It's frustrating how much of the system already is a hassle for everyone who already does the things right.
I make some apps that use precise location. We don't sell the data, we share it with the interested party who the app user is working for only. The user is fully aware when the data is collected and when not, they can even turn it off at will. Nobody even cares who has the device, just that they're delivering a package or something to that effect. It's all good.
Then I hit the app-stores and it's like pulling teeth with paperwork and rejections (depends on the reviewer, sometimes you fly through, sometimes very much not).
I have to attest that we don't do shit with an email that may or may not appear in a field, that we don't do porn (I have no idea where that reviewer got that idea). Some reviewer misread something and now I have to explain that no we don't use contacts, we never do... wtf. More delays.
I'm privacy minded so I don't so much mind the IDEA that I have to attest to all these things, but all the hoops I have to run through is because the bad guys who steal all this info and sell it do their thing, but they're still doing their bad thing just fine ...
Meanwhile my app is stuck in review.
It feels like being pulled over randomly by the cops because "well there's a lot of speeders out there" when I'm not one of them. It's all hassle for everyone doing it right, and for the bad guys or the apps that clearly don't have to follow the rules that everyone else does it has no impact on them.
Exactly. Governments that seem to have good intentions are enabling the self destruction of public data. I'm glad we have projects like AA to right this wrong.
Their lifetime warranty used to be taken extremely seriously, and I really don't know what lifetime they were referring to. I had an old external frame pack that was my grandfather's back when my father was a Boy Scout. That pack outlived its buyer, and I was still using at Philmont where they had the same model as a museum piece. One of the zippers broke, and the back mesh was disintegrating, and pretty much as a joke we made a warranty claim. They honored that, circa 2012 or so.
Their schoolbags were pretty great in the 2000s, too. Withstood some serious abuse, though their zippers were notably on the decline. But that was covered by warranty, so it was fine. By the mid 2010's, they were in full decline, and that's about when I stopped recommending their stuff.
Absolutely not the case. Back in the days of exterior frame packs, Jansport was likely one of the best brands anywhere in the world. Incredibly well designed and made.
OTOH, I haven't thought of Jansport as a go-to brand for a serious backpack in 30+ years ...
When I was a kid everyone knew that JanSport was the one to get if you actually wanted your bag to survive. Absolutely one of those things where you'd spend more replacing the cheaper bags over and over compared to buying the JanSport once.
I feel like Agile is just a tool. You adopt it, or parts of it and see if it works. If it does for your org awesome, if not for your org, try something else.
Organizations are all different IMO (even if slightly), and you gotta try things and move on.
Is it the fault of Agile if it doesn't work? I don't know, I'm more interested in finding what works.
I feel like pretending a department under this administration's thumb is actually going to act honestly is a bit absurd.
They made a donation ... somewhere. Now they're all good. None of Trump's bluster is honest, they're just graft gates.
It wasn't any different during the first administration. I worked at a company slated to be acquired by a foreign company. But the approval just never came from the feds. Then one day the acquiring foreign company CEO visited the White House and that day Trump approved it. Trump even made a little speech about jobs. Then we were all told we were going to be laid off... just like that almost all the American jobs gone. Shortly after one of Trump's companies announced a big land deal in the home country of the acquiring company. MEGA ...
The looting stage of collapse, people tend to think someone will come and save things but so long as there is more money in decline the leaders will do that instead.
> we started hating ourselves and pitted one another against one another, whether that’s by class, race, or gender
> stop some dumb ass gas station beaver and a bunch of MAGA folks and furries
I'm not all that supportive of Buc-ees or furries and definitely not of MAGA, but good job continuing the hate and pitting against each other. Do you think hate is okay if it's not based on class, race, or gender?
I know there is a personal responsibility / call to action in there but I think it elides both how politics work and how people work. Politics is run by cynical operatives skilled in mass manipulation and people generally believe what they’re told to believe. Encouraging people to tilt at windmills is one of the ways to undermine effective opposition. Pitting them against each other is another way. I think actual effective opposition is localism / a general devolution of power.
It’s all moot anyway because AI is already smart enough to upend the economy / social order. A productivity boom without a consumption boom will kill margins across the board.
