Busy week coding -- but there was one delightful article that led me down a small rabbit hole of Richard P Gabriel's writing about "worse is better" from 1989/90. The hub for this idea is here: Richard P. Gabriel: "Worse Is Better", https://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html And I found it via: Christine Lemmer-Webber: "How decentralized is Bluesky really?", 2024-11-22, https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/ The idea of "worse is better" got connected to Gall's Law, and loosely relates to why idealistic, big software rewrites fail so often. And why things that are imperfect but provide value proliferate.

In the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries, cities passed “ugly laws” banning“unsightly beggars” from public places. In the first half of the twentiethcentury, vagrancy and loitering ordinances were used to expel the poor frompark benches and street corners. Today, municipal regulations still allow thepolice to arrest the homeless for being seen in public, criminalizing abjectpoverty.

honic Consciousness

In 2023, Texas lawmakers made a small concession to the outcry over the uncertainty the ban was creating in hospitals. They created a new exception for ectopic pregnancies, a potentially fatal condition where the embryo attaches outside the uterine cavity, and for cases where a patient’s membranes rupture prematurely before viability, which introduces a high risk of infection. Doctors can still face prosecution, but are allowed to make the case to a judge or jury that their actions were protected, not unlike self-defense arguments after homicides.

But Texas’ new abortion ban had just gone into effect. It required physicians to confirm the absence of a fetal heartbeat before intervening unless there was a “medical emergency,” which the law did not define. It required doctors to make written notes on the patient’s condition and the reason abortion was necessary. The law did not account for the possibility of a future emergency, one that could develop in hours or days without intervention

bylaws

Is it that we each do our own thing and we develop some form of in a collegiality between us, how to go forward?

Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; intrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself.

If we were observers who routinely traced  every motion of every molecule, we would say, what do you mean that there's randomness in  what's going on? There's no randomness. I can see what every individual molecule does. So  in a sense, that's an example of a place where being an observer of the kind we are is the  thing that causes us to perceive laws of the kind we perceive.

Please sign these letters to legislators, telling them that misguided AI laws will hurt startups and small companies and discourage AI innovation and investment in California.AI offers tremendous benefits, but many fear AI and worry about potential harm and misuse. These are valid concerns for everyone, including legislators, but laws that promote safe and equitable AI should be fact-based, straightforward, and universally applied. Legislators in Sacramento are considering two proposals, AB 2930 and SB 1047, that would impose costly and unpredictable burdens on AI developers, including anticipating and preventing future harmful uses of AI. Though well-intended, these bills will dampen and inhibit innovation, permanently embed today’s AI leaders as innovation gatekeepers, and drive investment and talent to other states and countries.

if we live in a 00:01:03 radically evolutionary Universe which we do then why should the laws of nature all be fixed in advance why can't they evolve like everything else

Ashby came up with the concept of variety as a measurement of the number of possible states of a system. His "Law" of Requisite Variety stated that for a system to be stable, the number of states that its control mechanism is capable of attaining (its variety) must be greater than or equal to the number of states in the system being controlled.

In computing, the robustness principle is a design guideline for software that states: "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others". It is often reworded as: "be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept". The principle is also known as Postel's law, after Jon Postel, who used the wording in an early specification of TCP.

President James E. Faust (1920–2007) of the First Presidency summarized five fundamental truths relating to how God reveals truth in His Church: “First, the keys and the authority of God have been given by Him to Joseph Smith and each of his successors who have been called as Presidents of the Church. “Second, those keys and authority are never to be given to another people, and those who have such authority are ‘known to the Church’ [D&C 42:11]. “Third, continuing revelation and leadership for the Church come through the President of the Church, and he will never mislead the Saints. “Fourth, individual members of the Church may receive revelation for their own callings and areas of responsibility and for their own families. They may not receive spiritual instruction for those higher in authority. “Fifth, those who claim direct revelation from God for the Church outside the established order and channel of the priesthood are misguided. This also applies to any who follow them” (“The Prophetic Voice,” Ensign, May 1996, 7).

For those who wish to conceal their location from Google, keep in mind that you use Google services under license agreement. That’s a contract. Google is within their legal rights to know under which country’s laws that agreement is being made. Google is liable for honoring each country’s laws.

