Like the other commenter said, you’re falling prey to the “appeal to nature” fallacy.
There are plenty of natural things that are bad for you and plenty of synthetic things that are good for you.
And there absolutely are reasons to feed yourself artificial sweeteners.
Sugar-free soda is awesome for people trying to lose weight. The carbonated drink keeps you satiated and you don’t ingest any of the calories in regular soda.
Maybe for whatever work you do your IDE works better for you.
In my case, I mostly code in C++. I've tried JetBrains' IDEs and it drives me insane how slow they are to index and I often get freezes when working on really large codebases.
The same applies to Visual Studio (not vscode).
vscode drives me insane with the amount of dumb notifications it keeps popping up. But I can concede that for most people it works well enough. It also doesn't perform nearly as well as Sublime Text. Working on really large codebases is a PITA with vscode.
If I need autocomplete (which I actually don't like that much), LSP works well for my needs.
Just because those companies have certifications it doesn’t mean they can’t make a mistake.
In addition to that, the source code is closed and not generally auditable by third parties.
I was a student under Diego Aranha (a cryptography researcher from Brazil, now based in Denmark) many years ago when he got the chance to participate in the public test/audit of the voting system software.
At the time they did find issues with the code that would allow you to de-anonimize the votes cast in a voting machine [1].
EDIT: If anyone wants to take a look at the vulnerabilities found at the time, check the paper [2]. In fairness the paper is from 2013, so a lot may have changed.
> In addition to that, the source code is closed and not generally auditable by third parties.
That's not correct. While you can't get it from GitHub, there is a process to audit it and any Brazilian citizen (or resident, I'm not sure) over 21 can request and be part of it. The process extends for many months starting the year prior to the election. Input from the multiple audits and tests are valuable in guiding the evolution of the software and hardware.
You literally proved my point. It’s not generally auditable.
Even if you ignore the fact that the audit window is restricted and that the software is developed behind closed doors, just the first step in the process is absurd if you want this to be practical for anyone to audit:
> A Justiça Eleitoral prepara uma sala segura para deixar os sistemas a serem utilizados na eleição vindoura à disposição das entidades fiscalizadoras interessadas. As entidades podem utilizar ferramentas automatizadas e solicitar os esclarecimentos que julgarem necessários. Caso encontrem alguma inconformidade, deverão apresentá-la ao TSE, que deverá corrigi-la e apresentar o ajuste realizado. É importante destacar que todas as alterações realizadas nos sistemas são rastreáveis e ficam disponíveis para verificação das entidades fiscalizadoras.
Anyone can apply. You'll need to go there in person. I just don't see that as a huge hurdle, but, if you have a medical reason to be unable to be there in person, you can petition the election court. They are extremely reasonable with accommodations that don't create problems for their own tight schedules (remember the logistics are anything but trivial).
I think one issue is that unlike physical objects like phones, software doesn't occupy physical space or respect national borders. So trying to enforce "all software of such and such category within our physical borders must have this property" is impractical without draconian measures that pose a significant threat to software freedom. It creates legal hazards to otherwise perfectly benign actions like downloading open source software from a foreign country, compiling your own browser, publishing software or offering network services for free on the global internet, etc.
That's not to say a regulation like this couldn't be done in a reasonable way, but it needs to be handled with care.
And to be clear when I say "a regulation like this" I'm referring to the one about adding emergency alerts to web browsers. That's an arguably useful feature for browsers to have, and it's probably not a big deal if some open source browsers don't have it so full enforcement isn't necessary.
Things get way harder when you're talking about forcing the addition of user hostile features (like the bill described in the OP presumably is; blocking users from accessing a website that they want to access), because that creates a situation where vendors have to treat the device owner as a potentially hostile actor. I don't see any way you could enforce that without completely destroying users' freedom to run software of their choosing on their own device, no matter how the law is worded, and I wouldn't consider that "reasonable" under any circumstances.
> Doesn't seem unreasonable that computer OS's and/or web browsers be required to support the same.
Why?
Web browsers were designed from the start to show you only content you expressly requested. Notification APIs are still opt-in. A browser is primarily pull-oriented, whereas a phone was always bi-directional. Inverting this expectation for the browser is very much unwelcome.
My government (UK) seems to struggle with communicating some things with citizens. There is no way so send a simple short message to every citizen.
For example, recently the law changed so that pedestrians had priority at 't' road junctions without traffic lights.
Ideally, every citizen would be send a small infographic showing the new law on the day it became law. They would click "okay" and go on with their day.
Instead, the government bought up TV ads and billboards across the country (very expensive) to try to get the message across - and still, months later, you have people honking horns and getting angry at pedestrians and drivers who don't know about the change.
Are you not entirely proving the OPs point? A law has been changed regarding right of way and you’re not aware of it, potentially leaving you more likely to strike a pedestrian. Does that not highlight a failure of communication?
