cogman

@cogman@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When old people tell you about "the good old days" and how great things used to be⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Truly some excellent adventures were had in those boxes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This queue for the new swasticar⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You kidding? This is probably the best use of cops. Instead of harassing minorities they’ve created a human shield that will scare off people from purchasing Nazi mobiles.

  If tax money is going to cops, they might as well be doing the job of a protest but more effectively.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fucking leeches⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  if money had an expiration date.

  That’d just lead into investment into non-monetary things. For example, buying precious metals or bonds or stocks or property and selling them as needed.

  To actually fix problems with wealth disparity, you need a wealth or property tax.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fucking leeches⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This is mythical thinking. Frankly, there’s just not that many products that need inventing, particularly that need a factory. We are past the era where a revolutionary bread slicer will change society. Most of the actual advancements we are seeing come from grants into general scientific research. Not from some lone Einstein with a vision.

  What actually is happening is some of these discoveries are very good and they ultimately get scooped up and patented by some corporate entity that thought the research was marketable.

  Recognizing that reality, that innovation basically never comes from the founders of a company, should really lead you to understand what’s broken about the US economy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it possible to design a (pen and paper) cipher that is secure against government cryptanalysis for at least 10 years?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  No, not possible.

  The closet we’ve seen are the zodiac killer’s scribbles and they lasted as long as they did because he made a mistake (and frankly because no security researcher was really trying).

  Modern cryptography works because it shuffles data around so much that it appears random. There’s simply no way to do those sorts of operations with just pen and paper.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨hate your job? how about you die and still have to do it⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  it is more obvious in the book compared to the film.

  The film was loosely based on the book and was explicitly written as a critique on fascism and the book. Verhoeven and Neumeier have said as much.

  But also, I don’t think you know what fascism is. There’s always people in a fascist state that have a good quality of life. The question is what happens to people that don’t fit in the state mold? What happens to enemies of the state? Who gets classified as an enemy of the state? Who holds power or can hold power in the state? The fact that to be a citizen you’d have to start by joining the state party is de-facto a fascist state.

  In the film, the enemies were the Arachnids. War started because of the colonization of arachnid territories and extermination was the next order of business. Even though Arachnids are depicted as being thinking and intelligent beings. That was the point of the final scene “It’s afraid!”. Rather than try to understand or communicate with the alien/foreigner/etc, the government prioritized extermination and learning to make it fear them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨hate your job? how about you die and still have to do it⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Robocop is a scathing critique on capitalism. What’s nuts is O doing think everyone gets that. It’s literally the underlying theme of the movie.

  Same thing happens with starship troopers. People miss the fact it’s a critique of fascism and colonialism even though the movie ends with Nazi uniforms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mozilla is eliminating its advocacy division, which fought for a free and open web⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Unfortunately, the web is pretty much captured by google/apple at this point. I don’t think it’ll be long before gecko and spidermonkey die. When that happens, we are looking at a web that is basically over-fitted for webkit and v8. Which, unfortunately, is exactly what lead us to the bad old days of internet explorer (Ironically now just a webkit skin).