I was going to say that you can choose to not install the antivirus but unfortunately this crap and similar come installed on so many laptops. If the HW is compatible I suggest to format the whole thing and install Linux.
> If those non-natives don't speak proper Dutch or with a heavy accent I could understand these parents, kids pick this up and it will influence their learning and future prospects negatively.
It's more complex. Learning in your native language has a strong effect in your ability to learn. For very intelligent kids this is no problem and may be actually good, but the aggregate effect is that non native kids will lag behind. Also immigrant parents tend to have lower education and worse jobs, with more demanding schedules and less time and energy to monitor closely their children and this also has a strong effect. A few inmigrant children is no problem at all but if there is a huge percentage then the academic level will drop. This will transform into just another force pushing segregation that will feed back the whole cycle.
So several fundamental forces gave us the centralized internet, at least for the time being. Trusting a few players has never given resistance to these forces and so blockchain doesn't alter the equilibrium.
What are the forces pushing for blockchain? Some will say greed, and of course at an individual level greed has something to do with it, but greed has always been there. Greed is part of humanity. What is specific to blockchain? Maybe just the desire for decentralization.
When I was young I pirated everything but now I have paid the few proprietary programs I use. I prefer to spend some hundred on licenses, maybe a thousand in total if I sum videogames and have some hygiene on the computers I use to access my bank, private information and social networks accounts.
Cuba and Iran have been under sanctions for a long time. Dictators are very interested in not losing their jobs. I think, from the comfort of my home, that there are two paths out of a dictatorship: one is military and involves a brutal invasion of the country with the willingness to stay there for decades, the other is a progressive improvement of life conditions and gentle external influence
The issue was that RMS did not conform to some ideology and so he was bullied. The fact that he is wrong or right about his opinions it's not even relevant. We have normalized ad hominem attacks, amplified through social networks. Reputation was everything in medieval science and we are moving in that direction.
I actually read the Scientific American article because I have previously read Scott Aaronson's blog and he doesn't looks to me like someone who would write anything before thinking about it.
The SA article is a complete piece of crap. I just hope this doesn't goes the same way it did when RMS asked to give Marvin Minsky the benefit of doubt.
That's an interesting point to make and defendable but these declarations mentioned in another comment, I will assume to be true, coming from Trudeau, Canada's president:
“They don’t believe in science/progress and are very often misogynistic and racist....This leads us, as a leader and as a country, to make a choice: Do we tolerate these people?"
I have taken both shots, and will take the third but these declarations are appropriate for a mad man, not a country leader.
I've been thinking lately about jobs and motivation. Some people will always be unmotivated, that's an statistical fact. What about the rest?
I used to think that the relation between unmotivated employees and their corporation was "parasitic" but I'm switching to an alternate framework, less influenced by corporate narrative. Maybe unmotivated employees are the antibodies of society, infiltrating companies no longer serving a useful purpose. The company will fight with its most powerful weapon: money. But money is to happiness what sugar to nutrition and eventually the humanity inside people wins. I hope it cheers you up next time you feel down at work: you are still human, a soldier in this fight.
What is the solution? Of course I have answers for this (too). Destroy/split the companies. They accumulate too much money and power and have no idea how to spend it.
Regarding lawyers or accountants I think they should limit the duration of their careers. Maybe 20 years is the most a human being should be in that profession because it's obvious it has long term lasting effects. Now, I'm talking seriously here: we should promote career mobility.