I still don't understand though why people do delivery pizza when decent-quality frozen pizza is often far cheaper than delivery, and it comes out of one's oven piping hot. Unless we're considering folks without ovens.
The language of addiction is psychological language that may leave people feeling hopeless, particularly if they view themselves as biologically-chemically determinative beings.
Perhaps the language of idolatry as used in the Bible (reflecting thousands of years in the Jewish and Christian traditions) may be more helpful. What many see as addictions may in fact be an underlying spiritual condition of serving something as an idol, or a God-substitute. The only way to break that is repentance, turning from the idolatry to the living God. But this gives hope, because as people we are able to do exactly that.
We are more that a bag of matter and energy. We can exercise responsibility over our actions.
The doctrine if sin and the language if idolatry actually can give hope, as the possibility of repentance and belief is always there.
And this in spite of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the US strongly recommending against using SMS as a 2nd factor authentication since 2016!
I'm pretty sure you can deal with 2fa on Kai OS feature phones. They also include Gmail, Google maps, and WhatsApp access... on a tiny screen where you won't get sucked in for hours.
However, they also come with a ton of tracking, and are a disaster for privacy.
So is this basiclly a fully peer-to-peer application, like bittorrent clients?
Or something like bisq (https://bisq.network) when the program runs locally peer to peer and hosts all user data locally, but still pings oracle servers for outside market price data?
Back in 2010, these two stop-motion shorts were each shot on the Nokia N8:
Dot [1]
Gulp [2]
Then in 2011, a short film and a feature-length were shot on the Nokia N8:
Splitscreen: A Love Story [3]
Olive [4]
Oh, and back when Apple announced their first iPhone, Steve Lichfield was already filming his Phone Show episode 22 on a smartphone, the Nokia N93. [5] For years he filmed with an N8, then a Nokia 808, and eventually Apple's camera tech caught up and he finished out his Phone Show filming on an iPhone.
Are you ruling our hardcover books that still get written and published? I'm on email mailing lists of two small/Independent publishers, and they still make books.
And where I live, there's a book binders workshop on my street.
And my memory of Florida law (when I was signing an apartment rental contract 4 years ago) was that any electronic signature agreed to by the contracting parties was valid. So I simply typed my name in the contract, emailed it to my landlord, and we were done.
Of course, I also used https:/.opentimestamps.org to store the hash of our contract on bitcoin's block chain, because that way we both had proof that the contract existed in a certain form on that date. (I never needed that proof, because he was a good landlord, and I paid rent on time.)
Such as the politicization of everything, or the abandoning of teaching basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills in favor of woke political agendas, or perhaps due to the hollowing out of cultural/religious consensus and the corresponding doubt's that there is any unifying factor in the academy.
After all, universities were born in the high to late middle ages out of the conviction that knowledge found its unifying point in the Word of God's revelation of Jesus, but today the vast majority of (western) universities have long abandoned the pursuit of truth. Theology, once seen as the queen of the sciences, is generally regarded as less useful and less true than fiction writing.
Probem is, at least in terms of the climate debate, climate alarmism and mainstream media says that there's scientific consensus, but at least when I read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 5th report in 2015, they didn't even predict how much doubling atmospheric CO2 would warm the planet (as they had in their previous reports)---and that with no clear explanation. However, following their footnote to the scientific detail report, they noted a lack of consensus between the computer-based models ("catastrophe immenent!") and the latest observation based models.
When I combine that with prominent climatologists like Judith Curry changing her position when presented with observation-based evidence that countered her climate predictions[1], it leaves me deeply skeptical of any and all alarmists.
I haven't taken time yet to read the IPCC's latest report, but I've heard that it has the same lack of consensus between the computer models (full of alarmist assumptions in how they were programmed) and observation-based studies.
I firmly believed we must follow observational data above computer simulations... Its just better science.
> * Software needs maintenance. You can't just build an app an call it a day, you need to employ a team to maintain it continuously. You can build a massive, gargantuan bridge and maintain it maybe every few years/half a decade to keep it safe for 30+ years, you cannot do that in software.
> * Unlike what outsider think, software -- even "boring" CRUD/web software -- is still very much a research project. If you ask a civil engineer how to build a bridge, they'll tell you about all the techniques that were developed over the many many decades.
As a nonpracticing civil engineer, you're underestimating the ongoing maintence that goes into any large bridge.
Also, though the techniques may be more established, every bridge must still be designed to fit the specific characteristics of its local geology and geography. But come to think of it, fundamental computer science algorithms are pretty well established, like bridge-building techniques. Software engineering is simply fitting the code to each unique problem, as bridge design fits a bridge to each unique place.
Cash is king for privacy. Pay with cash as often as possible. Walk or bicycle. Write paper letters, mail them with cash-purchased stamps. Looks tuff up at the library. Use an analog film camera, physical maps and a compass to navigate.
If you need to type, get an old mechanical typewriter, and lots of paper for when you mistype and have to redo the entire page...
Or, learn encryption and prefer open/free software solutions as much as possible.
In the US 2020 elections, there are plenty of convincing explanations of the mishaps[1], yet Trump's base couldn't be bothered to take time to read the explanations. I say that based on my conversations with friends who still belive the election was stolen, but when I ask them if they'd read any of the detailed legislative investigations or court proceedings (rather than simply listening to their media echo chambers), they always end the conversation saying no, they haven't.
Republican Trump-supporting committee chair McBroom summarized the above report, saying,
“Our clear finding is that citizens should be confident the results represent the true results of the ballots cast by the people of Michigan.... There is no evidence presented at this time to prove either significant acts of fraud or that an organized, wide-scale effort to commit fraudulent activity was perpetrated in order to subvert the will of Michigan voters.”
McBroom added: “The Committee strongly recommends citizens use a critical eye and ear toward those who have pushed demonstrably false theories for their own personal gain.”
Much of it is public record. And if you don't have time to wade through the data, the court cases Trump's campaign litigated provide a wealth of one the record, sworn testimony and evidence.[1]
I was amazed to read, for example, in Pennsylvania that when Rudy Giuliani was sworn under oath he told the judge that they were not alleging fraud had occurred in the election, yet in the media and in public he was loudly crying "Fraud!"
I agree things have become far more contentious since 2020. Trump's campaign used that controversy to fund-raise for "legal defense" but the small print in his campaign emails I received also said the funds could be used to pay down his campaign debts.
If you haven't read the Michigan Senate report (result of an 8-month bipartisan investigation chaired by a Trump Republican), please do. It cleared the air and answered tons of questions for me, seeing the evidence they found and realizing that there are simple, understandable reasons explaining what happened and also explaining the ruckus that resulted from so many people crying fraud but being unwilling to take time themselves to investigate the facts of the matter.