The ironic consequence of this is eventually if you want to use big tech for messaging privacy you'll be forced to basically pick one under the jurisdiction of an enemy non-extradition state like Russia or China. Sure their governments will farm and exploit the metadata even if encrypted, but they won't be handing it over to the west unless the deal is juicy.
Eh, not really, because the US has shown it's happy to go ahead and make it illegal to have TikTok here as well. The real result is probably much, much simpler: Globally-operating apps won't make as much sense as they got away with in pre-regulatory eras of the Internet.
Big Tech has basically spent the past twenty years pretending their global status made them above the law of any one nation, but in reality, being a global company just means you're subject to all the laws of all the nations.
Yes this seems variable based on point of entry. I had (have?) a flagged passport for awhile and I never got the oh shit face from CBP until they scanned my passport.
Is this something you've blogged about or otherwise discussed in more detail?
A college acquaintance of mine ended up in Syria with the YPG and I found it fascinating in a that's-so-fucking-cool-but-I-could-never way.
> Although it's a good thing that a good deal of Americans have plenty of guns to defend themselves (unlike us, who reside outside of the US)
Getting a gun is trivial about anywhere, btw, and in EU or latam ammunition enough for self defense is little trouble either. The fgc-9 and 'but what about ammo' are excellent education for curious Europeans.
In practice I assure you people don't notice one concealing a gun (especially in gun naive places) and for anyone who isn't a moron, it isn't pulled out unless they're trading a casket for a court docket.
I'm not religious anymore, but wasn't it Paul who made the argument that we should respect temporal authority and their temporal laws, because it was God Himself who allowed them to become an authority in the first place?
>fgc-9
Isn't it a bit too big to carry concealed for self-defense purposes?
That aside, don't 3d printed guns jam much more frequently than "real" guns?
So, for example, if you're in a life and death situation, and you live in a country that doesn't allow the concealed carrying of guns, and your opponent is a mafia member - who is, for all practical purposes, untouchable by the corrupt class of bureaucrats who are there to purportedly enforce and carry out the law (like the beauty of a country i find myself in) - and has a "real" gun pointed at you, and all you have is little better than a glorified plastic bb gun (because these days, unless you have a father or grandfather who had bought a gun 20 years ago to give to you today, buying a real gun is not as trivial as you make it sound, at least where I am), who wins nine times out of ten?
Like, sure, I've read articles about how there are resistant forces in some south east asian country (I forgot which one exactly and im too lazy to look it up right now, nor is it important to what im about to say) that are fighting a dictatorial military regime, and the resistant forces do use 3d printed guns; but the only reason they're doing so is because, one, before the conflict happened the citizenry didn't have a legal "right" to buy guns and so at the beginning of the conflict they had no real amount of "real" guns to use, and, two, they kill the oppressive military officers and take their "real" guns because they're just better.
But keep in mind, they're fighting an actual war, and don't have to conceal their guns (3d guns are too big to conceal in everyday settings), and two, even if someones 3d gun jams, there will be someone else with them to shoot at the opposite side trying to kill you (i.e not something likely to happen in a country that is not the US, where people aren't allowed to carry around guns for self-defense purposes)
Fgc-9 jams more frequently than a Glock. The barrel and ballistics were found to be near that of a Glock at least at lower round counts. Functionally it is a 9mm pistol which is what most law enforcement carry in my country. It is large but not unreliable at least in sub-1000 round counts.
Given the alternative is a glorified bb gun as you put it, or dealing with the same mafioso, it's not clear to me the calculus is so clearly dismissed as you put it. Certainly wasn't to the German Kurd 'Jstark' who invented it and indeed concealed it on German soil.
I suppose i was a bit overly harsh with calling 3d guns what I did
> Certainly wasn't to the German Kurd 'Jstark' who invented it and indeed concealed it on German soil.
Okay, I don't know much about him aside from just now doing a quick search on him, but he didn't conceal carry the fgc9 when out in public did he (correct me if im wrong)? And that's what im trying to say, the gun he made - while it is better having something than nothing - you cant conceal carry as you could a glock or any other pistol; or are there small, relatively decently reliable 3d guns that you can that im unaware of?
