namark @namark@qoto.org
Joined Jan 2020
I don't underestimate the radar, I actually accepted everything you claimed about evil government and their super sensitive radar as truth for the purposes of this discussion. Just as the government is able to silence or arrest, they are also able to refute any facts presented, it's not exactly a mathematical proof. Government can not filter/alter the presentation of entities that do not wish to cooperate, they can only silence those. This case hardly looks like cooperation in fear of retaliation.
You're not addressing my main point of how openly speaking against the government is any safer than a simple "hey fine worker of our glorious empire, what great deeds are you up to today?" in this context.
Sure I know nothing, but I don't understand your logic either... I'm saying "you don't have to accuse the government, you can just report on facts", and you are arguing that "accusing the government will get you arrested".
If what is posted here is the same as what was posted on twitter, you can't claim that it was the videos alone, they are clearly accompanied with anti-government rhetoric, which according to you is more than enough to warrant an arrest, not just a ban. There is also one pointless video of street violence, which might be against terms of service there.
I really don't see how trying to ask a couple of questions to the operator of the spray (after their shift even), or a visit to local government office in good faith, will put you on the radar of the evil government anymore than what @HarryChenPhD and anyone else involved are already doing there.
hmmm, I don't think anything I said can be used as an excuse for an arrest, I didn't mean to suggest to snoop out evidence with any means necessary. If the government stands on the way, reporting on that would be enough. Are police battalions escorting the workers not letting anyone close? Do the workers refuse to talk?
If it's about evil government abusing power to arrest people they don't like, even without an excuse, then actively speaking against said government is more dangerous in my opinion, than unopinionated journalism. None of those things require anti-government rhetoric, they can even be framed as pro-governmant - "look at the amazing technology and state of the art chemistry out government deployed!".
An analogy would be firefighting equipment or even police arsenal. I can't see why would the government go out of it's way to publish a thorough explanation on the technology used up to the chemical composition. On the other hand it would be totally normal for a journalist to do that. Nothing incriminating or out of ordinary there.
That said I don't know what the situation is in the quarantine(or the evil China in general), so maybe there is something I'm missing. I'm as usual out of touch.
From what I can see so far it does seem like just biased opinion if not agenda. Not what I would expect from a journalist, renegade or not.
In my opinion a journalist shouldn't just sit back and complain that the government doesn't go out of its way to do their job for them. A journalist will go and ask the driver what they are spraying, then go inquire in local government building/unit/whatever, maybe even take a sample and take it to a lab(or closest renegade equivalent) for examination. Report on all of that exactly, and then maybe express an opinion under a disclaimer.
Not saying there is anything wrong with expressing an opinion (even if biased), just scrutinizing the "renegade journalist".
I don't really know how any given loot box system works, and there can be some grey area there(for example, if you always get equal value out of it, but in different form), but the whole gist seems to be the same. It's entirely artificial and it's appealing to and encouraging the same mindset that one would need to have to play, say, slot machines.
I also have to say that to me the whole idea of buying a ready made in game item in general is absurd, but I guess that's our reality now.
@snow
I keep wondering whether it's "zzzz" as in snorlax or "zzzz" as in chris tucker in 5th element...
Well, I guess we can say that "gambling" is not really well defined, and not say that you trying to stretch the meaning of the word... doesn't matter though... What I was trying to say is that there is a big difference between unpredictable natural circumstances(risking) and conscious setups of randomness(gambling). Even those stock marketers, as far as I understand, simply found themselves in a situation where some risks can can be beneficial, they did not orchestrate that situation (at least in principle), and they are trying to do everything in their power to mitigate the risk, predict the outcomes. Gambling on the other hand is intentionally random, the whole point of the industry is to ensure "fair" randomness(in principle again), and in that sense is just the complete opposite thing. It's "the church of random" vs "the church of 'I wish it wasn't random, but oh well'".
You sure know how to be confusing... what is that supposed to mean? That everything is random and unpredictable? Oh gee, might the next key I press activate the orbital death ray that might exist and might be in a quantum entanglement with my keyboard and might fry me where I stand?! Chaos is the only true religion, and casinos are its shrines!
@snow
The wordplay works of course, but if you think about it, equating any risk of life to gambling, is akin to equating death to murder. One is an uncontrollable circumstance imposed on people by nature, that most of them strive to circumvent, and the other is a conscious activity people engage in by choice and encourage others to engage in. Of course there is no harm in playing games with your friends, as long as you realize what you're doing and take it lightly, but that's not at all what people usually end up doing when gambling. To me "gambling industry" being an actually meaningful phrase is bizarre, if not tragic.
@snow
I'm not an expert on the specifics to be honest, but I imagine the search on your instance would only bring results that your instance already pulled in. It will not cause new things to be pulled in like the usual interactions do. Basically it's not a full federation wide search, it's just within what your instance already knows about. There might be an exception there for user search specifically, since it's not that much data, but either way it would not be an exhaustive search across the entire network, as I understand.
