An Oppressive Benevolence

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”  –  C.S. Lewis

The most insidious sort of oppression is that which is carried out “for our own good.” In American politics it is a trite generalization that the Right views government is the archetypal Father Figure, an authoritarian caretaker keeping us on the straight and narrow, and punish us when we slip, lest we become savages. The Left conceives of the state as our collective Mother, with resources enough to nurture the whole of the people, and sooth their ills. It’s difficult to choose the lesser of these two evils, and I wouldn’t endorse either one without a litany of reservations. But for its manifold faults the impulses of the Right to act as enforcers of proper behavior are at least generally less expensive than the Left’s insatiable drive to feed everyone on everyone else’s dime, if only because it’s cheaper to beat people than feed them (though the modern prison system calls this assumption into question). Those of us who would prefer the State do no parenting whatsoever are relegated to the margins of political discourse, presumably to busy ourselves with UFO sightings, Revolutionary-period costume parties, and our gold fetish. I assume that there’s a similar dynamic at work in most other countries, regardless of the particular names and forms.

It appears Scotland is planning to assign every child an official “Named Person” starting in 2016. This person will be, it seems, either a health worker or teacher, depending on the age of the child. I’ve no doubt that the proponents of this plan have little but the best interests of the children in mind. This official will receive copies of reports, and be informed if a child misses an appointment. The State, and its magnanimity, has provided a Kindly Uncle (or ‘Aunt.’ We’re not sexist ’round here…) for the family, interested in nothing but the wee lad’s (or lass’s…) well-being.

There are those who, being backward and reactionary, view such snooping as an improper intrusion. Perhaps even “meddling.” The Light of Progress has not yet graced their faces, and it is the responsibility of the more enlightened vanguards to drag them, perhaps kicking and screaming, into this brave new world. But let us forget these unwashed pagans for the moment, and assume that it is a demonstrable good to assign these youths an Official Busybody to make sure their parents aren’t busy, forgetful, or abusive. What are the odds that it will stay there? Is it anything but credulity of the highest order to imagine that the State, once inserted into the family, will be so reserved as to limit itself to the original task?

No. Power begets power, human nature and mission creep assure a steady supply of new evils to combat, and any successes will be hailed as justification to expand the program. £30,000 isn’t much to fight a policy campaign or protracted court battle, but I wish the opponents of this policy all the best, both for their sake and for ours, as policy-makers tend to borrow ideas, and if it “works” in Scotland, it may spread.

(Hat tip to Cranmer.)

Truecrypt

I like Truecrypt. I really like Truecrypt.

Or I did.

It appears that Truecrypt is dead. Things are “different” at the Sourceforge page, with a declaration that development has ended and a recommendation to move files to Microsoft’s BitLocker. The internet is abuzz with the news of it, and with rampant speculation.

The primary, obvious theories are as follows: Has the webpage been hacked? A developer gone rogue? Did the audit find something major? Or something more sinister, such as government “encouragement” to include a backdoor for their use? The latter is what prompted Lavabit to fold.

My assumption, given the recommendation to shift to an encryption program far less likely to be trusted (if anything is compromised, that surely is), given the audit has so far found nothing of major concern, and given the final 7.2 release’s code suggests it can’t be trusted (as noted in news links above) is that there has been strong-arming to include a backdoor, and the developers have chosen to abide by the letter, if not the spirit, of the “request.” I’m no sort of programmer, but I am a top-flight pessimist who rarely finds himself let down by his cynical predictions, and it would not be surprising in the least to discover that “They” wanted to kill off, or at least neuter, one of the most popular and easiest to use encryption programs around.

For the time being, 7.1a is probably safe, if you’re a current installation or old install file around, and 7.2 is definitely unsafe. I’d be choosy about where I downloaded an old version from, as well.

Of course, for the vast majority of us living in the tin-foil-hat-free world, most encryption programs are “safe” in the sense that the secrets we’re keeping aren’t worth the government’s time to pursue. But it’s the principle of the thing.

UPDATE: ArsTehnica has a roundup of the most popular theories.

A Memorial Day

“And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be confectioneries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take a tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day. Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us; That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles. And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, Hearken unto their voice, and make them a king.”

Fatty Fatty, Two-by-Four…

According to a study, Europe will be buying bigger pants by 2030. On behalf of Americans, I would like to welcome you aboard, and suggest you get to the buffet early as the line tends to get quite long.

