World News Thread (Politics,whatever)

[Caine]

it seems people are becoming more scientifically illiterate. (or at least are more vocal about it.)

It feels like Idiocracy is starting to become a reality. A lot of it is already happening.

[edit]
I suspect two factors at play here.

• Through social media every idiot has a platform these days (and a closed bubble of followers).
• Religious belief seems to be on the rise again (I suspect due to the spread of Islamic belief and a counter-reaction to it, i.e. strongly entrenching oneself in previously weakly held beliefs).

Unfortunately religion can be a perfect breeding ground for ignorance because it claims to have universal answers (answers which seem to refute clear evidence for some people). I would love to see some numbers on this hypothesis.

space stuff happening here:

What's up with that video title? CRS-15 Launch. This is a space walk not a launch. Current CRS-15 launch date is NET 29th of June.
[/edit]

 

[klapse]

Well I don't really want to start a new thread here, but please help this go viral as HARD AND FAST AS YOU CAN.

https://savetheinternet.info/

They are going to pass legislation on wednesday that will destroy our ability to communicate on forums, imageboards, etc.
Or to be more precise, they will set up gatekeeper services, that every forum, INCLUDING THIS ONE, will have to subscribe to to stay in compliance.

Those will be run by COMPANIES THAT ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS. THEY WILL FILTER EVERYTHING YOU UPLOAD.

Here are the people voting for it, that we must target.

 

[Caine]

Hmmm... at least with the GDPR the underlying idea was right. Do these people ever use computers?

 

[FBnil]

any ideas on how to sidebar those sorts of conversations while maintaining some sense of free flow of ideas?

You can say you are from the concave earth/hollow earth society. And also add: Pandas are not real. They are created by the communist China for propaganda purposes. Those are actors in a suit or maybe even CGI models.

are more vocal about it.

Yeah, see the arguments @Caine gives.

 

[klapse]

Dunno if the grammar is ok on this flyer. Let me know (nicely) if there are errors, please.

 

[kuru]

*snip*

I have sent my letter to Mrs. Kaufmann.

 

[comradekingu]

So, hosting in Norway then?

 

[rSl]

I have sent my letter to Mrs. Kaufmann.

I have sent my letter to Mrs. Kaufmann.

 

[Null]

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/05/02/peppa-pig-latest-target-censors-china/572164002/

 

[___]

yay the idiots have finally done it. The new atrocity of an EU copyright law reform has been approved. Now let's see the real world implications of this... I'd love to know how the hell anyone is supposed to implement this bullshit.

 

[rSl]

yay the idiots have finally done it. The new atrocity of an EU copyright law reform has been approved. Now let's see the real world implications of this... I'd love to know how the hell anyone is supposed to implement this bullshit.

that's a shame, what a bunch of suckers.
they will finally decide on this in autumn behind closed doors in the so called "Trilog-Verhandlungen".
https://netzpolitik.org/2018/schlag...id-fuer-uploadfilter-und-leistungsschutzrecht

 

[___]

@rSl it feels like it's already been debated behind closed doors anyway. I think this whole democratic farce that is the EU parliament needs an urgent update. Since its inception it hasn't really felt like citizens were able to participate at all. It's representatives of representatives of representatives that we have "voted" on through other representatives.

 

[Askarus]

I still don't understand how this will affect Youtube for example.
Are they not US based? So if I a US citizen uploads something it does not need to be filtered, right?

I find it ridiculous what they are doing.
Why are people allowed to make laws about the internet who have no idea about the internet?

 

[elw3]

Cause they have nothing better to do.

 

[PCXT]

People in government are not people who decide. Trying to influence them is like trying to influence Macdonald clown. They are mascots. This is the thing most people don't want to know for some reason. Politicians only execute orders, like employee dressed as this clown. If they are ordered to sign, they will sign everything and they will get a nice money later, as they know they will not loose anything.
It's similar to schools - schools don't teach, they make proper and well-trained citizens who will not protest and blindly believe in "democracy" (which, as we see after the Internet became dominated by marketing, just doesn't work when scaled up). Universities are even bigger circus. And the history teaches us that talking never fixes a problem. The company may just change mascot, but won't change strategy.

 

[FBnil]

I still don't understand how this will affect Youtube for example.
Are they not US based? So if I a US citizen uploads something it does not need to be filtered, right?

