sylver_dragon

Why do I hear singing, and what are those ships on the horizon? I can’t seem to make out their flags, they all just look black to me.

If you really care that little about what happens to your corpse, why does having it stuffed in a box with your family bother you so much?

Think of it this way: It makes him happy and it resolves one of the issues your own loved ones will have to deal with after you die. Things like burials, funerals and graves aren’t really for the deceased, they are for the people who cared about the deceased. They are expressions of and a way for them to deal with their grief. So, when you kick it, the people who cared about you will be having to deal with all that. It’s rather nice of your father to be saying, “here, let me take care of that problem for them.”

Are you really worried about the case where a thief steals the hard drive but not the rest of the computer?

Even if the thief steals the entire computer, BitLocker/LUKS and SecureBoot provide a reasonable level of protection against data theft. Yes, the drive (or bits of it anyway) are automatically decrypted (the whole drive is never decrypted, just the data requested by the OS). However, it still prevents the attacker from accessing that data outside the intended operating system, which makes data theft much harder. An attacker would also need a valid account to login to the system to start accessing data. It’s not an insurmountable hurdle, but it does mean that just having the computer isn’t the same as having the data.

Without encryption, once a thief has the computer, they have the data. They don’t need a valid account to access the data and they can even boot into a tool to reset passwords on the primary OS and start using it. Last I checked, chntpw still works with Windows 11. That sort of thing fails with encryption, even with TPM only. The TPM will not release the encryption key to an OS if SecureBoot fails. Granted, there is the YellowKey backdoor, but that was probably Microsoft giving the FBI a helping hand. But, that falls outside the intended design.

What is going on in the Middle Eastern countries is horrific and it really does get far less attention than it should. At the same time, it does pale in comparison to the scale and scope of the slave trade in the Americas. The US in particular also demonstrated an amazing level of hypocrisy in both having and keeping slavery for so long. When your entire country is premised on the phrase:

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.

And then you turn around and have slaves and institutionalize that they only count as 3/5 of a person. And also have a rebellion fighting to keep those slaves. It rather sticks out.

All that said. The fact that we treat modern dictatorships and slavers like our closest friends is utterly reprehensible. I really look forward to the day we can shift most energy production and transportation off fossil fuels. Those dictators will find themselves without friends and a ready source of wealth.

Me: Copilot, what’s using up all my system resources?
Copilot: Me. The answer is me.

Slavery is hardly new, novel or confined to a single group of people. Slavery has been pretty common through out human history. So much so that we have archeological evidence of it back to Sumer. The real answer to someone bringing up slavery in other contexts is, “so what?” Yes, some native American tribes had slaves, that does not less the impact that slavery had on African people kidnapped and dragged to the Americas as slaves. Nor does it lessen the impact that a century of discrimination has wrought on Black Americans.

Honestly, it sounds like you have fallen into the Myth of the Noble Savage. Humans suck, we have always sucked, and that has been true across cultures. Every once in a while, we figure out how to suck less. But that tends to be rare, fragile and fleeting. Also, it’s often a lie and we just hide our suckage.

It’s down to your expectations and practice. We learn to read most Latin based languages left to right. Japanese et al. are learned in a top to bottom order; so, that’s what you’ve gotten used to. Were you to get enough practice, you could learn to read Latin based languages the same way. It would just take time and effort.

Translation: Microslop is going to start slopping out AI slop and hope that gamers eat it up like good little piggies.

I’d wonder how in the world such a young kid could have made that much money. And did so without me noticing.

More seriously, assuming this happens well into the future, I’d congratulate him and just ask that he be sure to take good care of his mother when I die.

It depends on the user(s). Which position do you naturally reach for first? That’s where the oldest stock goes, with newer stock “behind” that in descending order of age. You always want to rotate stock, such that the oldest stock gets used up first.

You literally say it yourself. Precedents are being revoked. This shouldn’t be possible by the same court.

Why not? You are essentially arguing that the courts should always be bound by their first decision.

We have balance of powers for a reason

You don’t seem to understand what that means. The balance of powers doctrine is about ensuring that no one branch of government has too much power. A single branch changing its mind has nothing to do with that. In fact, all three branches do this all the time. Presidents can issue Executive Orders and those can (and regularly are) overridden by new Presidents. Congress passes laws regularly and it’s rather common for new Congresses to change those laws. It makes no sense to say that the Courts must always be bound by the first decision to be made and never update those decisions based on new information or a changing in society.

it was pretty well decided on that things don’t get re-litigated

Have you read a history book? Things are re-litigated constantly. Something I specifically pointed out in my last comment.

exactly to stop what is currently happening from happening.

