ahje (u/ahje) - Readit News

ahje commented on Stab a Book, the Book Won't Die craigmod.com/essays/media... · Posted by u/cmod

cafard · 6 years ago

"If you read a novel in more than two weeks you don’t read the novel really."

Then who but academics--or maybe graduate students--can read War and Peace, The Man Without Qualities, In Search of Lost Time (or really, most of its constituent books), Moby Dick, etc.?

And I can imagine being "partial" to calling myself a reader, but "amicable" seems the wrong word.

ahje · 6 years ago

According to https://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/marketing/technology-researc... I could read War and Peace in a little over 24 hours, and English is my third language. That should be quite doable over a period of 2 weeks.

ahje commented on The problem isn’t data protection, it’s data collection twitter.com/CNBCi/status/... · Posted by u/thereyougo

WA · 6 years ago

Data protection suggests that it is okay in the first place to collect data, as long as it is going to be protected. But this is a problem. Data shouldn't be collected in the first place, because you can't probably protect it properly anyways (leaks etc.).

He's totally right imho, but to defend the GDPR at least a bit: It does have the concept of "consent" so that data should only be collected if people agree to it being collected. However, I still have my doubts that it works like that in reality for several reasons:

- Too many websites place tracking cookies first and then let you disable them

- Too many apps use some kind of analytics without any consent

- The GDPR has different mechanisms to give companies a "legitimate interest in collecting data". How this is enforced is kind of unclear.

- The GDPR issued fines in the past, but what's gone is gone. It maybe helps that companies stop collecting more data in the future after they were caught, but you, as an individual, are still screwed.

So, the only way indeed is to stop SOME data collection in the first place and do it yourself. And you certainly can forget cookie banners and all that junk. Only thing that works is:

- don't sign up to abusive services

- use tracking protection on the web (uBlock Origin)

- possibly use something like pi-hole to prevent tracking for all your devices and apps

But of course, this doesn't stop data collection where you really have no choice but to agree to something.

Edit: Clarification

ahje · 6 years ago

The idea is that the fines as supposed to act as a deterrent, but unfortunately there's been a shitload of really bad practices stemming from the fact that many consultants have drawn the erroneous conclusion that pre-ticked opt-in boxes are legal. Fines were handed out regarding a few specific cases, but very few businesses know about this and most of the ones that do claim it doesn't concern them for whatever reason. Furthermore, the Danish authorities set a very dangerous precedent when they refused to take on Google with the sole reason that Google are to big and that someone else have to do it.

But yes, until the situation has stabilized and someone has gotten very badly hurt from a financial perspective, the only sensible thing is to block non-HTML content by default and only whitelist the stuff you actually want to run.

ahje commented on A new type of genetic profiling economist.com/leaders/201... · Posted by u/lxm

buboard · 6 years ago

Why would it? People are already quite the unequal genetically, sometimes unequivocally so (e.g. women are less strong than men) but we accept that we have the same rights.

ahje · 6 years ago

The LGBTQ-movement, for example, is extremely vocal about any technique that could potentially be used to determine the sexual orientation of a person. They've spent a huge amount of time and resources in order to get society to redefine homosexuality from an illness and into a personal matter which should be included in societal norms.

If someone discovered a reliable way to detect the future sexuality of a child then those efforts would suddenly be contradicted, because 1) it would be harder to argue that it's not just a condition, and 2) no matter how controversial, there would be a demand for such screenings, and the LGBTQ-community would most likely interpret it as an existential threat.

Obviously, I chose sexuality as an example as it's an easy metaphor that most people get, but this reasoning can be applied to quite a few other things that are (possibly) caused by genetical factors and where there's a community involved. As an example, I've heard people mention an on-going "genocide" of people with Downs syndrome, simply because pre-natal screenings are quite effective at detecting it and that parents therefore terminate the pregnancy instead of having a child with Downs.

EDIT: Simply put: If you start screening for X, thereby allowing it to be prevented or treated in any way, then you imply that the X is something negative. People with X might take offence to that.

ahje commented on Spiders and ants inspire metal that won't sink rochester.edu/newscenter/... · Posted by u/dnetesn

Dylan16807 · 6 years ago

Does it sound incredibly toxic when spelled 'teflon'? It's pretty good on the food-safety front.

ahje · 6 years ago

But not all good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytetrafluoroethylene#Ecotox...

ahje commented on Is Inequality Inevitable? scientificamerican.com/ar... · Posted by u/viburnum

autoexec · 6 years ago

> Since we won't allow people to withdraw from society that means we're actively forcing people to live a specific way of life that some simply cannot handle.

