man is not a safety nor mission critical system. It was trivial to work around functional anomalies. There was nothing wrong with this, and it was hilarious.
I'm glad the VLC developers never backed down from the Santa hat popping up near Christmas, despite ridiculous criticism from a tiny minority of users.
I am surprised that they are serious when saying "even a single person being offended is one too many". Not want to start yet another flamewar on CoCs, but how is such a rule even practically enforced ?
Given it's impossible to respect for a project of this scale with this many users, it just feels like a fake statement for good PR
I feel like this makes the whole move even less respectful that if they'd have done nothing about the Santa hat complains
The maintainer of VLC is French. We have a culture of parody and making fun of everything.
This costs lives - people in France are killed because they made fun of the imaginary friend of some people. This is horrible and, unfortunately, we as a society start to give up. Teachers are told to be sensitive and not show pictures of gods, tomorrow this will be creationism and homeopathy and we will end up as another US.
I get offended all the time, but people are free to express their minds without fear. Even if they are obviously wrong because they do not agree with me (whom in contrast is always right and they do not get it).
Blackmail, master git branch, blacklists - all these changes are simply idiotic and the people who are proud of having changed that (and removing a hat on an IDE) probably do not realize that everyone officially tells them that we are proud of not offending them anymore, and when the micros are off they are called negros, twags and whatever word is painful to them. This is really sad.
They are the first ones to lose here, by having invisible walls built around.
I have a very good friend (a woman) who left a great company because she joined when the "diversity" program was live. She was told by her male colleagues that it used to be who you know, who you sleep with and now if you are a good match for diversity. She was brilliant but could not stand that and left for a smaller and more normal company.
All these forced ratio and PC is really against the ones it tries to help or make comfortable or not offend. And to be clear - having been on the receiver side of such campaigns (a minority), it took some time to build trust wit the ones who were not part of the minority. I also felt how it is to be a mnority as a kid - and it was horrible.
But PC is not the way to fix that.
I used somewhere else the analogy of catholics in France. They are being made fun of, they react (or not) but it ends here. This is the reason why they are integrated to French culture, and protected by this culture. The village I live in has a yearly mass outside of the church. As a complete atheist I find this great because this is a tradition and I like to see the folklore (whihc is faith for the ones who attend the mass). OTOH catholics do not try anymore to actively get in your bed to check what you do there, or try to push some god into our school books. And we like them.
I am offended that people didn't recognize that post as a joke. Or - alternatively - a ridiculous position that is tantamount to a joke.
Seriously, while on the one hand I welcome that we have become more culturally sensitive, on the other hand in some situations we should just get a thicker skin and learn again to say 'nope'.
Yea I remember when it went down, being a lifelong user of VLC I was pretty active there. It seemed obvious to me it was a joke, but so many were sure it was not.
Happened here the other day in a Perl thread. Someone made a pretty funny (to me) joke. Having used Perl too much I appreciated the joke but some read it differently.
Like the tabs v spaces, Vim or Emacs, to me it seems funny and nothing to get riled over but some just become so invested in taking offense/personal.
At what point does a software become mission critical? Would we be so accepting of this easter egg if it was in 'cat' or 'grep' rather than 'man'? I mean, yes, it's open source, so all downstream users can patch it out, but shouldn't unexpected output be considered a bug by the main upstream maintainer? How about an official branch, man-with-easter-eggs for users who want to debug this kind of fun at 00:30 in the morning.
Conversely why does your determination that an open source project is 'mission critical' to your use case obligate the author to make any changes at all for you?
I don't think the maintainer should be obligated to do anything. It would be courteous to treat it as a bug and maybe even provide a patch so that downstream users can easily fix it, but not an obligation. It looks like this one is already fixed so the point is moot.
If the primary maintainer of 'cat' decided it would be funny to have it output "meow" when run at 00:30 in the morning, it's totally their right to do it. I'd expect a lot of downstream users wouldn't find it that funny and would want to patch it out pretty quickly.
I don't think 'man' is that commonly used in scripts or as part of other automated processes that could go wrong. Most other unix utilities are fairly commonly used that way and a small behavioural change could be expected to break something somewhere just due to the sheer volume of use.
