Close by where I live is a monument for civilians who were taken from their houses and shot by the German occupiers during the last months of WWII. Simply because they were suspected of having distributed pamphlets. There wasn't even evidence to that claim, and retribution was a thing.
I passed that monument countless of times during my youth, giving me pause to contemplate.
It's a tangible reminder of what ultimately happens when people stay silent about something as final and poignant as one group denying the existence of another group for whatever reasons.
I have no problem with expressing differences over world views. I take issue when that world view entails denying the other side's existence because of differences, and a fervent intent to act on that notion.
This an interesting question. Forgive my meandering take on this.
We already have a mix of technologies to achieve that effect. Sort of. Simplified, you can host a personal website on shared hosting, a VPS, or wherever, at the same time chat via IRC or XMPP, and use RSS to create feeds to share tidbits about yourself. Nothing stops you from combining different programs and services to get that.
So, what are the problems you're actually trying to solve here?
Do you want to improve accessibility, that is: lower the bar for non-technical people to join feeds, publish their own thoughts, join group chats,...?
Do you want to improve discoverability across what we already have? Make it easier for everyone to serendipitous finding information? Like, search, recommendations, linking, pub/sub, and so on?
Do you want to solve sustainability? Developing models that also cover the expenses involved i.e. either covering the costs in maintaining tech, or redistributing the costs?
Do you want to solve governance, the issue of providing enough affordances to communities to moderate/govern themselves?
These are big questions, and once you try to solve them together, you'll have to make trade-offs, inevitably. Decentralizing everything sounds great, but that has an impact on discoverability, as well as accessibility. Not having another account sounds great, but that hides complex debates about online and offline, distributed identities.
Even more so, if you dig deeper, our approach these affordances is based on our values. And those can be very different depending on who you talk to. That's where things enter the murky, ambiguous teritory of sociology, culture, and so on where few absolute truths are offered.
That doesn't mean we should just accept throw up hands and accept the status quo, though. Talking in terms of a single "network" or a single "protocol" is too crude to approach these questions. The intrinsic value the Internet offers us, can be found in a handful foundational design principles like standardization, composition, openness,... which allow us to create many networks that host many diverse communities. Each to their own isn't a bad thing as it's too naive to think that there's a catch-all solution that caters to everyone's needs. Balkanization, such as it is, becomes really problematic if it erodes common beliefs we hold about a free, open and accessible digital global network.
Many "technical" people who are active in these niches like Mastodon, Nostr, the Fediverse, or even the Smolweb, do so because they are steeped in a particular (counter)culture that espouses the same values that also led to the birth of the early Internet. Cyberspace really is a marketplace of ideas first. Technologies are an expression of that.
Very thoughtful points. One thing about nostr is that it does tend to balkanize due to the technical architecture, allowing for different groups of people to use it in different ways (different relay policies, client features, filtering, etc). But the tradeoffs you list are real, and enforce real constraints (the biggest of which is bare keys as identifiers). Many of these constraints can be designed away, which keeps me optimistic. We've had 30 years of research and development into password management, but far less into end-user key management. Even if nostr itself has some fatal flaw, I think a lot of interesting ideas are coming out of it, just because it provides a very different set of affordances for digital spaces.
Yeah, I mean I am not personally working on a project in this space, nor do I have any super-strong feelings about it.
It's more that I like personal websites, from both an ownership and creative perspective. And so I wish there were more approaches which attempted to incentivize that model without creating a complicated new protocol, platform, etc. That might involve making it easier to create and self-host websites, an opt-in directory of personal sites with chat + forums attached, or something else like that.
For what it's worth, pubnix - public accessible UNIX systems - were/are that to an extent. You'd get a free account on some shared system, you log in via a terminal, and you get access to all those things: gopher/gemini/web hosting, chat, bulletin boards,...
But shell access doesn't appeal to non-tech users. It's the difference between engineering the electricity in your own house to become self-sufficient, and just expecting to magically get power when you plug a device in the socket.
Rolling back PFAS protections would not simply affect "the other half of the team", it would affect everybody. If there isn't some context missing here, this is an action that would be ubiquitously unpopular, let alone when contrasted against the goals of MAHA.
Gerrymandering has no effect on the Senate or Presidency making this largely a non sequitur. Furthermore, administrators of independent agencies (such as the EPA) need to confirmed by the Senate. Up until 2013, appointees could be blocked by a minority with a filibuster. That rule was changed in 2013 by a Democrat majority Senate under Obama, to make it such that a simple majority could force through any appointee.
