I have an ongoing debate (argument? fight?) with my father about this. He recalls a time when it felt as if there were 'good guys' in politics, and can't understand why it is that I'm so hard on the democrats (this has begun to shift in recent months as Chucklefuck and Aipac Shakur have consistently disappointed him). Besides the obvious issue of republicans being a lost cause, it's policies like too big to fail and dodd-frank and nafta that created the conditions for our current mess, all the while expanding and allowing basic, obvious bad policy to persist (presidential pardons, executive order powers, life terms in the supreme court).
A five year old can see the problems with a lot of this stuff, which once upon a time you'd defend with vague notions of a self-policing culture or the ghost of ethics in governance. Those kinds of non-safeguards can work fine in a stable system, but they inherently rely on foreknowledge of future conditions not changing in unpredictable ways.
The self-reinforcing recursive loop underlying all this is that the systems of governance can only be changed by the governors. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that democracy will fail so long as it's representative - the incentives to fix the system itself are simply not there because any inefficiency is exploitable for personal gain (so why fix it?) The doomsday proposition that comes out of that though is that the system cannot be changed - only replaced once it decisively breaks. Maybe that's what all this is. I would hate to find another bottom but I fear there's more to go before we get there.
woof, that article. The examples section doesn't contain a single concrete example and after reading the whole thing I can't tell whether they're talking about academics publishing news articles or congress' revolving door. Wikipedia has been struggling lately. Maybe that's what they're talking about.
If the attackers in this case are cleverly exploiting anything, I would bet on aggressive grey patterns like that more than I would US culture wars. Noticing that a company has policies that let you hide in plain sight means that you're paying close attention. Knowing what issues are hot button culture flamewars means you can access literally any American news outlet.
(forgive me if I don my aluminum chapeau going forward)
> Black rock isn't buying up all the housing, your neighbors are.
So in '08 we saw the veil drop on the mortgage folks. For a brief moment the sort of advantage they were taking of individual homeowners (I'm including landlords here) was plain for all to see, because the systems they had built to extract that value had been pushed too far and started to break.
The really clever/evil/nasty thing that happened next was that they all said "we're sowwy" and pretended to close up shop on the Mortgage Backed Securities markets, while sowing the seeds for a resurgence in mortgage lending by having Fannie run REO-to-Rental programs that sold foreclosed homes in bulk to investors. It would have been too obvious in the numbers if large institutional investors had bought those directly, so they let mom and pop go into business as landlords, effectively buying obfuscation of the stream of finances for the cost of whatever margins they had to take a hit on to allow for low interest rates to pump housing prices up to a place where, like in 07, they could go back to fucking around with mortages.
In less word salady terms, the plan looked like so:
- "oh fuck we pushed it too far and here come the torches and pitchforks"
- Stop making money on mortgages, but we're investment banks as well as mortgage lenders, so we can make up for the loss of mortgage money by buying a more significant fraction of the housing market at near-zero interest rates
- Wait for low interest rates to pump housing prices over time
- Okay cool, people have forgotten about the whole 08 thing and we've peeled back all the subsequent regulation so we can go back to making our money bundling risky ass mortgage securities again <--- we are here>
The essence of the problem as I see it is that finance has gotten so byzantine and complicated that the only people who understand it in real time are the people who are actively trying to manipulate it to maximize their profits, and by the time it becomes clear what dirty tricks they're pulling they've moved on to the next grift so it looks like they're innocent.
The warrant was issued by Trump - originally at 15M, Biden bumped it to 25, but Trump then bumped it again to 50. Not here to defend Joe, but you also shouldn't be defending Trump. Both bastards, but the Maduro thing is almost entirely on El Presidente Orangina.
caveat up front: I see that the point here is to talk about a nice, good thing for people to use that is useful, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I am also always looking for ways to upgrade, and I also agree that in a modern context with modern knowledge, we can do better.
However, regarding the posix skepticism - I think OP has missed (or just not mentioned) the actual thing that keeps bash/zsh from being unseated.
Industrial standards are a good thing just because they’re standards. They’re right that a redesign would be superior in terms of raw design, but this is only useful if it’s adopted widely enough so that you don’t have to context switch between two fundamental systems. I spin up a new VM somewhere and it's going to have bash. I use a tool and I expect it to follow a particular convention - having to figure out which I'm reaching for adds an amount of friction that would make most work untenable.
I like zsh but I also want something better. Type safety and robust completions would make me very happy, but if we're going to make the switch we have to do it as an industry - with a set of agreed upon interfaces and standards that are carefully thought out and built on consensus. I don't know if that's possible given the massive complexity of the state of affairs but that's what it would take.
I can only speak for myself, but it feels like playing with fire to productize this stuff too quick.
