From the paper: "Crashes kill 1.3 million people per year including 700 children per day." I have always thought it's striking that people drive so much in spite of knowing that each time you could easily kill or be killed. Imagine if phones were equally dangerous - who'd carry one in their pocket?
Obviously cars are useful, but we've built our cities to maximize that (and we still spend a lot of time stuck in traffic, even so). That doesn't mean that there aren't more useful possibilities, just that the inertia in the system makes them seem like a dream.
It’s not just “us” who built cities to maximize car travel. Everyone did it. Walkable european cities are surrounded by car-dependent suburbs.
The problem with your analysis is that your concept of “useful” is based on a set of priorities in your head that’s almost certainly not shared by the people who prefer to live in car-optimized areas. Cars let you travel in private, on your own schedule, without having to interact with other people. You might not value those things. Lots of people do.
Beautiful work, but the cup can't hold water (or tea, or wine) now I assume? So a partial restoration. It does make me wonder if you could do a mechanical repair like that and then reglaze and refire it (but I suppose that'd melt most metalwork soft enough to hammer onto a delicate cup...)
I appreciate the principled stand, but on the other hand the CA law only requires users to self-identify when setting up accounts (and then the OS will expose age to apps), that seems fairly toothless (though wrongheaded) compared to TX and UT wanting to scan photo IDs[1]
"Toothless" unless you're an app, website or platform developer, then you're given an enormous liability burden even if you strictly adhere to age signals and censor everything accordingly:
> (3) (A) Except as provided in subparagraph (B), a developer shall treat a signal received pursuant to this title as the primary indicator of a user’s age range for purposes of determining the user’s age.
> (B) If a developer has internal clear and convincing information that a user’s age is different than the age indicated by a signal received pursuant to this title, the developer shall use that information as the primary indicator of the user’s age.
Turns out the age signal is not enough. Liability-wise, you'll probably be doing face and/or ID scans, too, even if the law doesn't explicitly call for it.
Developers will just implement the strictest state's censorship and age verification schemes for everyone, which has already happened. My state has no age verification laws, yet platforms, and even Android itself, are trying to get me to scan my face and dox myself to use them. I can't even look at spicy tweets online without verifying my age with the X app, they're censored for my own protection.
> I appreciate the principled stand, but on the other hand the CA law only requires users to self-identify when setting up accounts (and then the OS will expose age to apps).
It is narrower than that. It only applies to accounts whose user is a child and is the primary user of the device.
See section 1798.500 (i) which says [1]:
(i) “User” means a child that is the primary user of the device.
If that's what they wanted there is no reason not to start with laws like the TX and UT laws. You need the boiling the frog when you are trying to push the evelope.
Wdym? The reason is that people would oppose the TX and UT laws harder in California. Everyone is calm now in CA because "oh it's just an age dropdown guys!!"
But once the infrastructure is built give it a few years it's not going to be a dropdown. And it will not be able to be bypassed in the same way you can't bypass permissions on iOS and Android today.
To be clear, the Texas law only applies to mobile app stores, not the operating system, and there is no requirement to scan photo ID, just the vague,” commercially reasonable method of verification.”
I don't want to feed my biometrics and identity into AI companies' models so they can train on them for free and then sell facial recognition systems to the government.
Except for the fact that my age is now a piece of information that any tracking pixel or web malware can access at all times to de-anonymize me, even in incognito mode. But maybe that can be solved by collapsing all ages above 18 to just 18. Not sure if that violates the wording of the law though.
That is the wording of the California law, IIRC. The age brackets are under 13, 13-16, 16-18, and over 18. It also requires the OS to provide only the minimum information necessary to comply with the law, and only when necessary to comply with the law.
What can I show to 16-18 year olds that I can't show to 13-16 year olds?
The real meat of the law is requiring websites and applications to comply with this signal. Which would be one good reason why there are so many categories of seeming little difference. This then gives them the opportunity to fine and harass developers out of business for the most minor of infractions or instances of mislabeling.
I don’t really see the need for the line at 16, it seems like they ought to be able to push that line up or down and simplify the brackets.