That was one of countless examples of where powers passed by one side with a majority invariably end up coming back to bite then when they become the minority. The Founding Fathers designed our political system to be largely dysfunctional without widespread consensus. That was clearly wiser than the path we are increasingly choosing in modern times.
This is true in a world of balanced power between Congress, the judiciary, and the executive.
It is not true anymore, as all power is centralized in the parties. The House’s impeachment power will essentially never be used against the dominant party’s President, which allows POTUS to act with impunity and strongly incentivizes him to secure his party’s House dominance — a dynamic we’re seeing very explicitly at play over the last few months.
POTUS keeps the House reps in power, the House reps let POTUS do whatever he wants. Both win by severing their need to have popular policies in order to hold political power, so that’s what they work to do. Gerrymandering is an absolutely critical tool in this effort which is why POTUS has been publicly pressuring “members of different parts of the government” to pursue it (and they are!)
Impeachment is not part of the normal checks and balances. It's intended as a means to be able to remove a President who starts acting against even his own party's interests, as it requires a super-majority in the Senate, which has always been understood to mean that generally a significant chunk of your own party will need to vote against you. Consequently, literally no President has ever been convicted by the Senate, though Nixon probably would have been - and that's a good example of the scenario where impeachment is intended, as his own personal actions compromised not only the integrity of his office, but also greatly negatively affected his own party. House-only impeachments are irrelevant and inconsequential gestures when there's no chance of conviction in the Senate.
For the normal balance of powers - the legislative makes laws, the executive implements them, and the judiciary ensures the latter matches the intent of the former as well as that they remain constitutional. The legislative can undermine the judiciary or the executive by passing new laws. The executive can undermine the legislative with vetos, and the judiciary by appointments. And the judiciary can undermine the legislative by deeming the laws unconstitutional, or the executive by deeming their enforcement unlawful.
No branch is particularly superior to the others. The executive has the strength of being headed by a single person, but that is tempered by it having relatively less power than the other branches.
No, it's really not. The idea that POTUS is allowed to retain all Constitutional powers so long as they act in favor of their party is dismissible on its face. The founders (broadly speaking) did not anticipate a two-party system and did not build in controls against this outcome.
Impeachment is intended for exactly what it says: "high crimes and misdemeanors."
Again: all of the balances you describe only work when party loyalties do not exceed loyalties to their own branch's authorities and responsibilities. In practice what we've seen (over decades) is Congress ceding power to their own party's executive, because in practice people's political fortunes are determined by "did I make the leader of my party happy" rather than "did I retain the power of Congress."
This is EXPLICITLY counter to the intended design of the Constitution. You can read the rationale for it in Federalist 51.
This is trivially provable. POTUS (of either party, but especially in the MAGA movement) can and does threaten to primary anyone in Congress who checks him, ergo you either cede power and keep your seat, or you don't and POTUS uses his extreme control over party loyalties to replace you with someone who will cede power anyway.
The two party system (natural consequence of first-past-the-post elections) is a fundamental design flaw in our Constitution which is why it doesn't exist in any government the US has helped architect since its own inception.
All of these things are related. They're an entire web of powers, as you can read about in the Federalist Papers. The founders feared factionalism and figured it would be inevitable, but did not foresee the natural equilibrium that would be found at only two parties and all the consequent pathologies we deal with today.
I agree with you on just about everything you said here. If you're arguing that my description is against the intent of the Founding Fathers then I also 100% agree there. With impeachment I am speaking of the practical effect of things, not necessarily how it was intended to function. Though I can't say I recall ever reading any political philosophy around it, so to me they remain one and the same.
And I think that segues nicely into this issue as a whole. Because the Founding Fathers were extremely averse of parties and the dangers they could pose, but this is one of the few examples where they let idealism trump reality in their philosophy. They themselves almost immediately broke down into factional parties, the first being formed by Hamilton, the author of aforementioned Federalist paper, himself! And even from that early stage it became clear that parties would become the defacto norm of society.
I'd also add that there's a bit of a paradox with things like at large proportional representation. It effectively encodes parties into the system, yet remains [relatively] diverse in practice, especially without mandates on things like the minimum vote percent. While district based FPTP has no connection to parties and ostensibly maximizes competitiveness by minimizing geographic regions a candidate needs to sway. Yet of course in practice, like you said, FPTP invariably trends towards a complete bastardization of democracy with two parties at a 50/50 equilibrium.
hi there! i'm not sure you read the comment you're replying to!
i guess you reject their request to stop trying to defeat the other team. but you also object to the use of the word "team" to describe a political party?
