hahooooo · HackerTrans

Or pay with both, like the NYT (print edition) which costs money _and_ comes with ads, Windows 10 (assuredly not free, the OEM has to pay for it)

hahooooo

10 anni fadiscuss

My main point is that people tend to view everyone as themselves. So intellectuals tend to view everyone as intellectuals.

So we think that if only I'd have guaranteed income, I'd finally get around to fixing Firefox, or making an Open Source Google, or whatever. Therefore, it would be better for society if people would be free to leave "useless work" and innovate instead.

But once you see the "real world," you realize that it's not going to happen. Most people would just sit at home playing CS or chatting on FB.

Now once humanity is retired, and of no more use (singularity), then sure, why not. It'll be the AIs innovating everything, running everything, and no one will be doing anything useful anyways.

But until that point, I don't know if we can realistically afford three quarters of the population to just go into early retirement.

hahooooo

10 anni fadiscuss

In other words, the tragedy of the commons.

My biggest concern with the UBI is that looking back at societies with UBI (such as the upper class Europe of the Middle Ages through the 19th century), for every Newton or Voltaire were many more unknown nobles who spent their life grooming their mustaches.

I don't believe our society is that much better now.

hahooooo

10 anni fadiscuss

The danger I see with UBI, is (in addition to possible inflation, etc.) is that commentators on HN tend to be of higher education, curious, and simply "hackers". Most people here would love to be payed money so they could sit and program some cool OSS, start a new company or simply change the world.

For them, UBI is fantastic. How many more Googles/GNUs/Apples would there be if engineers could quit existing companies and form, all while guaranteed basic sustenance.

The problem is that there are a lot of people who don't care for that. You pay them money, they'll sit playing Video games, sports, or simply bum around.

And then you start having issues convincing people to go for higher education (even assuming its free).

Wait, what about lower education?

Go to school, get good grades, or else you'll ... get a livable wage anyways?

Why should I write essays when I can play video games instead?

Then, until everything is automatable, you still need to get people to work under the hot sun, picking potatoes.

If you have a livable wage without it, why would you go? And how much will the farmer need to pay workers to go?

hahooooo

10 anni fadiscuss

The issue is like this.

I load https://webmail.example.com.

I see my email.

My ISP doesn't see my email.

The NSA (or anyone else who can MITM https, such as my workplace, college, etc.) can effectively turn it into http, and see the content.

We need to fix that.

So I write an encryption library in JS, loaded from https://webmail.example.com . It loads the email through an AJAX call from https://webmail.example.com, decrypts it, and displays it.

The only issue is that whoever can MITMed the connection can also modify the JS file to send the key to a C&C server.

So:

"Dumb" ISP can't read #1 mail

"MITM" ISP can read #2 mail

So what's the gain?

The only concern is that it's an active attack vs a passive attack, so no plausible deniability.

But in most MITM scenarios, you don't need plausible deniability.

1. Your workplace computer and the connection is owned by them, so they can do what they want with it.

2. Dictatorships give themselves whatever powers they want

3. The NSA has enough side-channel attacks to exploit.

So in which situation will a "JS" encryption help?

hahooooo

10 anni fadiscuss

Is there any advantage in using a functional language when programming non-mathematically related code?

I see how it can help write Neural Networks, AI, financial code, etc. But if you know Python,Ruby,PHP,Java and Lisp (well), why would you choose to write a blog, webstore, webmail client or social media* app (which probably is about 90% of what people actually do) in Lisp over the four three?

I'll tell you why I would chose the first four:

1. Large community. 2. Many more libraries. 3. Easier to hire.

*Except for (perhaps) a small spam-block/feed ai module

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