They made it sound like it, but this is not a victory at all, this is a temporary strategic compromise to silence the most sensitive/foreseen privacy advocator for now. But they will not stop here, instead they'll keep advancing the mechanisms, opinions and laws, so one day when the pieces aligned, they can come back to turn this tap off while having people lied to their side.

Forced age verification needs to be abolished completely and people who advocated for it punished to the point that their political career ends, this should be the baseline.

But of course, based on my understanding of everything, no, nobody will do anything effective against it. Everyone will just be "Yeah... they forced a component on my system that could act as spyware to monitor me, then have me pay for it without give me any control. But guess what, I will accept it because they said it's good for the future of mankind", like a peasant would. This is the tax you paid ended up for you, you know?

And it blue screens?

You bought this TV and it might install malware on your computer, so to use it you also have to buy a blocker that might be a scam. Where is the joy in all of this?

My X.com was shadowbanned, I got tired trying to resolve it, so I made the ban permanent with a simple element `.click` against the Like button of one of my post done inside a very quick `window.setInterval`. One of the best decision I ever made during the past few years.

I'm also in the process of getting my Steam account deleted because my friend told me it has been flagged while all I did was just using it as I would normally, no hacking, no cheating etc, paying all with my own money instead of gift card.

Maybe I'm old, I got really tired on performing maintenance on other people's bad intent or mistakes. But you know what, sometimes, cutting things off from your life can be beneficial, it makes you focus on things that truly matter to you, or at least it triggers the review process while you making the decisions.

Do you really need a TV anyway? Just so you can then spend more on it to watch stuff that you'll probably forget within a week? Less stuff, less suffering.

This is actually kinda a good suggesting for everyday life as well. Many problem people face are too complex to figure out without systematic analysis, and with this method of thinking, complexity can be simplified.

Of course you have to do some swaps:

    > Understand data flows                    -> Understand whats, hows and whys
    > Choose appropriate data structures       -> Choose appropriate tools
    > Reason about time and space complexity   -> Reason about cost and effectiveness

Of course that's a reasonable thing to consider, but in addition to that, I think it's also kinda useful to remember why you started as a software engineer to begin with, what were you planning that drives you to select this path? Will AIs be a blocker of that plan, or a enhancer?

Is this significant? I never saw anyone talking about it on my side of corner.

But, It's not really that surprising. A significant part of human civilization still believes that we humans were created by beings who live somewhere in the sky/atmosphere, and these beings are watching our every move to punish or reward us, and you beg really really hard, they'll help you (if they didn't, you ain't begging hard enough).

But what did available was a glider, so I guess my only form of faster transportation in the city is to glide to anywhere I want :)

What if, by some bad luck, that lawyer moved on to other job ventures, sold his office along with the equipment needed to unlock the phone? Will that still counts as a felony? The equipment maybe still in circulation and the data is still on the phone.

And China, based on my understanding, is looking for ways to reduce US influence anyway at least domestically. So, a worsen-yet-controllable US-China relationship maybe considered beneficial on that end. The tests (lockdown etc) done during COVID time has proven that Chinese people endures much more suffering before they begin to rise up, so the economic problems introduced by not caving to the US is just a small cake for the lead party to handle.

Maybe this confusing can be resolved if you view the authority, spammers, and "armed men" as equals. For example, you can treat them as interest groups, but with different level of power. It's a game, it's about incentives, desire, promise and payment, nothing about "do the right thing" or "for the people".

Now it's the Armed Forces got the top power, so you obey them until either they get replaced, or your own power grown so you don't have to continue pretending. The rule is just that simple.

And on the referenced "Civic Hygiene" article:

> But! Shock horror! After creating the database, the Government loses the election and the homophobes at UKIP get in to power! Now they have a database of every gay in the village, and can harass then, try to "cure" them, or make their lives a living hell.

