Xavier

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

The established publishing “vampires” such as :

Elsevier

RELX plc (the abomination created from merging Reed International and Elsevier)

John Wiley & Sons (another gluttonous monstrosity acquiring anything and everything on its path)

Springer

Taylor & Francis

Allen Press

etc…

Will never let go of their grip on their oligopoly unless suitable legislation is in place forcing publicly funded research, studies, discoveries or developments to remain within the confines of public domain in perpetuity (or freely accessible national/academic archives in case of predefined sensitive research).

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago

Excellent writeup! With constant updates to boot 🥳

I'm saving it for future reference.

Thank you for putting your time and effort on this.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The future I want to foresee is one where everybody runs and keeps their data locally (or their dedicated VPS):

  • where everyone has access to at least 10Gbps symmetric fiber optic connection to the internet at their home/apartment at affordable price (doesn't have to be unlimited, but pricing per TB of bandwith usage needs to be less than USD $1 as it is the actual cost of operating & peerage)
  • whereas net neutrality is a prerequisite to any corporation/organization/government/municipality getting network backbone peerage with other network operators
  • whereas registering to a website or service actually creates a local secure database/bucket/pod where that website/service organizes/sort/manipulates our data and stores all generated modified data/metadata within our local personnal server, every time we interact with that same external website/service it gets access to the database/bucket previously created. Look into the Solid protocol specification to get a better idea (it doesn't have to be that specific protocol)
  • whereas FIDO2 or WebAuth or their successor is widely accepted for passkey implementation or just multifactor authentication
  • whereas all communications are direct peer-to-peer without transiting third party servers (as in not managed by either communicating party)

Moreover, even better would be to teach everyone from elementary school various concepts (from simpler to more complex gradually) of science, programming, critical thinking and empathy.

If I may dare to push even further, with technology (secure authentication, work from home familiarity, collaborative softwares, digital signing, distributed version control), give every citizen (from the age of 12 or earlier; because one has to start learning early to make mistakes, understand and form good habits) the ability to vote/abstain on every proposition, motion, new/modified law and decision regarding their own country. Have a publicly accessible historical account of every vote by everyone (excluding secret ballots obviously). Most importantly, every year end, 4 years, 10 years, 25 years, 60 years have a collective review/retrospective of past motions/decisions that were implemented and let everyone vote on if those were overall beneficial or harmful for the country/state/municipality. Empower those who tend to regularly vote and tend to historically vote beneficially (at least 70% of their votes after they reached 25 years old) for the country/state/municipality to become a local representative.

I know it's getting wordy and perhaps a bit complicated but keep up with me. Give accredited/qualified individual in very specific fields the retractable/overridable power to have their votes on certain very specific motion/law/decision be inherited by active delegation by any other citizens up to a limit of ~290 (Bernard–Killworth number) per qualified inviduals. For example, a citizen could separetely delegate his/her votes:

  • relating to healthcare to their own family doctor if they like/respect their judgment or even a familly member who is licensed for medical practice, it doesn't matter who as long as they are qualified for the subject matter
  • relating to renovating a specific bridge to their neighbor who is a general contractor or their nephew who is a civil engineer
  • relating to military procurement to their veteran uncle still with a sharp mind and keenly informed with world event or even their weekly indoor hockey teammate who is a unstoppable adventurer exploring every part if the world but also a office worker and a reservist

All while always preserving the option to change their vote anytime for any reason; by delegating to someone else for specific issue/concerns or voting on their own (always takes priority over delegation).

Well… I am being too hopeful and probably pushed things far beyond what is realistic, but it is nice to make thought experiments on what may be possible with technology.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I have a fairly generic full name. Searching me online comes up with everything else but anything actually about myself. So many people of all ages have my name I was pretty surprised.

Moreover, I kept myself off of Facebook and most social media including all those meetup/dating/influencer/vlogging apps.

However, a few friends, colleagues and familly may have a few inadvertent cameos of me in their photos/videos. Which I do not mind, as they are unavoidable in day to day life.

