Tag: EU

Sunday Paper - Apple and the EU, Haitian Repartitions, Remote Work

The former enslaved people of Haiti, not the French enslavers, were forced to pay reparations to their enslavers.

I think these attacks on Apple, boil down to jealousy. As a consumer, I've never once said, "I want more app store competition."

… the EC has a problem with Apple doing any vetting whatsoever on apps distributed outside the App Store. The EC will take care of making sure malware, phishing, scams, clones, IP rip-offs, and pirated apps aren’t getting through. This also means that apps distributed outside the app store will be able to use private APIs. One can argue that what Apple is calling “notarization” in its DMA compliance plan is actually just a less extensive form of app review, but without this step, Apple has no oversight over software distributed outside the store at all. That seems to be exactly what the EC is saying the DMA demands. I don’t think this is going to go well. Daring Fireball

It's an old NPR article. Learning about the history of the world, I sometimes get angry.

While the U.S. officially left Haiti in 1934, it continued to control Haiti's public finances until 1947, siphoning away around 40% of Haiti's national income to service debt repayments to the U.S. and France.

Much of this debt to France was the legacy of what the University of Virginia scholar Marlene Daut calls "the greatest heist in history": surrounded by French gunboats, a newly independent Haiti was forced to pay its slaveholders reparations. You read that correctly. It was the former slaves of Haiti, not the French slaveholders, who were forced to pay reparations. Haitians compensated their oppressors and their oppressors' descendants for the privilege of being free. It took Haiti more than a century to pay the reparation debts off. Greg Rosalsky

It seems I may have to rethink my plans to live like a digital nomand.

If you’re planning on working remotely from another country, you first need to determine if that country offers a digital nomad visa (or similar) and that they allow a citizen from your home country to apply for that visa.

If the answer to both of those is yes, then yes, it’s legal, you can “work remotely”… but sadly, in a lot of cases, not for some U.S. tech companies.

Paul Scanlon

In AI Roundup: The Bad, the Ugly, and the Pretty Cool, Jeffrey Zeldman compiles a list of articles discussing the current state of AI, addressing both its potential and challenges. The article highlight concerns about AI's environmental impact, its prevalence in various industries leading to a tech bubble, and the importance of AI literacy. The links provided offer insights into different aspects of AI, including its energy consumption, educational opportunities, and the need for critical evaluation and understanding of AI technologies.

Most of the biggest YouTubers…that have channels focused about photography, aren’t even the best photographers…in the world, so stop looking at them for inspiration. I’m not trying not trash these people, I’m not trying to put myself on a pedestal, my ultimate goal is to help you improve. They don’t have to be good at photography…they have to be good at YouTube. They’re not making their income from photography, they’re making them income in talking about photography.Juston Mott

EU DMA

I am so angry at the ignorance of these EU bureaucrats (aka idiots) that I cant’ clearly state why I think this is going to hurt consumers. I’ll let others speak for me.

I am so angry at the ignorance of these EU bureaucrats (aka idiots) that I cannot clearly state why I think this is going to hurt consumers. I’ll let others speak for me.

Demanding that vendors of encrypted messengers figure out how to simultaneously open up their service to interoperators and maintain security is a tall order, even though the demand is limited to very large, well-funded companies like Apple and Meta Platforms (Facebook). As applied to encrypted messaging, interoperability could encompass a range of approaches from simply requiring users to be able to connect to a service with the client of their choice, all the way to a fully federated model akin to email. These approaches would have vastly different effects on security. A technological solution that is simple to express in legislative terms can have unintended consequences, such as creating incentives for companies to compromise on the security of users’ communications. As with recent US proposals for law enforcement access to encrypted data, policymakers need to safeguard users’ access to truly secure communications.
…
...making encrypted messaging interoperable simply cannot happen in the timeframe envisioned by the DMA if it has any hope of resolving the significant technical and policy hurdles. The DMA’s time limits on gatekeepers to provide interoperability—three months after a request in the case of one-to-one encrypted messaging; and within two years for group messaging—are far too short. By comparison, Meta Platforms (Facebook) announced plans to interconnect and encrypt three of its own messaging products in March 2019, and this project is still not complete. Getting interoperability right would require participation by a much larger group of stakeholders as part of a standards-setting and governance process and would therefore likely move at an even statelier pace.