In economics, Gresham's law is a monetary principle stating that "bad money drives out good". For example, if there are two forms of commodity money in circulation, which are accepted by law as having similar face value, the more valuable commodity will gradually disappear from circulation.[1][2] The law was named in 1860 by economist Henry Dunning Macleod after Sir Thomas Gresham (1519–1579), an English financier during the Tudor dynasty. Gresham had urged Queen Elizabeth to restore confidence in then-debased English currency. The concept was thoroughly defined in medieval Europe by Nicolaus Copernicus and known centuries earlier in classical Antiquity, the Middle East and China.

Conway’s Law is sometimes referred to as “shipping your org chart”. If you’ve been in professional software development for a while, you’ve likely come to respect its power and inevitability. How your team is structured is always visible in the product you produce, and that can often be a bad thing for users. It’s the weird cracks of inconsistency and disconnectedness within a user application that makes you wonder if two parts of the app were made by two different companies.

His social theory, developed over thirty years, owes a massive intellectual debt to the work of the English philosopher and mathematician George Spencer-Brown. Spencer-Brown's work of algebraic locic, Laws of Form (1969), was a minor cult hit in the 1970s

He also banned women from attending gladiatorial fights and athletic events to keep them “pure,” even exiling his own daughter and granddaughter for “vice.”

This section does not apply to any political party or group which has had a place on the ballot in each national and gubernatorial election since the year 1900.

From my own perspective, the conclusion is important that human structural development issubject to a categorical double bond: On the one hand, a person’s lifeworld is his or her ownsubjective construction. On the other hand, this construction is not arbitrary. In spite of allsubjectivity – because of the human’s structural coupling to its environment, this constructionis influenced and limited by the framework of this very environment (Kraus, 2013, p. 65ff.).

"Sturgeon's Law". According to those who were there, Theodore Sturgeon the SF author made this comment at a convention in 1953. it is that:90% of everything is crud, and it's the 10% that isn't crud that is important.

For example, the idea of “data ownership” is often championed as a solution. But what is the point of owning data that should not exist in the first place? All that does is further institutionalise and legitimate data capture. It’s like negotiating how many hours a day a seven-year-old should be allowed to work, rather than contesting the fundamental legitimacy of child labour. Data ownership also fails to reckon with the realities of behavioural surplus. Surveillance capitalists extract predictive value from the exclamation points in your post, not merely the content of what you write, or from how you walk and not merely where you walk. Users might get “ownership” of the data that they give to surveillance capitalists in the first place, but they will not get ownership of the surplus or the predictions gleaned from it – not without new legal concepts built on an understanding of these operations.

“Bennett’s Law”, consumption of fat and protein (read: “meat”) rises with income.

Gall’s Law, which states that a complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. Contrast this with a complex system designed from scratch, which never works and cannot be patched up to make it work.

Because of the constantly growing number of volumes, and to minimize coordination issues, Gottfried van Swieten emphasizes a set of instructions for registering all the books of the court library. Written instructions are by no means common prior to the end of the eighteenth century. Until then, cataloging takes place under the supervision of a librarian who instructs scriptors orally, pointing out problems and corrections as every-one goes along.

Leslie Orgel’s second law (“evolution is cleverer than you”)

NEGATIVESThe interface between the game and the Steam Client denies you the ability to take screenshots. I also could not capture play footage.

Too new to comment on the specific answer

As of Jan 1, 2021 many countries now require KS creators to show Shipping AND VAT/Fees/Taxes on Kickstarter Rewards - not just 1 price for "shipping". So we will do that in our Pledge Manager, after the campaign. Yea, we know...this sucks and is against everything Kickstarter used to be about (the world now views KS as a store, not as a creative platform sending rewards to backers for helping bring the vision to life)

(b)(1) A representative form of annual or special meeting is a meeting of members elected by district to exercise the powers vested in the voters of the town to act upon articles. However, the election of officers, public questions, and all articles to be voted upon by Australian ballot as required by law or as voted under section 2680 of this title at a prior annual or special meeting, and reconsideration of articles under section 2661 of this title shall remain vested in the voters of the town. (2) An organizational resolution to adopt a representative form of annual or special meeting may be made by the legislative body of the municipality or by petition of five percent of the voters of the municipality. An official copy of the organizational resolution shall be filed in the office of the clerk of the municipality at least 10 days before the annual or special meeting at which the vote whether to adopt the organizational resolution shall take place, and copies thereof shall be made available to members of the public upon request.

