I suspect it will be politically difficult to outright ban the ad model... might the same effect be achieved however by enforcing strict online advertising requirements & making websites (specifically the owner of the domain name used to access the site?) liable for all ads that they host as well as liable for all data gathering activities that drive those ads? Ideally with a requirement that all ads shown must contain a link to information about all parties involved in producing the ad & any profiling used to determine whether or not to show it to the user viewing it.
So if any ad is shown based on user profiling from data gathered illegally (i.e. without a proper opt-in as per GDPR etc) then the site showing the ad could potentially be sued?
Essentially, make it so onerous to legally advertise without risking a large class action lawsuit that the practice more or less dies out without technically being "banned" per se...
I also wonder the extent to which "pseudo-black-box-AI" is potentially driving some of these crazy valuations now due to it actually being used in a lot algorithmic trading itself... seems like a prevalence of over-corrected models, all expecting "line go up" from recent historical data would be the perfect way to cook up a really "big beautiful bubble" so to speak...
My super talented friend Ian is currently (and for the rest of this week) live streaming himself painting a triptych of portraits of Elon Musk. He's currently just getting started on the first painting but will also be chatting to various people along the way inc Rosie O'Donnell who I believe will be joining in the next hour or so.
It's all in aid of "Free Our Feeds", a campaign to "keep social media open, people-powered, and billionaire-proof", which they've so far raised over $100k for out of their $500k target
Anyone who might dismiss this as being just a few isolated cases — or who think it is desirable to just remove political opponents from the equation — should think long and hard about what it will actually take to maintain this kind of “criminalisation of dissent” over the long term… escalation is inevitable.
There is clearly an intentional narrative being pushed that defines anyone who disagrees with the current administration’s ideology as an enemy who should be punished. Even if the risk to any one person is currently relatively small, just the threat itself will have profound effects on individual’s decisions.
A massive brain drain seems inevitable but such a war on free speech will also radicalise people, even if it starts only in whispers. That will likely necessitate further oppressive measures to “stamp it out” and so forth, creating a vicious cycle. With each iteration the stakes increase, justifying increasingly violent measures & countermeasures on both sides, further increasing the consequences of — and the need avoid — actually being held accountable for those actions…
I'm concerned about this as well. If this keeps progressing, we could see a monoculture develop among elite institutions and media where the shots are being called by three letter agencies. We could get to a place where federal agencies are working directly with social media companies to coordinate censorship of dissent and set speech guidelines. If they don't oblige they'll be threatened with arbitrary enforcement and getting dragged out in front of Congress.
Eventually there could be an entire political capture of these social media companies, universities, journalists, NGOS etc where 90%+ of its employees subscribe to one political party .
But it gets even worse. If this continues we could see activist judges try to throw political rivals in jail. They would even change the law in order to try to get them to go to prison, combining misdemeanors into felonies.
And this says nothing about the rhetoric. By casting political opponents as villains, this invites assassination attempts and general lawlessness to intimidate people perceived as not falling in line. By this point the media will be complicit so there will be no investigation into these activities. Even a failed assassination attempt would be at most a few day story with no reporting on motive or coordination.
I don't agree with your characterization, but fine let me grant it for now.
The current issue isn't the US deporting or revoking visas. The issue is there's a process to both do that, which involves a trial, and a process to deport, which also involves a trial.
Neither of those are happening. Instead, the admin is unilaterally decreeing a visa or citizenship is invalid and then they are rushing individuals across the country with promises of a direct flight to El Salvador.
One of the many reasons we have trials is to ensure that the agency actually caught the right person.
If you skip over the trial (or other checks) portion, you can't be sure they aren't citizens. That's part of the point. That why you extend rights to everyone, so a political party can't use the excuse of "oh, it's ok, they weren't citizens".
Otherwise, it's it's a group of people collecting un-named people, deporting them, and them saying "trust us, we got it right".
There's SO much wrong with what you're saying. I hate that these things happen too, but ... stop the absurd hyperbole. This isn't criminal prosecution in any way shape or form.
1) ZERO citizenships are being "decreed invalid". I don't know where you get any ideas to the opposite.
2) revoking a visa does not involve a trial. ANY border control officer can do that, for any reason, including for no reason. This has always happened, including under Biden or Obama, only the reasons have changed (a bit)
3) only removing a green card requires "a trial". It's specified between scare quotes because it is called a trial but is NOT subject to the normal rules of justice (to give one extreme example: you do not have the right to a jury trial, you don't even have the right to be present at trial). The judges are employees of the executive (hired and fired, NOT appointed) and thus under the control of the executive (ie. Trump).
