volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
I like how I pointed out that you're overlooking voters, and you reply with a bunch of articles that... overlook voters.
I see nothing bonkers in saying the first half of 2A is functionally irrelevant. It merely echos the preamble as being a little aside.
Anyway, a huge problem with a privacy amendment is figuring out a way to frame one that wouldn't directly impact so much longstanding and well-regarded functioning of the government.
For example, how do you say a person has a right to take an abortion pill but not a right to take prescription drugs without a prescription? Or do you give up all drug regulation? All medical device regulation?
The real issue here isn't the amendment. It's figuring out some theory by which government can regulate some things we do to ourselves but not others.
So to be a bit more concrete, when I originally read the ActivityPub standard, it struck me as having a tremendous amount of overhead and being based on a design that would not scale well.
That's just looking at the technical side. There are other major issues, for example the lack of any guarantee of limited audience for a post.
But when I read the standard I wondered if the people behind it had any experience analyzing distributed systems for scalability, or if they'd even heard of Big-O analysis. (A professional programmer friend of mine says it's not necessarily even taught in college these days).
Sure enough, as the flight from Twitter took off, I heard case after case of instances literally crashing under the strain of those poorly designed protocols.
These issues are core to the AP design. You can't switch to lighter-weight signaling or more scalability-optimized distribution approaches without ripping it all out.
I'm hoping Bluesky hasn't made the same mistakes.
And yet, voters did, indeed, vote for candidates who won.
You can talk all day about WHY voters voted as they did, but at the end of the day, it was their decision whom to empower.
No, separation of powers doesn't allow the president to unilaterally borrow money without authorization.
It's exactly the opposite:
BECAUSE of separation of powers, the Congress cannot stop the president from performing his constitutional duty to service the debt, as per the 14th Amendment, when when the Treasury has the cash to do so.
And it's just shameful that Biden has been using those threats to duck his 14th Amendment responsibilities to push for greater borrowing power.
That is incorrect since the Constitution recognizes that the appropriations power is distinct from borrowing authority.
It's also incorrect since the Treasury is the one that issues debt, not Congress. Wrong branch of government.
You talk about buying a TV on a credit card, but you're overlooking that in this analogy the TV has not yet been bought.
Well there are parts we can compare and parts we can't.
For example, we can look at the overall design, how user accounts are managed, and see how different it is from how ActivityPub manages user accounts.
Yep, we'll have to wait to see how other parts compare as they shape up, but at least we can look at the parts of the design that have been publicly outlined.
Ha, well, there are two sides to this, objective and subjective. And please read the following in the lighthearted tone I mean it.
Objectively, it would take so much work to add in the features missing from ActivityPub, the user-empowering stuff, because AP is just that focused to the core on instances.
Subjectively, my personal opinion, AP is so ugly, so badly designed, so bloated and inefficient in its use of layer after layer of kludged-in standard, that I'm happy to throw it overboard.
I say this to respond to your strikes me as odd statement. To me, it doesn't strike me as odd at all, as from my perspective the alternative is a lot of work to maybe have new features sort of function in a system that's not work keeping in the first place.
And now to go take a vehicle to a mechanic to try to salvage a car that, if I'm being honest, is really not work keeping in the first place :)
I think you overlook the existence of voters in the US system of government.
Stories of purchasing elections have been generally debunked as nothing more than conspiracy theory.
Keep in mind that there's absolutely nothing preventing ads on a ActivityPub instance or even being sent through the network.
Your instance can start showing you ads this very second if it wanted to. Heck, I could even reply to this thread with an ad :)
Bluesky is still in development. I expect that once it's ironed out there will be federating instances (or whatever they call nodes).
We will see, though.
@uniquitous @RogueLodge @hakirsch
But what of Bluesky's focus on users over instances?
One reason I'm interested in Bluesky is precisely BECAUSE I really care about decentralized media and was disappointed that ActivityPub centralized around instances.
@supernovae@universeodon.com Well, populations have grown, markets have grown, and there's really only so much that managers can do to scale.
If a CEO (well, his staff) is receiving 100 letters a day one year and then 1000 letters a day a few years later, the secretary only has the same number of hours in the day.
So much in the world is about matters of scale, scaling up or down.
@rolle, thanks for sharing this link to a one paragraph summary of #Bluesky 's reason for existing.
Although I would push back that things like increased portability means LESS control, not more.
@uniquitous @RogueLodge @hakirsch
The problem is that ActivityPub has some real deficiencies built into its core, that can't be simply extended away.
To address those issues--ranging from privacy through the focus on instances over users--requires an incompatible protocol.
The concern I have is that the reduced scrutiny meant less people involved to give input and point out weaknesses in the design of the system.
ActivityPub has some serious deficiencies, for example when it comes to privacy, decentralization, and resource usage.
Had there been more scrutiny and eyes on the development, maybe we wouldn't now be saddled with those issues.
Yes. Congress can impeach him if our democratic process comes to the conclusion that he's misbehaved in office.
Fortunately cooler heads will probably prevail.
It sounds like you're trying so, so hard to deflect from the simple matter of law that was before the court here.
The FDA broke the law.
Oh, but the drug later developed a track record--but the FDA broke the law.
Oh, but we really should let women access this drug--but the FDA broke the law.
Oh, but the politics--the FDA broke the law.
You seem to keep throwing up these other issues that are completely irrelevant as to the actual question the court was asked to answer here.
Did the FDA break the law? None of this other stuff changes the answer to that question.
Ha! As if proprietary protocols aren't a thing?
Yes, a protocol is a protocol even if you yourself haven't been assisted in joining the party yet.
Again, read the monthly report and you'll see that the Treasury doesn't operate year by year.
The Treasury collects money every day and spends money every day, so it's about the day's tax revenues vs the day's spending, and they update their balances every day.
So when the Treasury has a debt to pay today, it doesn't think about different years. It looks at what its balance is today and it spends what has come in.
It's exactly like your own bank account. When your electricity bill is due, you write a check out of your account that day, you don't go look into the account for some particular year, I'm guessing.
@stopgopfox@libretooth.gr
Specifically, what weapon were they using?
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
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