hypna

I tend to consider the two key characteristics of a state to be the claim to the right to demand tax, and the claim to the exclusive use of violence. The definition of statecraft as the act of managing capital is a formulation I have not heard before, and doesn't strike me as persuasive. It seems to have strange implications, like that Goldman Sachs is a state.

Your arguments here seem more in support of institutions than states. Asking whether one can have capable municipal water service without a state is a different question than whether one can have capable municipal water service without institutions. The necessity of institutions in this case seems an easier argument.

The answers to these kinds of issues is never disclosures or ToS or admin vigilance. It's always technical. Everything which is technically possible will become normal.

Lemmy is not popular because it is a well designed piece of technology. Frankly it's a pretty naive implementation of activitypub. It's popularity comes from being the biggest alternative around when Reddit pissed off a good chunk of its users.

The only way to control how data is used, is to make it technically or practically impossible to do so. Until then, expect all the data on the fediverse to be used in every way possible for any purpose, and act accordingly.

I guess if you wanna go off at people like that, I have to go through your links and point out that

1. Providing services to a cyber warfare organization does not make one a cyber warfare company. I bet they contract out their cafeteria services too. The article specifically states the contract is for data analysis.
2. Doing data analysis for target selection also does not make one a cyber warfare company.
3. Data analysis is not cryptography. Also, my personal computer is encrypted. Am I a cryptographer?
4. Receiving data from your customers does not make you a data collection company, and the article points out that the data is being collected by Oura. Compare that with the NSA who for example have internet backbone splitters installed at the major telcos, or put cell spoofers in cities.

Why is doing data analysis for unethical ends not enough?

Palantir is a data analysis company. Data analysis is just one part of what the NSA does. Other important functions of the NSA include cyber warfare, cryptography, and data collection. I have not read that Palantir does any of that.

If different people with similar visual characteristics have similar behavioral characteristics, doesn't that imply that perhaps we can judge a book by its cover?

I have a hard time believing that Gore would have made a difference on preventing 9-11, but I'm sure the response would have been different. Maybe no Patriot Act, maybe no Afghanistan War, almost certainly no Iraq War. That's a big enough difference for me.

Sounds like a play for protectionism.

I'm used to AP titles being pretty dry, but they have started putting some bite in them.

I'm having a conversation with a family member. Somehow the topic of firefighters comes up. She pauses, looks very thoughtful for a moment, then asks, "Do you not like firefighters, either?"

"What? Why would I not like firefighters?"

"Like how you don't like police."

She knows me well. I boggle at how my distaste for cops could be this misunderstood.

I think it kinda doesn't matter. If they can catch 95% of all users, that's pretty close to total victory. Well more than enough to shut out access from Linux systems for most things without causing public backlash.

Apple, Microsoft, and Google account for roughly 95% of all human user systems.

Mitchell Hashimoto is trying to build a reputation system to combat this https://github.com/mitchellh/vouch