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  Location: EU / Bulgaria
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: C++ and other programming languages, Qt, Docker, Kubernetes, CI pipelines, automation, core Internet protocols, distributed systems, databases, cloud.
  Résumé/CV: http://lastviking.eu/cv/jarle
  Email: contact@lastviking.eu
I am an experienced freelancer with 38 years in IT. Hands-on experience has gifted me a deep understanding of business processes, IT security, software design and development, and DevOps. I literally wrote the textbook on hardware https://lastviking.eu/maskinvare_og_operativsystemer.html used in Norway to educate IT technicians and other IT professionals.

I work full-time at my own company in the EU. This makes it straightforward to invoice your company, anywhere in the world, for services I provide.

I have state-of-the-art hardware to take on any work with Linux, Android, Windows 11, macOS and iOS and local LLM agents - and experience with all of it - including cross-platform projects. In addition, I have a flexible lab that can simulate cloud workloads.

My primary programming language is C++20. I also use other languages frequently.

Links:

- Freelance website: https://cpp-freelancer.com/

- Professional website and blog: https://lastviking.eu/

- GitHub: https://github.com/jgaa


It's what happens when the people governing is terrified about the people they govern.


SEEKING WORK | Remote / Worldwide | Experienced C++ Freelancer Available

Location: EU

Looking for a principal-level C++ developer?

  - Library Design – Design and implement modern C++ libraries and tools
  - Architecture Review – Conduct architecture and design reviews
  - Security Audit – Perform security and vulnerability assessments
  - Performance Optimization – Tune performance and optimize hotspots
  - CI/CD Engineering – Build CI/CD pipelines and cross-platform workflows
  - Team Augmentation – Seamlessly integrate with your existing development team
More info: https://cpp-freelancer.com/


When I received the first warning email about this, I wrote a simple library and cli to validate all my certs for me.

https://github.com/jgaa/openvalify


I just have a cronjob that does:

    #!/usr/bin/env bash

    cert_check() {
        server=$1
        host=$2
        port=$3

        str=`ssh "$server" "echo | openssl s_client -servername $host -connect localhost:$port | openssl x509 -noout -checkend 604800"` || true
        if ! echo "$str" | grep -q 'Certificate will not expire' ; then
            echo "$str" | ./send-email.py "Certificate \"$host\" on $server will expire in 7 days" \
        fi
    }

    cert_check name myserver.com 443


If you’re automating the check why not automate the renewal directly?


I've missed expired certificates because of a configuration issue that broke the certbot automation. Granted, I could've read the certbot journalctl output, but 99.9% of the time that's a waste of time. Not like there was anything mission-critical on there.


who says they don't have the renewal automated?



That explains a lot.


This is never about protecting the children.

This is always about government overreach.

People are less likely to criticize the government, or even participate in political debate, if their online identities are know by the government. Governments like obedient, scared citizens.

The only ethical response to laws like this, is for websites and apps to terminate operations completely in countries that create them. Citizens who elect politicians without respect for human rights and privacy don't really deserve anything nice anyway.


Providing identity and access services at scale is certainly a few people's next big plan, and it appears they've managed to sell the representatives of their own states on it first.

This sort of thing can't happen except through the largest tech companies in the world, who are coincidentally already poised to be the world's official providers of digital identity, and private internet enclaves.

Look at what Microsoft has done with Windows - mandatory minimum TPM to install and a Microsoft account registration for a local user. Try using an Apple iPad or iPhone without an iCloud account or adding a payment method. Google wants you to sign in with them, everywhere, aggressively. Cloudflare has been the web's own private gatekeeper for the last decade. Facebook's whole product is identity. IBM has sold surveillance, IAM, and facial recognition services for decades.

Instead of a clunky IP-based Great Firewall, imagine being able to render VPNs ineffective and unnecessary everywhere on the planet by a person's (verified national) identity. Click. Block and deactivate all members of group "Islamic State" on your platform. Click. Allow IDs registered to this ZIP Code to vote in this election. Click. CortanaSupreme, please dashboard viewer metrics by usage patterns that indicate loneliness, filtering for height, last assessed property values, and marriage status, and show their locations.