Like, I woke up one day and a magical owl told me that I was a wizard. Now I control the elements with a flick of my wrist - which I love. I can weave the ether into databases, apps, scripts, tools, all by chanting a simple magical invocation. I create and destroy with a subtle murmur.
Do I want to share that power? Naturally, it would be lonely to hoard it and despite the troubles at the Unseen University, I think that schools of wizards sharing incantations can be a powerful good. But do I want to share it with everybody? That feels dangerous.
It's like the early internet - having a technical shelf to climb up before you can use the thing creates a kind of natural filter for at least the kinds of people that care enough to think about what they're doing and why. Selecting for curiosity at the very least.
That said, I'm also interested in more data from an engineering perspective. It's not a simple thing and my mind is very much straddling the crevasse here.
This cuts to one of the critical issues with governance globally in this era. For a really long time, we relied on social norms and mores to keep governments in check - and astonishingly it worked at least a little. Embarrassment was a good proxy for well constituted rules of representation.
What right-wing institutions have noticed all around the world is that you can just kind of ignore all that shit now. Centrists are flailing around begging for an explanation for "how this could happen" and folks on the left, marginalized for years in favor of free markets, are just kind of facepalming and saying we told you so.
You need to put it in writing somewhere that there's a limit on governmental authority and enforce the hell out of it. You need to do the same to clamp down on the power of special interests and corporations. More than anything, you need robust mechanisms that make government representatives vulnerable to the voting public. The people need to be the ones that they scramble to please and when we get mad that should be dangerous and difficult for those holding the reins of government. Their existence needs to depend on the mandate of the public.
It boggles my mind that you think this stuff is being pushed by the right. Expansion of government and surveillance is a hallmark of the left, and indeed this latest wave of surveillance is being pushed by progressive governments in Western Europe and Australia.
Governments of both flavours are ignoring the voting public, for various reasons, e.g. they are signatory to agreements that no longer work for the public but are difficult to break, the public is increasingly economically irrelevant compared to businesses, and, of course, the greedy self-interest of the politicians themselves.
I agree with you on the third paragraph, but it's also the reason that I believe the US will be okay compared to other Western democracies (an opinion I'm not sure you would share, judging by your post). The Constitution is already a thing, and is on its own a declaration that certain rights derive from a higher authority than government. The second amendment in particular is under siege (again, by the left), but does equalize things in a way that many of its opponents are reluctant to admit.
The constitution is being summarily ignored by the current administration. There is a right to trial in there that we've just totally blown past, and the deep integration between party insiders and media consolidation is a sideways assault on the first amendment.
The idea that "they're coming for your guns" is something we can begin to discuss when the first step to curb our mass shooting problem is actually taken. For now, it's a little ridiculous to infer that there's any kind of 'siege' on the second amendment given that we have them all the damn time and they're not slowing down.
I would ask folks in the EU whether they think they're leaning left at the moment. Reading their news it doesn't seem to be the case [0 1 2 3].
Just out of curiosity - in what concrete way do you think the second amendment serves as an equalizer? Do you imagine that the government sees an armed populace as any kind of a threat?
Leaving the left-right debate behind for just a second - I smell that there is something perhaps we may agree on. Representation is fundamentally broken. Even given our ideological differences, how do you feel about direct democracy? I think we'd benefit.
>The constitution is being summarily ignored by the current administration. There is a right to trial in there that we've just totally blown past, and the deep integration between party insiders and media consolidation is a sideways assault on the first amendment.
To what extent does the US have the right to maintain its borders? The idea that anyone should be able to enter the country illegally and be given the right to due process presupposes that the state has the resources to deal with the volume of people who decide to do that. And in most of the world, it would be uncontroversial to suggest that people entering a country illegally have -- effectively, if not necessarily legally -- zero recourse should the state decide to remove them.
>The idea that "they're coming for your guns" is something we can begin to discuss when the first step to curb our mass shooting problem is actually taken. For now, it's a little ridiculous to infer that there's any kind of 'siege' on the second amendment given that we have them all the damn time and they're not slowing down.
There is a sustained anti-gun lobby, and California has taken significant steps to restrict gun ownership. The US is too far gone for any one government to be able to swoop in and completely remove all guns, so the goal is long-term. Sway people's opinions, change the culture, and implement controls that skirt the edge of violating the second amendment, or set a precedent for limits on the second amendment. I don't live in the US, but even what I see as an outsider looking in makes it clear that this is happening.
Governments as an organization are perfectly capable of putting down an armed population, but individual members of a government certainly do see an armed population as a threat. I know for a fact that senior members of the (large, US) company that I work for take security very seriously. And though I don't support or condone shooting government officials and CEOs in any way, shape or form, I do believe that all peaceful negotiations, whether they be between employees and employer, or citizens and government, are purchased through a credible threat of violence. Otherwise, there are no negotiations, just suggestions. We're the lucky ones who got to live through a time when those fights have already been had, but there's nothing to say they won't need to happen again.