Sometimes (although far less often than some people would like to assume) the person who withdraws is perfectly capable of handling the demands we force on people in our society, but they simply prefer to not participate. These people usually aren't sitting around all day collecting welfare checks, often they are the career homeless or living in isolated shacks in mountains. I can't really fault them if that kind of lifestyle is actually preferable to them.

ahje · 6 years ago

You're right, there are definitely people who choose a specific lifestyle willingly and by all means let them do so.

We shouldn't assume it applies to anyone just because it applies to some indivuduals though.

ahje commented on Is Inequality Inevitable? scientificamerican.com/ar... · Posted by u/viburnum

kjhkhkj · 6 years ago

It always comes down to violence and that argument makes me less sympathetic not more. I'm not interested in paying off what amounts to a rabid unproductive population for some hope of safety. Also, I'm not particularly scared of people that can't manage to find some success in the modern US either.

So if you argument is that we should increase taxes so another Mao doesn't exist, I'd rather just kill Mao.

ahje · 6 years ago

I get what you mean and I do sympathize somewhat.

The fact is, however, that modern society doesn't fit everyone. Since we won't allow people to withdraw from society that means we're actively forcing people to live a specific way of life that some simply cannot handle.

Simply putting more pressure on those groups will result in the forming of parallel societies and in the long run that means that those parallel societies will form a separate culture and try to secede. If we stop that there will be conflict. History tells us such conflict will be very bloody, no matter who ends up on top.

This is a cycle that Western Civilization has dealt with for thousands of years. Personally, I wouldn't mind trying to break it this time.

ahje commented on Is Inequality Inevitable? scientificamerican.com/ar... · Posted by u/viburnum

tathougies · 6 years ago

But in those times, relatively rich Americans were selling to extremely poor Europeans, Asians, and Africans. Inequality overall has gotten better, just the geography has shifted substantially so that previously homogeneously equitable places now have a more representative share of world inequality.

ahje · 6 years ago

So increased inequality on a local level is good as long as the global average goes down? I thought the idea was to make _everyone's_ lives better.

ahje commented on Nuclear fusion is 'a question of when, not if' bbc.com/news/science-envi... · Posted by u/pseudolus

pfdietz · 6 years ago

There is no reason to think such cost decline will apply to fusion reactors. Many of the parts in the system are mature (like, all the non nuclear parts like turbines.)

ahje · 6 years ago

I'm hopeful that the research might bear fruit at some point, so I am glad to see it continue. We definitely shouldn't put all eggs in one basket, though.

We don't have a finished design yet, so who knows what parts are needed (yeah, a turbine is a given, but still...)?

ahje commented on Nuclear fusion is 'a question of when, not if' bbc.com/news/science-envi... · Posted by u/pseudolus

ZeroGravitas · 6 years ago

But still a question of if it will make financial sense. Assuming this generates heat and drives a steam turbine, solar, wind and battery is likely to be cheaper than just the steam turbine and the transmission costs, never mind the fusion bit.

ahje · 6 years ago

That's indeed a big if, but even if it ends up being cheaper to use solar for most applications I can imagine fusion power would be a nice thing to have locally around major production centres where the power demand is much higher.

Solar is great for decentralized grids where one's neighbour basically buys excess power from you, but transferring gigawatts of power from a large amount of solar panels to something like a major industrial area /might/ be trickier.

ahje commented on When George Soros Broke the British Pound (2014) priceonomics.com/the-trad... · Posted by u/JackFr

ceejayoz · 6 years ago

The "Soros broke the bank" framing I tend to see in discussions of this is really quite odd, as if it were some sort of illegal Oceans 11 style heist.

He didn't break the bank. The bank broke itself.

> What kept the pound from plummeting in value was the British government’s guarantee that it would keep the value propped up, and the market believed that it would. As long as everyone believed that England would stay indefinitely committed to buying pounds for around 2.95 Deutschemarks, the status quo was maintained.

If you build a house on rotten stilts, and some neighborhood kid comes and kicks one of them, it's not the kid's fault when the house collapses.

ahje · 6 years ago

> If you build a house on rotten stilts, and some neighborhood kid comes and kicks one of them, it's not the kid's fault when the house collapses.

If you build a house that isn't fire proofed properly and a pyromaniac sets fire to it then you won't blame the contractor, even if the house wasn't properly built. Sure, there might be fines involved for breaking rules etc. but the blame for the fire is still attributed to the person who lit it.

Soros and his associates did this to a number of countries, includingMalaysia, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand and others; this is not about a single incident where someone used a small loop hole to make some profit -- it's about the financial sector deliberately playing nation states for massive profits, affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of people in those countries.

Should the banks have been better prepared? Yes, definitely. Does that in anyway shift the blame for playing with the livelihood of millions in order to turn a profit? Not a chance.