I'm not actually that surprised the easter egg broke something for someone even in 'man', for the exact same reason, but it's probably less expected than with grep and lots of other unix utilities.
I think it's mildly offensive to some because they view utility software as a tool that's meant to be invisible. You don't want your hammer singing Christmas carols even if it's harmless. It just feels out of place for this item that's supposed to have a single purpose which otherwise would do one thing and only that one thing. I understand the argument that it's fun, but I think the "it's fun" people are a little too quick to react when others say they don't want it. No one's trying to ruin your good time, it just feels weird. Sometimes I'd rather my tools be impressionless and predictable.
The original request was ridiculous but in fairness the "if you don't like it, fork it" attitude is really bad too. Forking something isn't zero cost. You'd have to maintain it, and then try to get developers to come to your fork, teach users about your fork, and then you end up with the annoying ffmpeg/libav situation where you have two similar but different projects.
It's kind of like saying "if you don't like Trump why don't you just leave?".
A better and more honest response would have been "I have considered your idea and I unfortunately disagree and won't implement it."
Good advice. Ever since Tavis Ormandy set his sights on password managers, I have been a very sceptical user. I still use 1Password, but without the browser extension. Putting autofill aside, there's a couple of other concerns I have.
I am hesitant about recommending a password manager to the tech illiterate simply because one piece of malware could compromise the entire vault. In that respect, a sticky note is arguably more secure than a tech illiterate person using a password manager.
Also, I have my usual criticism of client-side browser encryption. Anyone who has the technical ability to compromise a cloud-based service can likely take it a step further and modify JavaScript files enabling total vault compromise. There is no easy way for a user to mitigate this risk.
Password managers must be a stop-gap measure only until webauthn is more widely deployed. I long for the day when phone-based webauthn keys are the norm, and I can stop fielding questions about password managers from friends and family.
A piece of paper is the most secure solution, sure, but once you get to the point where you have a hundred passwords, even if you've got them all in the same place, it's too unwieldy to use.
Sticky notes suck because people leave them in plain sight. A notebook is a totally reasonable way for a non-technical person to track passwords securely.
A notebook is a totally reasonable way for a non-technical person to track passwords securely.
I do this, even though I'm a "technical" person. I do it because I use unique passwords for almost every site I visit.
The notebook never leaves the house, but what if I have a fire? I remember a few passwords, but most of them "poof, gone".
My reckless behavior reminds me of this commercial parody on SNL, long ago:
- A Tradition of Security -
We will make a list of our clients and how much money each of them has given us to invest. We will keep this list in a safe place. If we have time we will make a copy of the list in case something happens to the first list.
In case of fire, seems like you only need to memorize the passwords for your email accounts. Everything else can be fixed with “reset your password” links.
I’ve sometimes wondered if that would be a useful security scheme. Using email as a de facto pw manager. Memorize your email pw. Use the password reset feature on your critical sites. It would be enormously inconvenient. But it would mean your passwords are never written down and never stored in a pw manager’s database.
Seems like that would make things more secure, but I’m probably overlooking something.
I think some people don't make any real effort to keep track of their passwords, and so reset via email is kind of common.
But what if you're Sarah Palin, governor of some out-of-the-way state (pop. 736,000). Suddenly you're thrust into the spotlight as a VP candidate.
Sucks for her that Yahoo's password reset questions at the time were simple: The Yahoo! account's password could be reset using shared secret questions including "where did you meet your spouse?" along with the date of birth and ZIP code of the former governor to which answers were easily available online.
Do you have your password manager database and private keys backed up in a way that would survive if you have a fire? A lot of people may think they have backups of stuff like this but unless you remember to grab that thumb drive out of your desk drawer (assuming you're home) a fire might still destroy them.
No, no, I don't have my passwords anywhere but in a paper notebook. And I don't have any other copies. That's what I meant by "my reckless behavior".
What percentage of people use a password manager? I think on iOS/macOS it's pretty high because Safari offers to save them, but what about non-technical users in general?
As to why I don't use a password manager, I think that the probability of some bug or hack or whatever of the password manager, which would lead to all my passwords being compromised, is greater than the probability of my house burning down.
