No, Binance has been the leading BTC exchange in China for quite a while! Maybe you heard of them because of their Binance Coin announcement. It went pretty far, pretty fast in terms of volume.
> "I've dealt with an ill temper my entire life, although not many people who know me would think so. As a kid I was bullied a lot (both of these are likely direct products of me having ADD), and I used to get in a lot of trouble because my reaction was to let my rage boil over and fight these bullies."
Look into Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. It comes with ADHD, but it can exist on its own or with other uncommon neurologies.
Google Reader served a similar purpose. People used its social features for communication since (the thinking went) governments weren't going to block Google.
You're neglecting a key point: primary and secondary education are the province of legal minors. Full legal rights of majors do not apply.
Not that there aren't problems with both P/S education and higher education or public discoure and media generally, though your analysis misses a few key salient aspects and presents numerous red herrings.
J.S. Mill affords a longer view you may appreciate:
How exactly should we vote supply and demand out of existence? You propose a left-ish solution but the same left-ish people that would enact it also support housing regulation, and due to supply and demand, your goal simply can't be met. This is not a systemic issue in most places where the program exists, it's an issue of current regulation (and the people that created it).
> How exactly should we vote supply and demand out of existence?
You can't, but there are things that can be done to compensate or mitigate:
- Anti-union regulations like "right to work" laws are an anti-market intrusion that weakens the power of labor. Vote against them.
- Support works councils (they've worked well in Germany) for more democratic governance, which right now I believe are illegal in the US (read this in a Bloomberg article earlier, though haven't verified).
- Support things that make bad jobs less bad. For example, there are benefits offered by 'better' companies, like good health insurance or paid parental leave, that could be provided by the state or mandated by the state.
- Support land use and transportation changes that would allow more people to participate in the economies of 'superstar' cities without ruinous housing costs.
Note that two of these things are even market-oriented, not all the positive changes have to be about more/bigger government.
> - Anti-union regulations like "right to work" laws are an anti-market intrusion that weakens the power of labor. Vote against them.
How is forcing me to join a particular union pro-market?
Also, how am I supposed to vote on this or any of the other things you mentioned? I get one vote per legislative body every 2 || 6 years and that one vote has to cover dozens of issues like this that come up in the interim.
I always though the right way to do things in a democracy is to talk to your neighbors and reach consensus (campaigning). The purpose of a democracy isn’t so individuals can say “I voted”; voting is merely democracy’s technique for communal action. One could even convince enough people to buy an ad.
It should be obvious given that a person has one vote.
> How is forcing me to join a particular union pro-market?
A contract stipulating joining a union for a job is no more anti-market than a contract specifying work hours or clothing requirements or how much vacation you get. If that's how the business has decided to run, the free market perspective is that they should be allowed to. It's market forces that can compel a company to agree to such a setup, after all.
However, a regulation saying that this type of contractual obligations is illegal is very obviously an intrusion on the market. Not that I think all intrusions are bad, but I don't see a compelling reason to support this one, given that corporations already tend to have the advantage over workers and this reduces workers' collective leverage.
Agreed that it's hard to vote narrowly on this topic. But no different from any other political subject, really.
Certainly businesses today are free to mandate union involvement, even in right to work states. However, it is actually anti free market to stipulate thar businesses must do this. There's no way to spin that as anything other than authoritarian
> But businesses cannot mandate union membership for employees in right to work states. That's what "right to work" means.
Yes they can.. That is what 'right to work' means. If a company mandates union membership and you do not want to join the union, or decide to leave the union, a company in a right to work state will fire you. This is like a union in a non-right-to-work state, where, if there is a union, and you refuse to join it, you can no longer work at the company. This is how it works for teachers unions too (in California at least) -- if you leave or refuse to pay dues, you are automatically let go.
> Not sure what 'this' you're referring to here, could you clarify please?
If you tell all businesses in your state that you must have a union (or accept a union if your employees vote for one), then that is mandating that the company mandate union membership from their employees by a mechanism other than the company's directors' own will. This is an infringement on their liberty (justified or not).
> Yes they can.. That is what 'right to work' means.
No, it does not.
> According to the Legal Defense Foundation, right-to-work laws prohibit union security agreements, or agreements between employers and labor unions, that govern the extent to which an established union can require employees' membership, payment of union dues, or fees as a condition of employment, either before or after hiring.
> "right-to-work laws" refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between companies and labor unions
You cited one particular definition by one particular foundation that marginally fit your purposes better. I don't see why I shouldn't do the same.
Right to work usually means the company can fire you for any reason, and you can leave the company for any reason.
While true that a company cannot expect an agreement with a union to be legally enforced, they can certainly decide to mandate membership in a union of their own accord. For example, it is reasonable for a company to specify in its job description that it only wants to hire certified Realtors or members of the ACM or whatever other group the company deems necessary.
> Nobody was talking about this?
This is what 'unionization' means in the context of a 'union shop'.
>Right to work usually means the company can fire you for any reason, and you can leave the company for any reason.
Oh, so this is actually pretty common: you're confusing "right to work" with "at will employment". They're not the same thing.
