Historically, democracy only allowed free males who were land owners to vote. A minority.

In the last few generations the wealthy have come up with clever ideas to hold onto power while expanding the vote to the majority.

So, I think Democracy is defined by periodically changing some of the government by the voting of some people. And the votes must be counted in front of witnesses.

This is my definition of democracy only; and not me arguing for it, personally I don’t think it works well enough

Yes, as practiced it’s mostly theatrics and the working class does not take power due to many controls and mental conditioning.

Democracy gives the illusion of control.

But many of these countries are by definition democracies

Yes: As long as people can vote, kick the other government out, and replace it with worse, maybe better.

I think where the confusion lies at, is the very definition of democracy. Democracy does not mean good governance or even particularly fair treatment. It had nothing to do with socialism or helping the disadvantaged. It simply means it can be replaced using voting.

I think the democracies of the west are overhyped oligarchies; but they are democracies

One is a quickly developing powerhouse.

The other is a democracy. It’s main opposition party had promised to allow porn again and is wildly successful

It’s like watching an online version of Brexit, without the referendum

Trump is terrible. His family is horrible no good people, and using politics to enrich family and friends is unethical.

That said, the only thing I see different from other presidents is less hiding and less being clever about the enrichment.

Which is a huge issue; because in my experience one can tell the level of graft in a government by using the visible crimes, usually small things. The actual crimes can be ten times more than the scandals. Like an iceberg

So when we see public crimes that are more often and more serious: that is a lot of new graft… tens of billions of USD at least

“Barbarian horde” backed by a foreign empire

Hopium

Users are funneled towards actions exploited by both politics and greed. Many have no choice.

This tech we all use is advancing exponentially.

And we must be ready to embrace the dizzying changes in the next few years so that we can improve our lives and have better governments.

Your very welcome!!

I design systems similar to this; in my mindset the competency and privacy are the same.

There is simply no way anyone competent or knowledgeable would have made this series of mistakes in good faith. And it’s very hard for someone not knowledgeable about the tech to understand the magnitude.

It’s rather like designing and selling car with bad breaks, and your car gets into an accident which could have been avoided had the breaks worked. But nobody could test the breaks fully?

Sounds like a long term issue that will not resolve itself. The only relevant advice anyone can give here is tips about job searching or sympathy.

You have my sympathy

Indeed, how can anyone know?

I think failures like this will be readily apparent, within months after launch, to technically minded people only. But only if people have summaries in their news feeds or know how to research the opinions of others…

Perhaps non technical people should wait at least a year or two of before trying a new service? By then the worst of them will have crashed or be found out.

This will not be the last time it happens. With llm coding, I think there will be dozens similar to this in a few years

It is too bad all these people trusted a bad company which cared little about them or their privacy.

I agree with that other comment which argues to set it as the users expect. I think the 1 based is logical here

Noo…!

Who else to call out the atrocities of car culture than the underdogs who are most affected by it?

I have been both riding bicycles and driving huge trucks, not at the same time. And when driving was far less likely to be critical; I would think “this is bad”, and left it there. Five minutes later forgotten.

But when I rode bicycles these very things impacted me much more; I would stew in anger. Then , in that mindset I could more easily reflect on the absolute travesty: not just where I was but roads and metal things slicing up the landscape over continents.

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Yes, although I still worked on my own projects.

I have drifted from professional to other for many years.

Now that I have coded for two generations now, I often think I should have chosen some main occupation that was not a sit down job.

But it is what it is, and I will probably program more than anything else for the rest of my working life