This is yet another negative article with LiberOffice/TDF at the centre of it (this time with Collabora freely dragging themselves into the muck). This after attacks on OnlyOffice and OpenOffice for, from a relatively external perspective, "existing as competition".
I appreciate that for those "in the trenches" this may be a rallying cry or a shot across the bow, but for the rest of us it is indicating that we keep the whole thing - LibreOffice and Collabora - at arms length. Which is a shame because I've recommended both to people in the past, as well as happily using both at various points myself.
On the contrary, I would take this as evidence that these projects are alive and well - they have people who care enough to try to affect their future trajectory.
The tech community has had pretty much free reign over the last few decades, and has always chosen adult convenience over child safety (and mostly profit over both). The "middle ground" probably involves a bigger transfer than this.
There's probably a much better solution than "adults vs children" but very few with our expertise seem seriously interested in solving for safer children, which essentially leads to inexpert solutions gaining popular support.
I won't call myself an expert in this field, and haven't given it much thought, but a couple options just off the top of my head...
1. Limit child accounts to "classic" social network functionality. They get to see things from mutual friends. No algorithmic feeds, kids aren't in the user search, and no way for messages to be sent/received unless both sides have consented.
2. Disable chat for child accounts. How many chat apps do children really need? Each one is another potential vector for issues that parents would need to monitor.
I'm sure there is a monkey paw here, but either option seems better than no end-to-end encryption for anyone, at a time when government surveillance is a bigger issue than ever.
Frankly, I think option 1 would be better for all users, not just children. Go back to classic "social networks". This "social media" experiment has failed.
It should be acknowledged that this was at least significantly about lobbying, and shouldn't be considered a cut-and-dry "failed experiment" (though clearly there are lessons that can be learned):
> [Munich Mayor] Reiter wanted Microsoft to move its Microsoft Germany corporate headquarters to to Munich. Microsoft moved and Reiter wants to deliver on his promise to make Munich a Windows-powered city.
One important point is that many people die WITH cancer but not OF cancer. So even for the 1.8%, only a fraction of those people were going to die of the disease (or even suffer significant symptoms) - the rest were just going to die of natural causes anyway.
But now you've found it you pretty much have to remove it, which has significant quality of life implications.
Age is a big factor in the with/of cancer factor. If someone is 80 years old then there's good chance it won't be cancer that kills them (assuming they aren't already in a late stage).
But if you are 40 and you have cancer, there's a good chance you'll die of that cancer if it's left untreated.
I'm personally of the opinion that cancer screening should happen earlier for younger people and less frequently for older people. Like, if you hit 80, there's really basically no reason to screen for cancer.
It does, doesn't it! This is basically the reason scepticism in screening has risen (amongst scientists and medics, not the general population) - research seems to show that screening catches much more cancer but doesn't save many more people.
Rohin Francis does a good video on it, which you don't have to watch because it has references underneath you can click straight through to (the video is good though): https://youtu.be/yNzQ_sLGIuA
I am frustrated by this because it seems obvious to me that "more data == better" but I guess it makes sense if you think of the scans as having high amounts of noise, and us having a poor understanding of the system we're monitoring (this never happens in tech, of course :)).
From the statistics on autopsy and other accidental discovery, it seems that more than 30% of the population has some cancer by age 40 that would never impact their life left untreated (mostly thyroid, prostate, and surprisingly-for-me, breast cancer). Regular widespread full body MRI might catch these, but the effects of treating (e.g.) prostate cancer are so terrible that most would be better off ignoring it.
If they think this is good/important then fine but what they've created is a grant programme, not a UBI.
Personally I would have thought this money would have been better spent getting people on the margins the stability to retrain into in-demand skilled careers (e.g. single, unskilled parents training as electricians or plumbers). That feels like it would be a more durable, multi-generational benefit.
Who said it is a UBI that this "rebuttal" even makes sense to appear here? The Irish government isn't calling it a UBI. The article doesn't call it a UBI. Even the FAQ for the program says it is not UBI:
>> Why this is not a Universal Basic Income
>> It is important to note that that the Basic Income for the Arts Pilot is not a Universal Basic Income. This is a sectoral intervention to support practicing artists and creative arts workers to focus on their creative practice. This policy is separate to the Universal Basic income as outlined in the Programme for Government.
Basic Income and UBI are colloquially synonyms, people use them interchangeably, and the Irish government are almost certainly using it to endear themselves to supporters of UBI and to get more coverage for their policy than media would give them if they just called it a grant.
This happens all the time. For example, in the UK there was a push for a "living wage" in the 2010s, which the government responded to by rebranding the minimum wage the "National Living Wage" and bumping it a little for over-25s.
Society needs art. Artists produce art. There a pantheon of greats that had no commercial success in their lives but moved our culture, we’d be so much more culturally impoverished if we’d insisted they become shit plumbers.
It is not a grant. It is UBI. People who advocated for UBI always said they will spend time creating art, etc. if they didn’t have to work for income. So here it is, the dream come true.
Ireland currently has a population of approximately 5,501,000 people. There is great news: Bono and the rest of his band have agreed to provide subsidies for the 5,499,000 citizens who aren't receiving the BIA funds, and they'll brand this supplemental program as U2BI.
The website will be established shortly as https://ww2.u2bi.ie:212/ as soon as the registrars can correct the typos.
I appreciate that for those "in the trenches" this may be a rallying cry or a shot across the bow, but for the rest of us it is indicating that we keep the whole thing - LibreOffice and Collabora - at arms length. Which is a shame because I've recommended both to people in the past, as well as happily using both at various points myself.
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