World News Thread (Politics,whatever)

[Phlyra]

As I read it, it is both a platform for citizens to complain/describe a better way of doing things, like a forum. And then this data is mined. The politician has a GUI with data from the dataminer to focus on threads and "consensus", ignoring the complaints and trolls.

The forum is special, you can not create new threads, but maybe there is a thread where you can propose new threads, or the moderator just creates threads around topics the government needs feedback. Not unlike the reactions forum of a newspaper, where you can only comment on an article.
So how do I see such a forum? Likes that tag things as:

• "(s)he's go a point" (well phrased and explained ideas, neutral standing; the hmmm smiley or the star), not in the article, as a "significant" post would have many thumbs (up/down), so we do not need this one, we infer it.
• the thumb up. Like (important-to-me ideas, positive standing)
• the thumb down. I disagree (ignored tag, negative standing)

As for abuse of the system

So if I was a dictator, they would find consensus in the colour of the background drapes where I give my speeches (a topic I created on the forum).
And then I'd select the one colour they, "the people", chose (democracy!), and ignore posts that are off-topic (For example that talk about removing me from office... totally off topic).
Then, I'd give members the power to self-police (by using the thumb down). This way, people that are off-topic a lot will get CON points, and people that are on-topic and "harmonious" get PRO points. With every post you make, these numbers are visible (as badges; no need for them to test WHICH post of them changed their rating).
If you like a post that has CON points, you lower in ranking yourself, and viceversa. This promotes that posts of people with high PRO points float up due to suck-ups wanting their PRO rating to go up. The benefit of this is that these posts are highly favorable to me, and due to the high "like" rate, I can say that "the people" chose it... And posts from people with a too high CON rate get shadow banned (i.e. if they log in, their posts are visible to them, but nobody else sees their posts); however, they can still thumb up/down other's posts. And I'd give my internal affairs intelligence agency a GUI with the CON ratings.

interesting.

Have you ever seen the scene in “The Rum Diary” where the protagonist listens to the main business partner/baddie explain how their real estate deal works through “compromise”?

 

[FBnil]

There are five named storms in the Atlantic right now. Paulette, Rene, Sally, Teddy, and Vicky.

There was a joke somewhere that they'd soon run out of western names to name these tropical storms, so they'd start with Arab and Indian names like: "Achmed" and "Bhuvaneshwar", "Cloud-behind-the-sun", "Damocles"
The truth less fun: They'd continue in Greek letters:

We just ran out of 2020 tropical storm names thanks to Wilfred. Here's what happens next

We're going to need our backup plan

www.cnet.com

With 9 storms so far this hurricane season, what happens if we run out of names?

From Arthur to Isaias, the hyperactive 2020 hurricane season has already used nine storm names. But what happens if we run out of names?

eu.usatoday.com

Have you ever seen the scene in “The Rum Diary” where the protagonist listens to the main business partner/baddie explain how their real estate deal works through “compromise”?

No, haven't seen the movie (just saw the trailer... crazy!). I'll add it to my mental to-watch list.

 

[Phlyra]

As I read it, it is both a platform for citizens to complain/describe a better way of doing things, like a forum. And then this data is mined. The politician has a GUI with data from the dataminer to focus on threads and "consensus", ignoring the complaints and trolls.

The forum is special, you can not create new threads, but maybe there is a thread where you can propose new threads, or the moderator just creates threads around topics the government needs feedback. Not unlike the reactions forum of a newspaper, where you can only comment on an article.
So how do I see such a forum? Likes that tag things as:

• "(s)he's go a point" (well phrased and explained ideas, neutral standing; the hmmm smiley or the star), not in the article, as a "significant" post would have many thumbs (up/down), so we do not need this one, we infer it.
• the thumb up. Like (important-to-me ideas, positive standing)
• the thumb down. I disagree (ignored tag, negative standing)