Currently, laws don't require age verification, just that ineligible parties are excluded. There's no legal requirement to card someone before selling them alcohol, and there's no reason anyone would need a depth map of someone's face when we could safely assume that the holder of a >5 year old email account is likely to be 18 if 13 is the minimum age to register with the provider.

Shifting the onus to parents to control what their kids do on the internet hasn't worked. However, that's a bare sliver of what's at stake here.


The anonymous, unchecked Internet got us where we are today. It was a great experiment in worldwide communication, but has now been converted into a weapon for the same type of authoritarians that previously used traditional media and propaganda channels. AI is only accelerating the possibilities for abuse. Critical thinking skills taught from a young age is the only defense.


That’s a very strange take on governments, treating them as a singular entity. A government that deserves that name is first and foremost and elected set of representatives of the constituents, and thus like citizens that vote for them again, act in their interests.

If the government is not working like that, you have an administrative problem, not a societal one. A state is its population.


> A state is its population.

Very dangerous thinking. Unless each and every citizens has approved the elected "representative" and every decision they made (which will never happen), you cannot assimilate the state and the population. The state has to be considered a separate entity, one which operate beyond the common man's thinking.


> Unless each and every citizens has approved the elected "representative" and every decision they made

But they have, by electing the representatives that ought to represent them, and thereby yield the power to make decisions on behalf of their constituents. If they do no not act accordingly, they will not be elected again in subsequent terms; if they act against the law, they will be fairly tried; and if the laws don't sufficiently capture the reality anymore, they will be adapted. That is how a representative democracy should work. If it doesn't, you have an implementation problem, not a systemic one (admittedly, this is almost a true Scotsman, but still.)

> The state has to be considered a separate entity, one which operate beyond the common man's thinking.

This isn't mutually exclusive. Of course the state has to make higher-level considerations and people in power will invariably be corrupted to some degree, but concluding that the state is your enemy and cannot be trusted is the wrong one, in my opinion. With that attitude, you're just waiting for it to become truly evil so you can say "See? I told you all along." Better to try and shape the state you have into something better while you still can.


> But they have, by electing the representatives that ought to represent them

Yes this is the theory, but what if there is no political party "representing" me, what about people abstaining from voting, what if peoples elect an authoritarian figure I didn't vote for ? This is one of the pitfalls of your system, if only one citizen disagree, or do not feel represented in it, this justification falls apart. You cannot hide this behind an "implementation problem", because there is no such implementation. If "we are the government" so everything the state is doing to me (or any other individual) will be "voluntary". With this reasoning the state is not putting me in prison for my dissident opinion, I went to prison myself.

> concluding that the state is your enemy and cannot be trusted is the wrong one, in my opinion

I didn't conclude such a thing, I only wanted to make clear that the state is a distinct institution that cannot possibly represent everyone, thus not worthy of the title "we". Also yes I do not trust it :)


> what if there is no political party "representing" me

If it bothers you enough, you’re supposed to create your own party. Democracy doesn’t mean that everyone else is doing the hard work for you.

> what about people abstaining from voting

Silent disagreement—if they were bothered enough, they would go voting.

> what if peoples elect an authoritarian figure I didn't vote for

If a few people do this, the system can (and has, for hundreds of years) handle it just fine. If more and more people do it, something is off, and nobody did anything about it. Part of the problem is people stopped caring and participating, expecting someone else to.

> if only one citizen disagree, or do not feel represented in it, this justification falls apart.

It’s no justification. We live in a shared society, democracy is a compromise to make the most people in it happy.

> the state is not putting me in prison for my dissident opinion, I went to prison myself.

As far as I can see, no democratic state is putting you in prison for a dissenting opinion, as long as you don’t endanger someone else with it.

Otherwise, yes: if you willingly went against the rules you agreed to follow by actively enjoying the benefits of a free, democratic society, then it’s reasonable to go to prison if you’re caught. You expect the same of other criminals, even if they may not realise the error of their ways yet.