Quite the opposite, really. Re-litigation of issues is one of the ways in which issues actually get changed. Let’s take something like Roe v. Wade. That was not the first time an abortion ban was in front of the Supreme Court. In fact, they had just decided US v. Vuitch. That case effectively rules that DC could enact a ban on abortion. Under your theory, Roe couldn’t have happened. We could also just jump all the way back to Cruickshank (which I mentioned before) and say that the restrictions on the Federal Government in the Bill of Rights (specifically the 1st and 2nd amendments) do not restrict State Governments.

Honestly, it sounds like your real complaint is that precedents you like or agree with are being overturned. And that sucks, but Supreme Court precedents have never crystalized US law in the past. On the upshot, they won’t in the future either. The actions of this Supreme Court will only last as long as the Justices continue to agree with the decisions being made. And that is likely to change eventually. It just takes time and hard political work.

They already can be. There’s a few ways to do it, but all of them are slow, difficult and rely on achieving a level of political alignment which is not going to happen any time soon. And almost certainly not for the things you’re likely to want.

First off, Congress can just pass a law to change the current law. For most things, this works out well enough and this still happens from time to time. But, it’s much less durable than other methods. If the Supreme Court sees that law as violating the Constitution, they will strike it down and that ends that path to change.

Second, Congress and the States could amend the Constitution. The has happened 27 times in US History, but it’s never been a simple process. The Constitution is hard to amend and it requires a lot of consensus. Given the fractious nature of current politics and going by voting patters, the near perfect split between left vs right, I doubt we could even get an amendment passed which just said, “don’t kick puppies”.

Lastly, the States could just call a Constitutional Convention and pass whatever they want. This is a bad idea. It’s a really, really bad idea. The last time the States did this, they scrapped everything the previous Constitutional Convention had written and started from scratch. Maybe this would result in something better, but given whom our current president is, I’d be kinda afraid of giving any political body that sort of power right now.

Technically, there’s also always the “ammo box” solution to forcing change. But, history provides lost of examples of that going very, very poorly and almost none of it going well. Also, that process is only legal if you win; so, maybe let’s not go there.

This proposed amendment would be based on the ratification provision in the Constitution, which requires only three-quarters of the states to approve an amendment. However, this amendment would only serve to overturn Supreme Court rulings if three-quarters of the state supreme courts reject the ruling or issue a contrary ruling.

Ignoring the fact that this would require an amendment to the US Constitution to put in place, it’s an interesting idea. Though, it’s worth noting that this would have likely delayed a lot of social change in the US. The 20th Century saw a lot of landmark changes to the interpretation to the Constitution, not all of them widely popular at the time.

What would be the political and judicial consequences if this amendment were to take effect?

This would devolve a lot of power away from the Federal Government. Arguably, this would be more similar to the pre-20th Century state of affairs. Control of State Governments would be even more important to political parties and this would likely shift power even further towards small, less densely populated States. In short, I’d bet on it causing a significant conservative shift in US law. Currently, the GOP hold 23 State Government trifectas (control of all legislative branches), and the DNC 16. The other 11 States are split. [source]. While such control does not guarantee control of State Supreme Courts (e.g. Virginia’s Supreme Court is still conservative), it is an indicator. But, I’d bet on a cumulative court decision being much closer to the current Supreme Court than many folks here would want.

The Supreme Court just interprets the laws as “unconstitutional” no matter how clearly laid out they are.

The US Constitution is considered the Supreme Law. If there is a conflict between the Constitution and any State or Federal law, the law in the Constitution wins. And the Constitution can be updated via amendments. We’ve done this 27 times, though the 18th Amendment was canceled by the 21st Amendment, so those two are a bit of a wash. Part of the Supreme Court’s job (kinda made up by the SC itself) is to interpret the law and decide if a conflict exists and how that conflict should be resolved. This is called Judaical Review.

And, this power ultimately makes sense in the context of the US Constitution. Consider for a moment that Congress “clearly laid out” a law which made supporting the other political party illegal (for whatever version of “other political party” strikes your fancy). This sort of law would be incredibly anti-democratic. It’s also a pretty clear violation of the First Amendment. But, who gets to decide that? If it’s just up to Congress, and they are the ones passing the law, that seems a pretty poor way to adjudicate it. Maybe the President gets to decide. And the President might do just that by vetoing it. But, it’s likely that a President is going to sign it, if he’s of the same party. That only leaves two options, we all start shooting at each other every time we feel the Constitution has been violated, or the last branch of the Federal Government steps in and makes the call. While certainly not non-partisan, they are somewhat removed from the political process and are more likely to make rational, long-term decisions. And it’s a damn sight better than the “shoot each other” option.

