It doesn't really seem the same. In coupon hunting, I might not want to spend time finding a coupon and decide to pay full price. That's my choice.
In surveillance pricing, I wouldn't get that choice, I'd just get a custom-to-me price. I'd have no idea how the company decided to charge me more or less than they charged my friend. And no idea how to change the price I'm offered, so it would be terrible if the algorithm decided to charge me +15% for everything.
>In surveillance pricing, I wouldn't get that choice, I'd just get a custom-to-me price. I'd have no idea how the company decided to charge me more or less than they charged my friend. And no idea how to change the price I'm offered, so it would be terrible if the algorithm decided to charge me +15% for everything.
What's the difference between this and the company charging an absurdly high base price, then your discount is "customized" to you? That's basically how universities work with various scholarship and financial aid schemes working as discounts.
The person who runs archive.today decided to involve me, and every other visitor, in their dispute. They decided to use us to hurt someone else. That's a pretty big sin in my book.
To work, you need to provide a National Insurance number, which is unique and tied to certain state benefits like pension. The idea is you work, pay "national insurance" contributions and accrue "contributing years" to get a state pension later.
The wrinkle is that it doesn't seem to be tied well to identity. Someone working illegally can provide an NI number that's legit but not theirs. Their work accrues to someone else's NI record, but the person getting the extra years probably never notices and the person working under their NI number doesn't care because they aren't entitled to a state pension anyway, they just want to work now.
I've been thinking about whether "$some_country rape gangs" seems racist to me. I've come down on "yes".
The reason might seem odd. But it ocurred to me that if you want to use immigration to reduce crime, including rape, the obvious solution is to ban all male immigration.
That shocked me because it seems so wildly discriminatory. Yes, most violent crimes are committed by men. But very few men commit violent crimes. Banning male immigration would punish a large group for the appalling actions of a few. Making it about "$some_country's men" doesn't seem a whole lot better. It's still unjust to punish someone for someone else's crime.
If anyone is curious about the exercise, I recommend trying it. It was disconcerting to sit with the idea of banning male immigration, really seriously consider it and realise how viscerally shocked I was by the idea.
Edit: for context, in the UK right now, phrases like "rape gangs" are part of the debate/argument about immigration.
Your solution of banning male immigration makes perfect sense to me. Maybe not ban it entirely but at least ensure a 1-1 ratio of men to women (male surplus has a tendency to turn countries into shitholes).
Disallowing someone from immigrating is not a punishment because there is no right to immigration anyway. In fact I believe we should go even further and see immigrants as investments. If the immigrant is unlikely to have a net positive tax contribution (or at least not being a rapist, for a more realistic target), I don't see any reason to allow him or her to be here. If you accept this idea, there is nothing wrong with training a neural network on characteristics of existing immigrants to predict the future value of a particular potential immigrant.
The Grooming Gangs feature a lot of nationalities, but some more than others.
There's nothing racist about the facts. How one responds to it can indeed be racist -- ie. "all people of one of said nationalities are like these ones" would be racist. But observing that a nationality of immigrants are vastly overrepresented is just using your eyes to observe reality.
"Approximately 1 million a year net" is completely true. In 2023 the UK's net migration was 906,000. But for context I'll add that it was a historic high and in 2024 net migration fell to 431,000.
> they also made the news for dumping particularly large volumes of sewage into rivers
Yes and they have been fined for doing so, thus proving my point. These companies have statutory obligations. See the Water Industry Act 1991 and subsequent legislation.
Well sewage has to be dumped (especially in storm conditions), and the water companies have licences to do so. However Thames was found to be in breach of the license, so were fined.
Many people claim these things happen because "shareholders" however it was completely widespread practice to dump sewage before privatisation and the system is literally designed to do so. This doesn't make it OK, however.
Sewage doesn't have to be dumped. Simply separate your black water and grey water. Storm drains can go to rivers (if the rivers have capacity – if not, it's sometimes easier to give the river more capacity than to build more sewers), and the amount of water in sewage pipes will be independent of the amount of rain.
Sure, the sewers might not currently be designed that way, but that can be changed. (It's a logistical challenge, but it needs to be done.)
Aye, the fact that the WHOLE system would cost trillions to upgrade doesn't stop anyone from upgrading it slowly in this way. The problem will still exist in 50 years, any progress is better than none.
If a sewer system can be designed such that dumping sewage need never occur, you can earmark some of the budget for gradually introducing this property into your sewer system. The more such improvements you make, the less often you'll have to dump sewage, until you never have to. Thames Water could have done this.
Subsequent legislations are EU directives (and associated EU fines), which are not as corrupted as local legislations, and forced the UK to start building the Thames Tideway for instance. The population chose Brexit though.
I'd widen the frame a bit. People scared of losing their jobs might underestimate the usefulness of AI. Makes sense to me, it's the comforting belief. Worth keeping in mind while reading articles sceptical of AI.
But there's another side to this conversation: the people whose writing is pro AI. What's motivating them? What's worth keeping in mind while reading that writing?
> what you’re demanding is that Apple allow you to run your own software on their OS
Yes. I'm not the original commenter, but this is what I expect.
From my POV, the OS exists to virtualise the hardware it runs on. I don't want the OS manufacturer to decide if I'm allowed to have a web browser or play games.
Naive in hindsight, but until game consoles and smartphones came along, it didn't occur to me that an OS would forbid me from installing something.
I would be a bit more careful how I would say compliance.
For example, a coffee maker does have software in there. But it does a job and does it well. There's no cloud garbage, no remote attestation, or much of anything.
To that end, I look at "who can control the device?" If the answer, as someone who paid money for it, and the answer is "the company", then I'm logically not the owner.
Alongside a fraudulent sale, there is also tax fraud by misclassifying these rentals as sales.
I've also seen nobody discussing the tax fraud angle either. We the public are getting cheated as well, from both directions. Its high time we start suing and pressing charges, and making us whole.
> For example, a coffee maker does have software in there. But it does a job and does it well. There's no cloud garbage, no remote attestation, or much of anything.
Man, have you seen coffee makers lately?
just search for "smart <appliance-name>" and you get all cloud garbage and more. Dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, televisions, microwaves, ... what a cesspit
Admittedly a minor point of interest, but the last famine in England happened in 1623 and was local to an area called Westmorland [0]. That was 150 years before the Industrial Revolution, so the 10% figure might not be very reliable.
England was the first nation to escape from famine. A national market began to take shape shortly after the civil war, and the national market transformed traditional famine into a question of high prices. Jethro Tull began his experiments in 1701, and Charles Townsend began taking notes about fertilizer shortly afterwards, and when the public became aware of their work, the Agricultural Revolution began, and then, shortly afterwards, the Industrial Revolution. But obviously, most of the world continued to experience famine into the 1900s.
Channels about autism also disproportionally cover people who are willing to talk about their autism. Recently I've been reading The Lost Girls of Autism. Something that stood out in the anonymous accounts is the fear of being "discovered" and the associated anxiety and depression. Since reading that I'm not super comfortable with the idea of incentivising high-functioning people to hide.
In surveillance pricing, I wouldn't get that choice, I'd just get a custom-to-me price. I'd have no idea how the company decided to charge me more or less than they charged my friend. And no idea how to change the price I'm offered, so it would be terrible if the algorithm decided to charge me +15% for everything.