Germany went further and created an account of the German Bundestag — in 2012, citizens received access to the latest laws on Github. Since then, residents of Germany can not only monitor changes but also to do pull requests, however, to make the change take effect, it must be approved by the Bundestag.

This depends on the legal jurisdiction applicable to your site.

Make it clear that signing up is optional. Consent must be “freely given”; you may not coerce users into joining your mailing list or make it appear as if joining the list is mandatory. For this reason, you must make it clear that signing up is optional. This is especially relevant in cases where you offer free white-papers (or e-books) for download. While the user’s email address is required for the delivery of the service, signing up for your newsletter is not. In such a case, you must not make it appear as if signing-up to the newsletter list mandatory and must make it clear that it is optional.

It’s always best practice to either simply follow the most robust legislations or to check the local anti-spam requirements specific to where your recipients are based.

In the EU, the ePrivacy directive sets overall guidelines that are individually implemented by member states

Generally, these laws apply to any service targeting residents of the region, which effectively means that they may apply to your business whether it’s located in the region or not.

Generally, such legislations apply to any service targeting residents of the region, which effectively means that they may apply to your business whether it’s located in the region or not

These rules usually apply to any company selling to EU residents but may vary for international sellers on a case-by-case basis. It is worth noting, however, that in recent cases US courts have chosen to uphold the applicable EU law.

In the US, there is no one national law in regards to returns/refunds for purchases made online as in most cases, this is implemented on a state-by-state basis, however, under several state-laws, if no refund or return notice was made visible to consumers before purchase, consumers are automatically granted extended return/refund rights. In cases where the item purchased is defective, an implied warranty may apply in lieu of a written warranty

This exemption is may not be applicable for all regions and is therefore subject to specific local regulations.

In the US, there is no single comprehensive national body of data regulations; there are, however, various laws on a state level as well as industry guidelines and specific federal laws in place. Since online site/app activity is rarely limited to just one state, it’s always best to adhere to the strictest applicable regulations.

Determining your law of reference Generally, the laws of a particular region apply if: You base your operations there; or You use processing services or servers based in the region; or Your service targets users from that region This effectively means that regional regulations may apply to you and/or your business whether you’re located in the region or not. For that reason, it’s always advisable that you approach your data processing activities with the strictest applicable regulations in mind.

This is it. I'm done with Page Translator, but you don't have to be. Fork the repo. Distribute the code yourself. This is now a cat-and-mouse game with Mozilla. Users will have to jump from one extension to another until language translation is a standard feature or the extension policy changes.

Allows you to autodetect and limit prior-blocking and cookie consent requests only to users from the EU – where this is a legal requirement – while running cookies scripts normally in regions where you are still legally allowed to do so.

Please note that at the moment the Cookie Solution is optimized to comply with very strict Italian implementation regulations (this can only improve compliance in other jurisdictions).

many organisations block torrents (for obvious reasons) and I know, for example, that either of these options would have posed insurmountable hurdles at my previous employment

Suddenly even linking to data was an excuse to get raided by the FBI and potentially face serious charges. Even more concerning is that Brown linked to data that was already public and others had already linked to.

Having said all that, I think this is completely absurd that I have to write an entire article justifying the release of this data out of fear of prosecution or legal harassment. I had wanted to write an article about the data itself but I will have to do that later because I had to write this lame thing trying to convince the FBI not to raid me.

I could have released this data anonymously like everyone else does but why should I have to? I clearly have no criminal intent here. It is beyond all reason that any researcher, student, or journalist have to be afraid of law enforcement agencies that are supposed to be protecting us instead of trying to find ways to use the laws against us.

The key change here is the removal of an intent to defraud and replacing it with willfully; it will be illegal to share this information as long as you have any reason to know someone else might use it for unauthorized computer access.It is troublesome to consider the unintended consequences resulting from this small change.

The problem is that it is that the laws themselves change the very definition of a criminal and put many innocent professionals at risk.

As serious leaks become more common, surely we can expect tougher laws. But these laws are also making it difficult for those of us who wish to improve security by studying actual data. For years we have fought increasingly restrictive laws but the government’s argument has always been that it would only affect criminals.