People take everything around them for granted, acting like their freedom doesn’t come at a cost. It does. By living in a democracy, you enjoy boundless riches, housing, health care, fair trials, roads, plumbing, electricity, supermarkets, and a myriad of scale effects that are only possible because a lot of people have agreed to work together. The price to thrive in that system is to adhere to our collective rules, and deal with the fact that we constantly need to make compromises with our neighbours so the majority of people can be as happy as possible. And yes, that means even a government that you don’t fully agree with represents you, if not perfectly; it means taking responsibility for the mechanism that feeds you.


> If it bothers you enough, you’re supposed to create your own party.

Yeah, and that party wouldn't get any seats. I'm sorry, how did we go from "the state IS the population" to "well if your policy preferences fall outside the two agendas on offer, you have to start an electorally-successful third party—something NOBODY has managed to do—and if you don't or if it doesn't work, then it's your fault."

It sounds like you're trying to apportion blame for why the state ISN'T the population, and at that point, you've already conceded that your initial claim was wrong.


I respectfully disagree. If we replace all idealism with realism in the way we think about our political system, there is nothing left to do other than burying our heads in the sand. I firmly believe that people must participate in democracy, and that involves fighting for your convictions.

It's not your fault how things are, but doing nothing and expecting things to get better on their own isn't going to work either.


Realism doesn't mean doing nothing. It means taking a critical attitude toward your own strategies for effecting change.

> but doing nothing and expecting things to get better on their own isn't going to work either

Isn't this exactly what you advocate for? You say democracies faithfully represent the will of the people, and yet the American president's rock-bottom approval ratings indicate otherwise. Your attitude (correct me if I'm misrepresenting you) is basically that the system is fine, and the problem is that all the people in it are just irresponsible. Well, that's not a plan to fix anything. It's a do-nothing ideology. Or are you going to wave your magic wand and make everyone responsible?

> By living in a democracy, you enjoy boundless riches, housing, health care, fair trials

Tell that to poor people, homeless people, uninsured people, and the countless people unjustly imprisoned in the largest prison system in the world (1.8 million inmates).


> A state is its population.

Oh that's not true at all. A state is an institution which is influenced by its population, but if anything, the attitudes of the population are more a product of the state, its constituent political parties, and the associated media apparatuses than of a freestanding "will of the people."

To give a trivial counterexample, if the American state "is" its population, then why does your presidential vote only matter if you live in a swing state, and why can you only vote for one of two candidates? Surely your vote should reflect all of your policy preferences and have equal influence no matter where you live.


I would say it is a realistic take, and yours is idealistic.


It isn’t realistic, it’s pessimistic. If the government, the system, is your opponent, there is no other outcome than subversion, everything is futile anyway. That leaves no room for democratic participation, for any kind of peaceful change, if you’re being earnest with it. And that seems very cynical and ideologically driven to me. There’s a lot of room for improvement that doesn’t involve tearing everything down because it’s beyond the pale anyway; it isn’t.


I am not advocating tearing everything down, as that will make things worse, especially if done violently.

> That leaves no room for democratic participation

I think there is very limited room for democratic participation and it has become far to difficult to change anything. If I vote and I do not care which of the parties that have a chance of winning wins because their policies are so similar it does not matter, where is my democratic participation? Even if the parties are different and I do not like the policies of either, what is the value of my vote?

I think things will improve in the long term when there is sufficient pushback, but it will take a long time.


> If I vote and I do not care which of the parties that have a chance of winning wins because their policies are so similar it does not matter, where is my democratic participation?

In joining a party that represents you better—or founding one if no such party exists—and campaigning for it. Democracy doesn't end with casting a ballot, especially in trying times like these. Nobody is going to come and save us; if we don't stand up, nobody will.

I can wholeheartedly recommend the book "The Germans: They thought they were free" by Milton Mayer[1]. It very thoroughly describes how a society ends up asking how the holocaust could possibly have happened while nobody did anything about it while it did.

[1]: https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html


> It very thoroughly describes how a society ends up asking how the holocaust could possibly have happened while nobody did anything about it while it did.

