Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Salvador Mirzo Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2025 14:04:08 -0300 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 126 Message-ID: <87v7szw9yv.fsf@example.com> References: <67b21894$14$17$882e4bbb@reader.netnews.com> <28416cc3-e819-886a-4025-2b2588f88663@example.net> <87a5ale0vg.fsf@example.com> <0310a638-3153-f886-5206-9bc8453c1f8e@example.net> <8734g9modu.fsf@example.com> <25c6c643-4e94-09d9-48e6-e9cf123e7cd4@example.net> <87seo8fgx8.fsf@example.com> <87eczscb6w.fsf@example.com> <87plj82ico.fsf@example.com> <1a64642e-3538-1363-1321-6760e5a417b9@example.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2025 18:04:10 +0100 (CET) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="7f0d8709274a8fcf11e160395f1aaf02"; logging-data="1287314"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18ICixZsyqPFOOGgFy9/5WpjU7tJblHbqA=" Cancel-Lock: sha1:GoIM3pb8HA+wiUYToQEwplxSs54= sha1:xY4FvAM/QTzPGMVjtkAV4TgDHiE= Xref: csiph.com comp.misc:26643 D writes: > On Sun, 23 Feb 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote: > >>> At the moment, everything essential in society has to be able to be >>> done on paper, so it really is not a problem, and costs about 20-40 >>> minutes per year in extra writing on actual paper. >>> >>> This scares me though! I fear the day when a smartphone is mandatory >>> in order to participate in society. This will be a sad day indeed. Add >>> to that, centralbank managed electronic currencies, that can be clawed >>> back from you, or where you are blocked from spending them in an >>> instant, if you go against the government, and we have a very >>> dystopian situation indeed. =/ >> >> I would think that there are so many poor people in the world that >> governments could never really ask anyone to always have a phone. >> However, I think it's already real that without such tools, the >> alternative way will be so painful that a person like you or I will >> likely not choose not to use a phone. > > True! > > It seems that god was listening in on this and sent me this article on the same > theme: > > https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/feb/22/the-tyranny-of-apps-those-without-smartphones-are-unfairly-penalised-say-campaigners > > I think they have a good point! One business idea I have is hosting "virtual > phones" in the cloud. So people who do not want a smartphone or who can not > afford one, can rent a small VM in the cloud for 4-8 EUR per month or so, and > use that to run their apps. > > The provlem is that not all apps work on a VM, since app developers can do some > kind of magic that blocks them from running on an emulator. The governments > national ID has this, so refuses to run on an emulator. > > But I think that the majority of apps might run in that configuration. So if I > need an app, I get start my VM, do what I need to do, and then shut it > down. I suppose commerce itself can do that. For instance, someone could walk in a store with cash and exchange it for a temporary credit card to be used at the machines, say. You know what I mean? Government offices can make their systems all based on phone apps, but then people can walk in some place to use a phone and get their bureaucracy done. It's your idea up there, but instead of virtual machines, real phones instead. This will likely be done, I think. And I think that's a good solution. >> I think that's already more or less true in commerce. For instance, >> I've been at times confronted with the situation that without using >> Whatsapp, I could not get service. >> >> During the pandemics, for example, so many people could not find a way >> out of following protocols they did not want to follow and even taking >> chemical substances they did not want to take. So many people I know >> did not want to do it and did it anyway because it was a hassle >> otherwise. > > Oh that was a pain. My wife got vaccinated once against her will because of it. > I did not, and I spent many 100s of hours avoiding the unethical restrictions. I > printed my own corona vaccination qr codes for a while, until that didn't work, > I found a medical loop hole to allow me to travel without a mask, towards the > end, I copied other peoples foreign qr codes, which would get me into stores, > despite being unvaccinated, since the system in the stores only checked if the > qr was valid, and nothing else like last country of use, or matching it with id > checks. I did the same. (It's amazing the kind of parallels we can find on the USENET.) I'm happy to hear you managed it too. I did a COVID exam every week, getting it negative 100% of the times, for an entire semester and archived my exams with my employeer. I was very happy with the alternative: I would not have taken any substance at all. I would have gone to the last resort. I saw no point in taking in an unknown substance so try to avoid an aggressive /cold/. >>> As for children, no such thing for me, since biologically I have an >>> extremely low chance of having children. On the other hand, my parents >>> got the same diagnosis from the doctor, and they had me, and the >>> doctor said it was not possible according to science, so who knows? ;) >> >> I am sorry for hearing the news, but I also feel that we should hope for >> the best here. I think nobody should trust doctor's predictions. I >> certainly don't know the reasons you might have low chance of having >> children and let's remember this is a public forum. The subject does me >> remind me of a conversation with epidemiologist Shanna Swan, which I >> have been slowly rewatching again---it's a 2h conversation. The entire >> conversation is very interesting. In this conversation, we can learn >> that male fertility is decreasing by 1% *per year*. >> >> Shanna Swan on male fertility (et cetera) >> https://youtu.be/C9aqGqjC1kE > > I've actually seen the video before, when my wife was the most crazy about our > problem. In my case, it is just a chance mutation that resulted in low quality > sperm. That's all. It is not impossible, but but very, very low probability of > fertilizing eggs. I'm not a religious person in the traditional sense of the word, but turns out I find myself one of the most religious person I've ever met because patience, perseverance, lack of ambition and a certain mastery of the art of listening seem pretty religious to me. For instance, pretty much every religious person I know has at least one tattoo on their skin. I think that's totally non-religious because a tattoo effectively destroys (at least a bit) something natural that took a zillion years to be prepared---to protect the person. I think that if God speaks to us at all, it is done through the movement of nature. Lol. I'm saying all of this to say that I would never believe that it's really impossible for you to have kids. Life is full of adversities. My idea is that we should work on them 'til the end---unconcerned with the end result. End results imply a direction, a strategy. We try to fix the bug in the software because we want to understand what caused the bug and how it works. Not because we want the software to be flawless. So we don't fret if we can't figure it out, but we always work on it. We work directionless because we don't really mind not getting to the end result. Anywhere we go is natural enough; it's divine enough.