Do I really want to trust Firefox with all my passwords? Do I really want to trust Google with all my passwords? (Fuck no!) Do I really want to trust some random password manager with all my passwords?
The smart thing to do, which I unfortunately don't, is to memorize a handful of passwords and use a password manager for the rest. E.g. remember bank password, use a password manager for Chipotle and Five Guys.
> Do I really want to trust Firefox with all my passwords? Do I really want to trust Google with all my passwords? (Fuck no!) Do I really want to trust some random password manager with all my passwords?
There are options like KeePass or Bitwarden that allow you to store your own database file wherever you see fit or self host, respectively.
> The smart thing to do, which I unfortunately don't, is to memorize a handful of passwords and use a password manager for the rest. E.g. remember bank password, use a password manager for Chipotle and Five Guys.
This is the way that I mitigate risk as well. My email password is not present in the db, nor is my checking.
It should be reasonably safe to store database files on various cloud storages. If you are not willing to do so, it is also possible to keep them on flash drives at your relatives' homes.
I beg to differ. A piece of paper can easily be found by someone. Much easier than hacking a password manager. Unless you're storing that piece of paper in a safe, it's not secure. The only advantage of paper is that it's not exploitable remotely.
> A piece of paper can easily be found by someone. Much easier than hacking a password manager.
A piece of paper in a locked drawer is potentially accessible to a person breaking into it. It is probably an unsophisticated burglar looking for money. They are probably located in the vicinity of your neighbourhood and have rocked up to your home, and will not evade capture for long. They will likely leave DNA. If they decide to swipe your notebook, it will be immediately apparent you have been compromised, as your drawer is open and your notebook open or missing. Your notebook may be looked at momentarily, perhaps passed to one or two people, more likely, it will be thrown into a gutter as soon as the burglar realises it has no money in it, or just left untouched.
A password in a locked password manager is potentially accessible to a person breaking into it. It is probably a sophisticated cyberattacker looking for credentials. They are probably located overseas and have remotely connected to your home network, and will evade capture. They will leave no trace. If they decide to compromise your vault, it may not be immediately apparent you have been compromised, as your password manager is still there. Your vault will be scrutinised intensely, and your credentials will be sold to many others on a darknet forum.
If someone sees a list of site/user/pass, wouldn't they take a photo of it instead of stealing the entire notebook? It just seems like the obvious thing to do.
>They are probably located in the vicinity of your neighbourhood and have rocked up to your home, and will not evade capture for long. They will likely leave DNA
Did you get that from CSI: Miami? Nobody is gonna collect DNA samples just because some stuff went missing in your home. The cops will file a report and tell you to file an insurance claim.
Burglars are in and out in a matter of minutes. There's no way they're standing there taking photographs. Like I said, they want money (and easily hocked valuables). No street criminal is interested in your Google Account login.
Australian here. When my house was broken into Police forensics came that afternoon and fingerprint dusted all points of entry and lifted prints. Do they not do this in your jurisdiction? I have just realised DNA is probably poor shorthand for that.
If someone has remotely compromised my home network how do I know they haven't just installed a keylogger, and are capturing the passwords that I type in via a sticky note?
I'm just a person on the internet, so my threat model may be different to yours, but my threat model is for the most part phishing, social engineering, data breaches, and the likes. The majority of these are fixed by password autofill (for the most part)
> It is probably a sophisticated cyberattacker looking for credentials
It is probably the script of a sophisticated cyberattacker leveraging some vulnerability for looking for credentials of thousands of people at once. Yes, the burglar is a total non-threat by comparison (unless they happen to be working for your very personal enemy intelligence agency)
Good security practice would add a memorized element to the stored passwords as an informal second factor. Are there password managers that have good support for that when auto-filling and updating?
I used to work in a pretty secure environment. The way to store passwords was to write them on a piece of paper and put that paper in your personal safe. This was inside a building with armed guards.
I guess it all depends on where your risk/convenience preference. I would say just like the best camera is the one you have with you, the best way of storing passwords is the one you are willing to use. Perhaps pen and paper in a safe is the best way, but if that means insecure easy passwords are used for many sites I guess password managers are better.