As for abuse of the system

So if I was a dictator, they would find consensus in the colour of the background drapes where I give my speeches (a topic I created on the forum).
And then I'd select the one colour they, "the people", chose (democracy!), and ignore posts that are off-topic (For example that talk about removing me from office... totally off topic).
Then, I'd give members the power to self-police (by using the thumb down). This way, people that are off-topic a lot will get CON points, and people that are on-topic and "harmonious" get PRO points. With every post you make, these numbers are visible (as badges; no need for them to test WHICH post of them changed their rating).
If you like a post that has CON points, you lower in ranking yourself, and viceversa. This promotes that posts of people with high PRO points float up due to suck-ups wanting their PRO rating to go up. The benefit of this is that these posts are highly favorable to me, and due to the high "like" rate, I can say that "the people" chose it... And posts from people with a too high CON rate get shadow banned (i.e. if they log in, their posts are visible to them, but nobody else sees their posts); however, they can still thumb up/down other's posts. And I'd give my internal affairs intelligence agency a GUI with the CON ratings.

interesting.

Imagine where we would be if Galileo had been “harmonious”...

 

[levi]

I suspect it's the same system they trailed on the BBC's click programme about a year ago. That was more like twitter than a forum, with everyone able to make short posts. The system* then tries to identify people with similar opinions, and puts them in groups so that they only get shown posts by people with similar opinions. Then it tried to build a consensus across groups by finding something they all agree on. For example, it forms two groups of people who are pro and anti gun control, but it discovers that all of them like funny pictures of cats, so the government forms a task group to take funny pictures of cats and post them out, and everyone's happy and has forgotten their previous differences.

* At the time, I assumed this meant an army of staffers reading and classifying posts.

 

[ible]

How Taiwan's 'civic hackers' helped find a new way to run the country

New social media platform vTaiwan cuts through noise and trolling to establish consensus – and create new laws

www.theguardian.com

http://pol.is seems to run in the same vein. i tried signing up but i think i broke their server

 

[FBnil]

I finally got understanding what they mean by the voting-by-email fraud in the USA. Not sure how big the problem is. They basically extort/intimidate the elderly. I guess it's useful in swinger-states.

 

[FBnil]

NASA Is Tracking a Vast, Growing Anomaly in Earth's Magnetic Field

NASA is actively monitoring a strange anomaly in Earth's magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies above the planet, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa.

www.sciencealert.com

 

[levi]

Not sure how big the problem is.

Snopes to the rescue: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mail-in-ballot-voter-fraud/

 

[Phlyra]

Snopes to the rescue: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mail-in-ballot-voter-fraud/

“I have no idea what is going on in the head of the President. He votes absentee, and absentee ballots have, over the decades, been more commonly used by portions of the population that lean Republican.

I am not sure the President and some conservatives have any idea about how mail in balloting works, instead they are fanning flames of distrust and promoting conspiracy theories as a way to fire up their supporters.”

 

[ible]

that and they're sewing the seeds to say the election was a sham. usually there's a "blue shift" of democratic mail-in ballots, so they want to try and stop the count as early as possible.

Choose Democracy - Get Prepared

We can stop an undemocratic power grab, but only if we prepare and together, choose democracy.

choosedemocracy.us

although i think the problem will be smaller now if polls are to be believed, we can't get complacent...

 

[FBnil]

Watch out bitcoin! The Digital Euro (DE) is here!

Digital Euro: A Report By The European Central Bank

The report on a digital euro published by the ECB is an important document on the topic of the day. Although there is a whiff of "CBDC theater" about it; it does lay out the problem in detail. Now we await the solution, but a decision will not be made until mid 2021!

www.forbes.com

This article is shorter, and easier to read and highlights the same key points:

Working to shift power over money from banks to people
in the UK and around the world.