It's definitely a step up from the visa "process" but ...
It's like "youth court". It's called a trial. It happens in a courtroom. In youth court, the judges are actual judges. BUT IT'S NOT A TRIAL. You don't have the right to defense. You don't have the right to a jury trial (or the same as immigration, you don't even have the right to be present).
4) You can leave ICE detention by "self-removing". This involves proving you've booked a flight, and they will bring you to the airport to catch your flight. So you're not detained.
5) this is just utterly ridiculous: "One of the many reasons we have trials is to ensure that the agency actually caught the right person"
Yes. But these are NOT trials (even the green card removal isn't). To get US citizenship you must prove yourself for, at minimum, 10 years, often more, the the executive of the US government.
6) I would ALSO like to point out that what Trump is doing is the norm in the whole world. Including in Europe. In the Netherlands, protesting while on a VISA is stupid, and if you get arrested, you will be removed. Maybe not the first time, but it will happen. I hear France is the same.
1) Hasn't happened that I'm aware of, it's definitely something trump is loudly signalling he wants to do. Even issuing executive orders about it. [1]
2) Fair point.
3) You still have a right to appeal unfavorable determinations.
4) This assumes the ICE agents are following the laws. I don't believe they are.
5) Even as someone caught by ICE you still have the rights to an attorney and you have legal rights to claim this was a false arrest. ICE may have extra enforcement capabilities over non-citizens, it cannot hold citizens.
6) One of the most recent deportees, Rumeysa Ozturk, didn't protest. She wrote an op ed [2]. Further, ICE violated judicial orders not to deport. [3]
AFAIK the state has not explained why Ozturk's visa was terminated. The idea that it was because of an op-ed seems to be speculation by her supporters. I wouldn't be confident that a better justification exists, but we shouldn't make assumptions.
Having the state police arrest people without an explanation is in and of itself evil. Citizen or no.
So yeah, I'm going to make the worst assumption about why they are doing this because they should have to explain themselves. We still, presumably, live in a democracy where the state is accountable to the people. Letting the state police remove civil rights for opaque reasons should always be treated as them doing it for the worst possible reasons.
On what basis are you asserting that no explanation for her detainment was provided? Or by explanation, do you mean a public announcement?
But let's say for the sake of argument that no explanation was provided, even privately to her and her attorney. I would agree that's bad, even if it's legal in the case of visa holders.
But why should that cause us to make assumptions about the reason? And if we're going to make assumptions, why this particular one? Why not assume she was detained because an officer didn't like the color of her shoes?
"... ICE you still have the rights to an attorney and you have legal rights to claim ..."
Which is exactly what your example Rumeysa Oztruk is doing, and ICE seems to be respecting the order. Which undercuts your point number 4 a bit. If she asked to leave detention by leaving the US, would ICE stop her, and forcibly keep her in detention? I'm going to assume "no" ... why would ICE violate one inconvenient law, but respect another?
ICE could make the argument she is only in detention because she explicitly asked for it, that she is only detained because she delayed her deportation.
But more than that, I think Rumeysa Ozturk is yet another example of someone who just won't get support from people. She's a rich kid being given an easy path in life, yelling loudly how bad the people helping her are, and ... good luck defending that one in an economy where people are losing jobs.
Probably she's here on the dime of her parents, with a scholarship (a PhD IS a scholarship, a subsidy, so there's really just a question of how much it covers), with the goal of letting her immigrate into the US and get a better job, better life, here than she could ever hope to get in Turkey ... the world is extremely UNfair, and she is the benefactor of enormous unfairness.
Given what has happened to the economy in the past few years, and how many people have experienced setbacks 10x worse than losing a free and easy path in life.
To some extent people don't seem to realize "you want the right for an easy path in life for people in X (Turkey, China, Gaza, ...). Fine, Great even, but the US government FIRST must create such path for everyone in Appalachia. You want it done for Turks? Great. I even agree that that should be done. But not by the US government, by the Turkish government"
And yes this is a "if I can't have it, you can't have it either" argument, and it is mean, jealous and vindictive ... but Rumeysa's defense is essentially "let them eat cake". She has support from the US government for her education, which many locals don't have (and many MAGA are going to say a student in education sciences isn't helping the US, she's just taking jobs and subsidies away from US people. This isn't entirely untrue. She is not an exceptional talent that will elevate the US, economically or politically, or even in sport, or otherwise. In other words, she's "wasting" the US government support she's receiving, bluntly why shouldn't US citizens have first dibs on wasting US government support?)