A certain Dr. Webber opines that “[p]olicies that reduce obesity are necessary to avoid premature mortality and prevent economic strain on already overburdened health system.”

It almost goes without saying that there is a “crisis” of obesity, at least if you consider how expensive it is for the health system. To those who see every “crisis” as a golden opportunity to “do something,” the logical approach is to muster the force of government, draft some laws, and loose the bureaucrats.

Oh my yes.

Not being European in anything but ethnic extraction, I can only speculate how well such “policies” will go over in the Old Countries. New York City didn’t exactly embrace Bloomberg’s efforts to ban high-capacity soda containers, though this doesn’t seem to have diminished his enthusiasm for meddling. His successor plans to continue fighting that particular good fight, and some of this minions have migrated up the government ladder. Are gigantic servings of sugary drinks good for anyone, or even “okay?” Of course not. Along with cigarettes, and the entire concept of “all you can eat,” they’re manifestly Bad Things. But we’re adults, with free will to make our own choices, so piss off.

On the other hand, if you don’t buy into the whole free will bit, you might be less hostile to the idea that we need helped along.

So what shall the Europeans do? Who knows… maybe the EU can vote about it, or the UN can pass a mandate that will be ignored by all.

In the meantime, we Americans can expand our selection of foods that expand our waistlines by eating some invasive species.

Wherein I Fail to Care About Things

I enjoyed The Sims and it’s sequels. I know I own 2 and 3, and may have a copy of the original lost in a copy paper box somewhere at my parents’ house. I never purchased any of the expansions, as I never felt I needed to personally support EA’s franchise milking. Besides, you don’t need any of the expansions to soak up the depressingly meta experience of being irritated with your sim for pissing away his time playing computer games when you should be doing essentially anything else.

However I was always somewhat bemused by the nature of sexuality in the Sims-verse. There is no sexual orientation as such; everyone is uniformly bisexual. This was most pronounced in the first game, where if you left your sim to his or her own devices and went for lunch, there’d be no telling who they might have become romantically entangled with by your return. While there may be statistical support for the idea that “(most) everyone is a little bit bi,” an entire population of absolute bisexuals no more accurately represents reality than there being none at all.

The peculiarities of sexual identity have landed the game an ‘adults only’ rating in Russia, as it runs afoul of a law that prohibits the distribution to children of media containing, among other things, “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships.” Politics aside, there’s almost no chance this will have a practical effect on who plays the game. Parents are not typically that deferential to the empowered moral guardians, and even if they were, Russia is well-known as a land where game piracy is as much the rule as the exception.

Meanwhile, Nintendo has drawn the ire of GLAAD for failing to let players be as gay as they want to be in Tomodachi Life, a game about, uh… something. I don’t actually know anything about the game other than the fact that it’s attracted controversy, and as I don’t own and have no intention of acquiring a 3DS, I also don’t particularly care. Nintendo isn’t going to change the game post-ship, and I also don’t care about that. Nintendo has probably done the math, and decided that losing sales from the committed culture warriors who also happen to own a Nintendo 3DS costs less than making the changes they want, and for everyone else they can do things differently in the sequel and all will be forgiven, or at least forgotten.

In the moderately more important world of U.S. military policy, the Defense Secretary is “open” to a review of the policy barring transgender individuals from joining up. I can think of perfectly reasonable rationales to both support and oppose this. If a man wishes to behave as a woman whilst serving the State, provided the effectuation of this desire doesn’t overly burden the organization, then all the best to them. On the other hand, one might imagine a twilight zone where a handful of servicepersons, stuck in some far-away shithole they probably needn’t be in to begin with, are unable to get the various pills they need to properly express what they feel they really are. The logistics of managing this, and/or the failure to do so, might be something of a morale problem.

Really though, I’m pretty indifferent, and this issue doesn’t seem like it should really be that high up the docket of problems with the military that need addressed (and I suspect it isn’t).

I’m not sure I really had much to say in all of above, but it seemed like an appropriate night to clear those links out as I’m at present missing an Against Me! show, because not doing things is so nice. I saw the band in ’05 or ’06, sometime around when ‘Searching for a Former Clarity’ released, and long before Tom transitioned into Laura. It was a really good show, and tonight would likely have been a really good show, too. But between my feelings about that, a mid-afternoon motorcycle ride right before I’d have had to leave for the show, and a heaping of general indifference, it just didn’t happen.