I’m aligned with your critique, and especially aligned with a focus on local efforts. The more local the better has generally been a good guiding principle for democracies.
> Politics is run by cynical operatives skilled in mass manipulation and people generally believe what they’re told to believe.
I agree with you in the effect - people for whatever reason just believe what they’re told to believe, but I disagree with the hint of “can’t do anything about it” that underlies your writing here. If that’s not your intent - my mistake.
A big part of undermining opposition is to encourage your opposition to operate in ways that are ineffective. Regardless of who won the 2024 we would have gotten the war with Iran, the US has a long history of electing peace candidates and getting war. We live in a managed democracy, part of that management is ensuring the opposition are grifters, Trump was not viable for 2024 until democrats came after him legally, I am confident the decision makers there knew that going after him would make him more popular. They would rather have run against Trump a third time than against a likely more effective candidate like Ron DeSantos.
There are things people can do, I left the US for a small country where politics are so boring I don’t even know who the president is and don’t care to.
> Regardless of who won the 2024 we would have gotten the war with Iran
That’s because of the geopolitical and geostrategic necessity. Can’t have another North Korea and definitely can’t have one sitting on top of 20% of the world’s oil supply. Though I don’t disagree with your broader point regarding so-called “peace presidents”.
I find your perspective about managed democracy to be a bit disheartening, but if you do believe that it’s a good argument against structures such as the EU, who is probably the best example of what you’re talking about.
> There are things people can do, I left the US for a small country where politics are so boring I don’t even know who the president is and don’t care to.
Most countries someone would want to live in aren’t open to immigration unless you’re pretty well off or specialized. I’m glad it worked out for you. We are stuck in the US (and Ohio though day to day is just fine) because friends and family but it would be a breath of fresh air to not have to care. Also most countries aren’t relevant on the global stage and so there isn’t really much for them to decide, they’re for the most part passive recipients of whatever America decides and to some growing extent China or perhaps the EU. Russia as an example and starting wars sort of an outlier.
> That’s because of the geopolitical and geostrategic necessity.
Says who, clearly the US is trying to have that say but failing at it.
> Can’t have another North Korea and definitely can’t have one sitting on top of 20% of the world’s oil supply.
Turns out you can.
I have known our missile defense strategy wouldn’t last into the cheap missile / drone age for over 22 years. Before high tech I was military adjacent. The real reason the US can’t afford to lose in Iran is what that would say about Taiwan and would mean for its position as world hegemony. My main fear was that the US would start a conflict with China believing it could win and having it lose. Ironically Trumps bungling may have saved us from an even worse fate.
> Says who, clearly the US is trying to have that say but failing at it.
In what way has the US failed? People keep saying the US failed but I’m still confused as to what failure has occurred.
> Turns out you can.
Well the rest of the world could let it happen, and let other countries control maritime shipping lanes and exact tolls, but I think your statement is actually objectively false given the US bombed Iran and stopped whatever nuclear program they have, even if that turns out to be sort of temporary.
> I have known our missile defense strategy wouldn’t last into the cheap missile / drone age for over 22 years. Before high tech
The Pentagon knows this too, but you fight a war with the weapons you have while you work on new ones.
> I was military adjacent. The real reason the US can’t afford to lose in Iran is what that would say about Taiwan and would mean for its position as world hegemony. My main fear was that the US would start a conflict with China believing it could win and having it lose.
I was in the army on active duty including deploying to Iraq. The US isn’t/wasn’t going to start a war with China. Doesn’t make any sense. So no worries there.
I think you’ve actually got it backwards. The worry was that China would start a war to seize Taiwan and, frankly, Putin saved us all by failing so hard at Ukraine. The US easily bypassing or destroying any Chinese and Russian air defense assets in countries like Venezuela or Iran has given the Chinese pause too.
China has immense manufacturing capability. Probably #1 in the world. But their weakness is they have not fought a serious war or even a minor war in quite some time. The kinks you’re talking about, lessons learned, &c. Are things that the US has learned or is learning more about via conflicts in Ukraine and Iran and elsewhere. China has trained and tested but has not demonstrated any operational effectiveness when it comes to combined arms, and their equipment on paper is impressive but has yet to see meaningful action. Of course the Chinese know this too, but “how will the PLA perform” is a serious concern for the Commies.
