Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy

D <nospam@example.net> writes:

On Sun, 23 Feb 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:
>

At the moment, everything essential in society has to be able to be
done on paper, so it really is not a problem, and costs about 20-40
minutes per year in extra writing on actual paper.
>
This scares me though! I fear the day when a smartphone is mandatory
in order to participate in society. This will be a sad day indeed. Add
to that, centralbank managed electronic currencies, that can be clawed
back from you, or where you are blocked from spending them in an
instant, if you go against the government, and we have a very
dystopian situation indeed. =/

>
I would think that there are so many poor people in the world that
governments could never really ask anyone to always have a phone.
However, I think it's already real that without such tools, the
alternative way will be so painful that a person like you or I will
likely not choose not to use a phone.

>
True!
>
It seems that god was listening in on this and sent me this article on the same
theme:
>
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/feb/22/the-tyranny-of-apps-those-without-smartphones-are-unfairly-penalised-say-campaigners
>
I think they have a good point! One business idea I have is hosting "virtual
phones" in the cloud. So people who do not want a smartphone or who can not
afford one, can rent a small VM in the cloud for 4-8 EUR per month or so, and
use that to run their apps.
>
The provlem is that not all apps work on a VM, since app developers can do some
kind of magic that blocks them from running on an emulator. The governments
national ID has this, so refuses to run on an emulator.
>
But I think that the majority of apps might run in that configuration. So if I
need an app, I get start my VM, do what I need to do, and then shut it
down.

I suppose commerce itself can do that.  For instance, someone could walk
in a store with cash and exchange it for a temporary credit card to be
used at the machines, say.

You know what I mean?  Government offices can make their systems all
based on phone apps, but then people can walk in some place to use a
phone and get their bureaucracy done.  It's your idea up there, but
instead of virtual machines, real phones instead.  This will likely be
done, I think.

And I think that's a good solution.

I think that's already more or less true in commerce.  For instance,
I've been at times confronted with the situation that without using
Whatsapp, I could not get service.
>
During the pandemics, for example, so many people could not find a way
out of following protocols they did not want to follow and even taking
chemical substances they did not want to take.  So many people I know
did not want to do it and did it anyway because it was a hassle
otherwise.

>
Oh that was a pain. My wife got vaccinated once against her will because of it.
I did not, and I spent many 100s of hours avoiding the unethical restrictions. I
printed my own corona vaccination qr codes for a while, until that didn't work,
I found a medical loop hole to allow me to travel without a mask, towards the
end, I copied other peoples foreign qr codes, which would get me into stores,
despite being unvaccinated, since the system in the stores only checked if the
qr was valid, and nothing else like last country of use, or matching it with id
checks.

I did the same.  (It's amazing the kind of parallels we can find on the
USENET.)  I'm happy to hear you managed it too.  I did a COVID exam
every week, getting it negative 100% of the times, for an entire
semester and archived my exams with my employeer.  I was very happy with
the alternative: I would not have taken any substance at all.  I would
have gone to the last resort.  I saw no point in taking in an unknown
substance so try to avoid an aggressive /cold/.

As for children, no such thing for me, since biologically I have an
extremely low chance of having children. On the other hand, my parents
got the same diagnosis from the doctor, and they had me, and the
doctor said it was not possible according to science, so who knows? ;)

>
I am sorry for hearing the news, but I also feel that we should hope for
the best here.  I think nobody should trust doctor's predictions.  I
certainly don't know the reasons you might have low chance of having
children and let's remember this is a public forum.  The subject does me
remind me of a conversation with epidemiologist Shanna Swan, which I
have been slowly rewatching again---it's a 2h conversation.  The entire
conversation is very interesting.  In this conversation, we can learn
that male fertility is decreasing by 1% *per year*.
>
 Shanna Swan on male fertility (et cetera)
 https://youtu.be/C9aqGqjC1kE

>
I've actually seen the video before, when my wife was the most crazy about our
problem. In my case, it is just a chance mutation that resulted in low quality
sperm. That's all. It is not impossible, but but very, very low probability of
fertilizing eggs.

I'm not a religious person in the traditional sense of the word, but
turns out I find myself one of the most religious person I've ever met
because patience, perseverance, lack of ambition and a certain mastery
of the art of listening seem pretty religious to me.  For instance,
pretty much every religious person I know has at least one tattoo on
their skin.  I think that's totally non-religious because a tattoo
effectively destroys (at least a bit) something natural that took a
zillion years to be prepared---to protect the person.  I think that if
God speaks to us at all, it is done through the movement of nature.

Lol.  I'm saying all of this to say that I would never believe that it's
really impossible for you to have kids.  Life is full of adversities.
My idea is that we should work on them 'til the end---unconcerned with
the end result.

End results imply a direction, a strategy. 

We try to fix the bug in the software because we want to understand what
caused the bug and how it works.  Not because we want the software to be
flawless.  So we don't fret if we can't figure it out, but we always
work on it.  We work directionless because we don't really mind not
getting to the end result.  Anywhere we go is natural enough; it's
divine enough.