In that situation she goes out writing op-ed, complaining, doing what the executive (even under Biden) would consider sabotaging US government policy? sigh. Really?
To add insult to injury, to put it VERY mildly, what is happening in Turkey, is still a lot worse than what is happening to her. The US doesn't seem to be able to count on Turkey's help to rectify those problems. She wants to fix the world, yell at a government? Then go join the yelling at Turkey's government, they have destroyed their universities, replacing all teachers with Erdogan loyalists, imprisoning tens of thousands just for holding a university job (and I guarantee every last teacher, assistant and student on a visa was deported from Turkey, regardless of their political stance). Turks, who supported that (she seems to care about religion, which in Turks is a near-guarantee that they support Erdogan). And then she loudly criticizes the US for using money and visa policy to influence university positions? (as opposed to what HER government does: arresting, imprisoning for decades, even torturing the entire faculty staff)
So I also predict you will not see any real uprising against this until people can't make the argument "she could easily have avoided this in 10 different ways and effectively chose this path".
Only after defying the order to keep her in Mass. and illegally transporting her to a detention facility in Louisiana.
ICE and the Trump admin are operating under "Ask for forgiveness" with their actions. If they think a Judge will stop them, they try to act before the order is disseminated to claim "woopiedoodle".
As for everything about how she's not a perfect victim. I just don't care. Even if she's a serial killer, she shouldn't be treated like this. We have laws and procedures for how we treat people. At a bare minimum even the worst person on earth deserves not to be disappeared.
I also don't really care that "well turkey is worse". Why does that matter? North Korea is worse, does that mean an asylum seeker from there has no rights to express any opinion against the US government?
A foundational part of the US government is that political speech is and should be protected.
I also don't think you actually read the op ed. It did not criticize the US government.
The entire op ed can be summed up as "The student senate voted that you should divest from Israel. You should follow what the students have told you to do". That's it. It gave reasons for divestment and historical comparisons to the divestment of south africa. It did not actually mention US policy of funding israel in any way.
> Even if she's a serial killer, she shouldn't be treated like this.
In that case, especially, she should be treated like this.
> We have laws and procedures for how we treat people
And this is what those laws say. On a visa, the executive can chose to remove you immediately from the country, for any reason. That means Trump, since the election. If you don't leave yourself (that means an immediate one-way flight out), you can get deported. This is not illegal.
> I also don't really care that "well turkey is worse". Why does that matter?
Because
1) she's Turkish
2) she's religious
This very likely means she's an Erdogan supporter and will defend destroying Turkish academia by arresting, disappearing and deporting students and staff. To put it simple: on top of everything else she's Turkish version of a MAGA nutcase. She supports removing university staff and students on a large scale ... and now it happened to her.
College students are bring approached by strange men with masks and being transported across the country. We're well past "hyperbole". It's literally happening around us.
How about we treat humans like humans before we suddenly start legal nitpicking? It's not like these people are listening to actual legal authorities to begin with.
No evidence has been presented that any of these individuals "support Hamas". Protesting against Israel's killing spree in Gaza is not supporting "terrorism", it is arguably protest against a form of state terrorism.
Disregarding legal directives of judiciary is another aspect of these events that is highly concerning.
Freedom of speech, rule of law, not having an (unofficial) aristocracy, and undivided loyalty for our nation (alone) are (were?) the essence of American values.
> I think it's entirely reasonable to rethink our relationship with the people that are obviously exploiting the process.
That is irony for you folks. I'll let you do the thinking on the unspoken matter here.
This comment is propaganda. Protests can wave the Palestinian flag as protected speech. On Jan 6, the appearance of support for Camp Auschwitz was also protected speech.
"Let's do all of this, but much worse, with more corruption, and more violently" is a weird response to perceived political grievances. Like how Leninist critiques of the Russian monarchy and subsequent revolution lead to a system at least as bad as that of the Tsar.
If you want to deconstruct the status quo, make sure that your outcomes will be actually be better for you. Even Stalin ended up as a victim of his regime at the end of days, his physician ending up arrested and being interrogated while his health declined.
