jkn (u/jkn) - Readit News

jkn commented on SpaceX test flight of Starship SN-5 [video] youtube.com/watch?v=NJR4g... · Posted by u/lpellis

octaveguin · 5 years ago

The Expanse also has UBI on earth. With it, most people still lack opportunity and live a rather destitute, powerless life.

Seems like a pretty good perdition of our future, really. UBI recipients with no labor of value to offer won't have power to change their government for long.

It's unfortunate that the authoritarian future of Star Trek probably wouldn't lead to paradise. Or at least, that's how our culture's view of the future has changed.

Both fictions are a product of their time. I still wish we had the optimism of Star Trek now.

jkn · 5 years ago

Star Trek's society is collectivist (as all societies are, to a degree), but is it authoritarian?

I suspect that summarizing collectivism as authoritarian is like summarizing libertarianism as selfish: they go well together, but you can also get one without the other.

I don't know Star Trek very well, but as a utopia I guess they imagine a form of collectivism that largely preserves individual freedom? Of course most of the show centers on Starfleet, an authoritarian organisation like any military, which doesn't tell much about the whole society.

jkn commented on Apple Launches Portal for U.S. Users to Download Their Data bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/uptown

masklinn · 7 years ago

> Google, Microsoft and even Facebook have had this for quite some time.

Deployed and available outside the EU, and more specifically in the US?

jkn · 7 years ago

The Data Liberation Front team was formed at Google in 2007, and released Google Takeout in 2011, worldwide, well before the other big companies had anything similar in place.

http://dataliberation.blogspot.com/2011/06/data-liberation-f...

For more up-to-date information see the Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Data_Liberation_Front#c...

This service works quite well, I'm using it to backup the whole of my Google data every few months, including Gmail, Photos and Drive.

jkn commented on Google Suppresses Memo Revealing Plans to Closely Track Search Users in China theintercept.com/2018/09/... · Posted by u/halestock

jiaweihli · 7 years ago

No, disabling images breaks pixel tracking. One way to quickly sanity check a mail client's priorities is whether it gives you the option to disable images by default.

Some clients that don't allow you to disable by default: Polymail, Gmail on iOS, Inbox (Google) on IOS

If it's free, you're the product...

jkn · 7 years ago

Ha I thought you were wrong, but it turns out that indeed, you can disable image loading in the Gmail Web interface, in the Android app, but not on iOS: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?co=GENIE.Platf...

jkn commented on The Fight for Patent-Unencumbered Media Codecs Is Nearly Won robert.ocallahan.org/2018... · Posted by u/bzbarsky

rayiner · 8 years ago

> You could say the same of all Web technologies.

I don’t think CERN was trying to monetize anything. To the extent that web technologies today are driven by companies like Google, then maybe that’s a fair criticism too.

> Do you actually think it would be better to have software patents and royalties on every Web standard?

I don’t think it would necessarily be worse than having web technologies all developed to further the agenda of advertising companies.

> It is always possible to find hidden costs in free products, so what?

The “so what” is that hidden costs are, all else being equal, worse than transparent costs.

> The idea that a Blu-Ray player won't spy on you because the manufacturer paid some royalties is... flawed.

Paying someone up front doesn’t guarantee they won’t try to monetize you indirectly, but not paying someone up front virtually assures that they will. Compare Symbian to Android.

jkn · 8 years ago

So on one hand a "bad" company advances its strategic interests by contributing to a free and open technology. On the other hand, this technology can bring general benefits beyond the company's interest.

The question is: does one outweigh the other? I think in many cases, for Web technologies, the corporate interest is modest and the general benefit is enormous, so it's definitely a win-win.

As for Android, the open platform part is a huge piece of tech that many have found useful beyond the smartphone market. On smartphones the open source project has enabled several ROM communities that ended up offering versions free of any Google service. There is nothing comparable on the iOS side.

Even Android with Google services is a pretty good deal: for the most part you get to choose what you share with Google (at the price of some features).

I think comparing to Symbian is difficult, Symbian never was in the same league as Android and iOS was it? A better comparison would be with Windows Phone or iOS. Apple has invested a lot in its privacy-friendly image, and I trust they are doing a good job. But they are the outlier. Then you have Microsoft... I don't know where Windows Phone standed privacy-wise, but they sure got a lot of criticism regarding privacy violations in the desktop/laptop OS. Although it's not free.

All in all I don't think Android is a good example to support your viewpoint.

jkn commented on The Fight for Patent-Unencumbered Media Codecs Is Nearly Won robert.ocallahan.org/2018... · Posted by u/bzbarsky

rayiner · 8 years ago

Is this model better? When a company develops technology with the purpose of selling the technology, it’s incentives are predictable. But what are the incentives where technology is bankrolled by companies that don’t make money from the technology, but through something else they sell? Facebook is funding these codecs because it helps their business of data mining your personal information. How is that a better state of affairs?

There is no free lunch. At least when the cost of a patent license gets bundled into your Blu-Ray player, you know what you’re paying.

jkn · 8 years ago

You could say the same of all Web technologies. Do you actually think it would be better to have software patents and royalties on every Web standard?

For one thing, this would be catastrophic for open source projects (and indeed commercial audio and video codecs have been a huge pain for open source developers and users). Well, you're suggesting that free codecs are bad because they profit Facebook, and you could say the same about open source software, especially those that get contributions from Facebook.

I rather think that advertisers will always pay money to advertise, and when some of that money goes to developing open and free technologies that's a good thing.

There are many free lunches. You can get a universally supported free video codec to use for your hobby project or for your company's product, without having a Facebook account. It is always possible to find hidden costs in free products, so what? You can do the same for paid-for products. The idea that a Blu-Ray player won't spy on you because the manufacturer paid some royalties is... flawed.

jkn commented on A basic income could boost the US economy by $2.5 trillion weforum.org/agenda/2017/0... · Posted by u/rbanffy

joshuaheard · 8 years ago

"$1,000 paid monthly ... by increasing the federal debt would grow the economy."

Borrowing money from my credit card does not increase my annual salary.

jkn · 8 years ago

No but it does grow the economy. Things you buy with the borrowed money count towards the GDP.

If you have people buying and selling nothing that's going to be a small economy.

If you have the same people, with the same wealth, buying and selling stuff to each other, that grows the economy.

If you have the same people buying and selling stuff faster, they may still retain the same wealth but the economy will grow even further.

The size of the economy is about the number of transactions, and printing money or borrowing money can definitely grow the economy (IF that money gets used to accelerate economic transactions).

jkn commented on Ravens attribute visual access to unseen competitors nature.com/articles/ncomm... · Posted by u/Hooke

jkn · 8 years ago

I'm impressed by the lengths to which the authors must go and have gone to refute the skeptics' counter-explanations. For example, they simulated the presence of a potentially observing competitor using an audio recording of a competitor that was not actually observing the raven caching its food. Indeed otherwise a skeptic might claim that the caching raven was acting as "observed" in response to the different sound, rather than (as the authors want to show) because it inferred that it can be seen when the peephole is open.