I knew the UK was arresting people for online posts, including private text messages, including ones that were very obviously harmless. I didn’t realize it was 1,000 people a month.
In cases like this, I would like to see a representative random selection of the messages. (I can’t trust either side to give me that, instead of messages carefully selected to prove their point.) With some context, such as “the author sent 100 such messages during one week”, or “this was written as a response to this”, etc.
That’s because I can imagine a world where most of those messages are credible death threats or something like that, in which case I generally approve of the law, even if it means that once in a while an innocent message gets accidentally marked as death threat (ideally that shouldn’t happen, but is that the standard we actually use in other parts of life?). But I can also imagine a world where most of those messages are just expressing an opinion. I would like to make my opinion based on actual data, not on whoever decides to show me their selection.
on bsky you get added to a global block list and get hidden from half the people.
I am not familiar with bsky, does this mean that most of the users are from the same political tribe? More than a half, because not all people from the same tribe would subscribe to the same blocklist.
Is the future of internet bubbles that each political tribe gets their own social network?
when you buy a new computer, by default it will come pre-loaded with a lot of crap, and Windows 11 will waste a bunch of resources, and that Macs come with a lot of objectively terrible software, and that it takes a remarkable amount of deliberate effort to fix all this even if you mostly know what you are doing, during which you are subjected to ads.
Sometimes I am shocked when I have to use a non-tech person’s computer or smartphone. I saw a friend starting his work laptop (a non-tech friend working for a non-tech company), the first few minutes was just various applications starting and showing an error message or asking to install an update… then he closed all the windows and started doing the actual work. To me it seemed like hell, for him it was Tuesday.
Later, my relative asked me about some settings on her phone. It was full of various Chinese crap that came preinstalled, the desktop (or whatever it is called on smartphones) was several screens long, each screen containing a few icons at random positions, but you couldn’t re-arrange them because the desktop was locked (I didn’t have enough patience to figure out how to unlock it). If I had a phone like that, I would throw it away and buy the cheapest non-Chinese phone, but for her, this experience is normal.
What I don’t fully understand is why all of this is true. It’s one of those ‘yes I get it but also I don’t, actually.’ It seems like an obviously easy selling point to say ‘this PC doesn’t come with any ads’ and similar.
I wonder, could it be that you are wrong here, and the non-tech people consider all technology intrinsically confusing to such degree that these additional inconveniences, horrible as they might feel for a tech person such as you or me, are just an extra 1% inconvenience for them, nothing to specifically complain about?
forcing your kid to live like a ‘normal person’ and obsess over small amounts of money so they can be like everyone else or learn to ‘value the dollar’ or what not, is actually terrible training for being wealthy, for the same reason lottery winners mostly blow their winnings. [...] You do want them to ‘earn it’ and more importantly learn how to operate in the world, it’s totally fine to attach some fixed conditions to the unlock of parts of the trust fund, but you don’t do that by giving them Normal People Money Problems.
Yes. If you make your kids spend a decade or two doing lifestyle X, and then switch them to lifestyle Y, they will come unprepared. Even worse, if the moment of switch is your death, you will not be there to help them.
Training to survive the “normal mode” seems like a good idea, but can be done in a more controlled way. As an analogy, the fact that I have a car (or could call a cab anytime I want) does not prevent me from using my feet. I can have a car, and simply choose not to use it today. And take my kids with me for the trip. I could even go further and e.g. spend a few days camping in a forest, leaving all electronic devices as home. You can do the same thing no matter how rich you are. (Okay, maybe at some level you will need to hire bodyguards to protect your family from being kidnapped. But they can follow you at a distance, and be specifically instructed to ignore your kids if they try to get their assistance with something.) Or you could buy an apartment in a different city where no one knows you, and spend one month each year living there, spending only as much money as the average person makes in a month, taking no debts. The kids would help do the dishes, cook, clean up the room; all the things that an army of servants does for you for the rest of the year. No rich-person objects allowed; the kids are not allowed to disclose your identity. (Hmmm, this sounds more pointless than I originally imagined, but hey, it’s just the first idea that came to my mind.)
The problem with actually not having money is that it closes some genuinely good options for you: You take a part-time job when you should be fully focused on studying. You are unfamiliar with the latest technologies, because you can’t afford the hardware. You don’t attend conferences, because you can’t afford the travel costs, and the job you have to keep does not give you enough vacation. Your car randomly breaks, and that creates a cascade of problems that increase your stress levels and ruin your plans. -- These are actual problems, unrelated to building willpower and working habits, which are the supposed goals of keeping the money away from you.
And if you know that you are going to get tons of money in future, it can actually reduce your motivation to actually solve these problems, because you know that the greatest improvement to your quality of life will come unrelated to all your personal effort, and all you need is just to survive until the day that happens.
I actually know a guy whose rich parents are probably doing the worst of both options. They refuse to give him any cash. But they won’t literally kick him out of the house; there is always free food and bedroom available if he needs them. He just needs to pretend that he is trying. He is now over 40 years old, and he never kept a job for longer than three months, always with at least three months break between the jobs. He has an “internet business” (a few web pages with almost zero content, uses SEO to make people click on them, then gets referral money when the visitors proceed towards the stuff they were actually looking for, but spends most of that money on adsense to get traffic to the web pages) that makes a few hundred euro each month, and didn’t grow after a decade. He was married and has a child, but his wife divorced him and lives with the child in a different city. Despite spending most of his time online, his English, both written and spoken, is barely intelligible. One day his parents will die and he will inherit the millions. But he has already wasted most of his life, and will probably waste the money, too. (Not leaving much to his kid.) And then he is completely screwed.