The Toothpaste

My compatriot, writing below, refers to this Japan Times story concerning a gentleman who purchased a 3D printer for about $600 (at present exchange), and proceeded to print out a handful firearms, two of which functioned (and an array of colors, if the picture is to be believed). He then proceeded to post videos discussing his achievement, and plans so that others might achieve the same.

The man asserted that he believed firearms to be a “basic human right,” a sentiment I would broadly agree with. He also claimed he didn’t believe the production of 3D printed firearms to be illegal, which given we’re speaking of Japan seems either disingenuous or incredibly ignorant, and added that he “can’t complain about the arrest if the police regard them as real guns,” which strikes me as either unfortunate translation, a simple acknowledgment of legal reality, or a craven bow to authority. I’ll leave it to you to speculate as to which, or what combination.

I write on this topic simply to add my own thoughts on the legal and practical situation of printed firearms. To a greater, and higher profile degree than anyone else, Defense Distributed has made this an “issue,” printing weapons capable of firing over a thousand rounds with success. They’ve also produced designs for “high capacity” magazines, allowing anyone with a 3D printer to circumvent any local bans on those. If memory serves, Defense Distributed’s founder espouses a sort of crypto-anarchism, with an aim to step on the tube of toothpaste, splattering it all over the internet.

It’s exceedingly hard, if perhaps not impossible, to put the toothpaste back.

Anyone with a 3D printer, which are falling in price all the time, will be able to find plans for firearms, and to produce them. At the moment such practice is legal in the United States, as producing firearms for personal use (note: not for sale) is not against the law. There have been mutterings, and dramatic swooning from politicians and media types, but for the moment it’s no crime. Even if that were to change (which it may well), such legislation would join the ranks of thousands of other practically unenforceable laws.

I’m late to the party here, and this pronouncement is hardly a novel realization. I’ve merely added my voice to the multitudes noting the obvious. I disagree with an assertion that there is any end to “general scarcity,” but gun control has been crippled, and the age of centralized, big-factory industry may well be under threat, at least regarding some products. But that’s a topic for another time.

Infractors

” Every night there is a show with somebody shining a little blue light and finding tiny specks of blood splattered on carpets and walls and ceiling fans, bathroom fixtures and special-edition plastic Burger King tray cups. The next thing they show is some stupid redneck in handcuffs who looks absolutely stunned that this is happening to him. Sometimes the redneck is actually WATCHING the Discovery Channel when they break in to arrest him. And he still can’t figure out how on earth they could’ve caught him!”

-Lucien, Crash

 

So a 27-year-old man, assuming the good will of all enforcement agencies to his neato construction of firearms in his home using a 3-D printer. He’s even created a funpack of colors. I’ve been trying to tell people about the coming end of scarcity for a while now, and of course not even I believe the wild stories I’ve been spreading but some of it is coming true.

Control of information has been a failed preoccupation for the US government. As information overflows its academic banks and floods past the military/industrial levies we find a great deal to fear. Yet examine this young cur who constructs weapons for his own amusement and then tells the world. Unable to control themselves, people continue to put incriminating evidence on the network and in print and even on the surface of their skin. Humanity is clearly not bright enough to keep anything secret no matter how little purpose publicizing or commemorating serves.

I suppose I should not be shocked, the idiocy of humanity is writ large across history but has always been obscured  by a veneer of apologetic historians and the patina of time.  Conspiracy is difficult because people are stupid, which is good for everyone until the math catches up and the little eddies of unsupervised bureaucracy start bombarding us with unreasonable demands.

First things:

My lord, this digital prison. It says sundrycomp up there. Grey and white doom. So many things to complain about in my monochromatic hell. Frames with thousands of options that will not distill my words into anything useful. I would request feedback but then I would be obligated to do something about it.  Or find a category to put it in even. Speaking of which why is every portrayal of retail workers suggest that they are all deficient? Do no writers have underachieving friends?

Well, the color is good and someone has lifted the calligraphy of a hard-working monk and cheapened it to our program. It screams ‘We’re important enough for illumination’ in an age where filigree isn’t even listed as an option for being so cheap.

This has been a simulation of  content. If this were real content, something would have to be said about the world at large, which is far more depressing.