Regarding the DoS in the lean-zip application itself: I think this is a really neat example of the difficult problem of spec completeness, which is a subcase of the general problem (mentioned by porcoda in a sibling comment) of being sure that the spec is checking the right things. For a compression program, the natural, and I would also say satisfyingly beautiful thing to prove is that decomp(comp(x)) = x for all possible inputs x. It's tempting to think that at that point, "It's proven!" But of course the real world can call decomp() on something that has never been through comp() at all, and this simple, beautiful spec is completely silent on what will happen then.

That stuff doesn't depend on Alphabet and Meta specifically. It depends on ads. No ads = no that stuff. Are you happy for it to all disappear?

If not, at what point during your milk purchase does the negotiation step that you hold to be important for capitalism take place?

I put it to you that take-it-or-leave-it-ness is orthogonal to the capitalism-socialism axis, and that the take-it-or-leave-it nature of viewing an ad-supported website is no more socialist (and no more alarming) than buying milk.

Regarding "negotiation":

> * The site has the option of deciding not to serve me any more content, typically by showing me an anti-ad-blocker popup.

Are you indeed claiming that today's ad blockers operate by explicitly rejecting a request sent from the main site as part of some standard ad negotiation protocol? Because if so, I would agree that this amounts to a negotiation with the website as you say.

But this would certainly be news to me. It must be a recent change, since for most of my life, ads have simply been hyperlinked images/objects/videos/IFrames, or sometimes inline text generated server-side or on the client using JS, and the only mechanisms available to implement ad blocking were implicit, and based on subterfuge: By preventing fetching of that content in the first place (in a variety of ways), or by fetching it but then hiding/obscuring the result in some way. None of which amount to "negotiation", obviously.

BTW I've added an ETA to my original post with my reasons.

Using ad blockers is unethical. No one who uses one (probably 99% of people on HN) wants to hear this, but the conclusion is inescapable really.

You may commence your downvoting.

ETA: Why do I claim it's unethical? Every ad-supported page is an implicit contract: If you want the good stuff on this page, you need to pay for that by giving some of your attention to . Nothing more. If the trade-off isn't worth it to you, that's fine: you have the right, and the ability, to reject it -- to cease interacting with the site at all. OTOH, using an ad blocker to access the site without "paying" (with your attention) is violating the contract in the same way that hacking a parking meter downtown to park your car for free is. Running websites isn't free, and even if it was, it's the site owner's prerogative whether and how much ad-attention to "charge". If the fundamental idea of capitalism is sound (and perhaps it isn't -- but then let's discuss that), exorbitant ad burdens attached to desirable content will eventually be outcompeted by other sites offering similar content for free with fewer ads, or for actual cash.

There's a more self-serving argument, too: If everyone used 100% effective ad blockers, Alphabet (minus GCP) and Meta would not exist, and nor would the very large number of free-as-in-beer services that make up a large part of what makes the internet useful to people. Using ad blockers is only "sustainable" in the same way that mafia protection rackets are "sustainable" -- by being a sufficiently small drain on the rest of society.

If everyone used 100% effective ad blockers, Alphabet (minus GCP) and Meta would not exist, and nor would the very large number of free-as-in-beer services that make up a large part of what makes the internet useful to people.

I like the concept of applying Jax to SDF sphere tracing :)

It has persuaded me that your own inaction was totally unrelated to this outcome.

In this type of situation, the fundamental issue is that making progress depends on many people acting in unison to increase their bargaining power, which is (a) hard to arrange even if everyone who acted this way would benefit, and (b) actually may be detrimental to some people (usually the high performers).

The answer to such questions is always that, given their circumstances, they have no realistic choice not to.

This is very obvious, and it's frustrating to continually see people pretend otherwise.

So a little bit is always good, and more is sometimes very good -- even memorably good. Together these cause many of us to extrapolate too far, but for understandable reasons.

I can't see how that could ever go wrong.