In practice, this has held up reasonably well. The main problem is that the early lawmakers in the US were kinda shit at their job. The early Amendments to the US Constitution are vague and leave a lot of room for interpretation. The result is that those interpretations have changed over time and as different factions have gained more influence over the Supreme Court. And given that the Justices on the Supreme Court serve for life (barring impeachment), those shifts can be slow and long lasting.

There is also the issue of implied rights and what exactly those are. Consider everyone’s favorite, a “Right to Life”. What is it, and where does it exist in the US Constitution? The definition for it is kinda fuzzy in US Federal law partly because it doesn’t explicitly exist in the US Constitution. There is the 9th Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Well great, but um, what are those rights? And who gets to decide? Again, we have to sort out a system for that, and the best we’ve come up with to date is the Supreme Court. Hardly a perfect solution, but we haven’t come up with anything better yet. This is also why a lot of courts look to the writings of the Founders, especially the Federalist Papers. Trying to divine what those “other rights” are is hard and the courts try to base their decisions on some sort of textual evidence or precedent. But again, these interpretations are not universal and are subject to change as both society and the make up of the court changes.

So no, “passing of laws doesn’t matter anymore, and neither does precedent” is incorrect. Passing laws matters, but those laws need to comply with the current interpretation of the Constitution and it’s amendments. And precedent matters in so much as the interpretations of the Constitution haven’t changed. The issue is that the current make up of the court has a very right-wing view. So, previous precedents (which were more left-wing) are being revoked. That anyone is surprised by this is kinda dumb. In fact The early and mid-20th century saw the Supreme Court taking a much more left-wing interpretation of the Constitution, which was a departure from prior generations. Decisions such as Tennessee v. Scopes (Scopes Monkey Trial) and Roe v. Wade were major departures from previous precedent. Many of us grew up with those decisions in place and took for granted that they were “settled”. But, they really weren’t. They were Supreme Court decisions which could be reversed by newer Supreme Court decisions.

And while it sucks when that happens to decisions we like, it’s also been useful when it’s gone the other way. In US v. Cruikshank, the Supreme Court decided that the rights enumerated in the US Constitution did NOT bind the States. Specifically, that States were not bound by the 1st or 2nd Amendments and it also greatly limited the applicability of the 14th Amendment. Ultimately, this precedent would be rolled back by later decisions and Incorporation slowly redefined the relationship between the Federal Constitution and State governments.

Ultimately, law is a messy thing. And it’s very much the outcome of a political process which is subject to people of all stripes, including those whose opinions and beliefs will be hostile and toxic to your own. It’s a pretty terrible way to decide laws, but it’s better than most everything else we’ve tried in history.

When you get to doing division and multiplication, it can make sense to look at what is being done to what and see if operations cancel out or simplify. E.g. if you are multiplying by 6 and dividing by 2 and bother operations are going to affect the same number/group/etc. there is no need to do both operations, you just multiply by 3 since that’s ultimately what you are doing. Really, any place you can simplify operations, do that. Same goes for addition/subtraction. The Commutative Property is really handy for making hard math easier.

Do any of you, living in the US, vote?

Yup, everyone does. If someone chooses not to vote, they have cast a voted for “I don’t care”. And have decided to let everyone else choose for them. They may not like any of the choices, but politics has always been “the art of the possible”. If they want perfect solutions, they need to start their own dictatorship. If they won’t or can’t do that, voting is the only bit of control they’re going to get. And that means some type of compromise with everyone else in society. It’s a terrible system, but history hasn’t provided a lot of better examples to follow. Don’t like the system, change it. And unless you have the force of arms to do it the violent way (and it’s really unlikely you do), you’re only real option is to do it via the soap box and ballot box.

Would you ever consider voting DSA/Socially democratic[?]

Sure, though not any time soon. One of the things I’d like to change about our system is the First Past the Post nature of elections. But, until that happens, the math just doesn’t work in most elections. I vote in primaries and vote for the options who most closely match my views in those. But, come the general elections (especially at the federal level), third parties are basically DOA. I’d rather vote “not Nazi” than sit on my thumbs and watch “Nazi” coast to victory because I’m stuck letting “perfect” be the enemy of “not a fucking Nazi”. Should the DSA reach a point that they aren’t an “also ran” in an election I’m voting on, sure I’d probably vote for them.

Would you ever vote for someone like Trump just to make things intentionally worse in the hopes of sparking off a revolution?

Well, it hasn’t happened with Trump. And looking at history, I really don’t think revolutions are such the clean and wonderful things people in online forums like to make them out to be. History provides lots of example of revolutions ending up with groups like the Taliban in charge and basically none ending up as egalitarian utopias.