I am not sure what exactly would happen in a parallel universe where his parents created a trust fund that gives him a certain unconditional perpetual income. At least, he does not need to do all that pretend-work. Either he plays computer games all day long, or he might contribute to the family business in some little way (like maybe doing SEO for his brother’s company instead). Maybe his family didn’t fall apart because of financial problems.
In cases like this, I would like to see a representative random selection of the messages. (I can’t trust either side to give me that, instead of messages carefully selected to prove their point.) With some context, such as “the author sent 100 such messages during one week”, or “this was written as a response to this”, etc.
That’s because I can imagine a world where most of those messages are credible death threats or something like that, in which case I generally approve of the law, even if it means that once in a while an innocent message gets accidentally marked as death threat (ideally that shouldn’t happen, but is that the standard we actually use in other parts of life?). But I can also imagine a world where most of those messages are just expressing an opinion. I would like to make my opinion based on actual data, not on whoever decides to show me their selection.
I am not familiar with bsky, does this mean that most of the users are from the same political tribe? More than a half, because not all people from the same tribe would subscribe to the same blocklist.
Is the future of internet bubbles that each political tribe gets their own social network?
Sometimes I am shocked when I have to use a non-tech person’s computer or smartphone. I saw a friend starting his work laptop (a non-tech friend working for a non-tech company), the first few minutes was just various applications starting and showing an error message or asking to install an update… then he closed all the windows and started doing the actual work. To me it seemed like hell, for him it was Tuesday.
Later, my relative asked me about some settings on her phone. It was full of various Chinese crap that came preinstalled, the desktop (or whatever it is called on smartphones) was several screens long, each screen containing a few icons at random positions, but you couldn’t re-arrange them because the desktop was locked (I didn’t have enough patience to figure out how to unlock it). If I had a phone like that, I would throw it away and buy the cheapest non-Chinese phone, but for her, this experience is normal.
I wonder, could it be that you are wrong here, and the non-tech people consider all technology intrinsically confusing to such degree that these additional inconveniences, horrible as they might feel for a tech person such as you or me, are just an extra 1% inconvenience for them, nothing to specifically complain about?
Yes. If you make your kids spend a decade or two doing lifestyle X, and then switch them to lifestyle Y, they will come unprepared. Even worse, if the moment of switch is your death, you will not be there to help them.
Training to survive the “normal mode” seems like a good idea, but can be done in a more controlled way. As an analogy, the fact that I have a car (or could call a cab anytime I want) does not prevent me from using my feet. I can have a car, and simply choose not to use it today. And take my kids with me for the trip. I could even go further and e.g. spend a few days camping in a forest, leaving all electronic devices as home. You can do the same thing no matter how rich you are. (Okay, maybe at some level you will need to hire bodyguards to protect your family from being kidnapped. But they can follow you at a distance, and be specifically instructed to ignore your kids if they try to get their assistance with something.) Or you could buy an apartment in a different city where no one knows you, and spend one month each year living there, spending only as much money as the average person makes in a month, taking no debts. The kids would help do the dishes, cook, clean up the room; all the things that an army of servants does for you for the rest of the year. No rich-person objects allowed; the kids are not allowed to disclose your identity. (Hmmm, this sounds more pointless than I originally imagined, but hey, it’s just the first idea that came to my mind.)
The problem with actually not having money is that it closes some genuinely good options for you: You take a part-time job when you should be fully focused on studying. You are unfamiliar with the latest technologies, because you can’t afford the hardware. You don’t attend conferences, because you can’t afford the travel costs, and the job you have to keep does not give you enough vacation. Your car randomly breaks, and that creates a cascade of problems that increase your stress levels and ruin your plans. -- These are actual problems, unrelated to building willpower and working habits, which are the supposed goals of keeping the money away from you.
And if you know that you are going to get tons of money in future, it can actually reduce your motivation to actually solve these problems, because you know that the greatest improvement to your quality of life will come unrelated to all your personal effort, and all you need is just to survive until the day that happens.
I actually know a guy whose rich parents are probably doing the worst of both options. They refuse to give him any cash. But they won’t literally kick him out of the house; there is always free food and bedroom available if he needs them. He just needs to pretend that he is trying. He is now over 40 years old, and he never kept a job for longer than three months, always with at least three months break between the jobs. He has an “internet business” (a few web pages with almost zero content, uses SEO to make people click on them, then gets referral money when the visitors proceed towards the stuff they were actually looking for, but spends most of that money on adsense to get traffic to the web pages) that makes a few hundred euro each month, and didn’t grow after a decade. He was married and has a child, but his wife divorced him and lives with the child in a different city. Despite spending most of his time online, his English, both written and spoken, is barely intelligible. One day his parents will die and he will inherit the millions. But he has already wasted most of his life, and will probably waste the money, too. (Not leaving much to his kid.) And then he is completely screwed.
I am not sure what exactly would happen in a parallel universe where his parents created a trust fund that gives him a certain unconditional perpetual income. At least, he does not need to do all that pretend-work. Either he plays computer games all day long, or he might contribute to the family business in some little way (like maybe doing SEO for his brother’s company instead). Maybe his family didn’t fall apart because of financial problems.