World News Thread (Politics,whatever)

[PCXT]

And here's the difference between school systems in Poland and Germany. I remember that generally all things I wanted to know I had to learn myself, from sources far from school books. In school I remember only "we will skip this chapter, there's no time" and one teacher who tried to teach us something, but she quickly gave up when it was found that we won't reach the end of a book (including all school-free days it was nevertheless impossible to do it).

Of course there is no agenda with goal to make people dumb! I'll use another example: For some unknown reason, many people think that TV stations are in conspiracy about commercials broadcasting time - most of them broadcast commercials at the same time (+/- 15 minutes or so). Conspiracy on such competitive market as TV stations would be visible from a far distance and would certainly end with a huge scandal right after starting. There is no conspiracy, only optimum of an objective function - the time in which most TV sets are watched.

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.

I totally agree. But with countries going to the right or populism it becomes harder and harder even to maintain causality in a discussion, not even trying more logic reasoning. And it's not a change of 20 or 15 years, it happened in last few years! Generally a nice example of what I distill from catchphrases I hear in discussion-surogates can be described by the "and_in_USA_they're_lynching_black_men" phenomenon from Soviet propaganda, but I found a nicer example known as whataboutism. It's a bit better in the international media, but not too much.

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...

I have a half-solution: Use as textual media as possible, and RSS as information selection tool. Don't know why but these most nasty sites which serve "canned rubbish" don't use RSS, but use complex system of programs and scripts instead. Additionally I made rather strict limitations about technology, it's not an orthodox Stallmanism, but... it's a wonder if I turn JS on for some page .

 

[levi]

I've noticed sister TV channels from the same company often running ads at the same times if programming permits, and since there's only really three commercial broadcasters who run ads here that's quite a lot of them. No consiparacy, I assume it's to limit the temptation to skip to another channel and get hooked on whatever's there, and instead to sit patiently and watch the adverts. However since there's three stations with no commercial adverts (although they do advertise their own programming, although that's usually 1 minute between programmes max) that does limit the potential of that approach.

 

[rygD]

Y'all need to settle down before I lock your kids in cages.

 

[___]

I have a half-solution: Use as textual media as possible, and RSS as information selection tool. Don't know why but these most nasty sites which serve "canned rubbish" don't use RSS, but use complex system of programs and scripts instead. Additionally I made rather strict limitations about technology, it's not an orthodox Stallmanism, but... it's a wonder if I turn JS on for some page .

that's not what I mean, I can fend for myself browsing the sites I want information from. I mean the polluted minds all around us repeating bullshit they read somewhere and spreading alternative facts. It seems like so many people believe in at least one sort of conspiracy theory or alt-fact BS, it's not even connected to a pattern. You have your local activist who, when asked, starts endless arguments about 9/11. The old nice guy from the corner who turns out to not believe in the German republic state, but rather the "Reich" and has his own self made passport alongside his shotgun, the occasional chem trail believer who you always thought was just a normal and boring coworker, the "thanks merkel" people who believe everything bad that happens to them is the personal fault of Angela Merkel, the anti-refugee nutcase who will spread every made up news story about rape they can find on the internet and claims it's not safe to cross the street at night anymore, the insane antisemitic muslim who lives next door (who you really don't want to start a discussion about 9/11 with...) and who blames jews for everything... everybody has their own self indulgent, self righteous reasoning to blame everything on someone else.

It feels like there is no common ground to even start a debate with these people. That is what I find the most devastating consequence of the propaganda/fakenews/hate/fear information DDoS. Same in the US, neighbours don't talk to each other anymore since the Donald Duck won the elections, who were close friends before.

 

[JDTAY]

https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/21/twitter-smytes-customers/

This just in: Twitter is, in fact, an evil corporation.

Who knew?

 

[Null]

Who knew?

 

[PCXT]

that's not what I mean, I can fend for myself browsing the sites I want information from. I mean the polluted minds all around us repeating bullshit they read somewhere and spreading alternative facts. It seems like so many people believe in at least one sort of conspiracy theory or alt-fact BS, it's not even connected to a pattern. You have your local activist who, when asked, starts endless arguments about 9/11. The old nice guy from the corner who turns out to not believe in the German republic state, but rather the "Reich" and has his own self made passport alongside his shotgun, the occasional chem trail believer who you always thought was just a normal and boring coworker, the "thanks merkel" people who believe everything bad that happens to them is the personal fault of Angela Merkel, the anti-refugee nutcase who will spread every made up news story about rape they can find on the internet and claims it's not safe to cross the street at night anymore, the insane antisemitic muslim who lives next door (who you really don't want to start a discussion about 9/11 with...) and who blames jews for everything... everybody has their own self indulgent, self righteous reasoning to blame everything on someone else.

Similar thing here, 9/11 replaced by Smolensk air crash, "Reich" replaced by "Russian agents", or, not exaggerating, "homosexual-freemason plot" (Seriously, WTF? my parser crashes on this) and blaming not Merkel, but our former Prime minister. The problem is that this goes not only from people, this also goes from politicians, in the media.
The same fanboyism like in Apple/Samsung or Commodore/Atari, but with more disastrous consequences. And indeed, not much can be changed here.

It feels like there is no common ground to even start a debate with these people. That is what I find the most devastating consequence of the propaganda/fakenews/hate/fear information DDoS. Same in the US, neighbours don't talk to each other anymore since the Donald Duck won the elections, who were close friends before.