There is an old documentary called "the Revolution will not be Televised" about the Chavez presidency in Venezuela. If you watch it you will come away feeling that Chavez was treated pretty unfairly by the rightist media and "deep state" who attempted to overthrow his Presidency.
But even if that is true, it is also true that Chavez took many actions to centralize power, erode democratic safeguards in the Constitution, control the media and destroy the opposition parties. Every step was justified by pointing to the horrible rightist conspiracy against Chavez. But the end result was a dictatorship and the absolute ruin of the Venezuelan state.
This is normal for dictators. Many cast themselves as victims. Stalin was pressed on all sides by Capitalists, Kulaks, and Trotskyists. Hitler, of course, by Jews and Communists. Whether the accusations are pure fantasy or rooted in some level of real persecution of the movement, it is very important not to allow them to be used to justify the establishment of tyranny.
> where federal agencies are working directly with social media companies
When did this happen? If you're referring to the "Twitter files", then you're take on this is very misinformed and the government did not coerce Twitter to suppress the laptop story. It was even found that Republicans submitted so many similar requests that Twitter had to keep a special database to track those requests.
The right wing has a weird persecution complex while they have the biggest cable news network in the US (Fox News), just got control of all three branches of government, and had a billionaire buy Twitter for them to help their guy win.
Will you only be satisfied if everyone agrees with you and drinks the Trump kool-aid? Also note that the "other" political party you're referring to didn't deny the election results and try to overthrow the government.
I don’t quite recall Biden storming the Capitol, phoning politicians to “find votes,” and sending in a slate of fake electors to subvert the democratic process. But sure, the “activist judges” and their “lawfare” are the real problem here. Not, say, Judge Cannon punting and deferring rock-solid cases without precedent until it’s too late.
All of this seems to borrow ideas from Putin's playbook. I never realized how strong of an appetite certain segment of US population has for authoritarianism.
Whatever one may think about them, "protests, cancellation or boycotts" are not anywhere close to being governmental actions as those discussed here, so I would not call that "already happened" with "slightly different means".
> This had already happened for a long while in the US, it just used slightly different means like protests, cancellation or boycotts, just the victims were from the other side.
It sounds like this is viewed as revenge? The trend of using state power as revenge against groups one doesn't like is problematic and can be escalatory. As it escalates, eventually groups will fear the loss state power and that can lead to the end of democracy.
I see it not as revenge but as actions of a deeply broken system. Which broke well before the last elections.
We cannot just wish the current administration away. It is the result of the fact that the US system is seen as broken by many outside of coastal elites. And that they do not like being trodden on in the names of covid, climate or equity.
The sooner the opponents of the current administration start working on issues that matter to people they lost (instead of going further left and screaming louder), the less damage Trump can inflict. My 2c.
> The sooner the opponents of the current administration ...instead of going further left and screaming louder), the less damage Trump can inflict. My 2c.
I think the left may see that being conciliatory and moving to the center isn't the way to win. Trump didn't do that and it worked. I think people see that Bernie and AOC are the only politicians on the left that people are actually excited about. They can do the Trump playbook but from the left. Run as something new and untried.
Otherwise the left just becomes Trump-lite, undifferentiated and not as good as the original.
I think when people view the system as broken, they want to try new things. So be something new.
Maybe. Time in opposition, when well spent, is the most effective way to revive a party.
Although I think AOC and Bernie fire up their own base, the people who do not need firing up and will vote for the left anyway. I think going harder left will likely alienate people whom the democrats recently lost and a more centrist agenda can attract more people repelled by Trump’s antics.
I am not a politician, but if left goes farther left I personally will be sitting out the next election regardless of how crazy Donald gets.
This is really amusing to me. I in no way want to diminish your argument or beliefs, but the right are replaying the literal Nazi playbook with abductions of "undesirables" and using state power against political dissidents, but some people will sit that out and implicitly endorse *literal* Nazis because the left asked people to respect trans people's gender identity or whatever the particular beef is.
Was actually planning to be at GDC this week & while there were other factors at play, the clincher was a feeling that there’s now a non-zero risk of getting caught up in some serious nightmare scenario like this. Seemed pretty self evident that the new administration’s rhetoric even a couple of months ago was paving the way to fascist authoritarianism & I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Tbh, even having a post like this in my user history is apparently the sort of thing that could cause complications at the border! So much for “free speech absolutism”. Makes me wonder how many others will stay silent to minimise that risk & whether that’ll lead to an illusion of support for these policies…
It’s the kind of thing I think about before going to China or if I were to visit NKorea. But hasn’t this possibility of hardcore border harassment been a feature of visiting the land of the free (the US that is) for a while now? Phones confiscated and inspected etc..