>I would ask folks in the EU whether they think they're leaning left at the moment. Reading their news it doesn't seem to be the case [0 1 2 3].
Incumbent governments in western Europe are mostly left wing, especially by US standards. The population is pushing right as a response to those governments refusing to address valid concerns of the voting public. This is why right wing "populist" parties are on the rise, but they aren't in power yet. The push for surveillance has been bipartisan at best, and more realistically driven by the political left under the guise of limiting hate speech.
>Leaving the left-right debate behind for just a second - I smell that there is something perhaps we may agree on. Representation is fundamentally broken. Even given our ideological differences, how do you feel about direct democracy? I think we'd benefit.
I agree that representation is fundamentally broken across much of the west, but I believe that the cause is ultimately a crisis of sovereignty.
As an example: it's no secret that there's a major backlash against migration in many western countries, but with the volume of people coming across, what do you do? You can't shoot them, and if you spend resources shipping them home, a non-trivial (and generally privileged and insulated) chunk of your population wants to save the world and will protest. And the business lobby is all over it because they like the idea of lower wages, so you've also got an army of neoliberal economists and lawyers telling you why you should just let all these people stay. Then you've got all the NGOs that your country is signatory to that want you to invest resources in helping illegal migrants, and in the case of Europe, the EU might try to directly tell your government it needs to do its fair share of taking those people anyway. And even if an individual member of government privately thinks there's an issue with an unpoliced border, the party number-crunchers are telling them that these people vote for the party, so letting them stay and giving them a path to voting actually helps the bottom line. And of course, you've also got a few investment properties...
The end result of all of this is that governments change, but the course stays the same, because in the absence of a government that is willing to risk never being in power again no one is willing to do anything. At worst, you get voted out, the next group does the same thing until people are angry again, and then you get voted back in.
Which of course brings us to Trump. A lot of what Trump is doing, at least to me, is reasserting US sovereignty. He's forcing US companies to heel through the H1B visa change and tarriffs, rattling treaties to get allies to absorb some of the expenditure of maintaining security, and enforcing the nation's border. These aren't historically radical concepts. If the US is going to be a country where the government has an opinion and can advocate for itself as an entity, this probably needs to happen, because no one wants to fight for a shared economic zone. And eventually, if a government can't enforce its borders and exercise its monopoly on violence, another entity will fill that void.
I guess this is a long way of saying that I have no issue with direct democracy, but I don't know that it's the answer, because I don't think it addresses the real problem. Maybe it circumvents some of these issues, but how does a direct democracy raise and maintain an army? Or pass a budget?
> The idea that anyone should be able to enter the country illegally and be given the right to due process presupposes that the state has the resources to deal with the volume of people who decide to do that.
No. It presupposes that every human being deserves to be treated with dignity no matter the circumstances. But I don't expect you to agree with me. Your interpretation of contemporary life in the USA is clearly distorted, but again, I don't expect you to agree. You're being lied to, fwiw.
> what do you do? You can't shoot them
There's no reason for me to engage with you further if this is how you think.
Are you under the impression that corporations and governments of capitalist countries are somehow independent? The ultimate goal of both of them is to have the greatest amount of power over the greatest number of people. They're an extension of one another more than they are independent entities.
You my friend must live in an alternate reality where political leadership isn't obviously enmeshed with corporations to a pathological degree - without a revolving door of people circling between them, without lobbying, without corruption, without special deals to the benefit of the biggest corporations, where private corporations aren't abused to bypass restrictions on government powers, and vice versa.
Lobbying is a tiny industry in the United States and corruption is basically a nonissue. With the exception of the current president I haven’t seen any evidence for widespread corruption in the United States - at most it’s a collection of isolated low impact and rare incidents.
I can only speak for the U.S., but I know a lot of large instances where lobbying was a direct result or sibling of corruption. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Bosch all combined their efforts to kill grey market imports into the U.S. starting in 1994 after a campaign they initiated in 1988. This effectively killed imports from Britain, France, Spain, Russia, and Italy and severely shrunk the market for luxury sedans and coupes in the U.S., which backfired as the Japanese were faster to manufacture and took up the slack. Oshkosh created a system to undercut AM General in order to push the L-ATV design over competing JLTV designs. They repeated this tactic in 2021 to ensure they got the contract for the mail delivery vehicle despite not matching the statement of objectives paper as well as Mahindra or Workhorse. Verizon and Comcast combined forces to kill net neutrality, each whittling away at it with targeted campaigns since 2011 until it was finally ended in 2017 and barred from reimplementation this year. Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, Doordash, and other "disruptor" companies collectively spent hundreds of millions of dollars to bypass classifying their workers as employees and to excuse themselves from taxation. Even now they're still trying to reverse the legal landmark that those workers are employees and can form unions. Blue Cross Blue Shield spent tens of millions of dollars cutting off parts of the Affordable Care Act they didn't like. Currently license plate reader manufacturers are lobbying to get contracts with local governments at the city and county level to install facial recognition cameras everywhere they can, and they're lobbying the federal government to allow this breach of privacy in exchange for access to the databases.