You have no right to privacy in public. If you make this illegal private companies will do it instead, and the first amendment makes that impossible to stop.
The fundamental flaw of cynicism is that it invariably opts for the path of least resistance—a facile dismissal rather than a constructive lens for genuine improvement. If an overwhelming majority—say, 80% of the populace—were deeply invested in this issue, they would elect representatives committed to outlawing it, and thus it would indeed become illegal.
The cynic might retort that such laws are perpetually vulnerable to subversion under the guise of national security. While there's a kernel of truth in that, it's equally undeniable that if 80% of the citizenry truly felt impassioned, any rogue elements within the government would face severe repercussions. Acts of retribution against such actors would not only be tolerated but perhaps even tacitly endorsed by the public.
Well, a true cynic would note that if an 80% of a dictatorship all agreed and felt so passionate -- if even 40% did, such a government would easily fall apart or be capable of reform.
If we could reliably attain passion, cooperation, consciousness? And ultimately, a belief in agency?
Then we would hardly even need to protect institutions against such subversion.
I'm reminded of ceausescu. Everyone agreed, up until they suddenly didn't and he and his wife didn't even seem to get it until they were lined up and shot.
I think it takes both agreement and desperation for that kind of thing to happen, though. Comfortable people don't tend to buck the people who can freeze their bank accounts in any serious way at simultaneous scale, even when they're in mass disagreement.
Very well put, especially about the necessary dis-comfort.
I've always personally envisioned some terrible end-state of human history where vast swathes of people are in something more like a zoo than a prison. Without escape, but also without enough pain to push them toward resistance, until it's too late to turn back.
I'm of the opposite opinion,that recording is a liberty and the right to mass record and identify people is a healthy sign of private free speech rights. I feel banning it would be dystopic. Where I disagree is the use of government at all in many of the capacities taking advantage of this such as TSA, DHS, CBP etc as they are essentially unhinged violent pirates.
Interesting opinion but there is no dystopian literature i know of that worries about banning mass surveillance. Mass surveillance on the other hand features very prominently.
Then you're looking in the wrong section. You don't want the sci-fi section, you want history - Cold War. The investigation of the government by the people was violently suppressed and the the official mouthpieces were jokes - "There is no pravda in Izvestia and no izvestia in Pravda."
Mass surveillance played out privately means every plated cop car can be tracked, every noted confidential informant and every detective, tax stasi, etc can be traced. This is already becoming the case on networked mapping apps where the road pirates are losing their revenue. It's more of a worry for the state than citizens IMO.
That's actually a very fair point i haven't considered, i can't say i've changed my opinion to worry more about the citizens than the state but i agree with it part of the way!
It's not exactly about the privacy in public, though. YMMV, but I'm 101% fine if a camera looks at me and a machine processes the image. What matters is what happens afterwards.
Heck, I want an aid like that - my built-in wetware face recognition is barely functional (I don't even recognize actors in the movies, save for a few most iconic ones), and tying faces only works after repeating it a dozen times. I can pinky swear I won't be sharing this with anyone. I probably won't even keep records, because it's literal digital junk (but I'd like to have a right to record everything that happened around me that I could've possibly remembered naturally). But that's not about it - I just hate how mass surveillance made a lot of people hate all the cameras without making any distinctions (sure, I think I get it).
What this is about is that while individual privacy in public is not expected (save for stalking or other forms of harassment, which aren't exactly about privacy anymore), privacy at scale is an open question. Large entities, like governments or big companies, can collect unprecedented amounts of data, and at that scale it holds a significant potential both for good use and for abuse. So, in a functional democracy, it must prompt a public discussion and search for a consensus. It can be argued that there are benefits, and whenever benefits outweigh the risks, and it also can be argued that old principles must be still upheld to the letter, or if reality had changed too much and those principles are not matching to the ideas and reasons...
It especially matters when it's about the government, because government abuse can get really nasty, even deadly. That's why all the safeguards, checks and balances.
Basically, I think it's not really about cameras, it's about ability to build large databases with information that may be, uh, socially sensitive.
There are two things wrong with this: first, in the U.S., you do have certain rights to privacy in public. Whether this is a case of those rights being violated is a different question. In any case, I don't like the creeping redefinition of civil rights I infer from that statement, intentional or not. Second, just as civil rights can be eroded, they can also be expanded, and the idea that we should just throw up our hands is not helpful in a free society that depends on people giving a shit.
