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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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History of how Israel developed nuclear weapons

mardi 1 juillet 2025 à 10:44

For comparison with Iran, the history of how Israel developed nuclear weapons.

In the 1950s, 60s and 70s several of Israel's neighbors insisted that they sought to destroy Israel. There are countries that are hostile to Iran, too, but only Israel might seek to destroy it.

American student loan borrowers at risk of defaulting

mardi 1 juillet 2025 à 10:44

6 million American student loan borrowers are at risk of defaulting in the coming weeks.

This is the persecutor's doing. Biden had allowed the borrowers to stop making payments, while searching unsuccessfully for a way to forgive the loans despite the obstruction by Republicans in Congress.

The US should do what Britain has done, and make repayments conditional on receiving a middle-class salary. Then the loan would not ruin the whole rest of your life if you don't get such a salary.

Oregon bans methods of corporations owning medical practice

mardi 1 juillet 2025 à 10:44

Oregon has banned the subterfuge that corporations were using to sneak around the law that a corporation can't own a medical practice.

Russia and Ukraine have developed mostly autonomous drones

mardi 1 juillet 2025 à 10:44

Russia and Ukraine have developed mostly autonomous killer drones, and are rapidly researching full anonymity. It could be easy to program one to hunt down and kill a specific individual by recognizing per face.

Negotiations for a UN treaty to ban such weapons are becoming more urgent, bu it is not clear how to make sure all countries, all underground rebel groups and all mafias comply with such a treaty.

Surveillance pricing

mardi 1 juillet 2025 à 10:44

*Surveillance pricing lets corporations decide what your dollar is worth.*

* Algorithmic wage discrimination doesn't need to use third-party surveillance data: Uber, who invented the tactic, use their own in-house data as a way to make inferences about drivers' desperation and thus their willingness to accept a lower wage.*

Uber stands accused of optimizing its pricing algorithm to manipulate both riders and drivers so that they make out worse and the company profits more.

Note that this is not an injustice of nonfree malware. The software for the pricing algorithm runs in Uber's own computer. It is, I suppose, Uber's private software, but if it were someone else's released free software that Uber used a coy of, Uber would have the right to make the same modifications in its copy.

The app that riders must use to be customers of Uber is nonfree software and does have a malicious surveillance functionality, but the computerized manipulation being criticized here is not particularly related to that.

What makes the manipulation possible is that Uber forces its customers to identify themselves, so it can make a complete record of its dealings with each customer. It has a similar asymmetry of information about each driver (and that could hardly be avoided). The results are unjust because they are dooH niboR at work, enriching the rich owners and pushing down the low-income drivers.

In my view, the lessons are (1) don't assume that all nasty behavior of computing is causes by nonfree software, (2) governments should stop Uber from identifying its customers or requiring them to run nonfree software, and (3 governments should regulate drivers' pay to keep it higher.

I'm richer than you! infinity loop