I hate seeing all the blind negativity towards the rationalists, both because the general idea of improving structured thinking is good, and because there were some great essays on Lesswrong and adjacent blogs over the years. People who can’t see that are blinded by their own bias.
That said, the most interesting people and discussions seem to have moved on, and now it’s more of a social club. I haven’t read anything compelling from there for a long time. Adjacent bloggers like Scott still put out interesting writing, but their output has dropped significantly.
This is how the internet works now. There are only two clubs, and if you refuse to be associated with either one then someone will helpfully come along and assign a group for you.
Perhaps we could make it illegal to record an area beyond a certain scale, along with mandating that multiple systems recording distinct properties should not be networked together and must not share data with other systems. The exact language would need to be worked out to eliminate most loopholes while allowing reasonable applications.
It’s possible to allow small systems like home/business security cameras while forbidding mass surveillance. The law just needs to include clear statements of intent, and sufficient penalties, so future judges can apply it forcefully against people who try to find clever workarounds.
Good to see the “and ALPRs” added. Flock is not the only game in town, and many cities are switching to other vendors while saying that they dumped Flock.
P.S. to the “Flock is YC” guy: everyone posting here knows. You’re not adding anything to the conversation.
There’s good kinds of drama (competent dev forcefully rejects bad ideas) and bad kinds of drama (activist/corporate takeovers, subpar dev doubles down on mistakes, etc), but I haven’t been following it, so I have no idea which one this is.
For a long time they did weekly releases, which explains the “hundreds” of releases. It looks like they have made enough progress to move to periodic point releases. (I should probably take another look at it.)
I’m not qualified to judge the language as a whole, at least until I use it for something, but it does have some interesting features. I used to follow their progress, but it’s clear that the pace of development is very slow, like many other niche langs.
RMS was correct, as usual. Of course he could not have predicted the additional 1 million deaths due to military action (and estimated 3.5 million more from subsequent effects) in the resulting Middle Eastern/Central Asian conflicts over the following years.
"Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property, and equality before the law."
Technically both major parties in the US are liberal parties, it's a "liberal democracy" where they both share a certain set of beliefs, though they may differ on the details. Only in the US is the word used as a slur by one party towards the other.
I'm European, I know this very well. And still, the absolutist/dictatorial streak in Donald Trump's philosophy of government is something that XIX century liberals would simply abhor. He doesn't believe in consent (and not just "of the governed"), he doesn't believe in individual rights beyond his own... Even just his successful legal moves to obtain full immunity is the exact opposite of "equality before the law".
(I also disagree that the two US parties share "a certain set of beliefs". This might have been true 15 years ago, but after the Trump takeover it's becoming increasingly difficult to see any common principles between any other party and what is effectively a satrapy.)
George W. Bush's administration already showed a streak for dictatorial rule that had nothing to do with classic liberalism; Trump took that to extremes. Classic liberalism developed in opposition to absolutist monarchies, promoting rule by parliament - Bush and Trump did the exact opposite. They are not classic liberals by any stretch.
Thank you, good to see someone who actually knows what the word means.
Sibling comment is correct too, the term has been misused and muddied in the US since the 1930s, and it no longer has a coherent meaning here. (If you mean “Democrats” then just use that term.)
And ironically, neither party uses the word in a way that matches definition.
The DNC platform isn't particularly liberal, and is moving further from it as/if the DSA gets more of a footing. The RNC complains of "the liberals" are most often complains about policies and ideas that would be more socialist (in the real Marxist sense) than liberal.
It’s not really a finished product yet (in terms of being production-ready), but it would already be usable as an embedded kiosk for applications where you own the pages being accessed.
I was not aware of this, and now I suddenly understand the weird hate that the project gets from drive-by commenters. (I don’t agree with it, but I can see a plausible motivation.)
That said, the most interesting people and discussions seem to have moved on, and now it’s more of a social club. I haven’t read anything compelling from there for a long time. Adjacent bloggers like Scott still put out interesting writing, but their output has dropped significantly.
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