A good place to start is OSINT (open source intelligence) for your city/municipality because it requires little commitment, is scoped with regards to complexity and amount of information, and usually risk-free. Gather publicly available information about the companies in your area, who owns/runs them, your city council, any ongoing projects, the processes of funding stuff with public money and so on. Don't bother finding the best collection method or way to structure all the data, just start, you will figure things out on the way. Also be aware of your personal bias, which might make you dismiss important information or affect your judgement.
The next steps highly depend on where you live. Your HN profile says Australia, so at least safety-wise you are in a better spot. Connect to people in your area (preferrably offline), for example by organizing a local meetup, maybe there is one already. Activities can range from exchanging ideas to spreading awareness in your community to actively going against corrupt affairs. Make sure you know what and who you are up against, or you will have a very bad time.
Anticorruption is a group effort because it requires a lot of work and often special knowledge (info tech, law, finance, opsec, public relations and propaganda, ...) and, more importantly, a group provides safety from corrupt actors. On your own you will not be able to deal with lawsuits, misinformation, character assassination and worse.
> AI enables precision influence at unprecedented scale and speed.
IMO this is the most important idea from the paper, not polarization.
Information is control, and every new medium has been revolutionary with regards to its effects on society. Up until now the goal was to transmit bigger and better messages further and faster (size, quality, scale, speed). Through digital media we seem to have reached the limits of size, speed and scale. So the next changes will affect quality, e.g. tailoring the message to its recipient to make it more effective.
This is why in recent years billionaires rushed to acquire media and information companies and why governments are so eager to get a grip on the flow of information.
Recommended reading: Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan. While it predates digital media, the ideas from this book remain as true as ever.
Apparently X11 has a security extension [1]. There was a discussion some months ago [2].
Xenocara (X on OpenBSD) improves security by dropping privileges and using features like pledge [3], but I don't know how this affects the feasability of keyloggers.
> Thorn works with a group of technology partners who serve the organization as members of the Technology Task Force. The goal of the program includes developing technological barriers and initiatives to ensure the safety of children online and deter sexual predators on the Internet.
> Various corporate members of the task force include Facebook, Google, Irdeto, Microsoft, Mozilla, Palantir, Salesforce Foundation, Symantec, and Twitter.
Apparently Thorn scratched that list from their current website, but the Wiki page has an archive link.
Well, it's impossible to know if Eichmann really thought about the ethics of his job. With regards to his trial, it didn't matter anyway. Every captured Nazi official claimed they were just a cog in the machine and had to follow orders. The judges rightfully dismissed this, because otherwise Hitler would have been the only one responsible (how convenient!). They were all put on trial for their specific actions and decisions.
My take from Hannah Arendt's work is that normal people will do evil things if they think they can get away with it.
The legislation simply says if you collect more data about your users than necessary, you must inform them and they must consent. This has nothing to do with cookies or any other tech.
The question a user should ask is why is this website collecting my data. Marketing and adtech companies are trying to shift this question to why is the EU making websites worse.
> there is no need for government regulation here
You don't need to care about this if you respect users' privacy in the same way you don't need to care about waste water regulation when you don't pump waste into rivers.
I don't agree with two of the four given reasons for the rewrite.
> Modern codebase: Easier to maintain and evolve compared to 30-year-old C code.
It's not a modern codebase, but a NEW codebase, so ofc it's easier to maintain and evolve. How many 30-year old Rust projects are there to actually validate this claim?
> Younger contributor base: Young developers are opting for modern language like Rust instead of C. Rust's safety features also make it easier for new developers to contribute more confidently.
I like that a lot of young programmers work on open source projects, but the old-is-bad bias hurts software projects because so many hard earned lessons get lost and relearned over and over again.
Besides that, why call this a "takeover"? I like Rust, but this whole endeavour screems immature. Sudo is a critical component in millions of systems, please treat it appropriately.
The next steps highly depend on where you live. Your HN profile says Australia, so at least safety-wise you are in a better spot. Connect to people in your area (preferrably offline), for example by organizing a local meetup, maybe there is one already. Activities can range from exchanging ideas to spreading awareness in your community to actively going against corrupt affairs. Make sure you know what and who you are up against, or you will have a very bad time.
Anticorruption is a group effort because it requires a lot of work and often special knowledge (info tech, law, finance, opsec, public relations and propaganda, ...) and, more importantly, a group provides safety from corrupt actors. On your own you will not be able to deal with lawsuits, misinformation, character assassination and worse.
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