> If the government is not working like that, you have an administrative problem, not a societal one. A state is its population.

How do you jive these two statements?


My point is that the German society wasn't inherently evil, but stunned, indifferent; a comparatively small group of thoroughly sinister people managed to use that to their advantage. The correct thing to do would have been civil resistance, while it was still possible.


But a state is its population, by your own words. How can you say German society wasn't inherently evil and yet hold that a state IS its people? Either the German population is evil and willed evil into existence, or the state is greater than the sum of its parts. It seems obvious that the latter is the case.


Now that's mixing things. We are talking about democracies; and there, a state is its population: Every constituent carries responsibility for the government—the state—that is elected in fair elections. Even by abstaining, you agree with the majority. Without the German people, there wouldn't be a state of Germany.

But of course that doesn't apply to autocracies and dictatorships, which Germany pre-WW2 obviously turned into. My point is that the Germans voted for the NSDAP, and dit not resist the transformation into an autocratic state. They let this happen, out of indifference, wrong assumptions, anger, stupidity, and fear. That means one way or another, the German people decided what the state became.


False dichotomy. "Either the system is perfect or it is useless." No: systems can have mixed results, and they can be improved. Even when they can't be improved, they can be replaced by better (but still imperfect) systems.

You present a choice between pretending everything is fine and giving up. This is no choice at all. Both options entail giving up; one is just honest about it.

We can make things better.


People, and the governments they compose, respond to incentives.

If platforms like discord take a hard-line stance of "no, we're not enabling a surveillance state apparatus" and the government then forces them to cease business in that country, that is a decision with consequences. People don't like when the government takes away their nice things due to motives they don't agree with. It catalyzes a position - "unchecked government surveillance is creating negative outcomes for me".

Over time, if enough actors behave the same way, public sentiments will shift and, assuming a healthy democracy, the government line will as well.

But acquiescing to demands like these only further entrenches the position, as the public is only loosely incentivized to care. The boiling of the privacy frog in a surveillance state like the UK means most people won't care enough to change it until it's too late


> treating them as a singular entity

The entities that keep pushing for that stuff tends to be quite centralized.


> Citizens who elect politicians without respect for human rights and privacy don't really deserve anything nice anyway.

Unfortunately things don't always work out that cleanly:

- Sometimes you vote for the pro-freedom candidate, but your candidate loses. - Sometimes there are only two dominant candidates, and both disrespect human rights. - Sometimes one candidate disrespects human rights in some particular way, but the other candidate has different, bigger problems, so you vote for the lesser of two evils. - Sometimes a candidate says one thing while campaigning, and then when elected does something different.


So much for Elons "Free Speech"!

This may come as a shock to him: Free Speech means to allow people to say something that he disagree with. Something that may hurt his interests or even his ego. Free speech is not to allow people to say things he agree with or don't care about.


There never was any demand for free speech from him. He just wanted to advance his fascist agenda and used whatever means he had at his disposal.


While you’re correct as to his intentions, it’s still important to point out his hypocrisy as he called himself “a free speech absolutist,” and claimed to want Twitter to be part of that vision. He explicitly called left wing and right wing views as things he wants.

Yes, we know it was all lies but not putting out the evidence allows people like Musk and his acolytes to make it the new truth without a fight.


We really are living in a world where we were always at war with Eurasia. Musk shouted loudly to his followers his views on free speech and why he wanted to buy Twitter. And now, it’s like it never happened. This isn’t like a bias news outlet leaving out certain facts, this is Musk himself saying these things and people going along with it.

It’s bonkers to me.


Remember how he tried to get out of the twitter deal by claining there were too many bots?

How is the bot situation on twitter now?


I don’t think he ever wanted out of the deal. It was a way to keep the acquisition from being scrutinized too much.


I'm not sure you understand free speech. Free speech means he can make public threats to people without repercussions, doxx people when he feels like it, lie, and spread misinformation for personal gain. It means unbanning rule breakers, doxxers and harassers, as long as they're right-wing. Free speech does not extend to anyone who he personally disagrees with or dislikes, who will instead be banned from the platform.