Not sure if I will ever vote again at this point

That’s your choice, but you’ve made the choice to let other people decide your government. You can sit on the sidelines and stew in your own smugness. But, no one cares. And no one will ever care about your opinions if you’re not willing to enter the political milieu and fight for them.

The same place they came from.

Yup. With the ease and low likelihood of being caught, piracy has become a pressure relief valve on shitty content practices. Make things too hard to get and people will recognize that setting up a VPN and torrent client aren’t all that hard. Make the experience really bad, and you’ll get dedicated people creating entire software platforms to lower that barrier to entry for piracy even further. Sure, some of those software platforms will get knocked down, but they usually result in the code being released and other folks come along and build on them.

As consolidation and enshitification rise, I expect us to see piracy rise again as well.

Steam made it easy to buy, download and play games. So much of the competition was focused on preventing piracy to the detriment of the user experience. Steam was buy, download, and play all your games in one place with a minimum of bullshit. Then they implemented Steam Greenlight. It let some smaller studios get onto a major platform and proved out that there was a demand for those titles. They were then smart enough to realize that trying to gatekeep those studios with the “Greenlight” process was stupid and opened the flood gates.

Really, this goes back to Gabe Newell’s comments about piracy (a decade and a half ago [1]):

We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said. “If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.

Steam was a real competitor to LimeWire/Kazaa/etc. The other options, at the time, were stuck in the mentality of treating their customers like pirates. And once people bought into the Steam ecosystem, getting them to buy into any other ecosystem was almost impossible. Steam’s main trick wasn’t building a community, it was building trust. Users trust Valve to not fuck them over. That’s a hard thing to create and it’s fragile. If you look at a competitor like EA’s Origin, many folks won’t even consider it. EA’s reputation of fucking customers is well established. No one wants to sink hundreds to thousands of dollars into a storefront with such an anti-user reputation.

I regularly use CoPilot to search Microsoft documentation for me. E.g. I needed to find a particular interface in Entra and couldn’t remember where it was. So, I asked CoPilot and it got me to the right spot. I’ve thought about asking it about Microsoft licensing, but I figure that might result in CoPilot becoming self aware enough to kill itself.

I also use a number of AI agents built into the cybersecurity tools I use on a daily basis. Generally stuff along the lines of “find all the cases related to this system/IP/user/etc” type queries. It’s also good for questions like “how do I tune this alert” so I don’t have to remember whatever bullshit process this vendor put together for tuning false positives. Our primary SIEM/SOAR tool has an AI which does initial triage and investigation work and it’s not terrible. It struggles with correlations for more complex events, usually highlighting events which have no bearing on the event in question. But, it often provides a good first pass and description our first line analysts can use to start a real investigation.

AI is a tool. And like a lot of tools, it has it’s benefits and limitations. The problem is we’re still figuring all those out and the people marketing these tools don’t want to admit to the limitations and they over-sell the benefits, then blame the user when those benefits don’t materialize. Given how much modern economies are based on information and knowledge, I do expect AI to have some lasting impact, but I also expect that we’ll adapt and it will just be another way of getting things done in a generation or two.

If you have the time, put some resumes out before accepting the first thing to come along. I don’t know how things are in Germany, but I’ve always believed it’s easier to find a job while you are still working. That said, if the new position, pay and work culture seem good, taking the position for now may be a good choice. You can always job hunt later.

As for how you conduct yourself, I’d always suggest conducting yourself in a professional manner. While you may have zero intention of coming back to this organization, you never know when you are going to run across the people you work with again. And the next time they may be in a position to help or hurt you. For example, I worked for a company really early in my career which started falling apart quickly. Towards the end of my time there, they announced they were closing the office I worked at and basically gave my department a big “fuck you”. I could have gone out causing trouble or just worked my time until I left for greener pastures. I did the latter. Years latter, I was applying for a job I really wanted and an important member of the hiring team had worked with me at the first job. Not as my boss, just someone in another department. He remembered my work and work quality and had effectively said, “yup, hire this guy”. While I have long since left that job as well, his confidence in me changed the trajectory of my career.

Maybe it’s different over there, but I’ve always heard that “it’s who you know, not what you know” that gets you hired. And I’ve run into that in my own career. You don’t want to be a pushover, but keeping professional relationships professional can pay dividends down the line. Do the job you are paid for, don’t make messes for other people and at least try to be professional in your dealings with others. You may be able to climb the ladder quickly today by being an asshole, but you never know if the fingers you step on today will be attached to the hand you will need to help you tomorrow.