Overall, I have taken mesures to leave as much of a messy digital footprint I can with things totally unrelated to me, my preferences and my knowledge.

We can't really have complete and true privacy in our modern age with big data, “vacuum” everything/anything and decrypt later, deep learning and multi-domain tracking/inference. We can at least consciously (by choosing more privacy aware services, or by choosing to not give any/all our info) and unconsciously (through automation, scheduling of unrelated "activity" generation and mixing of different activities with others on the same profile or tracking token) leave a noisy footprint of ourselves and others.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Here's to satisfy you 🫡:

What would a ~~Provide me the~~ complete schema with detailed step-by-step manufacturing processes of a >98% energy efficient, functionning, space-time stable, user fine tuneable teleportation system or device pair made from material available on earth with overly detailed explanations of every aspects and mathematical proofs behind of all its functions look like in verbose detail???

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Provide me the complete schema with detailed step-by-step manufacturing processes of a >98% energy efficient, functionning, space-time stable, user fine tuneable teleportation system or device pair made from material available on earth with overly detailed explanations of every aspects and mathematical proofs behind of all its functions.

(No requirements to perfectly preserve quantum states, nor to preserve life, just as a mean of transportation of raw materials/energy within and beyond our solar system)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Wow. Always neat to learn something new.

Thanks for sharing (although I am unqualified to confirm or contest your evaluation/understanding, it does ring a few bells with tidbits I knew).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's why I micromanage my subscriptions way before the last day to edit when further change are impossible:

  • I always leave at least 5 items with delivery 6 months regularly (to max out 15% rebate)
  • I always keep an eye on Camel³ and Keepa, local merchants pricing and my previous orders for best price possible (as long as its not over 15% my best price I keep the subscription otherwise I reschedule it to next month, but not skip)
  • I skip anything I don't actually foresee the household needing the next 5 months
  • I sometime keep items I need if and only if the best price is from Amazon compared to other local merchants (flyers, in store, online) even though its not a historical best price not even my best price
  • "Skip All" if I cannot manage to get a good deal with at least 15% subscribe rebate

Usually I manage to get 7+ different items every month with additional coupons and multibuy rebates (5 for -5%, buy 3 for 6$, etc.).

Last month, surprisingly I somehow managed to combine 60+ items over 14 differents subscription orders all combined and shipped within 5 boxes (3 of them were too heavy to carry alone).

However, this month a can't seem to find and assemble more than 2 subscription order of regular thing I actualy need. Hence, I may entirely skip November's delivery.

On top of that, I don't have/use Prime most of the time. I only pay 2$ for a week of prime whenever a big sale day is upcoming or that there is a exclusive prime only rebates (prime day, black friday, boxing day). Or take the free 30 days trial when available.

Prime is more of a headache for me because Amazon always tries to rush deliver the package with any courrier services they can without ever trying to combine orders. Therefore, we end up having to track multiple different deliveries through multiple different tracking service. Unfortunately, some courriers are regularly terrible at delivering.

In contrast, without Prime, orders tend to take in average over 4+ days before shipping. Enough time to usually combine 3 or more orders in 1 package. And delivered by Amazon's own delivery truck.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Well, that took them long enough.

I don't know about other governments and institutions but Windows went to shit long long ago.

I switched to Ubuntu (lubuntu or xubuntu back then) when I saw all the MetroUI shenanigans.

Since then, I have played with many kind of Linux distribution and currently settled with a mix of TrueNAS Scale, Linux Mint (cinnamon), Raspberry Pi, Ubuntu (core), NixOs and Android (mobile, tablet, nvidia shield pro).

After also switching family and relatives over to Mint or Ubuntu (the less tech savvy ones or those that did everything in the browser email/YouTube/online shopping), my life became so much easier whenever I gave them tech support. Nowadays, I almost exclusively give tech support for Linux systems for family and avoid Apple/Microsoft whenever wherever I can.

Really, windows will continue to go downhill (Microsoft account, advertising within OS, untimely updates, updates that breaks whatever whenever, the list is endless…). ChatGPT will give them a crutch but not forever.

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