jkepler

I still don't understand though why people do delivery pizza when decent-quality frozen pizza is often far cheaper than delivery, and it comes out of one's oven piping hot. Unless we're considering folks without ovens.

The language of addiction is psychological language that may leave people feeling hopeless, particularly if they view themselves as biologically-chemically determinative beings.

Perhaps the language of idolatry as used in the Bible (reflecting thousands of years in the Jewish and Christian traditions) may be more helpful. What many see as addictions may in fact be an underlying spiritual condition of serving something as an idol, or a God-substitute. The only way to break that is repentance, turning from the idolatry to the living God. But this gives hope, because as people we are able to do exactly that.

We are more that a bag of matter and energy. We can exercise responsibility over our actions.

The doctrine if sin and the language if idolatry actually can give hope, as the possibility of repentance and belief is always there.

And this in spite of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the US strongly recommending against using SMS as a 2nd factor authentication since 2016!

This is why I run Open Street Maps on my smartphone: OsmAnd~ gets free maps updates anytime, for life.

I'm pretty sure there was a simple OSM app for GerdaOS -- the rooted privacy a friendly version of KaiOS for the Nokia 8110 4G.

I'm pretty sure you can deal with 2fa on Kai OS feature phones. They also include Gmail, Google maps, and WhatsApp access... on a tiny screen where you won't get sucked in for hours.

However, they also come with a ton of tracking, and are a disaster for privacy.

So is this basiclly a fully peer-to-peer application, like bittorrent clients?

Or something like bisq (https://bisq.network) when the program runs locally peer to peer and hosts all user data locally, but still pings oracle servers for outside market price data?

Sure, but if they reach that level or have some business acumen, they may just pay other people to deal with the video production and files.

Back in 2010, these two stop-motion shorts were each shot on the Nokia N8: Dot [1] Gulp [2]

Then in 2011, a short film and a feature-length were shot on the Nokia N8: Splitscreen: A Love Story [3] Olive [4]

Oh, and back when Apple announced their first iPhone, Steve Lichfield was already filming his Phone Show episode 22 on a smartphone, the Nokia N93. [5] For years he filmed with an N8, then a Nokia 808, and eventually Apple's camera tech caught up and he finished out his Phone Show filming on an iPhone.

[1] https://www.aardman.com/short-form-commercials/nokia-dot/ [2] https://aardman.com/short-form-commercials/nokia-gulp/ [3] https://vimeo.com/25451551/description [4] http://blog.gsmarena.com/olive-is-the-first-full-length-feat... [5] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7FMHcG-M_FY.

Are you ruling our hardcover books that still get written and published? I'm on email mailing lists of two small/Independent publishers, and they still make books.

And where I live, there's a book binders workshop on my street.

Maybe revolut.com.

And my memory of Florida law (when I was signing an apartment rental contract 4 years ago) was that any electronic signature agreed to by the contracting parties was valid. So I simply typed my name in the contract, emailed it to my landlord, and we were done.

Of course, I also used https:/.opentimestamps.org to store the hash of our contract on bitcoin's block chain, because that way we both had proof that the contract existed in a certain form on that date. (I never needed that proof, because he was a good landlord, and I paid rent on time.)

Such as the politicization of everything, or the abandoning of teaching basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills in favor of woke political agendas, or perhaps due to the hollowing out of cultural/religious consensus and the corresponding doubt's that there is any unifying factor in the academy.

After all, universities were born in the high to late middle ages out of the conviction that knowledge found its unifying point in the Word of God's revelation of Jesus, but today the vast majority of (western) universities have long abandoned the pursuit of truth. Theology, once seen as the queen of the sciences, is generally regarded as less useful and less true than fiction writing.

Sources for you data claims, please?

Probem is, at least in terms of the climate debate, climate alarmism and mainstream media says that there's scientific consensus, but at least when I read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 5th report in 2015, they didn't even predict how much doubling atmospheric CO2 would warm the planet (as they had in their previous reports)---and that with no clear explanation. However, following their footnote to the scientific detail report, they noted a lack of consensus between the computer-based models ("catastrophe immenent!") and the latest observation based models.

When I combine that with prominent climatologists like Judith Curry changing her position when presented with observation-based evidence that countered her climate predictions[1], it leaves me deeply skeptical of any and all alarmists.

I haven't taken time yet to read the IPCC's latest report, but I've heard that it has the same lack of consensus between the computer models (full of alarmist assumptions in how they were programmed) and observation-based studies.

I firmly believed we must follow observational data above computer simulations... Its just better science.

[1] https://reason.com/2023/08/09/this-scientist-used-to-spread-...

* Software needs maintenance. You can't just build an app an call it a day, you need to employ a team to maintain it continuously. You can build a massive, gargantuan bridge and maintain it maybe every few years/half a decade to keep it safe for 30+ years, you cannot do that in software.

* Unlike what outsider think, software -- even "boring" CRUD/web software -- is still very much a research project. If you ask a civil engineer how to build a bridge, they'll tell you about all the techniques that were developed over the many many decades.

As a nonpracticing civil engineer, you're underestimating the ongoing maintence that goes into any large bridge.

Also, though the techniques may be more established, every bridge must still be designed to fit the specific characteristics of its local geology and geography. But come to think of it, fundamental computer science algorithms are pretty well established, like bridge-building techniques. Software engineering is simply fitting the code to each unique problem, as bridge design fits a bridge to each unique place.

Cash is king for privacy. Pay with cash as often as possible. Walk or bicycle. Write paper letters, mail them with cash-purchased stamps. Looks tuff up at the library. Use an analog film camera, physical maps and a compass to navigate.

