Thank you for proving that the left lives in a bubble just like the right.

It’s propaganda. But, it’s not just propaganda, it’s effective propaganda.

The fact that it’s so effective is somewhat new and very concerning. We have to understand why it’s effective if there’s any hope of eventually stopping it. And, it’s effective not just because the propaganda is well crafted, it’s effective because there’s a whole system that immerses the audience in it and never lets them see an alternative point of view.

In North Korea the only information you get is information specifically selected by the state. The US free market and first amendment was supposed to be a shield against that sort of propaganda. Unfortunately, while people have the right to find other forms of media, a lot of people want the comfort of living inside their own media bubble. Then the propaganda channel tells them that every other source of media is full of lies, and controlled by the jews, and who knows what else, and those people get even more locked in to their propaganda source. Then they’re told that scientists are getting rich (ha!) by selling out, so you can’t trust scientific papers. So, you can’t trust the government, the media, scientists, doctors, schools… you can only trust them.

Then they’re told that if they ever do try to do their own research, they’re not going to get results because of censorship. Some censorship exists. Sometimes it’s formal, sometimes it’s informal, like YouTube taking down videos that hurt their bottom line, or cause them headaches. But, the convenient thing about claiming that information is being censored is that it’s unprovable or “unfalsifiable”. You can’t prove that something that doesn’t exist was censored because you can’t prove it ever existed in the first place. And, of course, when an idiot is told that information on “turbo cancer” is being censored, they search for it and get no results, that just reinforces their belief that the news is being censored.

Add to that that the same group that wants to lock people into a pipeline of disinformation also wants to defund schools and universities. You can’t hope that someone can learn the truth from a teacher or a professor if the school no longer exists. You can’t hope that the next generation learns critical thinking in high school if the high school is defunded and shut down.

Big tech companies making their platforms extremely engaging is yet another element in this shitty soup. Most of these companies actually employ mostly liberal people, and the culture is at least somewhat left of center. But, they get their money by keeping people engaged, which means feeding them things that are shocking, angering, etc. That keeps people in their bubbles, and keeps them from engaging their critical thinking abilities.

The end result is you get people living in bubbles, listening to, watching and reading news that makes them feel good because it reinforces their existing biases. They cut off people in their lives who have dissenting views because either they’re angry about that person’s views, or it’s just too much of a headache to constantly fight with them. Social media keeps them in a bubble that keeps them engaged, and keeps them seeing the same point of view over and over. And so-on.

Because the whole situation is so complicated, it’s not going to be easy to reverse. It’s not just a matter of shutting down Fox News, or Newsmax or MSNBC or any other propaganda fountain. It’s also going to have to involve breaking up tech monopolies, or at least removing their Section 230 protection for their editorial decisions. It’s also going to require major educational system reforms, ensuring that all kids go to schools that teach critical thinking skills, and because this is the US that will involve major fights over property taxes and religious freedom. I honestly don’t know if it’s going to be possible.

gave the odds 65-35 or so, in Clinton’s favor

I don’t think people realize how close that means the race was. 50/50 is like a coin flip. 35% is like rolling a six-sided die and getting either a 1 or a 2. It’s not the most likely outcome, but it’s not a surprising result either.

Your well come.

I miss Allie’s blog alot.

Noone should of aloud this code to go out the door. Atleast alot of other people people probably complained aswell, so your apart of a bigger group, incase you were worried.

COBOL

That’s not really a common situation though. Sure, people might use the BSD license on something they did as a hobby, or just to learn things. But, the scenario described here is more like:

A group of people all have the same little problem, and they work together to come up with a solution for it. They solve the main problem, but their solution has a few rough edges and there are similar problems they didn’t solve, but they’re not motivated to keep working on it because what they have is good enough for their current needs. So, they put out some flyers describing how to do what they did, and inviting anybody who’s interested to keep working on improving their fix.

A company comes along, sees the info, and builds a tool that solves the problem but not quite as well, and for a small fee. They spend tons of money promoting their solution, drowning out the little pamphlet that the original guys did. They use as much IP protection as possible, patenting their designs, trademarking the look and feel, copyrighting the instructions, etc. Often they accidentally(?) issue legal threats or takedown notices to people who are merely hosting the original design or original pamphlets.

Maybe the original inventor didn’t get screwed in this scenario, but you could say that the public did.

This headline sounds a lot funnier if you assume “it” means Signal, like I did.

See, I made a different joke.

Mostly nothing. Canada got it because nobody else wanted it.

Sure, but the year-round livable areas in Canada aren’t in that red area.

Humanity is inherently hierarchical.

Or do it the other way around, the amount of money that the government can spend is limited by voter turnout.

Clearly if you can’t get people excited enough to vote for your policies, you don’t have a mandate.

Yeah, and some of the biggest states (like California) solidly go for one party. So, the non-voters really don’t affect the presidential race there.

This is a pretty insightful comment.

I’ve come to the conclusion all these years later that it was some combination of shared hardship, forced closeness, security in employment, and a core belief that we were all working toward the same goal. We were in it together, and it felt like it.

This seems to explain why people who work in restaurants can often be close. There’s the shared hardship of dealing with a dinner rush, there’s a lot of forced closeness in the kitchen, and everybody’s working towards the same goal, whether that’s just getting through the shift, or trying to produce a really amazing dining experience.

There’s probably another one: depending on other people who work right next to you. If you’re working alongside other people but everybody’s working on their own project it’s going to be different than if you depend directly on the person next to you for whatever you’re doing.

Maybe it just comes down to people not being committed to their work

I think it’s the lack of all the things you mentioned. At an office job the hardship is pretty mild other than occasional “crunch time”. There’s some forced closeness, especially when people are crammed into an open-style office. But, I don’t think that’s the same kind of closeness you get in kitchen, or on a ship, or in a factory. You may be working towards the same goal, but it’s often a nebulous and distant goal. And, often, the goal isn’t something that feels particularly meaningful. You’re helping ship a product that may or may not be vaguely useful to some customers you’ll probably never meet.

But, I think the big thing is the lack of security. In the military you literally can’t leave, and unless you do something insane you’re not going to get fired. At most jobs, it’s extremely easy to leave, and many people feel like they’re always on the edge of being fired or laid off.

And there’s a better reason for wanting to delay definition updates: this outage.

Yes, just like all the current flaws are being exploited. The question is whether this would make the overall system better or worse. If it means that people weaned solely on a very biased media source / conspiracy theories have less of a chance of their vote deciding things, it might make it better.

It’s an attempt to address an existing problem that has obvious consequences right now.

Theoretically, this could hit Linux too. You could run a Linux kernel mod containing closed source stuff from a third party vendor which causes the system to kernel panic. The difference is really cultural. Linux admins would howl at that kind of setup, whereas for Windows it’s more standard.

Code review, QA team, hours of being baked on an internal test network, incremental exponential roll out to the world, starting slow so that any problems can be immediately rolled back. If they didn’t have those basics, they have no business being a tech company, let alone a security company who puts out windows drivers.