As long as the upload happens in EUSSR™, it has to be checked.
And this might well be a single instance that checks (for example: A European Ministry of Truth), so your post goes to this EU content checker, and only if greenflagged, you get a thumbs up to post it.
Of course, it will CC your text and deepsearch for keywords and because the article might have "fingerprints/authorship"... you might get put inside a classification box "radical", "extremist", "dangerous"...
So imagine a picture upload site. The Ministry of truth is not going to give you the MD5's of illegal content... no sir, you need to upload it to their site to be analised with their algorithms and hashtables. So, let's say you have a picture of the Belglan klng doing illegal things... it can be blocked immediately, instead of being online for a short time and risk being streisanded. You just wont be able to post it! (the algorithms are not good enough yet, but give it 20 years or so).
You will also have to pay a fee for this "service".
Wording in the law is vague... and can therefore be abused. For example GPDR. This picture taken could be in a concert... you, as the author, need to hunt down EVERYONE in that picture to get consent from each (or you just have a press badge). So imagine taking a picture of police brutality. You did not get a consent from the police officer... you go to jail for posting that picture.

It will affect Google, when typing in "football" yields online articles about football in online newspapers based in Europe (Google has to pay a fee to display those links to you or have "agreements" like first placement)

• Article 11: Link tax - No linking to copyrighted articles
  • Web Search Engines can not have any EU links to copyrighted articles, unless the searchengine has an agreement with said digital magazine.
    
  • No more RSS from third parties in EU
    
  • No links to articles in discussion forums (like this forum, with, say, this link to the verge site). The fines are quite high, so as the website maintainer you do not even want to risk it...
• Article 13: Upload Filter - All uploaded content has to be moderated by $INSTANCE which will run copyright filters over it to determine if text/image/video is copyrighted.
  • No more uploading of meme's with copyrighted material in EU (there is this "cultural" loophole, but most meme's are offensive, thus you still risk a fine/desist notif)
    
  • No more EU songtexts websites
  • No more game livestreaming in EU
  • No more unboxing videos...
  • No more Thundercats™ cosplay videos

It's not all gloom and doom though... here is the other vantage point: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/modernisation-eu-copyright-rules

• Mandatory Exceptions to Copyright rules
  • Made a movie that is considered National heritage? It's public now.
  • Made an article? Somebody can read the article aloud, post it on their site, for the blind.
    
  • Student or Teacher? You can use all copyrighted material!
  • Want to datamine copyrighted data? Or not having to warn people their data is mined. Hey, you can!
  • Made a book or painting? The library can put a digital version online, no need for your consent.

Alterslash explains it quite nicely.

There are more things like the privacy law, GPDR, which adds the right to be forgotten by the internet. And that has nice ties with Blockchain, which does not forget. With deepfakes, every official picture/video/tweet will have to be blockchained to proof authenticity. But that is another fascinating discussion.

Just remember: these laws are not for now, but for later. Now, we just are getting the equivalent of a mandatory sixpointed-star.


[doublepost=1529527753,1529526333][/doublepost]In other news: Your Recycling Gets Recycled, Right? Maybe, or Maybe Not
(nytimes, might be paywalled)

 

[levi]

@rSl it feels like it's already been debated behind closed doors anyway. I think this whole democratic farce that is the EU parliament needs an urgent update.

This hasn't been debated by the parliament yet, as far as I know - this has just been voted on by a committee. But it must be said, I don't really know whether this will be debated by the parliament before it comes into force. It feels a little too late for me to really learn how the EU works.

 

[___]

People in government are not people who decide. Trying to influence them is like trying to influence Macdonald clown. They are mascots. This is the thing most people don't want to know for some reason. Politicians only execute orders, like employee dressed as this clown. If they are ordered to sign, they will sign everything and they will get a nice money later, as they know they will not loose anything.
It's similar to schools - schools don't teach, they make proper and well-trained citizens who will not protest and blindly believe in "democracy" (which, as we see after the Internet became dominated by marketing, just doesn't work when scaled up). Universities are even bigger circus. And the history teaches us that talking never fixes a problem. The company may just change mascot, but won't change strategy.

I am sorry, I also am critical of democratic processes, but I am one of those brainwashed conformist believers in democracy. and instead of blubbering borderline conspiracy nut job bullshit on the internet, I spent a lot of my youth at protests and as an activist. I think a big part of the downfall of the internet are people like you spreading half assed conspiracy crap, and I'd love to see how you would have done without school. this kind of bullshit angers me.

brainwashed conformists like me were taught by teachers eventhough we landed in prison for our protests and political actions, I have had great discussions, even verbal fights with them. also I can not want to stress this enough: the only way to solve problems with each other is "talking". so what the fuck do you propose as an alternative? if there is anything history has actually taught us, it's that talking is the only way. unless you like civil wars or totalitarian ultra control. there cannot be a "we" or "society" without constant struggle. that is how democracy should work. the scary part starts when everyone agrees and noone raises their voice, that's when you want to pack up your bags and leave the country. wish my relatives had done that back in 1933 instead of staying and trusting that nothing bad would happen.

can't really understand the likes for your comment.