Also nothing new here - happens always where the propaganda starts labeling people. Usually the next step is "solving" the problem by total isolation of information flow. Under the flag of another bs idea which is propagated enough to be accepted without discussion (I'm not good at predicting, but in my conditions it may be both fighting "fake news", or enforcing "copyright"). So, going to the fake news idea, instead of education how to find reliable sources of information and look for credibility (as it may backfire into propaganda*), we have a censorship.

* Recent example: In a strange accident, I have recently watched a TV news report about audience measurement. Generally (because this year they shown lower audience in national TV) all pseudo-arguments against one audience measurement organization's recent report: That they had to pay the fine 22 years ago, that brother of the manager for Poland was in communist party 30 years ago, that their model cannot be verified as they don't supply precise locations of measurements, only number of tested households, that they "are all anti-Polish" whatever it means. Of course there were alternative measurements shown, with some fancy buzzword name, but no information about its methodology was said at all. No information about how the measurements were done. Because I play with data a lot, I started looking and also could not find the answer except the name and that "it's the best"-like catchphrases. So finally in the Internet Archive I dug the draft document (published using "Index of"-type publishing) about cooperation with a local cable network distribution company related to measuring audience. In a few cities. Still not specified which ones and with how many households.
And try to discuss with people who accept such information without verifying. Any discussion ends with "but they're evil, they had to pay the fine 22 years ago". [facepalm].

 

[klapse]

Articles 11 and 13 can still be stopped. Please spread info and get people to call in.
https://savetheinternet.eu/
https://savetheinternet.info/

Etc etc you KNOW WHAT TO DO
the 'yes' votes:

 

[FBnil]

can't really understand the likes for your comment.

Well, boiled down, it is how he states. We have different governments, but the same lobbies, thus (ir)regardless the policies are pushed by the lobbies. In the Netherlands, we are now asking the government why they removed the "Dividend" taxes for Shell* (losing a bit more than a million euro's a year) while our taxes for fruit and food doubled to make up for it. It's a slow process. The Prime Minister did not want to answer and was not there, while he was asked in person to explain, our representatives had to wait more than an hour and then he just did not respond and left again. But hey, the other Dutch keep voting for him... so strange.
But don't assume cynical -> inactive. It is more of a defense mechanism to survive day to day in a world where I can get fat and others starve.

* at that time, they were looking if they would be seated in UK or in NL, so they lured them to NL by offering them to let them pay zero taxes. And to be honest, for big companies NL is a tax haven, while smaller companies have to pay 51% taxes and sometimes taxes over taxes (which technically is illegal, but they benefit, so ...).
[doublepost=1529694136,1529692600][/doublepost]

Whose orders - I never got a conclusive answer

Ponzi scheme. The population polices itself (as police is also part of the population)...
Ask the 1%...

 

[FBnil]

Y'all need to settle down before I lock your kids in cages.

Wait, what? WHY? Nicholas Cages?

 

[rygD]

Wait, what? WHY? Nicholas Cages?

No. This is what you get for coming to my country.

 

[Xcl4m4t10n]

 

[HelenF]

Mods, could we have a thread about the EU internet thing? It seems more on-topic and less divisive than most of the issues in here.

 

[ible]

i don't like detaining kids in cages. imagine baby Jesus fleeing persecution by Herod, only to be separated from his parents and locked up in Egypt for illegal immigration.

"i bet you're a human trafficker. i bet this isn't even your kid," says one of them to Joseph.

joking, not a joke. too soon.

seriously though, people on my social media think it's ok to do it because the parents might be human traffickers.

it's not ok. (unless they're traffickers. why do we have to specify that, though? why do we have to assume the worst about humanity?)

 

[Caine]

why do we have to assume the worst about humanity?)

You don't have to, all you need to do is vote for it.

 

[klapse]

Mods, could we have a thread about the EU internet thing? It seems more on-topic and less divisive than most of the issues in here.

You can make one.

 

[HelenF]

You can make one.

I figured you posted in here because you thought it wasn't allowed outside (and might well be right about that, so I didn't want to go and make one without checking).

 

[Null]

https://metro.co.uk/2018/06/14/teenager-somehow-got-her-head-stuck-inside-an-exhaust-pipe-7631927/

 

[rygD]

@HelenF that is one of those things that fits, just like most other tech topics. It probably deserves a dedicated thread since it is close to sort of thing that brings us together, and as long as people act like mature adults i don't see it being a problem.

This thread is to contain the mess of general news, especially political stuff, so the mods don't have to monitor every new thread so closely, because news and politics... Well, you know.

 

[___]

German law enforcement is going haywire right now. they just raided the house where my local hackerspace is located, literally 2 minutes around the corner from me. there are several registered public associations that are housed in the building, a gbltq association, a science and free education association which also hosts servers and internet access and our local ccc friendly hacker space, aswell as a gourmet restaurant. they claim, that someone hosted plans for nuclear reactors or some shit on some server in that science/free internet groups premises and they had a warrant for that only, but regarless they just knocked down every door with battering rams and confiscated whatever they could from every other tennant.

this has been happening in augsburg, jena, berlin and dresden aswell and numerous ngos and ccc facilities have been hit. what the hell is going on? these morons bust peoples 3d printing equipment an seize it, because they claim the accused were manufacturing explosive devices. because they had printed a "nuclear bomb" fallout like mini nuke model.

https://m.all3dp.com/4/german-police-raid-augsburg-fablab-confiscate-3d-printed-atom-bomb/

german:

http://m.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/ha...lub-kritisiert-polizeivorgehen-a-1216463.html

https://netzpolitik.org/2018/razzia-in-dortmund-cybercrime-abteilung-durchsucht-webhoster/