You broke the site guidelines egregiously here, and made it worse downthread. We ban accounts that do that repeatedly, and I'm dismayed to see that you've been doing it a lot.
The comments below mine just don't look like i "made" something worse, quite the opposite, the comments below mine are leaning more in that or the other direction, i am fine with that i don't see a problem here...but anyway...accepted.
Then you need to do a better job of moderating the bad comments in the first place. We're all trying to make HN a good and enjoyable place the best way we can, and you warn "both sides" like that helps anything.
You seem to have an unrealistic picture of what moderation can do, if you think we ought to be moderating all the bad comments in the first place. That's not remotely possible.
How so? Even if the intent of such programs might be positive, is there not a risk of them being used to limit, coerce, or change user behaviour? (it wouldn't be the first time)
Social credit is offensive and freedom-limiting by definition. You can't make any small-d-democratic argument in favor of a massive central social credit system because the two are antithetical.
A vaccine passport system could turn into something similar, but that's not necessarily a given. It's the slippery slope fallacy taken to the extreme - "because it's possible to imagine a situation in which a vaccine passport system goes way beyond its usefulness and becomes oppressive, that means vaccine passport systems are oppressive." In addition to that sentiment being wrong, HN also has a pretty violent knee-jerk reaction to anything that could even potentially be taken as anti-vax sentiment. As can be seen by this garbage[0].
Zero trolling here. I am modestly in favour of a COVID-19 vaccine "passport". And yes, I have considered the oppression side of the argument. Why am I modestly in favour? Look at how yellow fever vaccination status is handled. In areas of the world where it is still endemic, travelers are denied entry without a recent vaccination and an official UN/WHO card to prove it. (Please leave aside for a moment the idea that these cards can be fake. Assume they are accurate for this discussion.)
Almost by small-d-democratic definition, the yellow fever vaccine requirement is oppressive. However, it helps to reduce the spread of yellow fever.
I've never traveled anywhere yellow fever is endemic so I don't know a ton about it other than the vaccination requirements you mention.
I carry my vaccination card in my wallet so I'm not immediately opposed to some sort of verifiable way to confirm one's vaccination status. There are absolutely some instances where it makes sense to mandate it, but it's wrong to try to structure society so that you can't take part unless you're vaccinated. There's a point at which mandates and guidelines aren't helpful anymore and they become theater. I'm not going to put a mask on at the entrance to a restaurant, walk ten feet to a table, and take my mask off. That's theater.
I have unvaccinated family members. They're not changing their mind, I'm done trying to change it, but they're still in my family and they're not disowned or excommunicated because they happen to be wrong about something. Omicron seems as transmissible or slightly more-so, but much less deadly. That sounds like exactly what we thought multiple variants would lead to a year ago. It sounds like things are in the right track and we're on our way out of the forest, so to speak. But, government being government, I don't see mandates slowing or going away any time soon. I think what's here is here to stay, whether it works or not.
I'm not informed enough to comment on the virus or quality/efficacy/safety of any of the vaccines, but I am vaccinated, and have friends and family in both camps. All I know is that this is not a naive virus, I know about a dozen people who have had it, not everyone has survived, but everyone who has was genuinely afraid for their lives. That anecdotal evidence is enough to convince me to accept a vaccine/medication because I feel the risk/reward is favourable.
I can't bring myself to support mandated vaccination or making pariahs out of those who don't share my risk/reward considerations, however, because I think clawing back individual liberties that we give up is much harder than finding the compromises necessary to hold onto them in the first place.
I might be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time, but I would prefer compromise and tolerance to a knee-jerk reaction. There is already too much bad legislation born from "times of emergency" and such, no need to stoke the flames.
Thank you for your honest and balanced reply. I spent some time to think about it.
How do you feel about "anti-vaxxers" (a weird term by itself) refusing to get measles vaccines? (It is regularly quoted as one of the most infectious human viruses.) In the United States, some communities that have a high ratio of people whom refuse to vaccinate their children have seen outbreaks of measles. (Southern California!) It's a devastating disease for children who don't yet control their own destiny. Frequently, parents are themselves inoculated, but refuse the same vaccines for their own children.
I can understand and appreciate: For adults the decision for COVID-19 vaccine is a bit different. They are only controlling their own destiny.
> Social credit is offensive and freedom-limiting by definition.
Yes, I agree. I was defending this exact point. The commenter I replied to originally seemed upset about the original comment condemning vax passports.
To put a proof of vaccination on the same level as a social credit system is just beyond, if you don't have a passport you cannot travel into other country's, if your dog is not vaccinated against rabbis, he cannot travel to let's say Georgia.
I am upset because a Quanon goat thinks a vaxpass is the same as a social credit system, and was just made for that "ultimately"
There's a risk of a baseball bat being used to limit, coerce, and change people's behavior, and there are documented cases of them being used in that way, but nobody would say that the Louisville Slugger is crypto-authoritarianism.
