Or, npm can add trust ratings to packages and versions. And Github the parent company can lend a tiny fraction of resources and programmer power to developing static code analysis tools for npm packages.
This problem is completely solvable in two different ways:
1) everyone uses private feeds that use vetted versions only, and
2) Github/npm take responsibility for every package published to npm as the distributor.
Also the name Shai-hulud was chosen by the people who made the malware, you shouldn't dignify them by using the name they chose.
A few reasons I guess: (1) it adds complexity; (2) it has always been HN's design to show the same site to everyone rather than shard; (3) there's a quality of pre-digestion about it which conflicts with the principle of curiosity.
It seems better if HN users poke around and decide for themselves what the articles and threads are about, and which are interesting or not.
I think this site is from the UK where companies are plural (they are made of people after all). Is there some other grammatical issue you have... it is kind of meandering, but that's taste more than grammar.
Electric Clojure is a living example of hypermedia - instantaneous UI updates via differential. Client and server code co-exist in the same file, it really is a thing of beauty.
We do not need to lose our rights to privacy because people want to control what their kids do and see. (I'm not even convinced this is true - this is likely just a convenient lie told by the politicians, because I don't see parents clamoring for this.)
We're below replacement rate, so it's not like most people are even having kids, anyway. Yet we have to give up our freedom for other people to raise little Christian tots (or whatever the motivation for this is billed as)?
I grew up in a Deep South Protestant household. Having access to the unfiltered internet got me interested in STEM. Bumping into occasional shock sites and porn as a preteen did not turn me into a satanist cannibal.
Keeping "Kids Safe" is a LIE.
This is about putting collars on every US citizen.
They'll filter you into groups.
They'll control what loans and jobs you can get.
They'll use this information to blackmail you should you ever run for office or gain wealth or power.
This is a threat to democracy and personal liberty.
As a child circa 2000, I remember seeing explicit bestiality porn pop-ups while looking up video game cheat codes. You're right, the internet is much different now, and not in the way you're implying.
By 2006, you already had Google, Amazon, and Facebook outpacing their competition. Apple was riding iPod success and just about to launch the iPhone.
Imho, that's well into the re-centralization of the internet and tech landscape.
Rewind another 10 years, and I'd call 1996 wild. That's before XMLHttpRequest/AJAX and when a cat could create as impressive of a website as any corporation.
At global conferences like Davos, where national leaders and policy makers go to schmooze and exchange ideas, this idea has been discussed for years. I’m sure there has been some subsequent cross-border coordination and discussion.
Everyone ignores stuff like this because of people like Alex Jones who make it seem like a lunatic conspiracy theory. But these conferences happen, and they do influence policy. It’s not a “cabal” that issues orders—many participants are national leaders bringing their perspectives (see the link above about Sanchez)—but it does have an impact.
The banal truth is that many different world leaders have talked each other into this after years of discussion on the proper way to “manage” the Internet. They see cyberspace as a threat to top-down technocratic control and view Internet-enabled populism (aka democracy) as something to be quashed.
> [World leaders] see cyberspace as a threat to top-down technocratic control and view Internet-enabled populism (aka democracy) as something to be quashed.
This has been true ever since the creation of the internet and web.
It's what the original 90s crypto wars were about: the right of individuals to access strong encryption to preserve the privacy of their communications from the government.
Absent that, pandora's box opens.
Age KYC is just the next fight against encryption and privacy dressed up in "for the children" clothes.
Strong encryption always has (and always will) facilitate criminal and illegal activity. Tough tits.
Law enforcement and intelligence agencies should work within the bounds of individual rights, not adjust them for convenience.
If the price of individual freedom^ is that it's harder to track and prosecute child exploitation, drug distribution, and mass terror attacks, then that's the way it needs to be.
^ "Individual freedom" as distinct from corporate freedom. Fuck non-human legal entities' rights to access encryption, aside from on behalf of their users.
> This has been true ever since the creation of the internet and web.
It's true that some have always seen it this way, but it's become much more salient in the current political context. The average politician 30 years ago was barely aware of what the Internet was - it wasn't a major concern. For a brief period, the prevailing (but not only, as you mention with encryption) attitude was that the information superhighway would make everyone was educated and wise as the managerial class elites. Social media muddled the picture for a while, but the Arab Spring was considered to be an amazing example of this - look, people around the world are going to be Just Like Us!
