ControlsFreak
No bio...
User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
But again, whatever happens/happened with Michael Cohen's legal case is completely irrelevant for Donald Trump's legal case. When Donald Trump appeals his conviction, specifically on the grounds that there was no other crime being concealed, the courts will get into that issue. There is nothing "separate" about it.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
(3) concealing another crime
Nope. There's no other crime being concealed. That someone somewhere plead guilty to a non-crime as part of a package deal rather than vigorously defend the position that it was a non-crime in the courts (where they would have won) does not actually make it a crime. You still need to show that it's a crime, but that's going to run into serious legal theory problems, not least of which includes the first amendment. This result is remarkably easy to see if you've spent any time reading the Supreme Court's first amendment/campaign finance cases.
This will... eventually... come back on appeal to the courts that actually give a shit about legal theory. It is unlikely to come back before the election, so perhaps the damage to democracy is irrevocably done.
he's a far-out third (fourth?) positionist calling 80% of the political spectrum progressives.
Not a bannable offense. In fact, plausibly true, given some conceptual understanding of those words and the concepts underlying many people's positions. Kinda funny that this is what comes top-of-mind when thinking about why he was banned. Really bolsters jkf's claim.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Why didn’t he get it back before punching me? Something something there are good reasons why Jeroboam had his money in my pocket before punching me and it’s very sticky.
Is there not an obvious OPSEC explanation? You had a prior understanding that you and Jeroboam were in good relation and that he was literally investing in the relationship, with the expectation that it was a long-term investment. If he suddenly asks for his money back, you're gonna start wondering what he's up to, what's changed, why is he acting so weird? Imagine Avon Barksdale saying, "Yo String, I love what you've been doing with investing our money, but actually, I'd like to just withdraw my half. Cash. Right now. What am I gonna do with it? I don't know; nothing in particular. I just like looking at it." Even high-level corporate folks are often required to have significant investment in their own companies, and questions are asked if they seem to be withdrawing too much. "Do they know something? Are they thinking that this corporate partnership is becoming a bad deal? Might they jump ship?" If having the investment is essentially known to all parties to be, in part, a trust mechanism to indicate whether everything is normal and good and that defection can be "punished" by confiscating part/all of that investment, sudden withdrawal of that investment may contain a lot of signal. Maybe dude just wants to build a new mansion or buy twitter or something... but maybe...
In the international realm, there is a delicate balance between quietly trying to organize your affairs to try to make your regime more sanctions-proof and retaining enough ambiguity about the likelihood that you're going to suckerpunch someone.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
The crazy pill is that most medical interventions don't matter that much for lifestyle disorders, either, because for the most part, they can't undo the damage from our lifestyle diseases. I was just listening to this podcast with a couple MDs, and he was talking about chronic conditions generally, and a bit about obesity, specifically:
We don't really have the infrastructure to help with prevention, so you talked about how in medical school, we didn't have a single course on dying. We also didn't have a single course on nutrition or exercise or stress management or the psychology of eating and our relationship to food and how you can help patients make better choices with nutrition and things like that, so I don't buy the narrative that we have an obesity crisis just because people are fat, dumb, and lazy. I think that we live in a toxic food environment, and we don't have a healthcare system that's really geared to help people out of it, because frankly, physicians aren't compensated to do that. You just don't have the billable structure in which you can do these things, so instead, I think we focus on where our tools are, and our tools are drugs. Drugs become a good tool to use in a chronic condition setting.
Moreover, they often have patients who don't want to change their disordered lifestyle and wouldn't carry through with doing it even if the doctor had training and a billable way of doing it. So, they sort of default to, "When the chickens come home to roost, I guess we'll give you a drug to help manage your symptoms somewhat."
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I can imagine the admissions scandals already. It's already bad enough that people think that there's a vague but strong-enough link between getting a degree from a particular school/program and expected lifetime earnings. Can you imagine if there was a literal government-backed guarantee of a multi-million dollar payoff?
And after admissions, hooo buddy. I went to school in what was considered a difficult field of study. A couple other students stick out in my memory as being relevant here. I remember right after one guy gave his capstone senior presentation; it was atrocious. Just hilariously bad. By that point, I had a pretty decent relationship with the assistant department chair, and we were talking right after it. I think I was remarking on how it was possible that he was even getting a degree. I think I even pointed out that my view was that giving such folks degrees devalues my own degree, because if people in the market hire guys like him and start thinking, "This is the kind of people we get from Program X?!" they're going to think we all suck. His comment was, "His GPA is ___. Who the hell is going to hire him?" [Yes, he literally told me the kid's GPA. Yes, I know that's totally not supposed to be allowed.] The message is, of course, there is very little incentive to not go ahead and give people a degree, so long as they can just barely sneak through (aided by rampant grade inflation and such).