> At-will employment is a term used in U.S. labor law for contractual relationships in which an employee can be dismissed by an employer for any reason (that is, without having to establish "just cause" for termination), and without warning,[1] as long as the reason is not illegal (e.g. firing because of the employee's race or religion). When an employee is acknowledged as being hired "at will," courts deny the employee any claim for loss resulting from the dismissal. The rule is justified by its proponents on the basis that an employee may be similarly entitled to leave his or her job without reason or warning.[2] The practice is seen as unjust by those who view the employment relationship as characterized by inequality of bargaining power.[3]
> You cited one particular definition by one particular foundation that marginally fit your purposes better. I don't see why I shouldn't do the same.
I could cite endless definitions from various sources. Here we go, since apparently you want this:
> The Right To Work principle–the guiding concept of the National Right To Work Committee (NRTWC.org) and the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW.org) –affirms the right of every American to work for a living without being compelled to belong to a union. Compulsory unionism in any form–“union shop,” “closed shop,” or “agency shop” –is a contradiction of the Right To Work principle and the fundamental human right of freedom that the principle represents.
> The National Right To Work Committee advocates that every individual must have the right, but must not be compelled, to join a labor union.
> Specifically, the right-to-work means that employees are entitled to work in unionized workplaces without actually joining the union or paying regular union dues.
> There’s some confusion surrounding "right to work laws"—perhaps due to the somewhat misleading title. While the "right to work" logically sounds like the right to have a job, or to keep a job once you have it, the term is related to membership in a labor union. More than half of U.S. states have enacted so-called "right to work" laws that guarantee no person can be compelled to join a union or pay union dues, as a condition of employment.
> I’ve heard that my state has a ‘Right-to-Work’ law. What does that mean?
> In the public-sector union context, right-to-work laws mean that union members do not have to pay union dues to be members of the union.
> In states that have enacted right-to-work laws that apply to private employers, although they vary based on state law, most Right-to-Work laws prohibit labor unions and employers from entering into contracts that only employ unionized workers for the jobs in the contract.
> This is what 'unionization' means in the context of a 'union shop'.
No, it doesn't. This
> Under this, the employer agrees to either only hire labor union members or to require that any new employees who are not already union members become members within a certain amount of time.
is not the same thing as
> If you tell all businesses in your state that you must have a union
The former is about a particular business decided to only hire people who will join a union, likely because of market pressure from the union/its members. The latter would be a a state mandating that union membership is required by law. Those are not the same thing. The former may happen because of market forces, the latter is obviously because of government force.
I assume this would mean trying to vote for politicians that would remove the artificial supply and demand in somewhere like San Francisco where, if stories are correct, the local population doesn't allow for dense development. I'm not sure what you do in locales like New York where development is already dense in many areas.
NYC has some similar problems, albeit not as severe. IIRC much of the existing housing in NYC is 'illegal' in the sense that current zoning would prevent it from being built today due to density restrictions.
For a counter example, you can look at Tokyo as a place that's more of a free for all, and indeed while it's still fairly expensive, it's much less so than the bay area or NYC.
Crypto is 99% woo, but the 1% is interesting. The interesting stuff isn't world-stompingly amazing, so it gets less press. I like the idea of someday being able to take pennies worth of payments from places where transaction fees alone at traditional payment processors represent a huge % of income. Bitcoin won't be the one to do it, but some of the coins that depend on something other than proof of work might.
At least I hope it's not Bitcoin. The power use is obscene.
* Never say never. Basically I don't think it could possibly be viable because it would require the total cost of transaction to be less than pennies. That includes the shopkeepers time to manage the automated store, the electricity used in the transaction, and a bunch of other non zero components.
Hell even transactions with real pennies today are almost a net loss. We eradicated 5c coins in NZ because they cost something like 6c to make.
And to be clear I understand you mean micropayments in general and maybe it is something possible im just not yet convinced the electricity costs will allow it unless it's subsidized in an unsustainable way.
> We eradicated 5c coins in NZ because they cost something like 6c to make.
Why would that matter? A 5c coin is spent thousands, millions of times. Why would there need to be any connection at all between how much it costs to make the coin and the value that coin represents in a transaction?
I think it was actually the cost of the metal, i.e. the metal was worth more than the denoted value.
There were other reasons like inflation making 5c coins largely irrelevant (we also had 1, and 2c coins phased out years earlier) (also 1nzd=0.5usd at that time)
NZ has also been largely cashless for at least 20 years now. (Link below has some interesting info/graphs)
I think the only reason this happening was even a big deal at the time was because they replaced all coins at the same time with much smaller, lighter and cheaper versions. I.e. it wasn't a big deal at all but rather the swap over was.
If the extra cost is labor it's fine, but not if it's material cost. People have been know to melt down coins and sell the metal when the intrinsic value of the coin exceeds its face value. This practice is illegal most places, but avoiding the situation altogether is probably better!
I'd say it's 80% woo, 1% of what you call interesting and 19% is solving real user problems with breaking the law. Mostly transactions that you can't depend on banks for - like buying drugs.