Then, you just get cured ;) It's like a magic. Previous day you are a guy with a deeply lovely boyfriend, today you are seeking to marry the most beautiful woman available, because the cure they give you make you realized how disgusting the hairs on man's legs really are, ew! puke! Just lie, everybody can do that. Truth only belongs to people you love and love you, not the people who don't care about you, not even the neutral public.

BTW: Completely off-topic here: There was an article titled "Incentives are for losers" posted few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49227652. It was beautifully put together, the leftist part of me almost convinced.... But, the rest of me realized that if you look the real "successful" people out there, the rich and powerful etc, you'll found that they all succeed by chasing the right incentives. Interesting uh?

Now, with these vigilante groups that speaks the exact same language that the cartels too understands, it gives those cartels a reason to think before they bully civilians. Because if they did it wrong, there's a chance some of them will start to lose bodyparts in a very unanesthetical way. If a few once incontestable cartel leaders puts on a show of crying and begging for mercy in a darknet video, it tends to educate everyone on what power really means potentially in a good way.

Of course, none of it is reasonable and civil, it's the darkest part of human behavior, but sadly sometimes it's the only way to communicate with the bad people. Mr. Hitler didn't surrender because the allies did a good job showing him that killing is bad, instead they bomb that rat in his own hole and scared him to death.

I don't like violence and I don't like people who uses it unnecessarily, but it's still a tool in the toolbox just in case the opponent is that unrecoverably bad.

However, I found that if the bar of doing business is high enough, "investing" in stock market maybe safer than start a proper business. Because if a business failed, you likely lost a huge amount wealth, including everything you put into the business and maybe more. Whereas if you buy stock responsibly (for example, DCA VOO/&QQQ), there's a high chance you'll eventually bounce back.

Maybe that's one reason the young Koreans invested so much in their stock markets. Their country failed them by restricting them from opportunities, the only way they can save themselves is by gambling.

I feel the sumtype/emum/routine demanders should yell a little harder so Go team can find their purpose again.

If you want something more powerful, there's also Cloudflare workers, which you can program to do whatever you want. But that one may cost you to run.

Also in my case, the scraper IPs are all over the globe, and almost each access is from a different one, so simple IP blocking don't work unless I block Vietnam, Brazil, Bangladesh, Argentina and the US etc (https://i.imgur.com/eWI5meM.png). But then, the scrapers might just go to another country next month.

Since I deployed those rules, the access from scrapers has almost stopped, while normal search engine crawls are almost unaffected. So it do still work for me, even if it's very rudimentary. But hey, security though obscurity it alone is not enough, but it sometimes do delay the attacks.

"Block on pages with ads" is probably about preventing the AI crawlers from clicking on the ads which maybe considered cheating by the ad company.

If you want to prevent "bot attacks", maybe the "Block" option will do the trick.

But of course, to do all that you need to put some trust on Cloudflare, because they're the one identifying the bots from normal users.

For me, as someone who's hosting a Gitea instance behind Cloudflare, I have a Configuration Rule set that says: if the client is trying to access a URL that is beyond certain length limit, then trigger "Browser Integrity Check" and "I’m Under Attack", a.k.a stricter security checks.

The match expression of the rule looked something like this:

    (
      len(http.request.uri) > !!!!!SET LENGTH LIMIT!!!!! and
      not lower(http.request.uri.path) contains ".git/" and
      not lower(http.request.uri.path) contains "api/"
    )

This rule alone basically blocked all abusive bot traffic to almost zero for my site (https://i.imgur.com/LaOjjvV.png, see the traffic drop around 10 clock and Cloudflare mitigation kicks in).