The second example is a girl who pretty honestly told me that she wasn't really planning on using her degree in the workforce. It was an interest, a hobby, maybe even a status symbol that look at how smart and cool she is to have gotten such a difficult and neat-sounding degree. She legit was planning to be a mother. Sure enough, within a couple years of graduation (I don't recall exactly how long), she was a stay-at-home mother. I don't believe she's ever used her degree in the workforce. [FYI, I think she was actually mostly interested in the subject matter, and she wasn't an atrocious low-performer; she was actually reasonably smart. But I kinda don't think she was always the most motivated to really push herself all the time like some of the other students; she really was able to just sort of focus on the stuff she was interested in and then sort of skate by on the stuff she wasn't.]
In any event, putting them together, a multi-million-dollar government guaranteed payout would cause some hella targeting of programs. I'd say that I could imagine an underground website that details exactly how much a degree from every specific program out there is guaranteed to be worth, but it wouldn't have to be underground! It's the government! They'd have to use a public formula and make determinations, in public, of which programs are in/out of which pay bracket. Once you've gotten in, by hook or by crook or by bribing the admissions department, what incentive is there to not graduate you? Like both of my examples, everyone knows what you're doing and what the outcome will be. Everyone knows that you're not, like, actually going to be out there performing surgery on people or whatever. "Nobody's going to hire you," and you don't even want to get hired anyway. And since you're probably not going to cause any harm anyway, do we really want to be jerks and get in the way of a poor young woman's multi-million-dollar payout? If we try, she might even protest or sue or do any number of things that cause extensive paperwork and unneeded headache. Much easier to just let it go.
If you move it to, "Well, you have to at least get hired and have a salary," that helps with part of the problem, but would almost certainly contribute to hiring discrimination, combining features that already currently exist, from parental leave policies to affirmative action. It will almost certainly give a company pause when considering hiring a brand new female grad if they think some combination of, "On top of having weeks/months of leave if she gets pregnant; she has a literal multi-million-dollar payout coming to incentivize her getting pregnant," and, "Does she really even want to do this job? Did she just do enough to get into/through school, so she could max her payout?"
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
My recollection is that pimps do provide a service to a prostitute; primarily protection. Yes yes, I know "protection racket" seems similar, and there is definitely an aspect of that, but prostitutes also have significant threats from customers and a variety of the situations they find themselves in. To some extent, the service the pimp is providing is some measure of protection from some amount of those threats. Of course, the level of service they provide, and the price they extract, may not be part of the most functional market ever, and they may lean a bit more toward the "parasite" end than the pure and honest goods/services end, but I don't know that they're 100% parasitic. I don't know what percent it would be. Of course, society is not going to jump straight to 100% parasitic either; it gradually grows to be that way.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
37% of their income
It is absolutely wild that anyone thinks that it is remotely sane to allocate this much to healthcare.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Did humans just suddenly start wanting recently? Do humans not want in places and cultures where they still have significantly higher fertility rates? This seems like it has poor explanatory value.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Gorsuch was replacing Scalia, and while they were salty about the Republican Senate with Garland, it was merely a missed opportunity. And frankly, they could read that they had lost that battle enough already that throwing a further fit was likely to be counterproductive with a new president and Republican Senate. Kavanaugh, on the other hand, was replacing Kennedy, which represented a real threat to liberal wins on abortion, affirmative action, and gay rights (two of the three have come to pass), among other issues where the right found Kennedy to be "too squishy". They threw out all the stops for the real threat.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I don't see what's awkward at all about the phrasing. They want people to reduce attack surface, so they say that they should not expose interfaces thoughtlessly (3). Obviously, they can thoughtfully choose to expose an interface, for precisely the reasons you present, which is why they give plenty of latitude for manufacturers to assess that they would like to expose it. It seems like manufacturers have wide latitude, too. There doesn't seem to be any real boundary on their assessment; they just have to be like, "Yeah, we thought about it."
Then, moreover, they know that there have been many high-profile instances of products shipping, having an interface exposed that is trivially-attackable, and when it's attacked, the manufacturers ignore it and just say some bullshit about how it was supposed to just be for the manufacturer for debugging purposes, so they're not responsible and not going to do anything about it. It's a bullshit thing by bad entity manufacturers who don't care. So, while they're well-aware that manufacturers sometimes want a manufacturer-only interface for perfectly fine reasons, all (4) is doing is saying, "Yeah, if that's what you're going for here, don't be an idiot; disable it before you ship it."