@crackurbones
infinity snowman travelling through space on an asteroid
#invertthat
This is how the federation(through activity pub protocol) works. Your instance only pulls in things that its users interact with (boost, like, follow, reply etc.). Otherwise, you can imagine, every instance/server would need to have the full capacity of the entire federated network, which would be very inefficient, and impossible for smaller instances. As you have discovered you are still free to request information from a specific instance directly. Most even allow you to view their local timelines. Unfortunately there are very few clients that would make it easy for you. I only know of two that do, Subway Tooter and Fedilab, both exclusive to Android. Subway Tooter is especially good at this, as it gives you a lot of options on how to view a given toot or timeline.
My personal experience also contradicts the "you need to be an expert to use it" stigma. I'm the "techie" of the family, and when using windows I had to service their computers several times a year for various reasons, and the process was very time consuming, sometimes having to resort to reinstalling/resetting the whole system. After switching to an LTS linux desktop there hasn't been any issues for years. They only occasionally need me to install or configure new software, and it's usually quick and painless. To my surprise I could often help them remotely, thanks to terminal interface of all things. It turns out it's much easier for both them and me to focus on just one window and copy paste some text around, instead of trying to describe what's happening to various GUIs and what should be done about that. It just takes admitting that if you don't know how to do something, you need to ask someone who does, instead of aimlessly poking around the system until it "works".
Of course not anyone has a relative that is more or less a software specialist, but neither does everyone have a plumber or an electrician in the family. You have local independent affordable service providers, that can help you, and this is an area where software industry is lacking. Most such affordable service providers have earned a bad(scammy) reputation, since even the specialist are often powerless to properly understand and fix proprietary closed source systems that dominate the market.
I believe this kind of service is the only ethical thing you can "sell to the masses" in this context. Something like "We'll rework your entire system to suit your particular use case, and even give you warranty on it". Today this would still be an uphill battle though, since proprietary software still has a firm grip on certain areas of the industry.
@Quellist1Resleeved
To concede to your nature is nothing but animal, what is human is to defy it. You don't need to be vague about it, say what you mean: "some people are not human".
Sure it is bad. If you think it is illegal in a specific case and really want to help maybe you should take legal action. If not then the least you can do is to let people see the crime, so that maybe someone does, or at least there is some form of backlash. Just blocking seems like a "lets forget about it, and hope it never happens to us" kind of deal.
A "they can't see us, we can see them" block sounds interesting, but not sure it's worth it. Better spend time on raising awareness of privacy on internet in general, or contributing to projects that work on that.
I think these kind of problems are beyond what mastodon instance admins should be trying to solve in their federation policies. After all most doxers will not be publicly announcing their intentions along with several failed attempts, from any account/identity that is worth a dime to them. This particular situation is more like a misguided person seeking all the wrong kind of attention. If you want to be extra careful and block them, that's fine I think, but not sure it's worth writing up a vague policy that might create the wrong impression or cause dilemmas in future.
2. As in "not let the evil haxor know the precious toots of qoto"? Then you should also close up public access to local/federated timelines, making qoto "registered user only", and then maybe also block all instances that don't block the evil haxor, for good measure... sounds good?
Unless you mean something like preventing malicious actors on qoto(or instance federating with qoto) from having access to information publicized on the evil instance? I don't think that's effective either, the information will remain public even if all other instances block it, and the doxer can always post it anywhere else they wish. If anything, silencing/blocking them will be most effective at preventing users in qoto from knowing that they might have been doxed (or that someone embarrassed themselves by failing at it).
@Quellist1Resleeved The idea that you can view/model/judge an entire civilization or a large group of people with the same metrics/methods you judge an individual is delusional. Very very useful though, if you want to justify and encourage dehumanization, wars, massacres etc.
I didn't do any research, so can't agree or disagree with that, but maybe that's the key difference. The homicide rate requires research, statistics and complicated reasoning, while prevention of accidents is rather obvious, like in your satirical analogy with vaccines.
@hansw@mastodon.social
I guess my main point was that the "regulation increases crime rate" argument is debatable, while "regulation decreases accidents" is pretty clear cut, and people, understandably, prefer solving problems they know can be solved first, before tackling more complicated ones.
@hansw@mastodon.social
I don't think that firearm regulation are aimed at reducing the crime rate. It is more akin to regulation of dangerous chemicals, that is primarily aimed at preventing stupid accidents, like school shootings. Even if it has an effect on the crime rate, it might not be relevant in that context, since you can fight crime by other means (which you would arguably have to arrive at anyway, since guns, even if reduce, definitely do not directly solve the problem), but some form of regulation is the only way to prevent the stupid accidents (not saying that any specific example currently in use it perfect).
Regarding the graphs, the spikes are not that surprising I think, since this kind of new regulation would cause a temporary shift in balance of power, which criminals and criminal organizations would try to capitalize on at some point. I'm also not sure if you can account for things like population growth without making some debatable assumptions, like a linear relation.
TLDR: crime is a very complicated problem, while firearm regulations aim at solving a much more mundane/manageable one.
@hansw@mastodon.social
