist because it's minor, and not the sort of thing that citizens would naturally try to prosecute each other for. Should citizens police each other for eating beef? Driv
96.
by technobabbler 5y ago
How did you go from "the government shouldn't use citizens as secret police against each other" to "citizens shouldn't report a fire"? First of all, a burning building isn't an criminal act (unless it&#x27
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by technobabbler 5y ago
Private actors optimizing for their local maximum is in and of itself a sort of inefficiency. In any case, it doesn't have to be an either-or situation (and arguably shouldn't be). For most of the last century we were able to jugg
98.
by technobabbler 5y ago
Because otherwise it'd be a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good? That scenario would happen anyhow even at market rate. As a taxpayer I'd rather see some money wasted, and some progress being made, rather than nothing
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by technobabbler 5y ago
Both these things can be true. Yes, Texas used citizen lawsuits as a workaround for something they couldn't themselves enforce without risking constitutional ire (for now). It's a legal sleight-of-hand that wins them bonus points
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by technobabbler 5y ago
The OP was clearly discussing invasive tracking, not SERP curation and delisting. But ok I guess? "Search engine picks and chooses results to show. Must be evil like Google now."
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by technobabbler 5y ago
Yeah. Guess it's easier to dismiss your users for wrongthink than it is to revise your entire marketing effort when someone calls you out on your hypocrisy.
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by technobabbler 5y ago
Laws -- whether abortion or idling -- aren't some permanent unchangeable thing. They just cater to the whims of lawmakers and public opinion of the day. Idling wasn't always illegal in NYC either; somebody made it so, and then tac
103.
by technobabbler 5y ago
We do plenty of that (Voice of America, Hollywood, etc.), and other countries are free to block us too (and they do). We tried the whole "global village" thing. It didn't work. People are too tribal and shortsighted. Back to
104.
by technobabbler 5y ago
This is in fact how many projects get built today, even without eminent domain.
105.
by technobabbler 5y ago
Whatever, pork-barrel corruption is already an everyday part and parcel of our system. Paying 2x-4x for some piece of land is still waaaaaaaay cheaper for society than drowning in decades-long quagmire while infrastructure falls apart every
106.
by technobabbler 5y ago
Man, this shadowy cabal was so good, they started a global pandemic that brought the world economy under its control, made everyone fall in line behind pandemic mandates, shut up all dissent and turned everyone into zombies who now work thr
107.
by technobabbler 5y ago
> Trying to use a 50 year plan is also a weakness. Technologies developed between now and then will make many goals obsolete before their finished. It's not that simple. If something changes within the 50 years (and it certainly wil
108.
by technobabbler 5y ago
The potentially illegal/unconstitutional part of it is the prevention of abortions. Encouraging citizens to bounty hunt each other... that's the novelty that the other states are copying. These creepy "see something, say some
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by technobabbler 5y ago
Explain?
110.
by technobabbler 5y ago
That first link is illuminating, thanks. Guess DDG's official policy is "this isn't tracking". brianstoner said: > There's no blurring happening because there's nothing to blur. There's no unique identi
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by technobabbler 5y ago
What does this have to do with the OP? So DDG is delisting Russian propaganda, but how does that answer the situation with improving.duckduckgo.com? Did you link to the wrong thread...?
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by technobabbler 5y ago
Most web trackers work similarly. When a user clicks on something important, a signal is sent via another request to a monitoring server, usually Google Analytics/Ads/A-B testing or something like it. In this case DDG just made th
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by technobabbler 5y ago
Abortions in Texas, guns in California, tickets in NYC... guess vigilante profiteering is the new legislative norm? Get citizens to snitch on each other to fill your budget shortfalls.
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by technobabbler 5y ago
The asshole homophobe who was CEO for like a week? Yeah, he deserved that. If you're going to try to tell people who they can fuck, don't be surprised if they say fuck you right back. He deserved it. Mozilla was on its downhill sl
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by technobabbler 5y ago
Climate change... not so cold anymore. Last two years we barely even had a winter
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by technobabbler 5y ago
Yeah, exactly. Somewhere along the way leadership lost their way and made Firefox into bloated adware and kept uglifying it and mutating its interface to be worse and worse every iteration, all while posting flamboyant front-page news that
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by technobabbler 5y ago
I honestly don't know why Google keeps funding Mozilla. Maybe it's a "useful fool" type of situation where having an inferior browser they can financially puppeteer helps them set their own standards (via WHATWG), since
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by technobabbler 5y ago
Yeah, but those projects are forever downstream of Firefox, no? Like they still depend on Mozilla to build new features and such, but then remove the Mozilla-y stuff before publishing? I think the Chromium model has them forking from a shar
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by technobabbler 5y ago
Just putting in a quiet vote for Chicago, that most underrated and magnificent of American cities. If you don't mind the risk of getting murdered once in a while, the city is affordable, beautiful, walkable, full of great food and good
120.
by technobabbler 5y ago
If that's the case, Edge would be clear winner and it's still not. No, Firefox just... isn't good anymore.

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