This is a very natural way of doing things. Honestly, I probably would have not done as good of a job if I had tried to put this set of ideas together from scratch myself.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Can you point to anything in the document which supports the interpretation that saying "We have assessed that leaving this debug interface provides user benefit because the debug interface allows the user to debug" would actually be sufficient justification?
That quote would not be correct. You have not "assessed that leaving a debug interface..." because it is not a debug interface, by the definition of "debug interface" given in the document. You have assessed that leaving that physical interface provides user benefit, because the physical interface allows the user to debug. You have determined that the physical interface in question is "part of the consumer-facing functionality". That is right there in the definition, in the document. You have made that assessment directly following the instruction given in 5.6-3, in the document.
The deliberate exaggeration of your opponent's views
Items 1 and 2 in my list is my description of my opponent's views. If you think there is an exaggeration, tell me where you think it is, specifically. I don't particularly like the constant deflections either.
Now that you have discovered that your proposal will destroy a culture (as determined by Nybbler), are you willing to pursue it?
Yes.
Ok, now we have discovered that you are willing to destroy a culture. I could act like you and claim that this means that you're willing to destroy the entire culture of tinkering, but that would feel a bit like an exaggeration, wouldn't it?
You are, again, deliberately misrepresenting his views.
Tell me, specifically, how I am misrepresenting his views. I don't particularly like the constant deflections either.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Notice that there is nothing in there about the entire culture of tinkering. I'm assuming that whatever culture it is that we're changing, it's not the entire culture of tinkering. If you/he want to press that it would require destroying the entire culture of tinkering, I'd have to learn a lot more about what proposal is deemed necessary, why it is necessary, what implications it has, etc. I really really wouldn't want to do that, so if it came down to the case where nothing can possibly work without destroying the entire culture of tinkering, I may not do it.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
And you have also explicitly said that if actions that would not end all tinkering are not enough, you would end all tinkering.
This is not true. I have not said this.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
My position is this:
-I believe that Nybbler's position is that any epsilon regulation would destroy a culture. I think you are coming into agreement with me that this is a reasonable description.
-I also believe that this position is totally hyperbolic. I don't actually think it's true, but it is the claim being made.
-I am not in any way claiming that regulation cannot possibly impact innovation.
Please specify which of the above you disagree with.
Turning now to the merits of your proposal. Now that you have discovered that your proposal will destroy a culture (as determined by Nybbler), are you willing to pursue it? Or is it now a no-go for you?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I don't see any documentation requirement for user interfaces. But it would seem that they are required to put on the table that they are intending for it to be a user interface. "We have assessed that this interface provides user benefits, e.g., debugging." Simple.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
"default passwords must be purged from the face of the Earth, even if it means the end of all tinkering"
This is not what I have said. Not even remotely. I would be perfectly happy with actions that don't end all of tinkering. I would prefer them!
Nybbler would declare that this is, in fact, changing the culture of people who mass produce end-use consumer goods. That this is the only way, that we have to change their culture. If that is required, I am willing to do it.
We can move this to the other thread, because this was your solution. In the other thread, we can discuss whether you're willing to pursue your solution, even if it changes their culture. I am still open to arguments that your solution has too many demerits to be implemented, but I am currently on the side of being willing to do your solution, even though you have now discovered that it will, in fact, change a culture. I could be persuaded otherwise, but first let's see if you're willing to proceed with your own solution.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Yeah, I don't understand what you're offended by. All we did was check to see if your solution destroys a culture, and we discovered that your solution destroys a culture. Simple as. This is just a straightforward description of what went down.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
There you have it, @ArjinFerman. You're a culture-destroyer. You just didn't know it.
I mean, I can hardly blame you, though. It was the only choice you had. Literally if you do anything, Nybbler will think that you're a culture-destroyer. There are only two options: do nothing and have billions of trivially-hackable devices with default passwords... or be a culture-destroyer. That's it. That's the dichotomy.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
if the trivial solution does not work, you won't think twice about destroying the tinkerers' culture
I don't know what you mean by this. What is "the trivial solution"? I don't have any idea what you mean by it. We've been talking about the entire class of possible solutions that stop billions of devices from being trivially-hackable with default passwords. Which one is "the trivial solution"?
My complaint with you is that you're acting injured that anyone would portray your values as terminal
I am not injured in any such way. I explicitly presented the value of stopping the deluge of trivially-hackable devices with default passwords as a terminal value. You're just really off the mark.
I think your link was meant to be this. Frankly, I interpret Nybbler's silence as rejecting your proposal. We can clear this up right quick, though. Hey @The_Nybbler! Arjin says:
My personal way of squaring that circle is that I'm open to regulation on mass-produced end-user consumer goods, and a more freedom on anything that requires some deliberate action.