What really kicked off the current level of enmity politicians have for the Internet was the rise of right-wing populism, especially Trump. This really deeply upset a lot of people, and the only conceivable explanation is that bad actors caused it using the Internet, because good and wise people would only come to the same conclusions as themselves, and democracy is only fit for people who come to those same conclusions. It is certainly not because their policy outcomes caused discontent. Since then they've been throwing everything at the wall to stop free Internet discourse in the belief it will make the bad people go away and restore Public Order.
I think the slide towards control rather than freedom on the internet is more subtle than that.
1. Increased centralization (FAANG et al.)
2. Larger tech entities willing (and able) to strike deals with government in exchange for favors
3. All governments always wanting more power over citizens
4. Today
This isn't a left vs right thing, as both sides have come up with kooky internet-control schemes.
It's a 'centralization breeds coercion' thing.
The antidote to that is decentralization (especially breaking up large firms) and an individual right to privacy (including the technical methods to ensure it).
Imagine DeCSS today! Facebook and Google and Microsoft and Apple would get calls, then Anthropic and OpenAI, and the key would be wiped off large portions of the internet.
Because the internet is global and the negative effects of the internet are happening everywhere at the same time. Also, politicians look at other countries for ideas.
When nobody's done something before, there are lots of unanswered questions.
Is it even possible? Will businesses my voters like and use a lot just leave my country entirely? Will companies be able to develop privacy-preserving age check infrastructure? Will the press present it as a 'Chinese-style Great Firewall' or be more supportive of it? Will the blocks all be trivial to bypass? Will the large number of porn users in my country form a cohesive voting block? Will a powerful pro-privacy, pro-free-speech lobby emerge to challenge this? And will they be backed by powerful, well-funded US interests like Facebook and Google?
Australia simply showed the world passing this sort of legislation isn't political suicide.
kinda. but not really. they just showed a lack of effectiveness and has emboldened other countries to further restrict things like VPNs and roll out ID based net access
Because it is an organized attack. The lobbyists got their orders,
now they pull it through. It is kind of fascinating to see though -
I bet many people don't realise this coordinated attack. To me it
is blatantly easy to notice. I am glad to not be the only one here.
If Facebook, in light of the 2021 "Facebook Papers," believed the legislation inevitable, what kind of legislation would maximize its advantage?
Noteworthily, the legislation moves age verification from individual apps to app-store operators [Apple, Google] which reduces Facebooks legal exposure for inaccurate/incorrect age verifications.
And if they do it anyway? Sure, you can vote them out but it's hard to dislodge incumbents especially over policy choices rather than obvious problems like corruption. Then even after you've ejected them, you need to push their successor into the Sisyphean task of rewriting populist legislation.
Representative democracy is not adequate to the demands of the information age, where the informational asymmetry between individual and state is unprecedented in history. It's time to explore other models like administrative democracy.
Coordinated opposition campaigns against misinformed and dangerous legislation has been effective in stopping bad laws [1]. After a website blackout, including a Wikipedia shutdown, lawmakers in Washington decided not to proceed with the Stop Online Privacy Act in 2012.
From your linked Wikipedia articles many corporations including Google were part of that opposite campaign. Exactly the type of people donating untold millions to our legislatures. Had nothing to do with any kind of grassroots pressure.
I got new bike lanes installed around the neogboirhood after I wrote to the local city representative about it, then went to a city where I did a PowerPoint presentation of all the places that you could get killed if the driver wasn't paying attention.
It took a month from first letter to new bikelanes.
The speed of turn-around sounds impossible. That you are asking for bike lanes - which is already part of most local agendas - is more believable. I daresay if someone asked for the lanes to be removed, they would not get any traction.
This problem is completely solvable in two different ways:
1) everyone uses private feeds that use vetted versions only, and
2) Github/npm take responsibility for every package published to npm as the distributor.
Also the name Shai-hulud was chosen by the people who made the malware, you shouldn't dignify them by using the name they chose.