Your statement isn't offensive and nobody is offended by it; it's just, as the comment above said, stupid. There's a difference.
Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? You have a long history of doing this, even though I know you've also posted lots of good things.
Can't even sign up. Gives generic error about "payment / registration failed" - its a regular credit card that I use everywhere. Oh well...kinda glad to be honest.
Knowing Oracle it will eventually become a nightmare anyway (whoops, we accidentally billed you $70 for the free-tier, but you need to manually call this long-distance number between the hours of 9am-4pm to reverse the charge and this also happens to be our sales dept)
Is this comment about UK decision to give boosters after 3 months from last vaccination?
I think there is big misconception about boosters and Delta. People appear to assume that there is some time after what vaccines loose effectiveness against Delta.
I see it rather as assumption that 1 shot should work against Wuhan variant. Well, it does not so does not 2 shots against Delta. Waiting period is irrelevant. It is only a compromise between mounting a better immune response from time difference and risk of infection.
I mean, hopefully we don't end up in that situation, but it would still clearly be better than _not_ having the boosters, if what's where we do end up.
That's a little terse, but I think it does point towards a valid observation about how people's expectations have had to change. It's gone something like this:
* Once we've been vaccinated, life will go back to normal.
* Well, okay, vaccination requires two separate doses.
* Of course we'll need an annual booster, like flu.
* Actually your certificate will only be valid for 9 months. (EU)
* Did I say 9 months? Better make it 6. (Israel)
* "the minimum gap between the second vaccine dose and booster should be reduced from six to three months." <--- You are here
We're not yet at the stage of people being shut out of society for not having quarterly injections, but who could have imagined the current set of restrictions just a couple of years ago?
Can someone answer the General Relativity concerns regarding this?
Imagine the same loop as Derek setup in the video, but where it extended into next galaxy (say 1 light year away). In next galaxy there is another switch - we don't know if the position of that switch is open or closed...
Now when Derek connects his switch and light nearly instantly turns on...this is obviously telling us information regarding the switch 1 Light Year away. How does this not violate General Relativity since seemingly that information is traveling faster than speed of light?
The time between changing the state of the switch and the affect it has on the bulb can not be any faster than the speed of light.
In Derek's example the switch and the bulb are 1 meter away from each other and therefore the time is 1/c seconds, i.e the time light takes to travel 1 meter.
The topic is definitely a little confusion, but there are no GR violations.
>In Derek's example the switch and the bulb are 1 meter away from each other and therefore the time is 1/c seconds, i.e the time light takes to travel 1 meter.
Perhaps I didn't make my example clear. Imagine loop with 2 switches...one switch 1 LY away...another switch 1 meter away.
Derek flips the 1m switch and light instantly turns on: What does that tell you?
Derek flips the 1m switch and light doesn't turn on: What does that tell you?
How were you able to find out that information before waiting 1 yr?
From what I understand, in your setup the lightbulb will turn on and quickly turn off, irrespective of the state of the other switch which is 1 yr away. Then after 1 yr passes it will react according to the state of the other switch.
Nitpick: galaxies are millions of light-years apart. One light-year doesn't even get you to the closest star. The diameter of the Milky Way alone is on the order of 100K light-years.
> As long as we ban IQ tests for employment employers are going to keep using this as the best practical proxy. I
Thats probably true to a degree, however I think the system will breakdown this decade. Given current inflation rates, anyone with an IQ >120 will soon see that the debt/benefit ratio is becoming unworkable.
The last 2 employees my company hired actually game via github - we were using an open-source repo that someone had made and eventually reached out and asked him if he wanted to consult for us and add some features to his code...that lead to an ongoing basic permanent consulting gig.
Doesn't inflation mean that nominal debt is less painful to hold? ie I go $100k into debt for a degree, but 5 years down the line that $100k only has $50k buying power (in original year terms), so its easier to pay off?
Its pretty otherworldly, I was an active member of a top 25 sub. Although the sub is decidedly non-political, the mod recently decided to post a politic-specific sticky as first post.
I commented in that thread "this sub is probably not the place for these overtly political posts"...the mod responded to me by banning me for "advocating politics / agenda pushing"...its literally orwellian newspeak site.
Munger is a real proponent of Chinese-style capitalism and generally praises the idea of social-credit systems.
It only makes sense that his architecture style would also favor brutalism. He probably repurposed some of the designs of the old commie-blocks from eastern europe.
Do you know what brutalism means in architecture? It means exposed concrete, Munger's design is not brutalism. Also what "commie-blocks from eastern europe" are you referencing? I can't think of any eastern european apartment buildings that resemble this design in any way. (They tend to have windows)
Well, the regulators only just decided to permit the thing:
>The California DMV, the agency that regulates autonomous vehicle testing in the state, said the permit allows the company to test five autonomous vehicles without a driver behind the wheel on specified streets within San Francisco.