Legal (first amendment) free speech certainly allows him to ban whoever he wants.

However, this is the exact behavior from prior owners that he counter-positioned himself against, allegedly pursuing a broader “free speech absolutism.” That philosophy certainly would not permit arbitrary bans of people he doesn’t like.

These mental gymnastics are remarkable to see.


I think we’re all in agreement and the person you’re replying to is being sarcastic ;-)


It's pretty crazy. If you say something that offends him (like perhaps the financial abandonment of his kids) then you're banned.

Free speech eh.


[flagged]


On the assumption you are acting in good faith, that is a very poor analogy.

I think a more apt one would be: Imagine asking for a shit-free meal, and you're served a meal with just a little bit of shit in it.


Except the meal is mostly shit. There's no free speech anywhere on Twitter. It's not even free-as-in-beer speech because you need a paid account for anyone to really see your tweets.


[flagged]


Ok, lets get some things straight.

Musk has /claimed/ (repeatedly) that he is a free speech absolutist, and by extension that twitter is as well.

This is false: https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-24/under-el...

I'm not clear on how you're defining edge cases here, and regardless, it doesnt matter.

"Sorry officer, those murders back there were just a few edge cases! I've publicly pledged to a murder free life!"

I see very few in this thread pretending anything


> Musk is dramatically more pro-speech than any other social media platform owner

X is blocking private messages on the basis of their content. Every competitor with E2E as even an option clears this bar handily.


Musk is a self-professed "free speech absolutist".

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600?lang=en-GB...


He belongs to these people that misunderstood freedom of opinion to mean that nobody gets to criticize their opinion.


No, he did not misunderstand. This is 100% malice.


Username checks out!


Go make a brand new Twitter account and check how "free" speech is.

Immediately you get one very specific "sect" of free speech.


What makes you say that? I've started using X recently and I would argue it's pretty free, you see a lot more range of opinions than on a site like reddit. Aggressively pro-trans posts come across my feed all the time, including some right-wing content


“Free speech” disappeared almost immediately after the Twitter purchase. Along with all of Musks supporters changing from “we need free speech”, to “Musk owns the platform, he can do what he wants.”

Pre-Musk Twitter was more about free speech, except it was trying to fight bots, hate speech and disinformation.


The biggest problem with the term "Free Speech" is that almost everyone makes exceptions for things that they believe should be restricted/censored.

Therefore the only standard should be the legality of that speech in a particular country. In the US those things you put as exemptions are permitted. So pre-musk Twitter wasn't about free-speech as those exemptions are restrictions on speech that are greater than US law restricts (which isn't much tbh).

Generally you have a trade off on any of these platforms between what you can say without breaking terms of service and the popularity of that platform. Generally less popular platforms are less restrictive.

If you don't want your speech restricted, you should probably just go back to hosting your blog and using a mailing list.


I would argue it appeared after the Twitter purchase. Originally Twitter had been dying through excessive bans, now you can find major political influencers on both sides of the spectrum


> about free speech, except it was trying to fight bots, hate speech

> about free speech

> fight hate speech

Do you realize how absurd you sound?


[flagged]


I don't understand how your comment is relevant. It feels like word salad and does not appear to logically follow the PC. What is "truth to power"? Did those ex-intelligence officers survive the Musk purge? How does this all relate to the events of today?


The USAID revelation revealed how they were funded. Along with thousands of other news organizations domestically and globally.


You're still not making sense. Who is "they" here, USAID? What does your second sentence even mean? How "news organizations [are funded]"? I'm seriously unclear what you are trying to say.


USAID had thousands of premium subscriptions to newspapers and magazines. One such was for 8000 monthly subscriptions. I don't remember the publication with 8000 but the NYT also got money from USAID.

Not sure if that's what we're talking about here. For the record I am against that practice.


[flagged]


Do you have any examples of left-wing disinfo that Twitter let spread previously?


It certainly does not come as a shock to him. He knows what he is doing.