When you hide it in a random book, and need to access it frequently, you end up with the plot device where the hyperintelligent detective guy immediately realizes that there can only be one reason this particular book looks more used than all the others.
The real threat of course is that you'll definitely not remember yourself (because you only use it for that one ring master password which you never use)
With a polarizing filter, oled display, vision based user recognition and a nice haptic knob, hopefully in some sort of upcycled oak, alder or white ash.
Ohhh, with automatic firmware updates! Maybe it syncs over Bluetooth, or pretends to be a car infotainment system to keep a copy of your mobile contacts.
The complexity probably warrants some sort of embedded microservice arch, like microK8S.
I'm a fan of Zettlekasten for notetaking and knowledge management.
Filing passwords on index cards or business cards (3.5x2 in, ~9x5cm), with a sensible indexing system, scales up reasonably well. There's certainly extant physical infrastructure.
The typical person has on the order of about 100 online accounts. Managing even 1,000 accounts in an index card file is at least within reason.
Another alternative is a GPG-encrypted file, though keeping that synchronised between multiple locations might prove a challenge.
> Another alternative is a GPG-encrypted file, though keeping that synchronised between multiple locations might prove a challenge.
What's the difference between what you're suggesting here and a password manager? Enxrypted local file, with an optional sync service. I know that if I was setting up my own password manager for security reasons, the sync part is likely the most vulnerable, hence why I would like to offload that to a third party that I trust.
Not being dependent on some external maintainer outside your preferred editor and encryption tools.
The ability to port to any alternative tools that provide superior capabilities, should the need arise.
Utilising the file using standard shell tools (gpg piped to grep, sed, awk, etc.).
I've been around long enough to see multiple tools come and go. Even PGP itself dates from after the beginning of my professional career with computers (though near the beginning). There are multiple applications, operating systems, and architectures I've used which have been relegated to the dustbin of history. I'm quite leery of becoming dependent on any one specific application or tool, most especially one that that's not been proven across multiple decades and widely adopted.
PGP, GPG, vi/vim, or emacs would all pass my tests. They're available on any system I could conceivably use. Even iOS, though with some difficulty.
Encrypting and syncing a file is simple.
Managing syncs from multiple locations of an encrypted file is ... a bit more complicated. Git might be able to manage that with some hooks.
A password manager only really offers marginal phishing protection, in the sense that 'automatic autofill' (as defined in the original post) is not available with an unrecognised website.
The problem is most profound with tech illiterate folk. If you have tried to teach a tech illiterate person how to use a password manager (as I have), you may have encountered the issue that 'autofill' isn't 100% accurate. You will occasionally hit a subdomain or alternative domain which using the same credentials as the saved website (eg amazon.co.uk vs amazon.com). It will appear that no credentials are available for that site. Therefore, you usually have to teach the person how to manually search the vault and either fill manually, or copy and paste credentials. Otherwise, you can expect phone calls for support. And, of course, the original article actually suggests disabling automatic autofill. It suggests filling manually, further opening up the possibility of mistakenly filling onto a dodgy domain. As soon as you teach them a workaround to deal with this case, the phishing vector is basically no different to a post-it.
This problem might also apply to a tired, tech literate person, who mindlessly fills manually or copies credentials without checking the domain.
In either case, we fall back to Google Safe Browsing doing its job properly, and await solid anti-phishing solutions like FIDO2/webauthn.
> A password manager only really offers marginal phishing protection, in the sense that 'automatic autofill' (as defined in the original post) is not available with an unrecognised website.
I don't know if alerting the user that something is wrong could be described as "marginal" for phishing attacks.
Sure, they may still make the bad decision but it might seem odd to them that their password manager didn't offer to fill it in for the site and get them to start looking around and double checking things.
Under WebAuthn you can have 2FA despite only one authentication flowing from your authenticator to the web site. Nice smartphones (say, a modern Pixel or an iPhone) with fingerprint readers, have as the two factors your fingerprint (something you are) and the phone itself (something you have). The phone signs your authentication, the private information (your fingerprint) never leaves the phone, it just warrants that it checked it (UV bitflag in the signed data)
Or say you have a FIDO 2 Security Key from Yubico. As well as the features of the cheaper FIDO 1 Security Key products, this has a PIN verifier. The PIN is something you know, while the Security Key itself is something you have, so that's two factors, once again the UV bitflag is signed.
