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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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Fossil fuels investors

vendredi 20 janvier 2023 à 16:02

*The world's leading financial institutions — including major Wall Street banks such as Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America — are still pumping money into fossil fuel expansion.* If you have accounts there, you can move your money to a smaller bank which can't do harm like that. I did. You can also urge your city to do likewise.

Online tech execs liable when too-young viewers are harmed, UK

vendredi 20 janvier 2023 à 16:02

The UK's new online identification requirement will effectively require all discussion platforms and search engines to verify the age of each user. The obvious way to do that is a repressive and tyrannical way: by making each user show government photo ID.

I reject commercial communications platforms, because they already deny users' freedom in various ways — instance, by demanding to identify the user and/or running their code in the user's computer. However, there are commercial search engines that currently do nothing wrong to the user. Will this law make them all engage in repression? Does the age verification requirement apply to search engines?

GNU Taler can be used to give people a way to verify their ages to a web site without giving the site any way to identify them. But this is not entirely finished yet.

The goals of this bill mostly seem valid to me; indeed, they may not go far enough. For instance, TikTok's practices seem to reduce teenagers' attention spans; should those practices be banned? I am not sure. However, the internet is a threat to democracy if tracks what people do and where they go.

Protest-vigil attendees hunted, captured, China

vendredi 20 janvier 2023 à 16:02

Not-quite-protester Cao Zhixin: *When you see this video I have been taken away by the police for a while, like my other friends.*

Political terror, NM House candidate

vendredi 20 janvier 2023 à 16:02

A Republican election denialist, who was defeated in the election in November, organized a campaign of drive-by shootings at the homes of the region's main Democratic officials.

By luck, nobody in the homes was hit. That Republican probably won't be allowed another chance.

Carbon offsets, a discussion

vendredi 20 janvier 2023 à 16:02

Scientists discuss the delusional effect of carbon offsets.

Some scientists sat it might be safe and beneficial for companies to buy carbon offsets in addition to meeting mandatory targets for reducing their own emissions.