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aestetix

Incidentally, with this update, Android will lose any edge it had, and become a shittier and less polished version of iOS.
This sounds like know-it-all propaganda as well. Why not make it opt-in? Google (and other Big Tech companies) seem to think they know better than everyone else, even though they are also completely untransparent about what they do.
Re:Hackers On Planet Earth begins today on Friday August 14, 2026 @07:31AM (#49297383)
HOPE begins today. You can view the schedule here: https://schedule.hope.net/hope26/schedule/

All talks will be available free on stream (click stream in the menu).

Re:The Hacker's Renaissance on Monday August 10, 2026 @05:41AM (#49241459)
There's an interesting point hidden here. A lot of people claim that 2600 is obsolete because it is still in print as opposed to going full digital like a lot of places did.

30 years ago, a lot of us thought that the internet and digital would bring freedom. We would no longer have to rely on the good mercy of book stores or newsstands willing to stock the magazines, or convince reluctant editors to print articles. We could just put it online where it would live forever.

It turns out that when something is online, it is much easier to ban or censor. Remember when the drama about Kevin Spacey came out, and all the streaming services removed his movies and TV shows? What about when a news story is posted and gets a bit of heat, so the editor goes in to edit it to remove the offending bits to appease the mob? Or deletes an article because they had bad blood with the writer?

If you have a physical DVD of a movie, no streaming service can block it. And if you have the print version of the newspaper or the magazine, then the editor can't just break into your house and cut the article out of the issue. I mean I guess they could, but that is a LOT harder than just clicking a button in a CMS.

For some reason the form chopped it off, so the direct link is: https://www.hope.net/talks/#What%E2%80%99s-Your-Age-Again?-T...
How about applying political pressure to countries like China and India that do not care about emissions control and pollution? :)
Re:Leviathan on Wednesday March 18, 2026 @11:39AM (#47427144)
I'd argue this is too expansive of a view. It's a debate specifically coming out of the English Civil War, and specifically focusing on the tension between Parliament and the Monarchy. If you read Clarendon it becomes extremely obvious. Hobbes (like Clarendon) took the royalist view defending the king, and Locke set for an argument for parliament.

Some of it doesn't translate super well into modern times. For example, Locke barely touches upon judiciary. The modern notion of separation of powers came (I believe) from Montesquieu.

I will say that Hobbes gives a far more comprehensive argument than Locke does. And some of Locke's details, including his anthropology of the origin of commonwealths, is demonstrably false.

Either way, glad to see Leviathan here!

Re:Peter Thiel's Antichrist Lectures on Friday March 13, 2026 @08:04AM (#47363294)
There were a few news outlets (I think maybe the Washington Post?) that got copies of recordings of these insane lectures when Peter Thiel did them in San Francisco. I think it would be in the public interest for them to release the lectures in full.

Maybe people should put some pressure on these outlets to do so.

Oh wow! I hadn't seen that. That's really great! All of them should be listed there, and should have been public all along.
There are two stories here. One is the alleged wrongdoing. The second is the fact that the Washington Post has a name of a former DOGE employee. I'm far more interested in the second story than the first.
> The Post is not naming the former DOGE member or company because it has not independently confirmed the accusations in the complaint.

Why not? Shouldn't the public be allowed to learn who all the DOGE employees were? Federal employees are public record, are they not?

Yes, it feels like another round of the same old tired "force everyone to use legal names online to save the children" that has been pushed continuously since the Internet driver's license of the 90s.

It will not save any children. It will destroy privacy, destroy free speech, and give lots of money to whatever corporation wins the bid for supplying the tech.

And of course, when that corporation gets hacked and all the personally identifiable information is put on the dark web, nobody will be held accountable.

Re:I Verified My LinkedIn Identity. Here's What I Handed Over on Saturday February 21, 2026 @11:45AM (#47102376)
Peter Thiel knows about the anti-christ...
Re:European nations gear up to ban social media for children on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @07:49AM (#46974314)
Here is another idea for how to solve this:

Why not produce a second kind of phone that is for kids. Maybe have it linked to their parents accounts on a hardware level. The kidphone is physically restricted somehow to only installing certain apps, so that parents can ensure they are safe.

This approach would put the power back into hands of parents, keep the kids safe, and also prevent all this intrusive age verification stuff from happening.

Also it is a lot easier to police. You could physically look at the phone the child is using to make sure it is a kidphone. If not, then they are committing a crime, similar to a child smoking a cigarette.

Re:Texas A&M bans part of Plato's Symposium on Wednesday January 07, 2026 @01:49PM (#46530716)
Don't forget the extremely loaded context surrounding Alcibiades.
Re:EU council reaches position on Chat Control on Wednesday November 26, 2025 @09:51AM (#46057909)
I was not moving goalposts. I was saying that the way we interpret the words has changed over time, and therefore we are taking words that meant one thing in 1957 and reinterpreting them to fit assumptions for today. Thus the semantic drift creates a shift.

To address the other point, I think we're missing a question of scope. Is the EU a legitimate governing body for negotiating trade deals and employment regulations between countries? Absolutely. I question however whether in recent years EU has begun to either scope-drift or expand their scope beyond what might be considered reasonable.

I think this is a natural tendency within human nature, especially when a governing body is given some power. Over time new opportunities arise which allow the body to gain more power, and then they reinterpret founding documents to include some of the new powers they want. I think it is pretty clear this is happening with the EU. Look at the rise of nationalist parties in Germany and France, etc.

Re:EU council reaches position on Chat Control on Wednesday November 26, 2025 @08:36AM (#46057270)
That treaty was established just over a decade after Hitler surrendered, when there were two Germanys, an Iron curtain across Europe, and a lot of other things which changed significantly after the Wall fell. Surely you would agree that those words meant something quite different then than they do now?

I don't think my framing was sensationalist at all. Chat Control is using the threat of child porn to make people forget the reasons why the ECHR cares so deeply about privacy. I'm not sure why Denmark is pushing it so hard, but governments have long feared and hated encryption.

Re:EU council reaches position on Chat Control on Wednesday November 26, 2025 @08:22AM (#46057138)
Honest question. The EU was created as an economic and trade institution. How has it morphed into a wierd political institution, which NATO was already supposed to be?

The root question: how did an organization that ushered in things like the Euro become a body that decides whether Europeans are allowed to have personal privacy?

It's because he knows about the Antichrist.

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