It's simpler, it's easier, it's more secure. And yet, right now I bet an HN reader is implementing yet another shitty SMS-as-2FA hack and we're still in a thread about remote authenticating with passwords - an idea that was already terrible in the 1970s.
I mean yeah, if you use 2FA and both phone and computer are just one factor on their own, then a compromised phone does not matter. So my question is, how about the mentioned scenario - to me it seems that just compromising the phone would compromise the whole, but maybe I misunderstood.
> You still need 2FA and the 2FA absolutely should NOT be a part of your password manager. Use a different app at the very least.
Recommended if storing 2FA codes in a password manager is to use 2FA for the password manager that isn't stored in the password manager. Off the top of my head, that doesn't seem to really open up any additional risks over storing 2FA passwords outside of the password manager.
Personally, it's a matter of practicality - I use my phone for personal 2FA codes, but don't have a work-provided phone and am not going to use my personal phone for work purposes - and as many services now require 2FA, it's easiest to store those 2FA codes in my work-provided password manager.
The counterargument to this is that there is evidence young people are neurologically not full adults at 18 years of age, and alcohol impedes neurological development.
I have no doubt war also has neurological effects, but they don't seem to be age specific.
It is challenging, if not impossible, to otherwise defend it. If someone has the possibility to choose (or be forced) to harm themselves and shorten their life in war, then why shouldn't a choice apply to alcohol?
The argument in response is that it is legitimate for the government to legislate to promote the health of its citizens, as we are seeing with lockdown laws in COVID-19. That people break lockdown laws is not a reason not to have lockdown laws. So the argument involves a bit more analysis than simply accepting that 'prohibition doesn’t stop teens from drinking'.
So, this just invites the same perennial arguments frequently made in relation to drug decriminilisation.
On my part, had the drinking age been 21 where I live, I wouldn't have started drinking until I was 21.
Tell that to the 73.6%[0] of Americans who are overweight or obese, but that the government doesn't care too much about it, in fact they subsidize it[1] via the farm bill & friends. Being overweight or obese will shorten your life [2]. Also the US gov doesn't care, as it's own dietary reccomendations differ from accepted nutritional guidelines e.g. Harvard nutrition plate[3].
IMO the government should not be in the business of policing one's health, or advocating for the people's health, as the USDA and associated agencies are demonstrably corrupted.
Most of this isn't accurate despite the links, which is kinda odd to see. To tick off some stuff:
1. The government does care about overweight/obesity; it comes up a lot in discussing issues with the healthcare system (https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html). A lack of regulation isn't the same thing as not caring -- for example, there's no regulation requiring Americans to get vaccinated, either.
2. Farm subsidies seem unlikely to be a problem.. it's not like access to food makes people obese -- in fact, the opposite seems to be true (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5781054/). Usually affordable-food helps folks eat better rather than more.
3. The US government's dietary recommendations not being a copy/paste of another set of recommendations isn't a meaningful observation... why would you think otherwise? For example, are you under the impression that someone following the US's nutritional guidelines would be worse off for it? (In case you're not American: the problem isn't the guidelines, but rather that most Americans don't follow them.)
4. The US government's call to regulate teen-drinking was based on a historical uptick in drunk-driving accidents when the drinking-ages were relaxed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._history_of_alcohol_minimu...). This is, the argument wasn't based on a teen's personal health but rather people were crashing cars on public roads, which is definitely a reasonable concern for a government to have.
> had the drinking age been 21 where I live, I wouldn't have started drinking until I was 21.
You really don't know then. As someone who lives where it is 21, I'm qualified to tell you that you're very likely wrong.
Before the "Source? Study?" parrots show up, you're darn right this is anecdotal. The "real data" is going to be from kids who aren't telling the truth.
This shouldn't happen. If you create a Word document within a subfolder of OneDrive, and open it in Word, it should be saving to OneDrive with autosave enabled.