The funny thing is if he was Russian he would be called an "oligarch" in every news piece. Since he's American he's an entrepreneur :)


Also how liberals were celebrating Elons "genius" just a decade ago will never not be funny to me, they also don't seem to mind Gates at all. I don't think they have much of a problem with oligarchy, they just want a liberal oligarchy instead.


You may want to look up under whose presidency it was when the United States Justice Department sued Microsoft in 1998. :)

Musk was far, far less political (at least regarding his public persona) even 10 years ago; his persona was more heavily futurism oriented. Electric cars to help mitigate climate change, colonizing Mars, that kind of stuff. It wasn't really a "liberal" or "conservative" thing then. Would've been nice if he stuck on this path IMHO.


But this is exactly my point and you don't even realize it, you think a billionaire helping mitigate climate change or colonizing Mars is a good thing and not political. You don't realize that what you described is exactly what I mean by "liberal oligarchy".

You don't mind if a billionaire is "helping" humanity. What I'm saying is that a billionaire doing anything grand like that AT ALL, IS oligarchy, it is not the billionaires who should mitigate climate change or do space exploration, it is all of us, collectively, through public funding, steered by a representative democracy, that should do these things, not singular private individual billionaires like Musk or Gates.


Clarification: I am guessing you are using the liberal term from a "classic liberalism" sense (e.g. how it is used in Europe) and not the US version of the term, which generally refers to social liberalism and is often associated with Democrats? That changes some things.

Personally I would absolutely love it if humanity didn't have to rely on billionaire philanthropy for these sort of things. But you are talking about a significant paradigm shift in world politics, one of which unfortunately (from my perspective) much of the world is moving away from at the moment.


Maybe news outlets were doing this but “liberals” at large were not.


Not a surprise to him, he doesn't care.

It's a mistake to treat people with mental disorders as having an internally consistent view of the world. Or as actually believing what they say.

They are paperclip optimizers, this one optimizing for worship and power. In other words he has the antagonistic and communal subtypes: https://www.verywellhealth.com/narcissistic-personality-diso...


No see all speech is free but some speech is more free than others.

/s


[flagged]


> You can still say anything you like on X

You cannot even say the word "cisgender" on X.



You have to search that word specifically to find those posts, they're otherwise algorithmically censored from timelines.


[flagged]


Sure, no one can see it due to the censorship but you can say it into the void unseen which is of course what you meant.


You can't criticize Elon on X...


Lol, is this statement serious ? People are openly calling out for his assassination on X, calling him any number of insults, etc.


Elon literally said:

"Criticizing me all day long is totally fine"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_Twitter_suspensi...


Another lie in the long list of lies from his mouth.


Have you been on Twitter recently? 50% of it loves Musk, the other 50% openly hate him and abuse him. If what people on here are saying was true, those accounts publicly insulting him would be blocked by now.


Except that... They are? Of course not all of them, but those with enough reach or power to truly harm his reputation - such as journalists investigating him. He's not disappearing "Mark0394893838444" for saying "Musk is a dummy lol" but what does that proves?

Meanwhile Musk has already banned the accounts of journalists for the crime of being too critical of him (on top of frivolous lawsuits clearly aimed at draining their money). The proof is not "how many people he hasn't banned" but "how many he has".


> but what does that proves?

That proves that its ok to criticise Musk on Twitter/X, which is what the OP was denying.


All the people he banned for criticizing him say otherwise.


People keep saying this yet there are countless people on X critisizing Musk freely, so it must be fine to criticise Musk on X. I can provide examples and already have done. Can you?


If I pretend to be fine with people criticizing me, that claims fails as soon as I block/ban/throttle one (1) person for doing that.


As long as criticism was 100% the reason for the ban and can be proved it wasnt related to anything else at all.


A nice dodge, given that Twitter is completely non-transparent as for the reasons of a ban - not to say anything about throttling/shadowbanning.


An impossibly high bar. So we just take people at their word then?


How does the justice system work in figuring out these things?


You are using Musk as a source to defend Musk. Do you realize why that's not a good source?


No not in this case. Im using a quote from Musk to defend something someone made up about him. Theres no conflict of truth because theirs was an opinion, mine is a fact.