Ahhh US army, that explains it. You know of the two main factions in US foreign policy, the primacists and the restrainers both seek conflict with China. The only difference being that the primacists wanted to win a war in Iran first to set up Israel as regional hegemony.
We have a different read on objective reality, using the simple proxy of 'success has many fathers and failure is an orphan', not many people are taking credit for the war with Iran - so I take that as a sign of failure.
The Pentagon is many years late on drone warfare and the whole incentive structure is set up for gold plated drones with the fat margins needed to buy lobbyists. Also I see much of the US Army as a make work program / pseudo welfare system still carrying on the great traditions of McNamara's morons.
As the US declines it is in China's interest to wait and it is in the US interest to initiate the conflict while it can still potentially win. Taiwan is simply a way of getting the US to act in the ways China wants them to, there is no need for them to actually invade Taiwan to make that happen, but they do have to convincingly pretend like they will by constantly harassing them.
> not many people are taking credit for the war with Iran - so I take that as a sign of failure.
Certainly an interesting point to think about, but I don't think it passes the smell test if for nothing else but that we've done successful things in the past and partisan politics will simply define those in a negative light purely to create wedge issues or distort reality. The President and others have gone way out of their way to claim success, of course it's Donald Trump, but nonetheless there are folks claiming success.
But even so, it's sort of early. How long did it take until George Bush stood on an aircraft carrier and claimed Mission Accomplished? If anything folks are more cautious about claiming success precisely because of this backlash in the past. It's a nice heuristic but I wouldn't over-index on it, especially for anything Donald Trump does. Folks are still claiming failure over Venezuela despite that being a resounding success in all aspects.
> The Pentagon is many years late on drone warfare and the whole incentive structure is set up for gold plated drones with the fat margins needed to buy lobbyists.
Nah don't think so. I think you're just making stuff up here. Of course the Pentagon has historically worked with contractors and there's definitely some fat that needs to be trimmed, but the Pentagon has, certainly in response to the Ukraine war, though of course earlier too, been working on building lower cost drones, interceptors and other capabilities precisely because folks know this. New companies have been standing up to build cheaper, less complex missile and drone systems. It takes a little bit of time without intense pressure (a real real war) to do these things. We do tend to over-pay, but you could just argue other countries are actually under-paying. We know our stuff works, and we have demonstrated that time and time again. Maybe it's worth paying extra for that. Who wants to cut corners on fighter jets or missiles?
I similarly reject, though to a lesser extent, the claims that laymen make around China and military corruption and purges and so forth. It can be true, but it's not the determining factor in how well the organization operates and is likely to, perhaps be systematic, but not likely to have such a large effect that it matters in the long run. It's just like hypersonic missiles. Hypersonic missile this hypersonic missiles that, drones this drones that - it's just what you hear on the news and folks for some reason misunderstand that other countries, whether that's China, Iran, or the United States can and do take action to address challenges and new capabilities. The world isn't stagnate. Your general lack of knowledge or awareness of military capabilities doesn't mean they don't exist or aren't in development or being tested. Obviously countries keep these things secret to the extent possible too.
> As the US declines it is in China's interest to wait and it is in the US interest to initiate the conflict while it can still potentially win. Taiwan is simply a way of getting the US to act in the ways China wants them to, there is no need for them to actually invade Taiwan to make that happen, but they do have to convincingly pretend like they will by constantly harassing them.
The military buildup that China is doing demonstrates that you're wrong, or at least they seriously believe they need the option to invade Taiwan. You're right about what China could do here, which is wait the US out by establishing increasingly dependent and positive ties between Taiwan and China and focus on a peaceful reunification via economic and political means. The problem is that Xi Jingping's viewpoint is more in line with Vladimir Putin's in that they are old people and they want to do something grand before they die and they have massive egos, like their buddy Donald Trump. That leads to mistakes, as Putin saw with Ukraine.
To point out what should have been pretty obvious, China has to do the military build up if it wants the US to believe they will actually invade Taiwan. It’s a costly signal, and it has to be costly or it won’t be believed, sure sending a memo would have been cheaper but without also doing the work no one would believe them.