Perhaps you are using an older version of Word and/or the OneDrive client?
Costs are compensatory in nature, not punitive. This is a risky gambit, pardon the pun.
Also, in Australia, you'll only recover a portion in accordance with scale limits (party-party costs). Indemnity costs (100% recovery) is rarely awarded. What's the case in the US?
I'm not even close to convinced by your response. Relying on the public-private divide as the sole basis for your retort is weak. You also assert that the person is pushing a personal narrative, but I suggest you're doing the same.
There's an argument that private corporations that are involved in dissemination of information (search engines and social media) should respect principles of freedom of speech as a democratic principle, regardless of constitutional mandate.
Suppose the government outsources welfare eligibility decision-making to a private company. Does this mean traditional notions of fairness we would expect from such an decision-maker do not apply, because they are a private company?
The public/private divide is a well-known conundrum. And the analogy I gave is a practical example of that, one that has actually faced several nations. I note you've offered no basis for it being 'dishonest', either, which is unfair. Be careful before making statements like that.
The point is, you look at the substance of what is being done or controlled, not the status of the actor as a private or public entity. That is what the analogy is used to explain.
The substance of what is being done, here, is regulation of communication between individuals over a communication platform. Downplaying it as 'not hosting public content' is inaccurate or at least of no moment. What's public content mean anyway?
If a significant amount of private communication goes through privately owned channels, it is reasonable that the private companies operating those channels respect democratic norms. It's unreasonable to dismiss any criticism as 'they are a private company', as that's beside the point.
I’m definitely on the side of the argument that says power is power, and private companies can do just as much harm as governments can. However, there’s a difference between gov’t censorship and censorship by private companies like we’re talking about here.
It’s the difference between not allowing the government to say what you can publish and requiring a company to publish whatever you want.
So then, I should be able to paint your house and car with whatever messages "I" want and you should not be allowed to erase them. Is that the argument you're making?
If "my" house is actually a meeting place for half the country, or even just half the city, and I've decided almost anyone can paint on the walls, I should not be able to say that one specific person cannot paint on the walls because, for instance, I don't like what party they vote for. Any restriction on wallpainting in that space must be independent of the content of the message. If I wanted to limit that message, I should have to go through the proper democratic circles, ie. pass a city ordnance.
This is the same logic that prevents me from saying that in this meeting hall, gay people are not allowed entry.
I disagree wholeheartedly. If your front yard happens to become a popular meeting space for the town, it doesn't change your rights to your yard. You can still ask anyone to leave for any reason. Google literally built all their infrastructure from the ground-up. It's theirs in the most direct sense of the word, and we should take an attitude of humble gratitude for their ongoing contributions to our wellbeing, rather then continue our attempts to punish them for their success.
You've conflated a few things here. Are we banning people or messages? You've said that bans need to be content neutral, but also that they can't be based on the individual doing the painting. This would mean that, for example porn would need to be acceptable. Or advertisements, but it seems reasonable for the owner to ban both of those things in pursuit of their desired aesthetic.
The actual case seems to be that anyone can paint anything except certain banned things. But any person can still paint other unbanned things.
That's different than banning particular people. In other words, if the republicans are allowed to discuss everything except vaccine conspiracies, you aren't discriminating against republicans, so this analogy about banning individuals doesn't work. And of course you might ban a particular individual from the premises for repeatedly breaking those rules.
All of this seems perfectly reasonable, and indeed I know real-world spaces that operate more or less like this.
> This would mean that, for example porn would need to be acceptable. Or advertisements, but it seems reasonable for the owner to ban both of those things in pursuit of their desired aesthetic.
Yes, I stand by this. If it's legal to have porn on your house wall, it should be legal for people to paint porn on your communal wall.
Again, the solution to this should be a city ordnance. The problem to me is not restrictions but accountability.
> The actual case seems to be that anyone can paint anything except certain banned things. But any person can still paint other unbanned things.
This seems akin to saying that the theocracy does not discriminate against gay men, because they can marry women just like hetero men can.
> Yes, I stand by this. If it's legal to have porn on your house wall, it should be legal for people to paint porn on your communal wall
Why? Why is it that if I allow people to paint things, I lose the right to moderate those things? Like it's still my property, right? What causes me to forfeit my property rights?