>There's no way for me, a hypothetical person who wants to keep my Signal messages 100% encrypted in the Signal ecosystem, to opt out of my contacts using an Element bridge.
This sounds like a made-up concern.
How do you stop me from screenshotting your convo and posting on twitter, or just copying and pasting from one app to the next?
Those are distinct from my concern. In your scenarios, I have trusted you to keep the conversation secret, and you betrayed that trust.
My concern is about giving messages in an automatic fashion to a third party, which I'm completely unaware of and have no way of making an informed decision about. The third party could be breached (they run an online service, which is much, much easier to attack than some dude's iPhone).
How much do you know about your conversation partner's cyber hygiene? They might leave their phone unlocked at the library or even unknowingly install malware.
All of that is true, and remains true if they're using a bridge service as well. The bridge service is strictly reducing the security of messages.
Look, I'm not up in arms or anything, I just can immediately see a drawback to bridging Signal specifically. There exist many other services (Telegram, Slack, Discord, the list goes on) that can be bridged to Matrix without compromising the security posture in any terrificly meaningful way, IMO. So the idea is great in principle.
> The bridge service is strictly reducing the security of messages.
Perhaps in some sense, yes, but in precisely the same sense that you reduce the security of your messages each time you send a new message, or each time you start a conversation with a new person, or each time any of your contacts reads a message on the train where someone might be looking over their shoulder. None of these things strike me as a meaningful reduction in security, at least in the threat models that are appropriate for most average people (namely where you don't expect to be personally targeted by an attacker with resources).
The Matrix bridge service is compromised (their infra has been successfully attacked before, and other similar platforms have had catastrophic data breaches as well)? That doesn't require a targeted attack, involves complete history disclosure and probably far more metadata than Signal even stores on their servers.
An Element bridge is just a Signal client hosted on Element's infrastructure. Them using an Element bridge is no different than them using an extra device you didn't know about. That device could've well been insecure, or shared by many people, or hosted in the cloud. If you care about this, you should ask.
> Them using an Element bridge is no different than them using an extra device you didn't know about.
It is different in a big way. That extra device would most likely only transit this one user's messages. The Element bridge transits a ton of users and as such is an attractive target for mass surveillance.
> That device could've well been [..] hosted in the cloud.
The capability of self-hosting is very niche. Only technical people could pull that off. Element is working hard to make using this bridge so easy that your grandmother could do it.
I thought I addressed that in my original comment: I _could_ go to each of my contacts and explain why I don't want them to do things like use the cool new Element service with Signal. But 1) I (finally) have a lot of contacts using Signal, so that would be a pain to manage; 2) to me, the entire idea of Signal is that I can pretty much set it and forget it on any relatively-modern smartphone for friends, family, etc. and not have to worry about anything but the biennial phone migration for my mother.
In the end it isn't a huge deal, as most conversations are extremely innocuous, and those I care about I'll take the time to verify. But after all the trouble to proselytize Signal, I get nervous about large public projects that could, in my opinion, strictly reduce the security of my secure messaging system.
> I _could_ go to each of my contacts and explain why I don't want them to do things like use the cool new Element service with Signal. But 1) I (finally) have a lot of contacts using Signal, so that would be a pain to manage; 2) to me, the entire idea of Signal is that I can pretty much set it and forget it on any relatively-modern smartphone for friends, family, etc. and not have to worry about anything but the biennial phone migration for my mother.
Yes, I totally agree that this would be a huge hassle. But what's your proposed alternative? Reaching out to every programmer in the world and convincing them to never write any software that can act as a Signal client? Or pushing for legal prohibition on any non-Signal developers creating software that can act as a Signal client?
Hahaha of course not. I don't really propose an alternative. I'm just lamenting the situation and trying to provide context to the Element CEO about why the original commenter, and people like him, might not be 100% jazzed about the democratization of technology that, in terms of message _security_, is a step backwards.
Doesn't mean I'm in favor of such ridiculous things as you've suggested here.
Many of us have, and painfully if I might add, finally convinced people to abandon insecure messengers and move to something like Signal. Now the solution is to tell them to abandon Signal in favor of Matrix? I'll pass.
The problem is Signal is not a standard unless they open up their ecosystem, so we're not actually increasing the number of standards here.
I've been through the pain of convincing people to Signal due to lack of better alternatives at the time. And I've done it yet again for Matrix. In this case, each move brought us closer to a global optimum so I'm not sorry for it.
Its not totally fair to put this all on Chinese manipulation.
Western politicians and many "tech elite" all love the concept of CCP-style 'social credit systems' being instituted.
This is ultimately what vaxpass is all about.