Recording things is generally interpreted as a form of speech. For example, recording police officers in public is speech. If the government can ban private parties from recording people's faces in public, the same could be done to prevent recording the police.
>Recording things is generally interpreted as a form of speech.
Then make it not so, we aren't forced to live with the status quo for eternity.
The law wouldn't be banning people recording faces. It would be much more specific: corporations can't record peoples faces at a mass scale to log them away and sell the data for a profit. If there's any edge cases to this, then let the courts handle it. We let the courts sort out grey areas already, that's their job.
Commercial speech is substantially less protected under First Amendment case law. You can't prohibit random individuals from declaring themselves a citizen journalist and recording people, but I think it would be entirely possible to pass a law saying private companies may not assemble facial recognition databases for sale to third parties.
They don't need to sell the database, just the video that builds the database. Or give it away for free and magically number go up in some bank account in Cyprus or Hong Kong.
Resolving this pathological impasse is straightforward - differentiate between personal activity and commercial activity. Individuals recording the police, other people happenstance, or even spending a considerable amount of their personal time compiling a self-administered facial recognition database of people - fine. Businesses (or really, entire industries) creating surveillance databases that would make a Stasi agent blush, likely by paying the salaries of many people to do this, and likely selling [access to] the databases to pay for it all - not fine. Societally, we've basically been hoodwinked with this temporarily embarassed millionaires fallacy - scale itself creates logical contradictions of our rights and we need to attack this head on.
It seems like an impasse caused by the first amendment, which does not distinguish between "personal" and "commercial" activities. I suppose there could be another amendment to add in these categories, but the freedom of the (commercial) press seems to fall under your "commercial activity" category? I suppose the government could license the commercial press, but that seems problematic, as it's what many totalitarian regimes do to suppress speech, and is exactly what the first amendment was meant to forestall.
On a slightly different note, why is the impasse "pathological"? Are you just throwing in a pejorative term?
The jurisprudence of the first amendment already makes many distinctions that are not there in the text of the amendment itself. This is inevitable - rights conflict with other rights and even with the same right as exercised by someone else.
> why is the impasse "pathological"? Are you just throwing in a pejorative term?
The current jurisprudence is a pathlogical (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_case) interpretation that clamps the solution space to maximal commercial/corporate rights at the expense of individual rights.
The example of the press is actually quite poignant. The current legal regime neuters the free speech rights of most of the press. People can be fired for writing articles saying things their employer does not want to be said. They can even be fired for saying things in their own personal time that their employer does not want to be said! The end result is greatly diminished rights for the individuals making up the press, in order to support greatly increased rights for the controlling owners of the press.
I don't see how you can differentiate between humans and corporations. They are both fundamentally the same. They are born... and oh wait, yeah. But still under the 14th ammendment's equal protection clause the Supreme court determined they were in 1886 (some argue 1819).
Maybe we shouldn't treat corporate speech the same as human speech under the 1st amendment, but that would allow regulation of corporations giving money to political organizations? Ok, well that's beyond the pale. That's obviously originally the founders intent in writing the bill of rights. I'm sure it's in the Federalist Papers somewhere.
We treat corporate speech as an extension of human speech because corporations are made up of humans, and there is no way of abridging the speech of corporations without also abridging the speech of the humans within that corporation.
Also, abridging corporate speech creates a precedent for abridging the speech of all human collective entities like religions, political parties, advocacy groups and the press, because there is no particular reason why corporations as an abstract entity created by humans to express collective human will should be unique in this regard.
You can't simply nullify rights when people exercise them in aggregate. That isn't how free societies are supposed to work, and it's too easy to undermine.
> there is no way of abridging the speech of corporations without also abridging the speech of the humans within that corporation
Sure there is. If corporations (/LLCs) were prohibited from directing their humans to say specific things as part of their employment, those humans can still say whatever they want on their own time.
> Also, abridging corporate speech creates a precedent for abridging the speech of all human collective entities
It's disingenuous to pretend that a corporation (/LLC) is just some group of people. Rather it's an entity that has gone out of its way to obtain a government created liability shield. Conditioning that grant on following extra regulations aimed at mitigating the harm caused by the extreme scale fostered by the limited liability makes perfect sense.