> potentially leaving you more likely to strike a pedestrian
Well, not really. I don't own a car, and I haven't driven one for years.
But that's to ignore your point, which is that I'm ignorant of the law. Thing is, that's far from the only law I'm ignorant of; if every little change in the law had to be notified to all citizens via SMS, that channel would become so clogged as to be useless (nobody would check their messages).
> For example, recently the law changed so that pedestrians had priority at 't' road junctions without traffic lights.
That's hardly a backwards-incompatible change that needs to be actioned immediately.
My attention has already been torn to shreds for years via smartphone usage (I'm in an on-and-off recovery). I don't need the government adding their two pence into what's already a bad situation.
If they care so much, mail me. Physically. That both gets my attention, lets the government constant me via a much less intrusive channel, and staves off the bankruptcy of Royal Mail.
You really think it's ideal to get new binding laws through text messages?
Don't look at your phone in the next five minutes, because Russia's invaded France and your iPhone goes ding.
Both you and me have been legally volunteered for conscription "at random".
And I wonder who's sons and daughters are magically missing from the man-power database, certainly not the engineers and politicians who built it. could never suggest such a thing is likely...
RF spectrum is a limited and valuable public resource that’s rented out to licensed operators who use devices from licensed manufacturers. That’s the mechanism behind the emergency alert system in a legal and practical sense (in the US at least).
Applying that to browsers does seem unreasonable to me. IANAL but to my knowledge mobile OSs aren’t legally required to support the emergency alert features of the radio because there’s no direct way to legally force them to. They do so because of popular demand and indirect requirements from large customers.
Phones are much easier to control than general-purpose computers; broadly-speaking, consumers get phone software from 'stores' that are gated by companies that can be controlled. That is, if it can be controlled by government, it will be. Doesn't make that kind of control "reasonable".
And you can "require" what you like; unless you have real control, then you won't get what you "require".
> government being able to mandate that a certain website not open at all on a browser/system is uncharted territory and even the most repressive regimes in the world prefer to block websites further up the network (ISPs, etc.) so far.
Repressive government's don't do their blocking at the browser level because it is completely ineffective. Anyone who wants to access the forbidden websites will be able to do so anyway.
The French government censors websites by forcing ISPs to delist stuff from their DNS servers. It's trivial to bypass simply by setting alternative DNS providers like Cloudflare.
And not even all ISPs, only the few most popular ones. Even if that's probably 96% of internet users, that looks like the law does not treat all citizens equally.
I think simply modifying the hosts file on a machine to "rename" the domain of the site you want to visit would be sufficient to bypass a browser-level block.
> The browser must send a request with a Host header with the correct site name or the server will 404 it.
Only if you configured it that way. Most http servers have a "default" website which they will happly serve from if the Host header has no match. I expect these sites will continue to work just fine in firefox using the host file hack or via alternative DNS domains.
Unless they just want a foot-in-the-door law to make certain browsers illegal (to then expand on it later), blocking content at the terminal is not the way to do it. So so many ways to get around it.
Please just make the block-list a plain-text human-readable file. That way I can update the file when a new torrent website is convicted and black-listed.
> Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill would force browser providers to create the means to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list
Why would this ever be done on a browser level? Any nation with internet censoring intentions can already do this by blocking it on an ISP level.
Here's the context: the fr gov's been acting against national interest for more than 20 years in a row. The people know it. The gov knows the people know. The gov wants to pretend it's not doing anything wrong.
It could keep pretending credibly, if only people would keep their trap shut on the web.
So now gov wants to control what people can see and say on the web.
Why do I have strong vibes that a better way of phrasing this is "a percentage of the people who thinks the fr gov's been acting against national interest (likely the people who think /their/ interest aligns with the national interest quite closely) knows it."
I mean, I don't know France and I'm no friend with "the government" and I oppose turning browsers into anything they are not supposed to be, but that "the government" can go against "national interest" for 20 year and "the people" know it is such a trite story that... uuuuugh. In short, you added no context at all.
Then don't try to put discredit to the saying of an insider. GP is 100% right. I've been back after about ~5 years living abroad and the country is in an astonishing decline on every plan (educational, moral, economical, political, diplomatic, security, judicial, medical, etc. the list goes one). And most of it is stemming from the policies enforced in the last decades.
> Then don't try to put discredit to the saying of an insider.
The GP in question is a generic ramble about distaste for current government. You can apply that for each and every country - there's not one where citizens are happy with their leaders. And if this flies for 'insider knowledge' in France you really are f**d and, its not because of the government.
>But I agree said rambling remains quite generic nonetheless.
That's what makes it sound like noise. If you took "france" out of the sentence I wouldn't be able to tell which country this is talking about. US, Canada, UK, China, Japan? It's like the fortune reading of government criticism.