If a pension system is purely based on repartition: yes. But that's not the case in most countries. Pension plans mostly involve pension funds which are rooted in the financial markets. It's the individuals responsibility to max out their pension plan, and fiscal policies are used to incentivize this.
Ownership of assets, like home ownership, also contributes towards the totality of a pension.
In that sense, not owning a home, having to pay rent in old age, is a form of impoverishment. If that rent isn't offset by other sources of income like financial investments.
Financial markets are fueled by growth. Growth in real terms (not merely inflation) requires increases in GDP which requires real output by people at it's core.
I'd be worried about expected financial growth of any retirement fund over the long term if population is flat or declining.
Who will work in these companies that you own? Who will consume the goods they produce and fuel revenues?
The home ownership is real, but you can't feed of that. You can live in your home yourself if you'd like, but if you plan to rent it out for profit you'll need young people to work and pay the rent.
And financial market growth depends in a large part on consumption growth. And consumption growth depends in a large part on population growth (at least in a given market).
There are two ways to get a population to grow. One is have babies at above the replacement rate. The other is immigration.
Oh, it's not just the "big stories". History is a pretty big flag that covers a lot of territory. At heart, history is about asking perennial questions like "where do we come from?", "how did the past shape us today?" and "how could the past inform us?".
This is true on an individual as well as a collective level, and goes well beyond academia. Consider genealogy & family history, local and regional culture and traditions, remembrance,... There is always a personal connection, and that tends to become extremely tangible in individual stories. Whether that's finding a lost relative, honoring one's culture, or just being able to empathize with the lives of people who are centuries gone and discovering that they weren't all that different from us today.
Historians do carry a big responsibility. That's why accountability is at the heart of anyone who does historical research on a professional level; or are motivated to spread their interpretation of the historical record well beyond a few listeners. That's why historians are instilled with a reflex to keep a pragmatic attitude and ask critical questions.
As someone who lives in one of those locations mentioned in the article: split out locale and language into different settings. Because they are not the same thing. This article explains that nicely. [1]
You want your users to be able to change their location (and, therefore, locale) and their language independently. The Accept-Language header could be used as a sentinel for language. Then again, I wouldn't outright rely on geoIP to set the locale which is an umbrella for regional differing variables like timezone, date formatting, currency, VAT / Taxes,...
I think it's okay to have your content served, by default, in a language that reflects either the majority of your target audience; or the culture / place you're based in. Changing the locale / language should follow a clear UI pattern e.g. a language switcher & locale switcher in the header; or a clear navigational aid pointing to a context menu. That's how Hetzner works, for instance. Another example is Deliveroo.
Thanks for the advice! I wasn’t planning on using geoIP at all for several reasons - the main two being inaccuracies AND that I’d need to use a paid 3rd party.
A sense of personal responsibility dilutes very quickly as more people get involved. This is a well researched dynamic in groups and collectives.
As it turns out, it's very easy to rationalize your own actions if you can defer your responsibility to a wider context. On an operational level: "My job - HR, SRE engineering, project management,... - didn't hurt anyone.", "I received an industry award last year for my work",... On a strategic level: "Too many people rely on us, so we can't fail.", "Our original mission didn't change.", "Our mission was, is and will be a net positive", ... Not just that, actually being convinced that those rationalizations are 100% true, and not being able to consciously notice how your own actions in a small, or large, way contribute to a negative impact. Just listen to testimonies of these people, the truly are convinced to their core that their work is a net positive for humanity.
> If I sell 400 million skateboards - do we need a regulatory board to approve skateboard design changes?
Suppose your design involves a wonky wheel. If you sell 10 skateboards, and 1 person falls, breaks their leg and decides to sue you for damages: that's a private problem between you and that person. If you sell 400 million skateboards, and millions of people people break their leg: that's a problem for the entirety of society.
Safety is also why car design is heavily regulated. Not necessarily to ensure individual safety, but to make sure that society, as a whole, isn't crippled by hundreds of thousands of people requiring care or getting killed in car accidents.
If you are able to sell 400 million skateboards, I sure hope there are regulations that enforce the safety of your product design.
> Your standalone web site is like a cactus in the middle of a vast desert nobody cares about
Yet, cacti thrive in the desert, uncaring about the opinions of others.