> corporations as an abstract entity created by humans to express collective human will
Wut? The corporate mechanic is that of directing humans in a top-down fashion. The only people thinking corporations represent "collective human will" are the ownership and managerial classes who either are the people directing the corporation top-down, or at least have to repeat enough of the corporate kool-aid to get promoted. The majority of people view them as the least-worst option to receive a paycheck and often see their own wills suppressed - even though respecting that distributed intelligence would often help the corporation (ie "shit rolls downhill").
That’s true, they also can circumvent restrictions.
But give the historical relationship between the government and the Native American organizations, I can’t imagine most tribes would politically get behind using their limited reservation land to house people from outside the tribe.
That's a good point. Still if the agreement is to lease to people oppressed by the US government they may agree to it. IIRC racism etc in housing is not illegal on an Indian Reservation so they might agree to certain classes of people they commiserate with if enough cash is in it for them.
I'd prefer something that is somewhat less of a perversion of the Constitution, though. Find some other grounds on which zoning is unconstitutional. (The advantage of that is that governments aren't allowed to do what's unconstitutional, whether or not the federal government has the right to overrule local law.
Like, zoning might be considered a "taking". The government has taken from me the right to build a skyscraper on this piece of land, so they have to make "just compensation" - they have to pay me the difference between what the land is worth now and what it would have been worth if I could build the skyscraper on it. Making zoning that expensive could make it impossible for local governments to do it.
Cost me 30k to build my house last year. No codes, no architect, no engineers, no licenses, and planning was a square on a map.
Drink a Busch light, execute next step.
Life is good. This is the way in my county, we found out codes, design review, and most zoning is for corrupt politicians and smug self righteous inspectors. Been that way for decades and none of the apocalyptical predictions happened.
As it turned out, affordable housing means less government and no assistance.
In BGA soldering, the concept of partial alignment doesn’t really happen. Here’s why: In a 2D plane (which is the PCB), only two points are needed to define alignment. If two solder balls are aligned with their pads, surface tension in the reflow process ensures the entire BGA package aligns with the rest of the pads automatically.
Surface tension acts on all the solder balls, pulling the package into place along both the X and Y axes. So once the first few balls are in place, the whole thing “snaps” into alignment. Misaligning only some pads while others are perfectly aligned isn’t possible unless something’s seriously wrong, like a warped board or damaged package.
It’s an all-or-nothing situation—either everything aligns, or nothing does.
> Misaligning only some pads while others are perfectly aligned isn’t possible
It's possible when your pcb-making process is on the odge of what designer wanted. Some pads on some boards may be not perfectly aligned in such cases. Or the board was heated not enough or in too short time and not all balls melted properly. Or it cracked under stresses because designer put too much vias in one place near the chip.
> It’s an all-or-nothing situation—either everything aligns, or nothing does.
In theory, practice and theory agrees. In practice, it sometimes does not.
I believe you forgot to quote "unless something’s seriously wrong". Your counter examples seem to describe exactly that: something going seriously wrong.
I've heard of head-in-pillow defects where the solder may touch but fails to wet the pad on the chip or board. BGA probably makes it almost impossible to nudge a leg to check for mechanically solid connections. I don't know if bad joints from the factory are a problem in practice, or they usually only crack in use.
The failure mode that I worry about and would need X-ray to detect is that temporary misalignment will merge/bridge some of the solder balls.
I like to "wiggle" the chip with tweezers (under hot air) to see surface tension in action and judge whether the balls have all melted, but a tiny bit too much wiggle causes that problem.
Indeed, the only common issue we have on BGA rework is bridged balls. If it's on the edge and it's a larger BGA, we can often wick it out with desoldering braid, cut up some fine solder wire, push it under, and "reball" it in-place. If it's on an inner row you're removing the BGA.
They have the support of a state 30x their size. In a unique way few others do, almost in a parent child undying and asymmetrical way.
This is 9/11 but the US backed by an entire alien planet, unafraid to go in the direction of scorched earth even when totally surrounded because the aliens will bail them out.