But of course, you need to figure out your own rules based on the characteristic of the website. Also, you can be more creative: for example, my actual rule is more complex than that, it also checks to see if a cookie is not set, and only triggers when all condition are met:

    (
      len(http.request.uri) > !!!!!SET LENGTH LIMIT!!!!! and
      not lower(http.request.uri.path) contains ".git/" and
      not lower(http.request.uri.path) contains "api/" and
      not http.cookie wildcard "*!!!!!COOKIE NAME!!!!!=!!!!!COOKIE VALUE!!!!!*"
    )

    (
      len(http.request.uri) <= !!!!!SET LENGTH LIMIT!!!!! and
      not http.cookie contains "!!!!!COOKIE NAME!!!!!=!!!!!COOKIE VALUE!!!!!"
    )

(Note: `!!!!!COOKIE NAME!!!!!` and `!!!!!COOKIE VALUE!!!!!` are the variables you need to customize)

When you put the two rules together, it forces clients to access "shallow" (short URL) pages first as an user would normally do, before they can access "deeper" (long URL) content hosted on the site without triggering more strict security checks. If that makes sense.

Also, don't forget the cookie basically also dug a hole in the security setting. So it's really a balance between avoid annoying the user and protect your site. You need to be smart and be flexible about it, otherwise your users will just leave.

This whole Chinese AI thing makes me giggle at these American AI companies, but the ultimate solution/long-term goal is still to make the technology universal. I don't think China alone can make it happen.

Also, if Americans can too offer open weight models, that could change the logic of their laws, making it more open rather than protective.

LLM is here to stay, keep denying the fact won't work. What does is to make the tech so abundant, it flushes the bad actors, such as for-profit AIs, completely out. It's either this, or get crushed by for-profit AIs, pick one.

If it run as good as before or even better, then that's kinda impressive.

I'm a developer so I really don't like it when AI might took my job, but if everyone on this planet could create a software for themselves exactly as how they wanted with just a few simple demands, that will change the world for the better.

Think of it as a democratization of technology. You don't want Microsoft stealing your data? Just ask a AI to write an OS for you. You don't want Google to listen to what you're saying? Just ask a AI to design a phone for you. If one day the AI ended up doing that, it will be the ultimate technology self-sufficient. In front of that, your job security is insignificant.

It is also why keeping the tech open source is that much important. Otherwise, it's still the same old shit again and again, and, you lose your job too.

A few samples:

    - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11021665 (read comments)
    - https://www.quora.com/Is-it-just-me-or-are-USB-C-ports-not-actually-very-durable-or-stable
    - https://www.reddit.com/r/PSVR/comments/11mdfn8/so_this_happened_accidentally_tugged_cable_ps5/
    - https://www.reddit.com/r/daddit/comments/1s1kk4i/pro_dad_tip_if_your_kids_have_lights_or_toys_that/

I'm feeling these politicians was not doing it for the victims. Instead, it's almost like the victims are providing reasons to allow the politicians to expand their own power.

The Accelerationism (see note below) part of me think it's a good thing, because a heavily regulated country is often also a backward country. Doing things like this long enough, then you get out competed by everyone else, your population shrinks to zero and your land gets reused.

(Note: The word "Accelerationism" in the Chinese dissidents circle means that, if a bad future is certain and it trends to destroy itself eventually, we might as well just let it happen faster, so the pain maybe shorter. More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerator-in-Chief)

Look, EU obviously have a few good regulations. But a regulation must be correctly designed and implemented, and it must not punish good people. Scanning private messages is a punishment to all.

If EU must scan something, I'd say scanning all messages/phone calls sent out by the politicians might do more good, consider how much trust people put on them (maybe they shouldn't).

Many of these publishers already got a podcast/video publishing routine anyways and they just put ads directly in the podcast/video. I guess maybe it's not that hard for them to add another publishing channel.

Getting one of the proper news agencies on board is very beneficial for the PeerTube network, because currently there's not much good quality content on it. News videos maybe a good baseline to keep user engaged (as long as they're not too political).

If PeerTube is my software, I'll probably pay my own money to get the agencies on board. I'll even host their site myself if it needs to (at least for the first few years, to demonstrate the value of the software).