This reads like the mental hoops someone who works for or invests into Meta comes up with to resolve their cognitive dissonance.
You might as well have said that without advertising, we wouldn't have charities, freedom of thought, and literature: the argument is as strong and might make you feel even better about yourself.
Oh, turns out that you did say that advertising solved slavery in another comment. Carry on, mate.
As far as I know, it hasn't happened, not even once.
Your objection appeals to emotions, not to reason. The very kind of objection that has enabled fossil fuels to be seen as less dangerous. FYI, nuclear energy has killed single digits of people. Fossil fuels kill around 10M annually through pollution alone.
Granted, your lament aims to make people privilege clean energy over nuclear, but in nature it is still the kind of thought-terminating fearmongering that gets us surveillance to protect children, so I object on principle.
The US has been the monster for most of the world for the last 70 years. It's shocking that most Americans still don't see that.
The Middle-East's bad record on human rights can be traced back to in large part to the meddling of the US, because it serves the interests of Israel and because of oil. In the time of Nasser, the Middle-East was a different place.
They probably are aware of nuclear waste and of the modalities of dealing with it, and still believe that not investing into nuclear is shooting yourself in the foot.
FYI, a typical 1GW nuclear plant produces 30 tons, or 10m3, of high-level waste. Germany uses ~500TWh of electricity per year. So Germany could replace all their electricity generation with 60 nuclear plants and would need to find space for 1800 tons or 5km3 of waste per year.
For comparison, German landfills can accommodate 70M metric tons per year.
France, a country famous for its investment into nuclear, is not covered in nuclear waste, and does not seem to have any issue disposing of it safely.
Nuclear has its disadvantages, but painting the many people who advocate for it on HN as delusional or ignorant is not very respectful.
This is the weirdest rant I've read from you, in all my years on HN, and will colour my future reading of your contributions.
Unless I'm mistaken, you seem to view the world in terms of race, tribalism, and might-makes-right: even if those you accept to be the unfortunate bystanders are different from who they were historically, I'll concede that you are fully in line with the American tradition.
And same as with the pre-2008 (per your comment) American tradition, it's an ideology that will make the world a worse place. Shame.
Just yesterday I needed this and resorted to running the harness in a sprite[0] in a proot distro[1] in termux: while I appreciated the symbolism of recurrence, it was a pain to set up. Will have a look.
He fills a niche, particularly successfully ,but the required substrate exists in every society. In societies that superficially reward other qualities, these people mold themselves to fill other niches that provide power: politics, tech, press. When the niche appears in Canada, or Germany, or the UK, these people will come out of the woodworks wearing whatever face they need to at the time.
Granted, America's been leading on encouraging the worse angels of our nature for the last, what, 70 years? But these personalities exist everywhere.
I think those people are largely in your imagination. You seem to be assuming a whole lot of dark motives or unsavoury opinions in reaction to people simply saying the EU is not perfect.
Unrelated to this chat, but I wonder what your political leaning is, just to understand where this aggressive defense of the EU is coming from. I assume you're not left or right, not radical in any direction. Would you describe yourself as moderate/centrist/Starmer's Labour/Macronite?
Exactly. As demonstrated by several countries pronouncing themselves against it every time this comes up.
If the government of Denmark really wants to implement this, let them, but the idea that a tiny country's officials, elected by a population of 6M that their media managed to convince of the utopia to come when privacy doesn't exist, manages to make another 450M in 26 countries comply to their will (not to call it delusion) is frightening.
Would be interested in seeing your sources for this. I've yet to see evidence that this has the significant upsides that would, definitely not justify, but at least explain, the push towards limiting fundamental freedoms.
There's a reason "who will think of the children" is ridiculed: there's no evidence that this is the intent or that there are outcomes. Everything I've read to date shows that surveillance is not effective in curbing CSAM, that the people (and especially organised crime) that engage into such activity are not using plain text and twitter to talk to each other, that those solutions that are known to have outcomes are not being invested in or enforced, etc.
I can entertain that this idea could be a solution IF done well, but what would be the path to democratic decision-making in this integrated EU? I strongly believe in people organising against the government, I think this is what can lead to change, or at least maintain the fighting spirit going.
The EU is handicapped by its very diversity on this. Imagine the situation where the EU is integrated, and the government wants to pass Chat Control 2.0, or some equally unsavoury measure. Imagine that some people or orgs manage to whip up the people of the Netherlands into protesting in the streets against it: it's extremely unlikely that Poles or Spaniards would be able to build a protest movement on top of that, if they were even aware of it, because of language and national sentiment ("it's just some people over there being angry about whatever, and mainstream media says there's nothing to see there, or that they're evil terrorists, and I don't understand their funny language enough to check").
There are some promising moves towards a EU-wide party in Mera25 for example (if I understand it correctly), but it's ultimately a party for English-speaking, basically well-off, educated, currently left-leaning, young people, which is nothing that one can build a deep movement on.
Not the parent, but chill with the aggressive tone.
When you vote in your elections, you almost certainly know who's going to lead the country.
Not so with the EU: look up Spitzenkandidat method and the deviations from it, including von der Leyen in 2019 being parachuted into her post not based on any vote.
I've never seen anyone ask for the dissolution of the EU in chat control threads, and I read every one of them.
What I see people (Europeans) lamenting is how undemocratic the EU is. As much as I think von der Leyen should be imprisoned, the issue is not the people in the government, but the institution itself. The Commission and the Council are the ones pushing these things, every time.
The people in government are bad, and there's no reason whatsoever to think that'll improve amy time soon: what prevents bad people from doing bad things is the regulatory apparatus of checks and balances, which the EU very much lacks (in parts, granted). Worse, it has introduced US style corruption (or "lobbying") into countries that historically lacked it.
If Chat Control 2.0 passes, given the general direction this would be showing, I'd very much understand people wanting to exit from the EU and cut the amount of undemocratic bullshit they have to contend with.
But to return to your point, when something people strongly reject happens in their country, they do, rightfully, advocate for the dissolution of that government. Much harder to do with unelected bureaucrats sheltering in another country.
I think American culture wars would be a great meme (in the original sense of viral ideas) without any billionaires or politicians pushing it, simply because they are perfectly marketable, appeal to our desire for outrage, and can be weaponised to their advantage by attention/power-hungry parts of the population.
There are many ways to restrain the Council that'd make the EU more democratic: enforce more/full transparency into the Council's decision-making, expand the powers of the Parliament (making the Council into the upper house basically), enforce the Spitzenkandidat method for appointing the EC President, allow referenda on major issues to bypass the Council.
None of these is perfect, but they would streamline the democratic processes within the EU by lessening the role of the Council as intermediary.
I agree that the Council themselves would never allow that however.
I don't disagree with this: I'm saying that unless the power is of the Council and Commission is restrained, all the goodwill of the Parliament is an uphill battle and all people of the Member States are subjected to the corruption of unelected people like Ursula von der Leyden or of (temporarily?) problematic policies of some of the Member States' governments (like Denmark on Chat Control).
Plenty of people do want more surveillance, but that's not why EU politicians are doing this. Seeking to implement surveillance across an entire continent cannot be explained by "the will of the people". Danes might want surveillance for their children, but I can't imagine them lobbying their EU representatives to also protect the children in France as well.
https://hackread.com/encrypted-email-provider-tutanota-backd...
However, Proton is leaving Switzerland, because of changing legislation, to Germany.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46329654