We work with economists, academics, journalists, policy makers and the public to bring about a fairer economical system.

www.positivemoney.eu

Some extra detail that the ECB says that the Digital Euro fights back against the Libra (Facebooks digital coin)

Digital Euro Would Provide Alternative to Cryptos, ECB President Lagarde Says

A digital euro for retail payments would "ensure that sovereign money remains at the core of European payment systems," according to Lagarde.

www.coindesk.com

Once side by side the Euro and Digital Euro might not be able to co-exist. And then we have a coin, not controlled by nations* (like the Peseta, Franc, Gulden, Mark, Lira, etc) but directly by the ECB (European Central Bank). And that means also less utility for national banks. Where's the Amero though, is it late to the scene?

* Euro's on the back side still have the representation of the country that ordered the coining. The front side is the same for all Euro's.

 

[levi]

I don't think that's a competitor for bitcoin in any sort of reality. It's another fiat currency, government backed, while a bitcoin actually represents discovery work done by a computer. I'm curious to know how, if it doesn't involve cryptography there're going to stop me copying my digital euros and in effect doubling them.

 

[Null]

 

[JDTAY]

Guys, early in-person voting begins in my state later today. I think I'll wait until Election Day to keep things interesting though.

I dunno, anyone wanna try to sway me now in case I vote early? I'm in a swing state.

 

[ClockworkCoder]

Guys, early in-person voting begins in my state later today. I think I'll wait until Election Day to keep things interesting though.

I dunno, anyone wanna try to sway me now in case I vote early? I'm in a swing state.

You're asking for trouble there! Or at least a new dedicated thread. I would just say vote for your own reasons alone.

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

I think that you should watch the Muppets instead, IMO it's a much better puppet show.

 

[ible]

@JDTAY vote like your life depends on it. don't listen to anyone who says otherwise...

ACA is on the chopping block (conservative supreme court will likely strike it down, so no guarantees if you have preexisting conditions).

also, goldman sachs did an analysis and figured we'd have a better economic recovery if we had a blue sweep.

but yeah, vote for your own reasons, and encourage your friends to vote.

 

[matzesu]

What happens if you dont whant neither of boot candidates? If you think Biden is too old, and this other guy isnt an alternative anymore??
In Germany, whe have a lot more partys to chose from, not just the 2, and if someone dont whant to vote the CDU or SPD, he can also vote par exemple the FPD, or the "Green Party" or the "Left" , or even the AFD, (Which is a Right Party), as the Democraty allows this
And i think this is the issue on the American System: You only have Democrats or Replucian, so if you dont give your Voice for one of them, the other will have more Votes..

 

[pyrat]

I don't think that's a competitor for bitcoin in any sort of reality. It's another fiat currency, government backed, while a bitcoin actually represents discovery work done by a computer. I'm curious to know how, if it doesn't involve cryptography there're going to stop me copying my digital euros and in effect doubling them.

I don't know anything about this digital currency or economics in general. Also nothing about Bitcoin, so I maybe should shut up. But I also think this digital Euro has nothing to do with bitcoin.
It's a little more similar to Libra (that'd be if Libra was anything at all), and from what little I know from the requirements, it reminds me a lot of GNU Taler, which I also haven't looked into yet.
I have a good feeling that it could be good but also that it will be badly implemented and finally haunted by vulnerabilities of the terminals (and maybe servers) not so much of the protocol itself.
Those vulnerabilities won't be any different from the ones currently affecting credit card payments and lots of people use of those. So it will all depend on how much market force exert the parties pushing for it.
Almost anything is going to be better to just give all your needed credentials to your counterpart and chase overcharges and problems later when you see your account. That's the worst protocol anyone might dream of in a nightmare. (there was a better explanation in minifree.org but I can't find it now in the wayback machine).
But I'm completely sure it will involve cryptography, just not so huge pile of hashes like bitcoin, but some signatures and stuff will be there for sure.

So. Here my 0.02 € worth of ignorance.

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

One of the issues that I have with voting is that the voter may become compliant in many horrible crimes. When someone votes then he tries to support a total stranger in being granted the power to destroy millions of lives. I'd rather not share in the crimes of these powerhungry strangers.