I suppose so. There have always been stories of those kinds of things, but from the outside looking in, this definitely _feels_ different. Perhaps it's the privilege of my pigment but in the past I've had little issue the handful of times I've travelled across the pond & felt like if anything did escalate it'd eventually make its way to someone reasonable. Now...? Well I guess it just feels like "reasonableness" isn't exactly being projected as a valued characteristic at any level in the current chain of authority.
Not really. I did set up a blog at biggles.games a while back but haven’t been actively updating it for quite a while & there’s nothing about our current project on there yet… probably time to do an update tbh!!
Everything you ever say online can and eventually will be used against you. No reason to tie your real identity into any online forum, including this one. Plenty of reasons against.
With AI pairing even semi-anonymous accounts to real people will become much easier over time.
Its fine if you never plan going to US but who knows the future right, also maybe they will eventually steer back from current direction... I am not holding my breath though. This is 50% of US population, consistently. Don't forget orange man didn't win previous elections only very narrowly, US folks on the ground don't give a nanofraction of a fuck about other nationalities and love this style of government. Out of 3 attempts, he won twice easily and 3rd time almost.
Stay the fuck away from US and any US product in literally any form, best advice for 96% of mankind currently.
Feels like not that long ago that this would have been considered a fringe paranoid perspective. I used to being an early adopter & getting my real name as a username before anyone else. Plus there was an ego thing back in the day of wanting to be a famous artist etc :-)
But I originally felt pride in showing up online authentically as myself rather than hiding behind anonymity. But I also realise that's a naive approach that only made sense in a more civilised time, perhaps, if even then... online discourse has become so toxic over the last decade that I've definitely self-censored & engaged less & less in the fear that anything I say could well come back to bite me.
That's the nasty thing, you might say something that actually would help you but they can just not use it later. Even a "Hail Trump" won't help me if they decide that I ought to be convicted.
This looks fantastic! Love the premise & well done for what looks like an incredible solo effort. I was tech lead on Ozymandias & have another minified 4X in the works at the mo & putting out feelers with publishers etc. Sounds like you plan to self publish this one but I’d love to chat & see if there’s any way I can help with your launch, whether just through advice or via introductions etc. You can reach me at biggles (at) bravobravo.games though I may end up finding a way to contact you directly first :-)
Not quite… in the most common version of chessboxing it’s more a case of alternating between the chess & the boxing via, say, a 3 minute timer from the start of each “round”. You do need to be very careful moving the chess board in/out of the ring between rounds so as not to upset any of the pieces but otherwise play just continues round by round until checkmate or knockout (or TKO or a clock falls etc.)
Source: I fought in (and won!) a one-off chessboxing exhibition match in London back in 2012
Hadn’t thought of it in this context before but in game development a “vertical slice” could potentially be thought of as akin to the “pilot plant” in that it’s about proving out the _processes_ for creating game content (and working out how long each piece of content should take to make) before committing to “scaling up” said content production to deliver the full game…
Game development is intensely iterative. One way to think of games is software where its only value is its usability. It has has no process workflows or business goals that it ever sacrifices usability for because the user experience is the value proposition itself. It only sacrifices the user experience for other aspects of the user experience.
Failed and not fun games do happen, but in general game developers put far more weight to this sort of process. There are no other goals that you can claim were accomplished if the users think the game sucks. So you get these ruthless production cycles and there's an appetite to cut things that don't work.
They actually did, one of the approaches they tested included holding down combinations of keys for variable durations (the "Representation 4: Bitmask-Duration Sequence"), however they didn't get any viable runners using that approach. Their conclusion was that with the constraints they were operating under (ie. only 1,000 fitness evaluations etc), the solution space was too broad for that approach to find any viable strategies. Main takeaway for me was that this form of genetic algorithm works best & converges most quickly the simpler you can make the search space.
So if any ad is shown based on user profiling from data gathered illegally (i.e. without a proper opt-in as per GDPR etc) then the site showing the ad could potentially be sued?
Essentially, make it so onerous to legally advertise without risking a large class action lawsuit that the practice more or less dies out without technically being "banned" per se...