> dumb ass gas station beaver and a bunch of MAGA folks and furries
How on earth are those three things supposed to be equivalent? One is a gas station chain with an animal as part of its logo, which is uh, a normal thing? Are we against gas stations in general or animals used for branding or what?
Another is a group of people who like to dress up and/or pretend to be animals with their friends, the worst thing you can say about that is it's unusual.
The third thing is a bunch of death cultists who are scared of everything and willing to worship a dictator.
This is some hardcore false equivalence.
> because we started hating ourselves and pitted one another against one another, whether that’s by class, race, or gender
started? Were you raised in some kind of cave that prevented access to recorded human history? We've been hating each other for all sorts of reasons for quite longer than we have written records.
And it's funny, this kind of argument is usually made by people who are mad that injustices are being pointed out.
Well I didn’t say they were equally stupid, I just said all of those cultural trends were stupid.
People can do what they want, but if you’re going to have a conversation about the collapse of a country, well people who get excited about a gas station and drive an hour away to fill up on gas - yep it’s just a gas station - are part of the reason for that decline.
> tarted? Were you raised in some kind of cave that prevented access to recorded human history?
I don’t think Americans have hated each other or been this divided in quite some time. I don’t even think Americans hated each this much during the Civil War. You’re missing the context of the conversation here. Of course people have always had conflict, but the nature and intensity of that conflict can vary.
People literally started a war and fought it for 4 years, killing more americans than basically anything else we could categorize as a single event, entirely to preserve their right to hold other americans as slaves, and you think people are hating more now?
It seems a tad unlikely.
Equating some hypothetical people enjoying a buccees with the collapse of a country is, and there's really no other way to say this, profoundly ignorant.
Why countries collapse, hell, what collapse even means, could fill several dozen books, but "rule of law" is a real big part of what makes a functioning country.
It's the difference between something like an actual state and a feudal fiefdom.
> People literally started a war and fought it for 4 years, killing more americans than basically anything else we could categorize as a single event, entirely to preserve their right to hold other americans as slaves, and you think people are hating more now? It seems a tad unlikely.
I think you’re overreacting to how many people felt during the Civil War, at least from what I’ve read or internalized over my lifetime. There really was, quite literally brother versus brother and while there was incredible disagreement and violence I think folks then still recognized one another as Americans at the base level. Today MAGA and Leftists hate each other so much they’ve lost even that. Another way to think about it is, how many veterans do you know who hate Iraq or Iraqis, or hate Afghanistan or Afghani people (Taliban aside)? Not many, right? Vietnam - we actually won the peace there. Japan? Germany? Folks get over wartime violence surprisingly quickly. But I think the way far-right fascists MAGAland and far-left communist lefty land feel about each other is genuine hatred and it's a bit different. Obviously one may disagree.
> Equating some hypothetical people enjoying a buccees with the collapse of a country is, and there's really no other way to say this, profoundly ignorant.
Well they’re not hypothetical. There was one that just opened in Ohio. Hour long lines to get gas. If someone is going to suggest that the US is collapsing or throw around this late-stage capitalism nonsense, well, it’s only fair to point out examples of that collapse.
The Rule of Law is for the most part doing just fine in the US. It’ll never be perfect, we aren’t an ethnostate nor do we share a common ideology to make things easy. The only area where we really are failing these days seems to be traffic enforcement.
> while there was incredible disagreement and violence I think folks then still recognized one another as Americans at the base level. Today MAGA and Leftists hate each other so much they’ve lost even that.
Mother of absurdity. You should read what they wrote and said back then. And how much violence they enacted.
And no, slaves were not recognized as americans or even humans. The abolitionists were hated more in the south.
The desire to impose bizarre-o world regulations ... hand in hand with Big Tech is really strange.
And we have to have some awkward legal agreement with every site and it's cookie banner, every damn site I visit.
BUT ... god forbid we just straight up come up with some rules about what a site can or can't collect or sell / share ...
When I was young I figured I'd be happy when people who understood computers / the internet were finally in power, but I was wrong about what the result would be.
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