Posts by JohnDyson

ICE-tracking app developer sues Trump admin after Apple spikes the software

Re: Land of the Not So Free!

An artifact of American federal law is that assisting lawbreakers has serious penalties. The first thing that an illegal immigrant does in the US is to violate the law. If someone comes for personal benefit or profit, then isn't illegal entry very disrespectful toward the government and American people/Green Card/legal immigrant? If an immigrant offers themselves for legal entry, then lots of benefits can start to happen for them. It seems that a lot of the reason for illegal entry comes from not knowing or understanding the effects of their choices. There are coyotes that take advantage of the unwise shortcuts, ending up with lots of child rape and trafficking, and other horrible things. This is outside the purview and protection of the government, UNTIL NOW. A lot of children are being tracked down and being made much more safe. This bypassing legal status has all kinds of negative consequences, and even if someone is encouraged to do an illegal act, they are still culpable. The previous administration apparently encouraged a lot of death and trafficking by their allowing irresponsible shortcuts. Immigration IS encouraged, and should be, but Illegal immigration is just... unwise and Illegal, both for the short term and long term personal status. Join the country by standing in line, instead of jumping the queue.

I must modify my statement to make it apply to 'in this case', because Trump does normally enforce the immigration laws. There are rather unpleasant federal penalties for helping someone violate the federal laws. Answering a federal lawsuit can be very expensive, often breaking the person. It is showing grace for the government to avoid lawsuits against an otherwise innocent person, just making a singular misjudgment. I don't agree with everything that is going on, but following the law is important to help avoid anarchy. Cheating (skipping the immigration queues) is unfair against a lot of different people. Just get in the queue, as it offers the potential for green card status or applying for citizenship. (Sorry for the previous overly short response.)

Yes, if they don't like the law, then change it. There are serious penalties for breaking some of the immigration laws, but so far Trump has the grace not to enforce them. It is best to offer a chance for a law breaker to change their ways, instead of hitting them with a sledgehammer.

Unlike most of Musk's other ventures, Starship keeps it together for Flight Test 10

Re: "eventually reaching the surface and exploding as expected"

Starship is doing new things and things are being learned from failures. In fact, the recent launch had planned weak points. Few companies/governments have even gone to the trouble of landing their boosters. Some of the Falcon 9's have lasted for many launches, and even if not reused for financial efficiency, that aspect has purpose in developing experience. SpaceX JUST MIGHT have to rescue the current American space efforts again, yet with such huge resources, why can't other companies/NASA do it? Why so many screw-ups with human payloads? Is NASA really testing the equipment that they purchase? Is the vendor adequately testing the product? Are they flying people after only a few flight tests? I don't expect SpaceX to be perfect, but some of the other space vendors "starts with a B' should be doing much better.

Stack Overflow simply bans folks who don't want their advice used to train AI

Could the right to be forgotten be implemented by making technical responses anonymous instead of deleting the entire bit of knowledge? Of course, the credibility might be decreased, but at least the knowledge might be retained? (The credibility might be implemented by a poster credibility score totally replacing the name of the poster?)

Gelsinger splits Intel in two to advance foundry vision

I have seen this before in big companies. Possibly the first step to a total divorce, a very big example would be AT&T and Lucent. I was at AT&T Bell Labs when it happened, and could see the separation causing more and more bureaucracy needed to work 'across the border'. Part of the goal was to make sure that the projects were separated before the big split. I had a project fail (at the exec VP decision level) because of the need for microelectronics technology from Lucent for a big project while working in the Labs. In earlier days, there would have been no separation.

Lets see what happens to Intel... Might be interesting over the next 5yrs.

Let's take a look at those US Supreme Court decisions and how they will affect tech

Re: This is somewhat weird...