The computer security expert Steven Bellovin argues interoperable end-to-end encryption “is somewhere between extraordinarily difficult and impossible,

This is bananas. All third party developers get control over the secure enclave and the software that controls it? Would be good to give them such control over the camera, microphone, and location data, too.

Sunday Paper - EU R&D Fuels Silicon Valley, Busyness, Kyle Kashuv and Shame and Moral Bullies, The Young and the Ignorant and Inexperienced

Have you heard about Silicon Valley’s unpaid research and development department? It’s called the EU. by Aral Balkan

You… yes you.
Who should you thank for Facebook’s Libra?
“One of the UK’s leading privacy researchers” University College London The DECODE project And, if you’re an EU citizen who pays their taxes,
You. Surprised? Don’t be.
None of this was unforeseen Today, the EU acts like an unpaid research and development department for Silicon Valley. We fund startups, which, if they’re successful, get sold to companies in Silicon Valley.

via Tom Zylstra

I have used the phare, "I'm busy", in the past. It's not part of West Indian culture so I must have learned this way of signalling one's worth from living in the USA. I'm not sure when I stopped trying to be busy.

Imagine if we were to temporarily step outside of our busyness and examine it from the outside. Why are we so damn obsessed with doing stuff all the time? Busy — is this the way we want to live and define our lives? Given the objectively absolute fact that we are only here for a limited time, is busyness even a rational benchmark for quantifying the value of our existence? To what extent do we ‘choose’ to be busy — or to what extent are we caught up in a toxic cultural motif or script?Why are we busy? by James Shelly

The Internet Judgment Machine is a forever machine, not unlike, the Terminator. Mistakes are forever punishable. Forgiveness is becoming a word with no meaning. The Intenet never forgets is a problem.

Kashuv had planned to attend Harvard in fall 2020 after completing a gap year, but shortly after his past racist comments became public, administrators advised him that his acceptance could be withdrawn "if you engage or have engaged in behavior that brings into question your honesty, maturity, or moral character." He was asked to provide a full explanation for his behavior, which he did. He also emailed Harvard's Office of Diversity Education and Support, vowing to make amends. This office told him "we appreciate your thoughtful reflections and look forward to connecting with you upon your matriculation in the fall of 2020."

Alas, it was not to be: The dean of admissions decided to rescind Kashuv's admissionHarvard University Cancels Kyle Kashuv by Robby Soave on Reason

These are the same cohort who routinely fall off cliffs and building and get mauled by wild animals while attempting to capture the best selfie.

In a post written last year, I explained why it's a mistake to give special credence to the policy views of victims of horrible tragedies. Surviving a school shooting, or some other awful event, doesn't give you any special insight into the moral and policy questions at stake. Survivors deserve empathy and respect—but not deference to their policy views, except in rare instances where they have genuine expertise on the subject. Why We Shouldn't Treat Survivors and Victims as Authorities on Policy Issues by Ilya Somin on Reason

Western society is headed toward a place where we are trading real freedoms in exchange for perceived freedoms.

The ban was implemented following an ASA review which concluded that stereotypical depictions pave the way for "real-world psychological, physical, economic, social and political harm for individuals and groups."
...
Gender stereotypes "constrict people's choices," says the ASA review. Yet the ban itself does precisely that, as it limits companies from advertising their products as they see fit and shields consumers from ideas associated with wrongthink.The U.K. Has Banned 'Harmful Gender Stereotypes' in Advertisements by Billy Binnion on Reason

I'm starting to see a pattern to these articles. The theme seems to be "judgment"; judging others against one's moral standard and trying to "force" them to live by that standard. It's a dangerous trend.

In addition to bans, fees, and moral preening, anti-plastic bag advocates have a new trick up their sleeve for inspiring you to bring a reusable tote on your next trip to the grocery store: shame.

Two weeks ago, East West Market, a grocery store in Vancouver, Canada, rolled out a new line of single-use plastic bags for customers who don't bring bags to the store. The bags feature less than flattering business names, including "The Colon Care Co-Op," "Into the Weird Adult Video Emporium," and "Dr. Toew's Wart Ointment Wholesale."Anti-Plastic Bag Activists Have a New Weapon: Shame by Christian Britschgi.