Lobbying is only tiny if you look at the individual amounts. Most lobbyists only put forth $5-10,000 at a time because they're not doing it at a national level. But it's the fact that so many do it in so many different places that makes it a threat. Somebody running to be on the city board can have their entire campaign financed by a single donor. A mayor can have their entire income for the year matched by two lobbyists laying the groundwork for a national campaign. One Senator or House member having seven to eight lobby sponsors can almost match their guaranteed salary for that year. There are entire divisions of the finance departments of companies that are dedicated to budgeting for lobbying over the fiscal year. It's a massive force, composed of nearly $4,000,000,000 in "contributions" in 2024 alone.
I strive to live in a version of the USA half as nice as the one you think we live in. We definitely didn't overthrow legitimate governments in the name of big business in South America, the Middle East, or even Hawaii. /s
I remember when I found out that a highly intelligent friend believed the earth was six-thousand years old. But at least he had the excuse that his idiotic religion was pushed on him since birth. Intelligent people on this site are sometime incapable of basic media literacy and I find it wholly depressing.
Keep voting against your interests while others of us fight you tooth and nail to try to make the world better for everyone (rather than just our own teams), even including you.
> Sorry but voting in favor of the 1% is very much in my interest.
Which is why people like me have to fight people like you tooth and nail. Despite having a very privileged life, probably similar to yours, I still want the best for everyone, not just my team. I pointed this out in my prior comment. You've now confirmed that you're too selfish to vote against your interests for the betterment of humanity. And you apparently have no sense of shame about it. Have a great holiday.
Seeing this thread again scrolling through my comments, and after the holidays feeling perhaps calmer than when it was current. I'd like to make a case, invite you to look at things from a different angle, because I think we might have more common ground than it appears otherwise.
> I have zero shame for voting in favor of the interests of myself and the people that matter to me.
...and you shouldn't. It's better than fine to do so and you ought to work towards things that benefit you. This is something a lot of people seem to misunderstand when I talk about anything political, and it's likely a failing in how I communicate. I don't think that people should sacrifice themselves for the common good just because "it's the right thing to do". It isn't and that's never what I'm driving at.
When I (and perhaps others who share part of my worldview) talk about governance and lobbying and similar stuff, it's not out of a sense of pure morals or ethics - these are issues of ecosystems. Some shapes of systems are healthy and robust and others are self-destructive. Mesh networks are strong, centralized (and unreplicated) control systems are fragile - as an SWE you know this to be true.
What I'm arguing here is that it's in your interest to exist in an environment that:
- prevents an accumulation of power or control too tightly, to avoid single points of failure in decision and governance
- avoids recursive loops which have a habit of wastefully consuming resources and starving critical systems
- maintains flexible responsiveness to environmental conditions due to being reactive to the state of all constituent stakeholders / subsystems / individuals
The issue with the top 1% of the top 1% having too much power is that it breaks all those safeties, and is actually bad for those people too. What will happen in this kind of a situation is that the excessively empowered will desiccate the environment for everyone - including themselves.
You already see it playing out in the form of crumbling infrastructure, ballooning homelessness, economic shocks, and the empowerment of bad actors who take advantage of the disenfranchised masses. This is bad for you, too.
the logic they describe does work. A lot. The Rollback of Dodd-Frank [0]. Recent malpractice reform (in the wrong direction) [1]. Drilling leases [2]. Asbestos. And so on and so on [3].
Tiger's in the house, y'all. And the roof is on fire. And the water is unavailable because it all got sold to nestle [4].
A five year old can see the problems with a lot of this stuff, which once upon a time you'd defend with vague notions of a self-policing culture or the ghost of ethics in governance. Those kinds of non-safeguards can work fine in a stable system, but they inherently rely on foreknowledge of future conditions not changing in unpredictable ways.
The self-reinforcing recursive loop underlying all this is that the systems of governance can only be changed by the governors. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that democracy will fail so long as it's representative - the incentives to fix the system itself are simply not there because any inefficiency is exploitable for personal gain (so why fix it?) The doomsday proposition that comes out of that though is that the system cannot be changed - only replaced once it decisively breaks. Maybe that's what all this is. I would hate to find another bottom but I fear there's more to go before we get there.
reply