Do you think this will destroy the culture, since anyone who wants to make mass-produced end-user consumer goods will be reduced to nothing but checking boxes? Or do you think that he can do this without destroying the culture?
My problem here is that if it doesn't work, you explicitly said you won't stop at it.
I actually explicitly said that I would consider all possible ideas, and that I was even open to the possibility that all options genuinely have too many demerits to implement. Literally in the comment you were just replying to. Please don't lie about what I've said.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I mean, just read them again, more slowly. 5.6-3 says that the company needs to at least think about leaving physical interfaces open. They can choose to do so, so long as they assess that there are benefits to the user. But their choice here is to either consider it consumer-facing or manufacturer-only. It is their choice, but they have to pick one, so they can't pretend like, "Oh, that's supposed to be manufacturer-only, so we don't have to worry about securing it," while also forgetting to turn it off before they ship.
Then, suppose you have a physical interface, is it a "debug interface" or not a "debug interface"? From the definition, it is only a "debug interface" if the manufacturer has determined that it is not part of the consumer-facing functionality. So, if they choose to make it accessible to the user (as per above, making a conscious choice about the matter), it is not a "debug interface", and 5.6-4 simply does not apply, because the device does not have a "debug interface". But if they choose to say that it's manufacturer-only, then it's a "debug interface", and they have to turn it off before they ship.
It's actually very well put together. I've seen many a regulation that is light-years more confusing.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Fair enough. California already sealed our fate years ago, and I guess this conversation has nowhere else to go.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
You are still effectively saying "get rid of things that annoy me, or I'll drive a steamroller over your culture", even if you don't particularly care how those things or gotten rid of, in my opinion that's still accurately described as "my way or the highway"?
I would be perfectly happy not driving a steamroller over anyone's culture. But billions of trivially-hackable devices with default passwords is truly unacceptable. If you want to characterize any version of "we need to fix this problem (and by the way, we can do so trivially)" as being "my way or the highway", I think this is just a fully-general argument against fixing any problems ever, even the most trivial ones. Literally any time someone points out any problem that could be fixed and says, "Hey, how about we fix this," it can be characterized as "my way or the highway". Even if they're open to literally any option that you can put on the table to solve the problem, they're not prescriptive at all, and are perfectly happy considering the relative merits/demerits of each approach, and even open to the possibility that all options genuinely have too many demerits to implement. Literally any form of "let's fix this problem" is "my way or the highway" because you want to "get rid of the problem (that annoys me... and also causes billions of dollars in damage every year and is a national security threat, but I guess mostly because it annoys me)".
So look, if you can come up with any other ideas. Get rid of them, don't get rid of them. Fix the massive problems some other way, still having billions of devices with default passwords, fine. I don't care. Come up with ideas. Bring them to the table. We can debate the merits/demerits. We honestly could even conclude that there are too many demerits of all the options and choose to not do anything. But right now, what I'm being told is that the One Great Demerit that is fatal to all possible options (not "my way"; all options) is that whatever is done, it will "destroy a culture". Very little is given to support what the meat of this demerit is, other than what appears to be vague threats of slowing innovation. If that's all, then I will throw in with destroying the culture. I will throw in with doing it in the most minimal way possible, with the most reasonable regulations you can come up with, or whatever alternative solution you propose, and we will just have to live with destroying the culture.
Moreover, your refusal on grounds of it being "my way or the highway" is fully symmetric, in addition to being fully general. If, as is claimed, the only two options are "billions of trivially-hackable devices with default passwords" and "destroy a culture", then the people who are demanding that we choose the former are also demanding "my way or the highway". It's just that their way is the other way. Why aren't you rejecting their position on the grounds of it being "my way or the highway"?
You're getting tit for tat
I don't know what you mean by this.
I did, and he didn't seem to say anything in response to me, so mission accomplished?
Can you link me? I'd really appreciate seeing your way. If you truly believe his silence means that we can do it, fix the problem, and not destroy the culture, it may actually be mission accomplished.
I find this utterly implausible. For the record, I find it completely plausible that various courts could find some way to rule against Trump, but this one will simply not be there. Higher courts know that there are plenty (not in percentage terms) of people who are in prison for non-crimes, especially as parts of plea deals, that would be found to be non-crimes if contested appropriately. It would be one thing if Donald Trump had plead guilty to the requisite non-crime; I could absolutely see a court viewing that as settling the matter. But I cannot possibly believe that someone else pleading guilty to a non-crime settles the matter in the case in front of them. In fact, I imagine the court records are full of people appealing (some successfully) their convictions for things that are non-crimes, even though they had accomplices who plead guilty to those very same non-crimes. I challenge you to find me one example of a court simply rejecting any possibility of such an appeal based solely on a third party's plea agreement.
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