Whether or not she is personally opposed to gay marriage, she openly serves LBGTQRST or whatever people in HER business. However, she was asked to represent a situation and create content (speech) that she doesn't feel comfortable to do. She did NOT decline to serve her customer until that service became speech. For example, a stronger variant of the situation that the business ownder declined to participate in: maybe I'd be very happy to help a friend who is gay, but I shouldn't be required to participate in a gay pride parade. Of course, the work product was not participating in a parade, but was something similar that it might be construed as advocacy (speech) that the businessperson didn't feel comforbable about. Maybe another way to look at it, but not technically exactly the same: I am happy to have a 'best friend' who is gay, but don't want to have lots of PDA in my presence.

I personally don't care if someone is gay, but I don't want to actively participate in the lifestyle or represent myself as supporting it. That is mostly what the ruling is about, NOT that she would/would not serve a gay person, because SHE IS HAPPY TO DO SO.

Maybe, someday soon, corporate virtue signaling will come to an end. Using merit and kindness for hiring and advancement will go much further than the new form of institutionalized racism/sexism that is often called DEI. A modified form DEI that has benefit and is truly based on some sort of kindness for all might be a good thing. However, it appears and is very clear, that most of these misguided new discriminatory 'anti-discrimination' programs are only hurtful for alll... Devaluting those who 'benefit' and damaging the self-worth of those with merit. (BTW, I had always been on the high end of the meritc scale, solving problems, developing new implementations & tech that my co-worker friends had trouble with...) It would have made no difference my race, gender, preferences, etc -- merit really does work very well. If you want to help minorities, then PLEASE improve the K through 9 education in the US... That is a good first start to give all of our friends a 'leg up.' Cheapening standards, cheapening those who are supposedly helped, and making inferior choices based on something other than merit and given a 'leg up' to those who might have shown poor character attributes (felons, violent people, discriminatory people based on language usage, etc) is only self destructive.

Threads versus Twitter: Shouldn't we be happy the wheels are falling off antisocial social media?

Re: Freedom is an illusion

Everything has reasonable limits, even 'freedom'. The US Constitution partially describes/defines one reasonable set of rules in US society. It doesn't describe absolute freedom, nor does it describe tyrrany. It attempts to describe something better than 'rule by fiat', avoiding fiat by a single leader, avoiding 'rule by democracy' or other 'unwise' situations. If change to the 'rules of the road' is needed, then a purposefully difficult process can modify those rules. All too often, the legislature (for example) is very lazy, thereby encouraging the expedient 'executive order' or 'judicial activism'. Anyway, freedom, whatever it is, does need to have limits/rules defined. There is no absolute freedom, and there shouldn't be. Somehow, freedom should be 'maximzed', such that everyone can participate, and that includes *government* NOT taking freedom from one person to give advantage to another. In the US, the effect of the Constitutional limiations for business/people is much more nuanced that the rather more strict controls over the Federal, then State gov'ts. (Again, this is somewhat US specific, but some of these ideas about limiting government might be helpful elsewhere also.)

Re: Freedom is an illusion

Musk is the 'incompetent parasite' who is the only one leading a revolution in space delivery technology. Also, he has helped to expose the gov't attacks against various aspects of Constitutionally protected freedom of speech. Whatever flaws Musk might have, these two items make it very easy to mostly give him a pass. Alas, most people nowadays don't seem to understand 'freedom of speech', even those living in the otherwise admirable EU and UK. Read the Consittution, and try to understand what the gov't had been doing, against NON CRIMINAL speech, think about it just for a while. Don't hold onto political right/left biases, look at the need for that fundamental freedom. Don't even try to compare with the 2nd amendment matters, those will mess most people up, because the 2nd amendment is not adequately nuanced by itself. You don't have to like or agree with what someone says, but it is best for everyone involved that non-criminal speech be protected. The current US executive leadership & bureaucracy has not been doing so.

Re: Freedom is an illusion

It cost Musk a lot of money to expose the Constitutional abuses by the US gov't. I don't know if that was his original goal, but it did happen. It does seem that Twitter will have lost its dominance, but the earlier incarnation was so defective and unreliable. Some aspects of the actions by the old Twitter were beneficial, but the gov't involvement and lack of balance negated all of that benefit. I applaud Musk for helping to support the 1st amendment of the US Constitution.