> in fact now at a mercy of Google's indexing policies.
Inherently, the Web doesn't carry "maximizing an audience" as a maxim. That's an expectation that the Web's denizens have come to believe in as a matter of principle: the only valuable reason to put anything online, is because you intend to cater to an audience.
That doesn't exclude owning a personal website that you'd just peruse for your own sake. In fact, the author writes as much:
> You can write at length, ramble nonsensically, and people can choose to read it or not. It’s about putting things out on the internet for yourself.
Like, sure, there are platforms where you could share cooking recipes. But maybe that's not something you want for yourself, for whatever reason, maybe you don't want to attract undue attention, and you just want to keep them in your own quiet corner of the Web, for yourself.
You might want to write for the sake of the craft of writing, and use the Web as your medium, rather then paper. Others happening to stumble on your work, is just a by-product of your choice to publish thoughts on the Web.
Maybe you don't care about search engines, and if you need someone to find your work, well, you can just hand them an URL.
From your perspective, all of that may sound horribly inefficient, and that's true, it is inefficient and not the right way to do things if your express goal were to cater to large audiences. But that doesn't make it any less valid an option to approach the Web.
> There is no bottom line here. It's all about economy and capitalism, which seem to always win.
Well, my argument is that the Web, such as it was, experienced an Eternal September with the advent of social media and mobile devices. Suddenly, everyone could reach an audience with nothing but a smartphone. And that notion caused millions, billions, flocking to those few central platforms that catered to this apparent want, creating a self-perpetuating feedback loop.
Whereas, do you thoughts and intentions really need to be shown in front of an audience of billions, just because that's possible now? Of course not.
Wanting to be like a cactus is perfectly valid, giving your thoughts a quiet spot in some corner of the Web you can call your own, not having to worry about likes, favorites, comments, shares or clicks. As long as doing so caters to your own intentions.
One of the examples mentioned studies population changes during NZ's colonization. It's part of Maori-led research. Such research provides a better understanding of the history and culture of the indigenous population of NZ. In turn, this research contributes towards contextualizing and enriching relationships between communities within the larger modern NZ society with respect to the economic and political plight of these groups.
The overarching theme here is identity. Both on an individual level, as well as a community level. Our shared past, heritage, traditions, stories, relationships with others,... are all what make us "us". And social sciences are paramount within that never-ending debate.
In a way, defunding research which studies particular indigenous communities within society is tantamount to effacing those communities from a larger national historical identity. However, doing so will never end that drive communities have to remember and to assert their own history and identity.
That's why studying how the arrival of Europeans in New Zealand has had an demographic, political, economical, cultural effect on the indigenous population definitely is fundamental research. And an important one at that.
Do you want to get social sciences defunded? Because this is how you get social sciences defunded. The academic obsession with identity is completely toxic.
That's at the heart of this discussion. There are two legal entities at play here: automatic, a for profit company, and the WordPress Foundation, a non-profit. It's believed that the latter carries independent governance over the open source project. As it turns out: that's likely not the case, and there's a potential conflict of interests.
That doesn't imply it's a bad model. Drupal is governed in a similar fashion, with safeguards in it's governance model to avoid this.
Dries Buytaert also considers the maker/taker issue, but does so from a place of, seemingly, healthy conversation.
I think the big issue is that, ultimately, a lot rides a lot rides on the character and the acumen of the foundational maintainer / creator of a FOSS project. As well as how they succeed in creating a particular perception about themselves. Sadly, the "mad king" moniker in the lwn article is kinda apt in WordPress' case after these last week's.
As for funding, I do believe companies leveraging FOSS have a moral obligation to contribute back, but that it's not the world we live in. Unless there are tangible incentives to do so, it's hardly possible to enforce this. As per Dries: promotion and visibility as a "trusted" party through the project's channels is probably the most concrete form of leverage a FOSS project has.
Close by where I live is a monument for civilians who were taken from their houses and shot by the German occupiers during the last months of WWII. Simply because they were suspected of having distributed pamphlets. There wasn't even evidence to that claim, and retribution was a thing.
I passed that monument countless of times during my youth, giving me pause to contemplate.
It's a tangible reminder of what ultimately happens when people stay silent about something as final and poignant as one group denying the existence of another group for whatever reasons.
I have no problem with expressing differences over world views. I take issue when that world view entails denying the other side's existence because of differences, and a fervent intent to act on that notion.
It's a matter of boundaries, and speaking up.