Or to ask a perhaps different question, could I close the venue entirely?
What if I later reopened it with a list of allowed people and you could only enter if you were on the list? Do I still forfeit those rights? How big does the list have to be for it to be suitably public again?
> This seems akin to saying that the theocracy does not discriminate against gay men, because they can marry women just like hetero men can.
You're going to have to explain this better. Because in practice banning gay men from marrying men prevents them from getting married at all. Preventing anyone from painting porn doesn't prevent an artist from painting not-porn. I might be more willing to agree if, for example, it was the government blanket banning porn. But we're not talking about that, were talking about one dude with one popular artists venue banning pornographic art being painted. It's not different than if I disallowed the sale of pornography in my art gallery.
Keep in mind, today, in the united states no priest is compelled to officiate a same sex wedding. The state recognizes them, but you or I don't have to.
> Why? Why is it that if I allow people to paint things, I lose the right to moderate those things? Like it's still my property, right? What causes me to forfeit my property rights?
Good question! In my view, the deciding factor is "universality". I think there is a fundamental difference in nature between a friendgroup and a customer base. When you offer a service to your friends, you may pick and choose how you like on any basis. When you offer a service to the general public, you are in a sense attempting to provide a "plug-in" service to society as a whole, and so the terms of that service should be negotiated with society as a whole, including such things as civil rights. This is exactly where you cross the boundary between being "a private citizen" and " part of the state".
> Or to ask a perhaps different question, could I close the venue entirely?
Yes. Nobody can be compelled to offer a service.
> What if I later reopened it with a list of allowed people and you could only enter if you were on the list? Do I still forfeit those rights? How big does the list have to be for it to be suitably public again?
I think this is a sliding scale. The specific cutoff would always be kind of arbitrary.
> > This seems akin to saying that the theocracy does not discriminate against gay men, because they can marry women just like hetero men can.
> You're going to have to explain this better. Because in practice banning gay men from marrying men prevents them from getting married at all.
No it does not; it merely prevents them from getting married in the way that they like, which is a different way than the societal norm. The right to hetero marriage, as practiced in theocratic societies, inherently normalizes hetero relations and excludes gay relations. However, there is nothing inherently wrong - in the erroneous sense, not the moral sense! - about such a choice. This demonstrates that the constraints you apply to a service, even if they only pertain to the nature of the service and not the persons the service is extended to, can still be discriminatory.
> Keep in mind, today, in the united states no priest is compelled to officiate a same sex wedding.
Likewise, inasmuch as weddings have societal relevance, I think they should be compelled to - or else not officiate any weddings at all.
> When you offer a service to the general public, you are in a sense attempting to provide a "plug-in" service to society as a whole, and so the terms of that service should be negotiated with society as a whole, including such things as civil rights.
Does this apply to all businesses that offer services? Keep in mind here that the first amendment, in addition to protecting our right to speech, protects our right to association. That is, our right to associate with the people, and only the people, we want to is a civil right that our constitution protects just as much as speech.
If I open a store and let people purchase things, I'm offering a service to the general public. But I'm certainly not "part of the state". One of the primary concerns about the state is that it (usually) has a monopoly on the things that it does, so that if it provides a service, it's the only provider of that service.
But "speech" isn't a service that one can monopolize. Preventing speech can be done via force, but "facilitating speech" isn't monopolizable. If someone won't let you do it, you can do it yourself or find it somewhere else.
> Yes. Nobody can be compelled to offer a service.
But you are compelling me to offer a service! I want to offer the service to paint anything except X. And you say no no! You are additionally compelled to offer the service to paint X. This by the way, gets far more complicated if, for example, my service is...baking cakes. If I offer a universal cake baking service, when can I refuse to bake a cake? Can I refuse all wedding cakes? Can I refuse all cakes above a certain size? Can I refuse all cakes in red? Can I only bake chocolate cakes? Can I refuse to bake cakes for people who have previously given me bad reviews?
> No it does not; it merely prevents them from getting married in the way that they like, which is a different way than the societal norm.