But, the state doesn’t actually have an incentive to fine and harass their tax base out of business. I don’t think they made it over-complicated on purpose, I think lawmakers just over-estimate our capacity to understand laws.
Keep in mind that as people age out of the 16-18 bracket, their age will be established fairly precisely. And that this information is spread by data brokers, and may follow them forever.
But the "fact" that I told the OS I was 99yr old might be the data they're getting? To anyone who's setting up their own machine, it will be effectively optional: if you just want to make sure you fall in the "adult" bracket, you will tell the OS you're 25 (even if you're 13... or 99...). For kids whose parents are setting up devices, it could be an actual headache (assuming they're honest), but in that sense it's like a lot of other nannyware solutions, probably clunky, but possibly not all bad?
Other nannyware solutions don't force apps, sites and platforms to spend money to censor themselves by law lest they be fined, or worse, which IMO, is all bad.
Let me make an obvious opposing argument: what is the social benefit in allowing people to gamble on the outcome of a sports match, or any other event? We encourage investment in the market in theory to allow companies to grow and produce things many people might benefit from (how well that works is another thing...). Gambling as far as I can see is net negative to everyone but the winners, and not entirely positive to them. Imagine if your next door neighbor dropped a cash-filled envelope that you found - lucky you? And if that was your neighbor's rent money? Like a lot of scams, the 'value' is only accrued by fleecing rubes, and it also creates a new class of super-bookies, which also not positive.
You're asking the wrong question, in a free society (supposedly) people are allowed to do whatever they want by default. They're not perimtted to do things, they're forbidden from doing specific things.
Is gambling a neg-negative? why do you care? how is that relevant? Things shouldn't be forbidden because of net impact, specific harm needs to be outlined and addressed. Most of the time, there are more specific problematic behaviors that should be legislated against, not gambling.
In your example, that person spending their rent money could maybe addressed by the law? Or if someone spends their family's savings on a bet, that specific behavior can be addressed. If you think about it, this lazy approach doesn't address root causes. Maybe that guy's rent money, or family's savings, he could have blown it on a fancy car, no law against that.
Conversely, what if someone bet all their money on a stock option? People kill themselves over this, but it isn't illegal. you see how the entire approach is crooked and lazy? categorizing "gambling" addresses the reactionary emotions of the crowd, it doesn't address root causes, it doesn't evaluate nuanced situations.
It isn't betting or speculating that is the problem.
That's a strong libertarian position I think few would agree with. A similar case would be fentanyl - what harm does it do to me if people are dying on the sidewalk from overdoses? Well, the cumulative impact of that on society is considered negative enough that we've outlawed its recreational use. That argument of course doesn't apply equally to my neighbor taking shrooms, which doesn't have any impact, go ahead. The question is if you see gambling as closer to fent than to shrooms - I would suggest that it has a significant blast radius[1].
No, I must disagree. With Fentanyl you can prohibit the substance just fine because it causes phsyical harm to its user, although even then I personally think so long as the seller educates its users well enough, it should be allowed.
If what you're bothered by is fact that people are dying on the streets, that's pretty grime, maybe make that illegal so they can find a less visually unappealing way of dying?
Consider this: How many people commit suicide? How people do __NOT__ commit suicide because fentanyl bought them something to chase after for a little while longer? How about we worry about all the people that die because they can't get enough medical care? Why is society quick to neglect that, and yet so eager to take away liberties for drug abuse? Or homeless too, I suspect you wouldn't want homeless people sleeping in tents on the street either, because that bothers you visually?
Your neighbors on shrooms are just as dependent on drugs as someone on fentanyl, so clearly you don't care about the dependency factor. If you care about mortality, then address the top causes of mortality.
Even with fentanly, people overdose specifically because it is illegal. In a sane society, people would be able to get fentanly administered to them in free facilities/clinics that give them correct dosage after doing a quick check on their blood chemistry. That would be cheaper than pumping junkies full of narcan every day, dealing with body clean up, all the crime that comes with the criminality of it all, and other costs to society. Same as with home with homelessness you could just give people free housing and that would be a lot cheaper, and it will solve the visual displeasure you have as well.
