Countries anger and provoke each others’ populations by pointing out the bad stuff, and defend against that by censoring or otherwise cracking down on dissent. Articles like this are just attacks against us in this process, true, but I think specific ones like this are still useful, when critically understood, to help us realize that not only the countries we don’t like use those authoritarian tricks, but more or less every one (and those countries that don’t are couped by one or another who does).

I guess Putin believes there will be a WW3, and would rather fight Ukraine before they actually join NATO and build up military infrastructure. Pulling out now would be a blunder under that viewpoint.

There’s this post of mine, also this article gives some background on the application of PIR to anonymous messaging. Basically, I’m trying to do a basic version of that, but using a state-of-the-art PIR protocol introduced in this article. It’s still not great performance-wise, but it’s enough to be practical (as stated, many thousands of users given enough resources).

No, sorry, I haven’t uploaded anything yet, I’ve only coded the protocols and some benchmark code. The idea is for each client to send and receive data continuously. Since text messages are pretty small and YPIR+SP doesn’t have a lot of overhead, that could be a reasonable way to conceal all metadata, as long as there are not enough people connected to overwhelm the server.

Sorry! I meant Private Information Retrieval, that could allow metadata-hiding messaging.

Nah we are basically immersed in a housing crisis, so no right to that. And every time an actual leftist party succeeds, our media basically unite against it while pretending to accept them. You can call it a “lesser evil”, but I would even doubt that, since China is probably talking about us the same way we talk about them.

I wouldn’t consider it an ideological thing, but more of a strategic decision by Xi et al.

I guess we could make one using newer FHE-RAM techniques and some edge case handling.

I like this perspective of yours. I may as well expand the range of activities of mine I call hobbies.

You’re right. At the end of the day, there are many factors pushing people to act, not just greed and rationality. Thank you for your reasoning and the interesting thought experiment.

I’d say it’s too soon to see if China will take an imperialist approach. The US and Europe seem to be decoupling from them, so they are in desperate need of well-developed markets that will buy their products. It’s in their own best interest that African nations develop quickly (which also hurts the US and Europe, making it harder to get cheap raw materials, thus doubly good for China).

It would be a win definitely, but unfortunately resolutions made by the General Assembly are not binding.

It is indeed true that if you instantly ended capitalism, there would be no way to bribe cops or other groups against the working class. But if you simply give all workers class consciousness, you are not instantly ending capitalism. Workers would not be able to refuse to work because they have no capital and cops would prevent them from breaking the cycle, then capitalists would keep those cops working for them.

I actually made a post in [email protected] looking at this specific hypothetical scenario from a mathematical perspective. The comments are especially interesting.

When returning from kernel code, one should issue Drop Execution Ring Privileges, of course.

No, because that wouldn’t be true. The bourgeoisie could trivially pay any sufficiently small group of people so that it’s in their best interest to follow along. This is true of cops but also of lawmakers (small groups of people that exert great control), so the current system would be rigged in favor of the ruling class even under perfect cooperation of the proletariat.

That’s not to say I’m 100% sure a revolution needs to happen. Most likely, it does, but the reasoning above does not rule out specific cases (e.g., conditions where the threat of a revolution could provide sufficient leverage, or “loopholes” in a legal system that might allow an additional advantage for a cooperating majority).

Even if everyone was class conscious, people could still act in self-interest. For example, cops could keep protecting capitalists if they were paid enough.

Very interesting. I’d say China will only increase and cheapen its production even more, which will allow them to push their influence. They have been focusing on doing exactly that, by building efficient transportation networks, putting increasingly more companies’ equities in the hands of the state (and therefore sidestepping investors), and, recently, setting up abundant facilities for cheap, green energy production. All three of those policies rely for their swift and massive realization on what US policymakers nowadays seem to refer to as “non-market” dynamics, which are basically out of the question for them.

Was he talking about abortion, or “life” in general? As I see it, (provided he was referring to the latter) both candidates’ stances on the war in Gaza are very sub-optimal from a “preservation of life” standpoint.

Reminds me of the time an investigation into a high-profile corruption scandal in Spain revealed the names of those involved, among them “M. Rajoy”. There’s a running joke that no one knows who might be behind that name, it’s a mystery that may never be solved.

Relevant context