spencerwi

joined 2 years ago
[–] spencerwi@lemm.ee 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

I read the whole article, as it went on to describe more of what has been reported as having a "social credit score", and gave more details about how it's administered.

Basically, the headline is "no, it's not at all what you've heard", and then the article goes on to describe exactly what has been reported in the US. I'm not sure your point about "there's no credit score that is administered by the Chinese government with a mechanism for blacklisting you and restricting you everywhere" is well-supported by an article that describes a credit score that is administered by the Chinese government that operates blacklists that are enforced under the slogan "whoever violates the rules somewhere shall be restricted everywhere."

If that's not actually how it works, then you need to provide a credible source that proves that's not how it works. Providing a source that reports that yes, that's exactly how it works doesn't serve your argument. And "well but the West is totally lying, maaan" isn't proof; it's an unverified claim by a random internet commenter.

[–] spencerwi@lemm.ee 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (11 children)

Did you read your own link, or just grab the headline from a google search and call it "good enough?"

It’s true that, building on earlier initiatives, China’s State Council published a road map in 2014 to establish a far-reaching “social credit” system by 2020. The concept of social credit (shehui xinyong) is not defined in the increasing array of national documents governing the system, but its essence is compliance with legally prescribed social and economic obligations and performing contractual commitments. Composed of a patchwork of diverse information collection and publicity systems established by various state authorities at different levels of government, the system’s main goal is to improve governance and market order in a country still beset by rampant fraud and counterfeiting.

Under the system, government agencies compile and share across departments, regions, and sectors, and with the public, data on compliance with specified industry or sectoral laws, regulations, and agreements by individuals, companies, social organizations, government departments, and the judiciary. Serious offenders may be placed on blacklists published on an integrated national platform called Credit China and subjected to a range of government-imposed inconveniences and exclusions. These are often enforced by multiple agencies pursuant to joint punishment agreements covering such sectors as taxation, the environment, transportation, e-commerce, food safety, and foreign economic cooperation, as well as failing to carry out court judgments.

These punishments are intended to incentivize legal and regulatory compliance under the often-repeated slogan of “whoever violates the rules somewhere shall be restricted everywhere.” Conversely, “red lists” of the trustworthy are also published and accessed nationally through Credit China.

[–] spencerwi@lemm.ee 2 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Maybe running an OwnTracks server or something?

[–] spencerwi@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This has real "Twoflower's Luggage" vibes.

[–] spencerwi@lemm.ee 7 points 2 years ago (7 children)

I mean, is "other people are having fun" really something that demands a resistance?

Or could you, perhaps, just not do it and not care whether that makes you "cool" or not?

It's like that bit from Community: "wear it because of them, don't wear it because of them — either way, it's for them."

Just be you, without having to have some sort of faux "resistance" to justify yourself.

[–] spencerwi@lemm.ee 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (17 children)

Thank u Jason, very cool !!

Seriously though, good for you I guess? Not sure why you're grandstanding about it.

Meanwhile, I'm doing it the way I have in years past: as a fun set of puzzles that let me write code I enjoy in a language I like, because I do actually enjoy writing code, and only until my real-life schedule no longer allows.

Nobody's saving the world by posting on their personal blogs about how they're bravely and boldly not doing a series of optional advent-calendar puzzles.

[–] spencerwi@lemm.ee 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

In the sort of dialect Charlie Daniels had, "went down to" means "went south to", meaning that Hell is north of Georgia. It's in Michigan, in fact — and based on my experiences there, it might just be Michigan.

[–] spencerwi@lemm.ee 13 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I'm really surprised to see Java ranked as less-verbose than OCaml.

Here's an equivalent code sample in Java 17 vs OCaml:

Java:

abstract sealed class Expr permits Value, Add, Subtract, Multiply, Divide {
  abstract long eval();
}
record Value(long value) extends Expr {
  @Override
  long eval() { return value; }
}
record Add(Expr left, Expr right) {   
  @Override
  long eval() { return left.eval() + right.eval(); }
}
record Subtract(Expr left, Expr right) {
  @Override
  long eval() { return left.eval() - right.eval(); }
}
record Multiply(Expr left, Expr right) {
  @Override
  long eval() { return left.eval() * right.eval(); }
}
record Divide(Expr left, Expr right) {
  @Override
  long eval() { return left.eval() / right.eval(); }
}

OCaml:

type expr = 
  | Value of int
  | Add of expr * expr
  | Subtract of expr * expr
  | Multiply of expr * expr
  | Divide of expr * expr

let rec eval = function 
  | Value value -> value
  | Add (left, right) -> (eval left) + (eval right)
  | Subtract (left, right) -> (eval left) - (eval right)
  | Multiply (left, right) -> (eval left) * (eval right)
  | Divide (left, right) -> (eval left) / (eval right)

....Java has so much more syntactical overhead than OCaml, and that's even with recent Java and being pretty aggressive about using boiler-plate reducing sugars like Records. And F# has even less, since it doesn't require you to use different operators for numerics or do as much manual casting between strings/numerics

[–] spencerwi@lemm.ee 4 points 2 years ago

Conversely, I have a recent-ish (<5yrs old) Brother inkjet printer that's waiting to be dumped to recycling because it arbitrarily decided that it didn't ever need to be discoverable or respond to any print requests one day, and so even though there was nothing mechanically wrong with it, even hooking up a Raspberry Pi to run CUPS over USB didn't fix the issue -- because Brother explicitly refuses to publish drivers for the Raspberry Pi, and their inkjet drivers are proprietary.

I've since replaced it with the best-reviewed Epson printer I could find that supports a generic PCL driver, so that if Epson ever loses their minds in the way Brother did, I can fall back on an open-source implementation of good ol' PCL.

That thing's given us no issues so far.

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