But the cruelty and hypocrisy is the point of it all isn't it?
Bankers and investors at major cities are cocaine junkies, that's a well known fact. In some states, being a weed junkie is highly normalized. being addicted to cigarettes and alcohol (which both have a well established mortality rate, and high cost to society!) is normalized, even celebrated at times. A junkie with needles on him by the street bothers you, but the same junkie with a bottle of beer and a blunt might not.
As I argued earlier, with gambling you're focusing on the wrong thing, gambling is the how, not the what. Every argument you make about "gambling" can be made about day trading stocks, or betting on options. People take risks they shouldn't think with money in a way that affects others, that interaction should be legislated, and some costs (not criminal) should be imposed by society on people that do that, targeting both the platform/house and the participants. The solutions are highly nuanced though, they're not as lazy as "just ban gambling", and they have costs associated with them that people don't want the government to subsidize, but in the long run are cheaper.
Should I be able to spend my life's savings on a corvette or an RV, without the seller asking how that would impact those around me, or how I would survive if additional costs arise later on? If I end up homeless, or my family becomes destitute because of that decision, the "blast radius" to society is the same as if I did spent that money at a casino. If your concern truly is "blast radius" then that could be addressed directly, root caused solved at the root.
I'm not a libertarian for the record, I'm simply trying to analyze the problems at hand and find the best solutions.
That's an interesting idea, though of course while we've done that with crop or livestock futures, we seem to have coped pretty well without betting on absolutely everything until now.
I think that makes it a non-standard implementation though (I agree it's certainly more practical for the user), sounds like it's usb-c pd but with nerfed data, an odd choice that feels like it would actually have cost more to develop than just adding two identical usb-c 3.x ports...
I suspect the limitation is that the SOC doesn't have the IO bandwidth to support two ports at usb 3 speeds (remembering that the SOC was designed for iphones which physically only have one port).
Why would it be non-standard? USB-PD is almost completely decoupled from the rest of USB, and USB-C connector doesn't imply 'super speed' lanes are available. The only thing it really changes from an implementation perspective is that you don't have to route high speed lanes to the port, and don't need them to be available on your USB controller.
Doesn't seem to be very Apple-like to have two identical looking ports with different function, though.
I'm not sure exactly what the USB specs require, but there are a lot of phones out there that only support USB 2.0 data speed but do implement the current fast charging protocols. It's absolutely a mainstream thing.
It's interesting to see that argument was based on Amazon having dedicated employee time to blocking Perplexity. Obviously bots can be a drag, but if these were agents shopping on behalf of users, that seems counterproductive (I take it Amazon's vision is that the only AI agents they want to support are their own, but imagine trying to claim that you needed to spend a lot of your employees' time on painting the windows of the office building so your competition couldn't see inside...)
I could agree to a point, the most commonly planted GMO crops are Roundup-Ready grains and soy, which encourage spraying even more atrazine on fields[1]. That does of course also mean increased yields, but the tradeoff is not unambiguously good. However the varieties discussed in this article clearly don't have that problem, knocking out genes to emphasize desirable characteristics seems much more appealing, though I suppose I'd rather see increasing nutrient density over making seeds less chewy, even if that meant adding DNA from other plants[2].
That's the nuance missing from the parent's snark, masks are most effective at preventing the wearer from transmitting infections to the people around them (especially important in an operating theater). Masks may also help prevent the wearer from inhaling airborne pathogens, though they're less effective there.
Also missing from the discussion is that it is easy to prove that an N95 mask works because the effect is so dramatic.
The fact that the efficacy of a surgical mask is more difficult to prove does not mean that it doesn't work. And, as you point out, the major benefit is to the people around you so that you don't unintentionally spread the disease before you realize you have it.
Obviously cars are useful, but we've built our cities to maximize that (and we still spend a lot of time stuck in traffic, even so). That doesn't mean that there aren't more useful possibilities, just that the inertia in the system makes them seem like a dream.
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