This principle equally applies to the laws of our country; we should never violate basic rights even if the consequences aren’t immediately evident.

In Europe, access to the Los Angeles Times was blocked and those who tried to access it were offered a screen with a notice which simply read: "Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries.

Lest U.S. companies think they will escape GDPR because they are headquartered in the U.S., Milla believes there will be fines applied to companies in the EU, the US and other jurisdictions.

Country specific requirements In addition to the above, please apply the following considerations if based in the countries listed below.

In Italy, the condition for Google Analytics to be eligible for “no prior consent necessary” is IP anonymization – however in France, Google Analytics doesn’t seem to be eligible for exceptions,

Regardless of where an organization is based (in the EU or otherwise), its website must meet regulatory obligations when processing EU/EEA citizens’ data or the business will face financial penalties.

This option is particularly relevant to users who operate in the UK as the ICO now requires that a reject button be displayed.

Congress will likely not commence except for in case of emergency, which would require lawmakers to be present since no remote voting system yet exists or is allowed under current rules.

I don’t know anymore whether something is still legal or not

Would you rather trust a human legal system or the details of some computer code you don't have the expertise to audit?

Should a man wish to adorn himself with the ornaments of the earth, to wear its apparels, or partake of the benefits it can bestow, no harm can befall him, if he alloweth nothing whatever to intervene between him and God, for God hath ordained every good thing, whether created in the heavens or in the earth, for such of His servants as truly believe in Him.

Say: Should your conduct, O people, contradict your professions, how think ye, then, to be able to distinguish yourselves from them who, though professing their faith in the Lord their God, have, as soon as He came unto them in the cloud of holiness, refused to acknowledge Him, and repudiated His truth?

Legislative staff members had finished rewriting AB 375, and a deal seemed imminent. That Friday, as he drank his morning coffee, Mactaggart decided to read the new bill — the fine print — one more time. He noticed a seemingly minor alteration in one section, the kind of thing most people would skip over. Mactaggart realized it would completely gut what remained of the private right of action. Furious, he called Hertzberg and Chau and told them the deal was off. Neither lawmaker could explain who made the change, Mactaggart told me, but Hertzberg scrambled to fix it. “In most negotiations, you are talking to all these different interest groups,” Hertzberg told me recently. “This is a situation where we had to go and reach out to everyone and bring that information to Mr. Mactaggart and ask him what he wanted to do.”

For a boss to fire a worker is at most a minor inconvenience; for a worker to lose a job is a disaster. The Holmes-Rahe Stress Scale, a measure of the comparative stress level of different life events, puts being fired at 47 units, worse than the death of a close friend and nearly as bad as a jail term. Tellingly, “firing one of your employees” failed to make the scale.

Once the employee is hired, the boss may ask on a moment’s notice that she work a half hour longer or else she’s fired, and she may not dare to even complain. On the other hand, if she were to so much as ask to be allowed to start work thirty minutes later to get more sleep or else she’ll quit, she might well be laughed out of the company. A boss may, and very often does, yell at an employee who has made a minor mistake, telling her how stupid and worthless she is, but rarely could an employee get away with even politely mentioning the mistake of a boss, even if it is many times as unforgivable.

But those crying the loudest to stop the lock-out laws fail to provide an adequate alternative.

Equity must be applied to forgivable actions; and it must make us distinguish between criminal acts on the one hand, and errors of judgement, or misfortunes, on the other. (A "misfortune" is an act, not due to moral badness, that has unexpected results: an "error of judgement" is an act, also not due to moral badness, that has results that might have been expected: a "criminal act" has results that might have been expected, but is due to moral badness, for that is the source of all actions inspired by our appetites.) Equity bids us be merciful to the weakness of human nature; to think less about the laws than about the man who framed them, and less about what he said than about what he meant; not to consider the actions of the accused so much as his intentions, nor this or that detail so much as the whole story; to ask not what a man is now but what he has always or usually been.

He must, therefore, know how many different forms of constitution there are; under what conditions each of these will prosper and by what internal developments or external attacks each of them tends to be destroyed. When I speak of destruction through internal developments I refer to the fact that all constitutions, except the best one of all, are destroyed both by not being pushed far enough and by being pushed too far.