If you need to type, get an old mechanical typewriter, and lots of paper for when you mistype and have to redo the entire page...

Or, learn encryption and prefer open/free software solutions as much as possible.

In the US 2020 elections, there are plenty of convincing explanations of the mishaps[1], yet Trump's base couldn't be bothered to take time to read the explanations. I say that based on my conversations with friends who still belive the election was stolen, but when I ask them if they'd read any of the detailed legislative investigations or court proceedings (rather than simply listening to their media echo chambers), they always end the conversation saying no, they haven't.

[1] https://misenategopcdn.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/99/doccume...

Republican Trump-supporting committee chair McBroom summarized the above report, saying,

“Our clear finding is that citizens should be confident the results represent the true results of the ballots cast by the people of Michigan.... There is no evidence presented at this time to prove either significant acts of fraud or that an organized, wide-scale effort to commit fraudulent activity was perpetrated in order to subvert the will of Michigan voters.”

McBroom added: “The Committee strongly recommends citizens use a critical eye and ear toward those who have pushed demonstrably false theories for their own personal gain.”

Much of it is public record. And if you don't have time to wade through the data, the court cases Trump's campaign litigated provide a wealth of one the record, sworn testimony and evidence.[1]

I was amazed to read, for example, in Pennsylvania that when Rudy Giuliani was sworn under oath he told the judge that they were not alleging fraud had occurred in the election, yet in the media and in public he was loudly crying "Fraud!"

Follow the facts.

[1] You can find the case names to know what to search for here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_relat...

I agree things have become far more contentious since 2020. Trump's campaign used that controversy to fund-raise for "legal defense" but the small print in his campaign emails I received also said the funds could be used to pay down his campaign debts.

If you haven't read the Michigan Senate report (result of an 8-month bipartisan investigation chaired by a Trump Republican), please do. It cleared the air and answered tons of questions for me, seeing the evidence they found and realizing that there are simple, understandable reasons explaining what happened and also explaining the ruckus that resulted from so many people crying fraud but being unwilling to take time themselves to investigate the facts of the matter.

Forgot to link the Michigan Senate report: https://misenategopcdn.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/99/doccume...

This isn't the first time spreadsheet errors have messed with election results.

It was a column error in tabulated election results that cause all the conflict in 2020 in Antrim county, Michigan. Any computer folks who took the time to read the report by an University of Michigan computer scientist hired by the Republican chaired bipartisan committee that the Michigan state senate would have seen that there was no vote fraud, but user error that got caught almost immediately in the accountability systems that were in place to catch any errors like that.

If we stopped trying to report election returns in real time like sporting events, and could be patient a few hours, we could avoid a lot of these highly divisive controversies.

The QR scan/generate app I use always presents me the scanned data in text form and asks me to verify if I want to visit the URL or not. I don't know why anyone would chois an app that doesn't afford the user that basic level of control.

I use the Privacy Friendly QR Scanner, developed by a German university research group. More info available here: https://secuso.aifb.kit.edu/english/105.php

Use a better QR scanner app. I use Privacy Friendly Apps' "Privacy Friendly QR Scanner", which always presents you with the scanned URL or text in the app before doing anything, and asks you to verify that you want to visit the site. It also includes the ability to generate your own QR codes.

See https://secuso.aifb.kit.edu/english/105.php for that and other apps developed by that research group.

Why don't they use IRC with public logs? Or a stack exchange style support wiki, so that it becomes documentation over time.

BlockTris

I'm not sure how you can say that an owner-operated family farm is socialist. The family owns the capital in the farm, and profits from its use. That's pretty capitalistic.

What seems far more socialist is the crony capitalism of large agro-business that prices small, family-owned capitalist farmers out of the market by taking taxpayer-funded federal subsidies and using them to capture regulators and buy out their competition.

No! Creating more money doesn't create wealth. We need to cap the money supply, let working people save in money that isn't being stolen from them by design (central banks target rates of inflation), and trust that with the deflationary effects of technology, peoples' savings will gradually increase in purchasing power.

Low-wage industries wouldn't necessarily be a problem of the currency's purchasing power was rising rather than falling. But in most "developed" economies, we're institutional used theft via central banks targeting inflation, rather than recognizing that technological advancements ought to bring about gradual price deflation.

We've accepted for far too long the lie that low inflation (i.e. theft at a slow enough rate that working people hopefully won't notice) is necessary for economic growth. That's not true, but it introduces all sorts of systemic injustice into our economic systems.

I'm not sure US agro-business would survive at scale without the massive federal subsidies it receives. The little guys in the US don't get the benefit of the government money on anywhere near the scale of the big firms. Large agricultural corporations are among those lined up to grow from the Cantillion effect of being very close to the government money printer---and everyone who's further from that spigot gets squeezed as the purchasing power of the US dollar is destroyed.[1]

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SA0R

Workers are being squeezed on one end and small farmers are being squeezed on the other, and the gains go somewhere else entirely while small communities fall into despair and die out.

This seems to have all started when we turned the dollar into a melting iceberg jn 1913 (created the Federal Reserve, which is basicaly a cabal of private banksters with a veneer of government), and it intensified when we decided to make dollars our primary national export product in 1971 (when Nixon closed the gold convertibility window for foreign central banks). Since then, workers are squeezed for working hard and trying to save for the future, but not understanding that if they're saying in dollars they'll never get ahead.

My guess specific to farming is that federal subsidies for corn and energy have driven prices up in ways that price smaller-scale farms out of the market.