I think being able to make small transactions with low fees is a human economic problem, not a technical one. How would crypto do anything better or differently, other than the idea of "let's spend power on proof of work instead of trust" which you seem to dislike?
Transaction costs for small payments on Bitcoin are much higher than the 1.5% a credit card processor takes.
Crypto has been nothing but dreams (and sadly lots of scams, as I had to personally witness)
The article implies more uncertainty than there is. To my knowledge everyone agrees to define the edge of space at 100km (about 62 miles), with the exception of the US where for historical reasons the edge of space is seen as 50 miles above sea level. There is no international agreement, but even though the line is arbitrary there is no huge variety of widely held opinions.
>> 'In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."'
This font is even more interesting because it of its extremely uncertain copyright/licensing situation:
“Open-source licenses, like all software licenses, are only possible through assertion of copyright. Certain free-software advocates prefer to sidestep this inconvenient fact (akin to ‘keep your government hands off my Medicare’). For individual software authors, this usually poses no problem, because their copyright arises at the moment the work is created. Thus, they’re free to put their work under any license, including an open-source license.
“But US government employees are a special case. As a matter of federal law (17 USC § 105), they can’t assert copyright in their work. Public Sans is an inseparable mixture of copyrighted work (= the underlying Libre Franklin font) and uncopyrightable work (= the alterations made by the GSA). The GSA currently claims that Public Sans has been released under the OFL. But that’s impossible. To use this license, they’d first need to have a copyright in their contributions. But they don’t.”
His position is not common and there's a long history of U.S. government lawyers approving participation in open-source projects under licenses which are not the public domain — e.g. SELinux is under the GPL because the original Linux kernel was and the NSA's lawyers approved that contribution.
The Free Software Foundation doesn't agree that the US government can release software under the GPL. From their FAQ about GNU free software licenses.
>Can the US Government release a program under the GNU GPL? (#GPLUSGov)
If the program is written by US federal government employees in the course of their employment, it is in the public domain, which means it is not copyrighted. Since the GNU GPL is based on copyright, such a program cannot be released under the GNU GPL. (It can still be free software, however; a public domain program is free.)
However, when a US federal government agency uses contractors to develop software, that is a different situation. The contract can require the contractor to release it under the GNU GPL. (GNU Ada was developed in this way.) Or the contract can assign the copyright to the government agency, which can then release the software under the GNU GPL.
Can the US Government release improvements to a GPL-covered program? (#GPLUSGovAdd)
Yes. If the improvements are written by US government employees in the course of their employment, then the improvements are in the public domain. However, the improved version, as a whole, is still covered by the GNU GPL. There is no problem in this situation.
If the US government uses contractors to do the job, then the improvements themselves can be GPL-covered.
The user space libselinux developed by the NSA is in the public domain. Which is consistent with the above. Are you sure that SELinux contribution was not released as public domain and then incorporated into the linux kernel? Something the GPL allows which the OFL license in question here does not.
I am aware of the Github issue and in fact Matthew has addressed your SELinux point in that discussion. He agrees that if the original font had been licensed under the GPL there would not be an issue here. But the language of the SIL OFL is different than (and incompatible with) the GPL, so the outcome is not automatically the same. And the OSI (the OFL licence's FSF-equivalent) takes the position that public domain and open source don't mix.
Yes, he restated his belief that the U.S. government cannot participate in non-public domain open source projects but he hasn't addressed why so many government lawyers do not share that opinion.
Again, he has said his argument is specific to the SIL OFL and not any other license. The GPL/FSF stuff does not apply to this discussion.
Not sure how he is supposed to have addressed the "lotsa government lawyers think different" argument when no one in that thread has raised it, let alone provided any evidence of it. And again, for it to be relevant, these government lawyer opinions would need to be talking about the OFL specifically.
> Again, he has said his argument is specific to the SIL OFL and not any other license. The GPL/FSF stuff does not apply to this discussion.
His claim comes down to the U.S. government not being able to use any license which relies on copyright claims, which is not unique to OFL. This is why the government lawyers question is relevant: if he's right, that means that a bunch of other contributions shouldn't have been allowed unless the projects are public domain or dual-licensed.
> His claim comes down to the U.S. government not being able to use any license which relies on copyright claims
You haven't read his claim then, he explicitly isn't saying that. He claims only that the government can't use the OFL because of the specific demands made by the OFL which the government can't satisfy. FSF licenses don't mind public domain contributions, the same is not true of the OFL.
I'm not sure of the practical implications for someone looking to use it in a design project. Who would have standing to sue for infringement, and in what situations?
I think it's not that someone might now have standing to sue for something and might do it; it's that actually no one has standing to sue even though the GSA is pretending that they do.
If true, the practical implication is that A) Public Sans is in the public domain within the USA, which means people there have freedoms in using it that they wouldn't otherwise have; and B) their current license is incoherently obscuring these freedoms.
The GSA can't license something that is in the public domain. Should they recognize this fact, it will make clear what people can and can't do with the font.