The current président de la République managed to trigger protests and strikes that are only rivaled by the '86/87 student riots. The yellow vest protest almost had the potential to turn into another May '68 style event. It almost always begins with police killing a French citizen of Algerian origin or by messing up with the fuel prices. Hollande was a total disaster and Sarkozy is a 2x convict by now, no need to say more.
That wasn’t my point and doesn’t change anything about GP’s own merits or lack thereof.
I was actually trying to show it does have some merit by pointing out that, despite being generic, said ramble targets all the governments we’ve had over the last 20 years, and thus shouldn’t be so easily dismissed.
The conclusion was me playing nice by finding some common ground with the person I was replying to.
It wasn't the saying of an insider, it was empty rhetoric based on the perception of an insider, there's a big difference.
I'm sure you perceive the decline, and you were so kind to mention in which fields. Let's take an example, i.e. economy and security. Immigration and illegal immigrants are often related to immigration, in public discourse.
I'm sure the government in the last 20 years has done something about it (despite me not knowing France): either it tried to tighten it, or to make it happen more smoothly, or to integrate the immgrants, or to convince them to go back, or...
Now, I'm also pretty confident there's a sizable percentage of people that think that immigration is not a security problem nor an economic problem, but it's casted as such by the right; all these measures were a waste of time and money, which could have been used to improve other stuff in the public interest.
There's a decent amount of people that believe immigration should be helped and increased, and the efforts in controlling it have been wrong, and bad, and against the public interest.
There's people, likely on the right, thinking that there's way too many immigrants, and the previous government didn't do enough to address this; it is in the national interest to reduce immigrants, make sure they are all working, but without hijacking the possibilities for French citizens.
Did I guess correctly? Who is The People, and what is the correct National Interest now? Does it by any chance align with your views on immigration (which might or might not align with those of the OP, btw - we can't say much about those since there was no content)?
Could you try to explain it again, without the editorializing? Just a straight, facts only version of events, please.
Don’t worry, we’ll be upset, we love getting upset, but we have to feel like we figured it out. Americans just prefer to bring our outrage from home, rather than have it supplied for us when we get there.
This is extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence! This looks more like a whack-a-mole "for the children" misguided initiative, not a great firewall of China... Do you have more context?
Government power grabs are the norm. You'd need extraordinary evidence to prove otherwise.
Of course, authortiarians will always pretend there's some mistake or some good intention, once they're exposed, and attack people with labels, when criticism is used against their policies.
Comparing stuff to the great firewall of china is ridiculous. It's like saying things are ok with police in the US because they're not north Korea.
hi, our nuclear park is jeopardized, our energy cost is above the roof, several scandals ; look up the macron leaks it's has widely made the news both in france and internationally.
Or Chirac and Balladur's 1995 presidential campaign accounts.
The only recently released the Constitutional Council’s archives, 25 years later, and it’s been quite enlightening.
Our Supreme Court "equivalent" basically approved, enabled, contributed to and hid away blatant fraud, then lied about it for years, all under the guise of avoiding "political consequences".
Yes indeed! is this enforced DRM everywhere or you can't browse? is this a forced french MITM certificate chain you can't remove, is this something else? how does using Tor with a non-french exit node get impacted? If I ssh over port 80 or any other to a french-located box does something change?
It seems to be a version of safe browsing that is mandated by law to be a full block rather than a warning. It will be very easy to bypass, making this a very stupid law.
It's slightly more worrisome that the law doesn't include any privacy protection measures, but the GDPR still applies and whoever runs the checking service has to comply with it since the browsing history is personal data.
> It will be very easy to bypass, making this a very stupid law.
It’s not about being effective, it’s about making things illegal. It’s trivially easy to break the speed limit, but that doesn’t stop local police using it to collect millions of dollars of fines every year
He created a record label to make copyright free music for people to stream on places like Twitch.
He distributes his music through Spotify, Apple, etc.
The key thing here is that his music is used on streams, which tend to last many hours. Imagine a bunch of streamers playing his music for hours a day (he created themed playlists/albums). He gets payed by play time.
Stripe actually does collect VAT and helps you file and remit. Check out their docs page for doing this with Payment Links, which is what Easyful uses:
>> Does Stripe Tax handle remitting and reporting tax, or filing tax returns?
> Stripe Tax doesn’t handle remitting and reporting tax, or filing tax returns. Stripe Tax provides itemized and summarized exports to help users prepare, file, and remit the tax that was automatically calculated and collected. To automate filing in the US, we recommend using TaxJar’s AutoFile solution. In Europe, we recommend using Taxually or Marosa. To get started, visit Taxually’s partner page or Marosa’s partner page.
There are plenty of natural things that are bad for you and plenty of synthetic things that are good for you.
And there absolutely are reasons to feed yourself artificial sweeteners.
Sugar-free soda is awesome for people trying to lose weight. The carbonated drink keeps you satiated and you don’t ingest any of the calories in regular soda.