Heres a random post from X wishing he could shoot Musk and his kid

https://x.com/cerpin415/status/1889763808874258448

What part of this is not allowed on X?


Not only can you criticize him, but he gets hit with community notes just like everybody else


You don't use X much do you?


Of course, since I was banned for criticizing Elon Musk.


[flagged]


Except that Musk claims to be a "free speech absolutist", and part of the noise he made around buying Twitter was to stop censorship.

Not that it's news that he's a hypocrite.


When has Signal called for a violent overthrow of the US government?


Good of you to admit that Musk is as bad as what you hated in the past.

I would even argue he's worse.


[flagged]


> If I own a platform I’m not under any obligation to allow you to say whatever you like on that platform.

Correct. It still makes him a liar, given what he claimed before the purchase to have meant:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/06/elon-musk...

https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600

https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376

Plus this pair:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/musk-threatens-to-sue-adl-for-...

vs.

https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/tesla-boss-elon-m...


Stop carrying water for the world’s richest person. Musk has claimed multiple times he’s a free speech absolutist and bought Twitter to make it the free speech platform.

I agree, it’s his platform and he can do what he wants within the law. But, how you or anyone else can continue to defend Musk when he has made clear multiple times he’s a lying hypocrite is beyond my understanding.


I think its funny how some conservatives used to advocate for common carrier regulation because they didn't have much control over social media platforms, now that they do, they don't care anymore about that.

But liberals do seem to stick to their principles of free market capitalism, "it’s his platform and he can do what he wants within the law". I see now why you are so ineffective in combating Trump/Musk if the only problem you have with them is their hypocrisy.

Perhaps you need to come to the realization that if you want liberal democracy you really do need to regulate mass communication platforms in a way that doesn't leech peoples brains out of their ears.


For the record, I wouldn't consider myself liberal or conservative using the US definitions. Probably more down the middle. But, I am a never Trump person, but even then I had a 'wait and see' attitude when he was first elected in 2016. Now I've seen, and I don't want any more of what he brings.

I have a lot of problems with both of them beyond hypocrisy, that was simply the big issue in this thread. And I do agree with your point. How can the left stick to some basic principles like following the law and still combat someone like Trump/Musk who ignore it at every turn. I really don't know what the answer is here, and it worries me that people will feel more and more trapped which can lead to violence.

I also think there could be some smart regulation around mass communication, but the problem is we have so few people in government who even understand social media. The average age in the senate is almost 65. The last two POTUSs will leave office in their 80s.


> If I own a platform I’m not under any obligation to allow you to say whatever you like on that platform

This is complicated massively by Elon's role at DOGE.

Twitter has the right to block whomever they want (and always did). But given "multiple federal workers...said they’ve moved sensitive conversations from text messages and Facebook Messenger to the encrypted messaging app Signal" [1], it's unclear whether this is a private or public action.

(Folks in this thread are complaining about Musk's hypocrisy in criticizing pre-Muskian Twitter for blocking accounts and content when he's doing the same thing. But again, that is eclipsed in importance by the corruption and abuse of power questions.)

[1] https://www.theverge.com/news/610951/federal-workers-privacy...


Isn't it fucking crazy that the world's richest person is also moonlighting a public office with massive conflicts of interest and virtually zero oversight? What the fuck is this timeline, is nothing serious anymore?? It's really not so long ago that this would be considered completely bonkers and something you would see on a "banana republic".


> Isn't it fucking crazy that the world's richest person is also moonlighting a public office with massive conflicts of interest and virtually zero oversight?

Trump team has said that Musk will self-determine conflict of interest when gutting govt. agencies.

It is lost on them that self-determination of conflict of interest is itself a conflict of interest.


Mm.

On balance, I think you are correct. But: precisely because DOGE is a QUANGO* that's much harder to demonstrate, whereas the hypocrisy is very on-the-nose.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quango


The problem with hypocrisy is it's a milquetoast charge. Plenty of people, including very powerful people, are hypocrites and we tolerate them fine. Most of us--hopefully--don't know someone who's corrupt.