So let's make this concrete. Let's say I ban painting my name. I don't want people to paint it in my house. People can paint anything else, but not my name.
With the marriage example, we generally assume that people are attracted to a particular gender, and aren't really able to change that. Are you suggesting that, similarly, there are people who cannot find happiness without painting my name on my wall?
I mean if that's the case, why is it moral for me to ban them as long as I ban everyone else too? These particular people can't be happy either way.
With marriage, the issue is that you're essentially preventing some group from being able to openly mutually associate in the way that they want to. We can quibble on exactly how much of a freedom to associate or a human right that is, but it sure sounds like a lot more of one than your ability to write my name on my wall.
There's another argument by the way, which is that marriage is a service provided to two individuals, and that providing only heterosexual marriages discriminates based on attributes of those individuals, in exactly the same way as only marrying white people would be discriminatory. This same argument doesn't work for the example of banning speech.
Yes, I don't believe in an unrestricted right of business association.
(Neither does the US, when it comes to discrimination on protected categories.)
> If I open a store and let people purchase things, I'm offering a service to the general public. But I'm certainly not "part of the state". One of the primary concerns about the state is that it (usually) has a monopoly on the things that it does, so that if it provides a service, it's the only provider of that service.
> But "speech" isn't a service that one can monopolize. Preventing speech can be done via force, but "facilitating speech" isn't monopolizable.
Sure it is, by controlling the platform. In any case, I have a much more expansive view of monopoly as a spectrum. Network effects, for instance, can also contribute to a monopolizing service. In any case, I believe the primary reason why monopoly is a moral risk is because a monopoly prevents you from switching providers to escape a restrictive corporate environment. My approach is instead to outlaw restrictive corporate environments.
> > Yes. Nobody can be compelled to offer a service.
> But you are compelling me to offer a service!
No, you always have the choice to not offer the service at all. I am not compelling you to offer any specific service, I am preventing you from offering a service with certain restrictive parameters.
> And you say no no! You are additionally compelled to offer the service to paint X.
No, you are compelled to offer the service to paint X, contingent on your decision to offer the service at all. You always have the option to cease offering the service entirely. And you could, I guess, close your company whenever someone requests a service you don't like. However considering fees, that may be impractical.
> I mean if that's the case, why is it moral for me to ban them as long as I ban everyone else too? These particular people can't be happy either way.
I don't have an opinion on the morality of the matter. Or rather, I don't think my morality should affect the decision. That's why I have focused this conversation specifically on the mechanism by which the morality is arbitrated, which should be the same mechanism by which state decisions are arbitrated, ie. civil rights, representative democracy etc, inasmuch as the service is of the class of "service offering to the general public" shared with some state services.
The idea that companies shouldn't be given the right to business association because their civil rights are less important that the civil rights of others is a moral one.
Civil rights are always in conflict, and which ones you prioritize and how is a moral decision. You can't abdicate that responsibility.
Put another way, why does it violate civil rights to offer a service conditionally, but not to refuse to offer the service at all?
Or in the reverse, why is the government able to regulate my offering of a service conditionally, even though you seem to believe that them compelling me to offer the service in general is a violation of my rights?
Or yet another way: why do you believe that the right of association is less important than the right of speech?
Those are all ultimately moral or ethical questions.
Yes, sorry, I agree. These are all moral questions. My position can be generally summed up as "the less individual an organization is, the less weight its rights have." This is because I consider the individual as the ultimate purpose of society.
That is, the more individuals your organization serves, the more it becomes a "thing whose arbitration between individuals is of societal import". I believe that issues of societal import should be decided by democratic means, whereas issues of individual import are decided by personal choice. Between the two is a sliding scale.
I hope the twin prime conjecture holds, since it would be pretty incredible to think that, despite what you said, there are infinitely many twin primes.
Asking for localization and then criticizing another region’s vernacular is… kind of hilariously ironic. Gas is short for Gasoline, which, along with Petrol, came form old names of propriety oil products. Neither is a misnomer.
I'm glad the VLC developers never backed down from the Santa hat popping up near Christmas, despite ridiculous criticism from a tiny minority of users.
If you don't like it, fork it.