These problems are all theoretical. If you actually tried to implement them at the scale you'd typically need to sway a federal election you'd find it pretty unworkable. And in close elections, the recount process is pretty intense, so it's even less likely that you'll be successful.
You'll probably want more detail. Ballot harvesting can't work because data analysis shows weird patterns like this ("huh this nursing home went 95% Biden whereas every other nursing home in the county went 55%"). Recounts do signature validation and lawyers from either party can challenge any ballot they want. Voters are contacted to cure their ballots. I've worked on the Democratic side and been heavily involved in doing all of this. We had armies of lawyers, software and data engineers, and organizers.
Most of the pointing out opportunities for fraud comes from a place of like, reasoning from first principles. But elections are huge undertakings involving tons of people. It's hard to successfully commit election fraud at a large enough scale to sway a federal election. It's why foreign adversaries prefer to swarm social media with bots: it has a chance of working.
I'm skeptical of these kind of like, self-describing data models. Like, I generally like at proto--because I like IPFS--but I think the whole "just add a lexicon for your service and bickety bam, clients appear" is a leap too far.
For example, gaze upon dev.ocbwoy3.crack.defs [0] and dev.ocbwoy3.crack.alterego [1]. If you wanted to construct a UI around these, realistically you're gonna need to know wtf you're building (it's a twitter/bluesky clone); there simply isn't enough information in the lexicons to do a good job. And the argument can't be "hey you published a lexicon and now people can assume your data validates", because validation isn't done on write, it's done on read. So like, there really is no difference between this and like, looking up the docs on the data format and building a client. There are no additional guarantees.
Maybe there's an argument for moving towards some kind of standardization, but... do we really need that? Like are we plagued by dozens of slightly incompatible scrobbling data models? Even if we are, isn't this the job of like, an NPM library and not a globally replicated database?
Anyway, I appreciate that, facially, at proto is trying to address lock in. That's not easy, and I like their solution. But I don't think that's anywhere near the biggest problem Twitter had. Just scanning the Bluesky subreddit, there's still problems like too much US politics and too many dick pics. It's good to know that some things just never change I guess.
Not sure I fully get you... In your example, isn't the problem that nobody cares about this data? So there is no motivation to build a client. Whereas if these were beloved notes or minisites or whatever that got wiped out by the latest acquisition (e.g. see https://bento.me/ shutting down), people would know exactly what those are, and there would be incentive for someone to compete for the userbase.
E.g. Blento (https://blento.app/) is atproto Bento that I only saw a couple of days ago. But the cool thing is that if it shuts down, not only someone else can set it up again (it's open source), but they're also gonna be able to render all of the users' existing content. I think that's a meaningful step forward for this use case.
Yes, there's gonna be tons of stuff on the network that's too niche, but then there's no harm in it either. Whereas wherever there is enough interest, someone can step in and provide the code for the data.
I'm saying it would be a lot simpler to just provide an API to download the data. I don't think it's worth the complexity and network of PDS' to preserve this data in perpetuity, but even if I did, nothing would stop me from using the download API and storing tapes in Iron Mountain or whatever.
I think there's also weird cases where you don't really want things replicated: revenge porn, snuff, CSAM, etc. Like, if someone we're like "yes it's true we lose all data forever if we shut down, but we're not indiscriminately pushing some of the worst content to everyone replicating" I'd take that tradeoff immediately.
I downvoted all your recs for polars, 1 because this is a DuckDB thread and it's low-key rude, and 2 because there are 4 of them. I wouldn't have minded if there were a single post that were like "DuckDB is cool, polars could be an alternative if..."
Tech needs to learn about collective action problems. Are any of geohot's shops unionized? Has he done any political work or advocacy? What I want to read is "geohot donates $5m to CWA", not some insipid, entirely useless blog post effectively calling me a coward, while its author does nothing.
If you raise the bar for being allowed to speak about a very real concern that high, nobody will be left to spread and debate the idea in the first place.
geohot's not a regular joe, he's founded multiple companies and is a leader in our community. This is like a general being like "why are you letting the enemy win?" while he sits comfortably in his study managing his cigar collection.
I still don't think it precludes him from having this opinion. Could he be doing more? Sure, but having found success in this system doesn't make his criticisms of it invalid.
I agree with OP, who to my mind hasn't said the so-called critique is invalid or that he's not allowed to have an opinion. Isn't the comment along the lines of "well, what have you actually tried to do? You have resources, standing, kairos, etc." Seems one of the more perceptive critiques on here.
The west was enjoying the peace dividend while Russians were dealing with the collapse of the USSR so the answer to your question depends on who you ask.
Right. You must be referring to the libel laws that have specific exemptions for politically powerful or otherwise publicly prominent individuals specifically to avoid intrusion into freedom of the press. And you think that helps your point?
The housing affordability crisis only exists in places that are very desirable, which is to say if you only build homes, you won't solve the problem, because most people don't want to live in a huge belt of suburbia. You have to build 15 minute cities, and you have to connect them with clean, reliable, safe public transit.
This is a huge economic opportunity for exactly the people we've been shafting: build us millions of zero emissions buildings and infra. I have no idea why Democrats aren't making this the front page of their platform.
FWIW, I left my full time job some years ago to do my own thing, in part because pushing back on bad decisions was not really doing me any favors for my mental health. Glad to report I'm in a much better place after finding the courage to get out of that abusive relationship.
Some might argue the risk of not pushing back is far worse.
I was a contractor/consultant between 2020-2023; I have a problem w/ authority so it suited me. But work/life balance was awful--I have 2 kids now, and I can't do nothing for 6 weeks then work 100 hour weeks for 4 weeks. The maximum instability my life will tolerate is putting the kids to bed at 9 instead of 8:30 lol. I'm also in the Netherlands so there's also other benefits. Worker protections are very strong here, so it's highly unlikely I'll be fired or laid off; I can't be asked to work overtime; I can't be Slack'd after hours; I can drop down to 4 days a week no questions asked, when the kids were born I got a ton of paid leave, etc. Not to imply I work at some awful salt mine; I like my current gig and coworkers/leadership.
Anyway, this is a collective action problem. I don't take any responsibility for the huge plastic island in the Pacific, nor do I take any responsibility for the grift economy built on successive, increasingly absurd hype waves of tech (web 2.0, mobile, SPAs, big data, blockchain, VR, AI). I've also worked in social good, from Democratic presidential campaigns and recounts to helping connect people w/ pro bono legal services, which is to say I've done my time. There are too many problems for me to address, I get to pick which, if any, I battle, I am happy if my kids don't meltdown too much during the evening. Maybe when they're both in school I can take more risks or reformulate my work/life balance, but currently I'm focused on furthering the human race.
You'll probably want more detail. Ballot harvesting can't work because data analysis shows weird patterns like this ("huh this nursing home went 95% Biden whereas every other nursing home in the county went 55%"). Recounts do signature validation and lawyers from either party can challenge any ballot they want. Voters are contacted to cure their ballots. I've worked on the Democratic side and been heavily involved in doing all of this. We had armies of lawyers, software and data engineers, and organizers.
Most of the pointing out opportunities for fraud comes from a place of like, reasoning from first principles. But elections are huge undertakings involving tons of people. It's hard to successfully commit election fraud at a large enough scale to sway a federal election. It's why foreign adversaries prefer to swarm social media with bots: it has a chance of working.
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