EDIT: I would love to know what orwellian dystopian country in the EU you are from btw. maybe you are not European and your government actually works like that and your schools really are prison camps. If so I apologize for my ignorance. If not, I think you should go back to school and have them explain the democratic process to you again^^.

 

[PCXT]

I never said that we have any conspiracy, nor that we have prison camps at schools. There is no conspiracy in this scope and seeing conspiracy in everything is in my opinion a first sign of some logic thinking problems. Like this gentleman from IT security who sees conspiracy in mosquitos biting him .
I spoke with Politicians, lawyers, Ambassadors - and if question was too tight for them, they always finally said that they're executing orders. Whose orders - I never got a conclusive answer. So it looks like a typical uncontrolled bureaucratic machine going on its own. These things end really bad.

School was first made to teach elementary knowledge, then to teach specific jobs for workers and these times it worked well. However, the system persisted while the development ran, information and skills got obsolete, new ones grown even faster, and the time doesn't stretch. So modern schools teach usually only how to solve tests, what box to tick on exam sheet, without asking why these answers and how to get them in thinking. For more open parts, you have to use a selected method even if it's not specified in test question. With non-science subjects it's even worse. Although the well known story about Nobel prize winner failing to interpret correctly her own poem at the school-leaving exam is not true, there were numerous cases of authors failing to interpret their own texts in exam questions and being really surprised when looking at the answers sheet later.

so what the fuck do you propose as an alternative? if there is anything history has actually taught us, it's that talking is the only way. unless you like civil wars or totalitarian ultra control. there cannot be a "we" or "society" without constant struggle. that is how democracy should work. the scary part starts when everyone agrees and noone raises their voice, that's when you want to pack up your bags and leave the country.

I still don't know. However, I agree that the democracy should work by talking. But it's too late - we've been DDoSed with useless information and the goal of this attack was to make citizens to not talk. And it works, the people discuss nothing and accept propaganda so well that its illogical methods can be used by everyone. I'm a bit afraid seeing that more and more people interpret "x or y" as "if x then y" and this bug is exploited all time. This leads us to totalitarian control, not by dictator, but by the one who pays more.
Maybe you live in a country in which people are not absorbed by "important" facts like who is responsible for all world's evil and why it's the politician of currently opposing party, where discussion is possible and doesn't lead to labeling opponent into any "negative groups" and making him responsible for all things. However, consider that even in EU people from different countries have different mentality and act different way in similar situations. I cannot question that there is a mentality that is compatible with democracy, but there is also another in which the democracy will be exploited and manipulated all time. And a full range in between.

 

[___]

@PCXT Thank you very much for elaborating. That makes a lot more sense then the post I attacked you for. Maybe it was a bit too polemic, I do that a lot, too.

Still I have my doubts about some of your arguments. I can follow you in a broad sense on the school issue, but people are still people and can think for themselves. Multiple choice dullness and teaching only for test scores is horrible and mind numbing, I agree. But so do many of the teachers, and as we all should know, your grades don't mean shit later in life. Then again, people are mostly taught that the system we know as paid labor is the norm, which I also find appalling. Still a lot of teachers openly discuss alternatives, political scenarios and interesting scientifical/philosophical questions with their students and pretty much all of the teachers I had, tried to teach more than the agenda they had to, because they wanted to pass on knowledge (eventhough their audience tried to resist getting any smarter). This was my experience in a German school at least. However your experience might have been or what criticism we have about the educational system, I think there is no agenda behind it trying to keep the people dumb. That is what I am calling conspiracy BS.

Same goes for the politician thing - again things might be different in other countries - there is noone there paying and controlling them behind some invisible wall of silence. Yes a lot of politicians are idiots, yes there is corruption, crime, lies, small conspiracies and scandals, but there is noone controlling the world and public figures dancing on strings pulled by these shadowy evil doers. And what you are saying sound a bit like that to me.

Discussions that label someone in a "negative" group are still discussions, try saying the wrong thing in freaking Iran or China and see what happens. That is totalitarian. I see our democracy and the European Union struggling right now and the countries strongly slipping to the far right, with a lot of fear mongering, publicism and dirt slinging going on and I think the least we need right now is more vague conspiracy crap, but a clear headedness and more discourse, more people actually talking to each other.

Oh and that information DDoS analogy is really nice, it describes perfectly what happened. It also depresses me, because I have no idea how to stop the bombardment, because it's also like a botnet that spreads itself to minds of people and continues the DDoS attack. It's like the laughing man...
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But yeah, maybe those morons who decided the copyright reform was a good idea could have talked to even more people and still would have decided the same, because it is simpy not in their interest.