> Most of us--hopefully--don't know someone who's corrupt.

Unfortunately, I think this is just a comfortable illusion that most of us choose to believe.

Between https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/bribery-rates?tab=table&t... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index, I think it's fairly likely almost everyone both knows personally someone corrupt, and has done business with someone who is corrupt, even in the UK, Germany, and the USA.


You're equivocating. Elon didn't just say that he believed in free speech, he said that Twitter would be a platform for free speech.


People know this. This isn't confusing. The hypocracy being pointed out is when Elon Musk says that he is a free speech absolutist[1], yet consistently blocks his critics and competitors.

This is ignoring his very confused notion of what free speech is[2]

> By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.

> I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.

> If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.

Not only is this inconsistent with his 'free speech absolutist' views, and inconsistent with Twitter's actions, but it states that he's actually all for the government censoring people. That's not even non-absolutist free speech.

[1]: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1499976967105433600

[2]: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1519036983137509376


Nobody has an issue with this stance. It is that before he was the owner and as part of his argument for becoming owner, Elon had a different stance.


Many have an issue with that stance, including me. The public townsquare has rules about permitted speech, same is true for public plattforms that fulfill that role in the digital realm. Utilities are to be regulated etc. These types of censorship ought to be illegal, and e.g. in the EU this whole thinking of that the owner decides is already not the legal reality anymore.


> If I own a platform I’m not under any obligation to allow you to say whatever you like on that platform.

Before the Internet this was not the case. In Marsh v. Alabama, it was ruled (in line with all previous precedent) that privately owned roadways and sidewalks had to allow religious pamphleters, even though it is private property. The court asserted that anywhere that is the forum for public discussion is de facto allowed for political and religious speech regardless of property rights. In the very early days of the Internet things changed, when people tried to assert First Amendment claims on Compuserve chats. Compuserve claimed they weren't the public square, that they were a private service. I think they were correct, in that Compuserve was a very marginal private space and couldn't possibly have been "the public square". But precedent over this tiny service were eventually laundered into much larger and more critical bits of social infrastructure.

In contrast to Compuserve, Twitter and Facebook are definitely the public square. You cannot petition for a redress of grievances or lobby for policy changes without using them. And the political left delights in suppressing their opponents on them but files lawsuits claiming their rights are infringed when they aren't given access to every inch -- such as when they sued Trump for blocking them on his Twitter account:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-dismisses-trump-t...

When Democrats were barred from interacting even with a very small part of a platform, it is a critical First Amendment violation. When conservatives, racists, sexists, or whatever term you want to use are barred, well, it's a private company bigot.

This hypocrisy must quickly end, or we as a country will end up in a violent conflict. There must be open, public debate on every major platform, and Americans must be entitled to express their opinions because the only other alternative is violence.


You're spot on (I say this as a lefty). Big social media like fb, instagram, twitter, et al are bigger and more important than any physical public square that ever existed. They are way way WAY past the point where they need to be treated as such and regulated as both a public forum for 1A purposes and as a utility like phone or mail for privacy protection and non-discrimination purposes.

Just don't pretend that trying to censor people on social media is somehow a trait of the Left (in fact, in a thread about the right doing precisely that!)


> This hypocrisy must quickly end, or we as a country will end up in a violent conflict

The country is currently massively pushing for violent conflict abroad...


Thanks for typing this.


With all the BS the new administration is coming up with, I guess the federal government lose anyone competent that is not a very loyal Trump supporter.


Maybe that's the point.


I use a dedicated PC with Ubuntu for the kind of AI assisted development where the AI's has access to the disk.

The only secrets it has are the API key to the AI, a temporary ssh key that can be used with git to access the github repository, and whatever the Brave browser stores for ChatGPT's website. Nothing else. No production keys, no CI keys no code signing keys.

Kind of the same restrictions I use on anything running Microsoft Windows.


I only use mine occasionally, so I turn it off an put in a drawer. When I power it on a few months later the battery is flat, and the machines date in far in the past.

This have never happened with any other laptop I've had.


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