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I've seen very apolitical people do a buy nothing for kids stuff. I called it the great chain of baby stuff. Just last week a coworker dropped off some diapers that their kid grew out of at another coworkers desk who could use them. Cribs, toys, clothes, handed from one family to another. I've seen a crib go to three different families.


Our crib was on its 6th kid (I only have two) when I got rid of it. I assume it is well into the 10th by now.


What do politics have to do with it?


The project has a strong anarchist spirit.

> The Buy Nothing Project is about setting the scarcity model of our cash economy aside in favor of creatively and collaboratively sharing the abundance around us


Somehow this feels less like anarchy and more like a free market solution, where the market finally realizes that monetary value is not the only factor in rational decision making.


This is absolutely anarchist and can be placed as part of a long tradition of mutual aid that can be traced back through Kropotkin.

I don't think it's possible to view this as a free market solution unless you want the term "free market" to lose all meaning. The free market does not have a monopoly on rational decision making. Any market is based around exchange, which this project expressedly rejects.


Not all markets are based around exchange. Kidney exchange markets, for instance, have a component based on a donor giving a kidney for nothing in exchange, starting a chain of kidney donations that could otherwise not occur.

Matching markets are another example that is not based around exchange


It can be traced back to hunter-gatherer populations honestly. So what?

Mutual aid is pretty far away from abolishing the state or abolishing the private ownership of the means of production, which were the bigger ideas of Bakunin and Kropotkin.


The entirety of modern economics is based on the presupposition that monetary value is the only factor in rational decision making.

A "free market" is literally defined as - "a system in which the *prices* for goods and services are self-regulated by the open market and by consumers" - all goods and services have a monetary price in such a system.

It is both inappropriate and in bad taste to call this a free market solution when it is clearly not.


> inappropriate and in bad taste

This is inappropriate and in bad taste, and you missed the point of my comment.


so you either don't understand free market theory or anarchism or both!


Wikipedia on Free Market Theory: In economics, a free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are self-regulated by the open market and by consumers. In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority, and from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities.

Anarchism.. in my definition, is the lack of a singular authority. Not to be confused with "chaos".

I see this example (Buy Nothing Project) breaking the linear-ness of economy. Harvest, Build, Sell, Consume/Use, Discard. No re-use, no re-cycle. This is not sustainable, especially with population growing. We need to re-use. I don't think that anyone is doing (donating/giving away) to hurt the profits of XYZ company, I strongly believe that we all got so much 'garbage' in our home, things that we haven't touched/used for a looooong time, that as the Minimalists said (the first 120 podcast episodes - after Patreon I dropped them) "find this thing a new home".


Circular economy is what we should be working towards, to get the most possible utility out of any given resource, rather than squandering them in the mistaken belief that there's always going to be plenty more where it came from.

> "I don't think that anyone is doing (donating/giving away) to hurt the profits of XYZ company, I strongly believe that we all got so much 'garbage' in our home, things that we haven't touched/used for a looooong time"

Both motivations are true for my girlfriend and me. We both want to make sure we don't get bogged down with superfluous stuff, so we give them to people who will appreciate and use them, but we also see it as an opportunity to not support corporations that do not have our (societal) best interests in mind.

The less stuff we buy, the less our money is used for purposes we disagree with or even abhor, in many cases. By buying the few things we do buy from small companies with responsible profiles, that's another step towards our money going to better purposes.

I don't really believe in the "power of the consumer" or "voting with your wallet" (both of which just lead to unnecessary consumption), hence why we try to buy as little new stuff as possible and prefer buying second hand whenever possible, but at least the little money we do spend won't be going (directly) to the exploiter's pockets.


I buy a lot of pre-owned stuff, and sell or give away stuff I'm done with whenever possible, for the same reasons. I especially can't stand IKEA, because they embody throwaway culture so much, with their cheaply made furniture. And, if it prevents other peoples' stuff from being thrown out, while I get to save a little money at the same time, so much the better.


The thing with Ikea is that they're known for cheap/disposable furniture, but they also carry furniture made from proper wood, rather than cardboard. My dining table is made from solid wood and you wouldn't think twice about standing on it. Obviously it's more utilitarian than pretty, but it feels like it's made to last. However it also cost a lot more than the flimsy cardboard alternatives right next to it, so it's obvious what people end up going home with.

I will also say that their kitchen cabinets are significantly higher quality than their other lines of shelves and cabinets. Better fasteners, hinges and so on. Yet again, they are significantly more expensive than most of the other furniture they carry.

Still, the amount of proper hardwood furniture in second hand stores is baffling to me, when you see people lugging home glorified cardboard disguised as furniture.


Insulting people is against site rules and doesn't advance the conversation. If you disagree with someone, explain whatever you think they're missing.


Clearly they havn’t seen https://wonderfulloaf.org

Once you see cash as a broad p2p communication method it’s hard to imagine an Anarchist seeking to undo it as it allows people to collaborate over space and time in so many more ways than barter or physical gift economies.


Speaking as a former anarchist, saying it’s hard to imagine an anarchist not embracing ____ is folly.


They're not opposed to currency necessarily, as I read it, but a scarcity model which happens to be tied to the current paradigm.


I don't think "political" or "anarchist" are the right labels here. Anti-capitalist maybe? Unorthodox?

Just because economic systems are politicized in our society doesn't mean it is inherently political to change your own personal economic system.


Given the whole #vanlife craze that is happening now, Spacehawk look prescient.


Why the Quarantine is actual serfdom. https://www.forgac.me/blog/2020/4/5/pandemic-the-shortcut-to... Also on Mises.


Keeping hundreds of millions of people locked inside their houses or in a 5- or 10-km radius is pretty close to modern serfdom, I mean, it definitely quacks and looks like serfdom to me. How else would you define modern serfdom?

Apparently we must apply these serfdom-like measures in order to win against the current pandemic, but that's a different discussion (one of effectiveness).


>Apparently we must apply these serfdom-like measures in order to win against the current pandemic, but that's a different discussion (one of effectiveness).

It's not just a discussion of effectiveness, it's a discussion of values. But proponents of the lockdowns try to avoid that by painting anyone who doesn't share their value system as evil or immoral. There's a good chunk of the population who think it would be immoral to violate people's rights to free movement and association even if a disease with a 5-10% death rate was going around, because human rights aren't conditional. E.g. people who follow some form of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics rather than a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism -based value system.


They don't have the membrane because they don't need it. With the old keyboards, any spec of dust would cause them to stick. That means these are back to the original, non-fragile keyboards with good travel.


>But it also suggests that tech platforms don't just deliver content, but that they shape it too

The medium is the message. Every medium shapes content. This is the whine of incumbents who want their power back.


At the end of their Black Hat talk they showed one. Anyway, Project Zero doesn't accept bounties.


Well, sort of. They ask that the bounties be donated to charity.


What's really cool is that they released all the code they used to create the attacks.

https://github.com/googleprojectzero/iOS-messaging-tools

Just went to the talk. TL;DR: iMessage uses old serialization libraries, they are terrible.


The final few paragraphs touch upon how expansive the attack surface can be due to this serialization code. So, yes the libraries are terrible.

Asking the HN audience: Is there a set of design principles that the iMessage team can follow to make these more resilient to such attacks while retaining their usability? As a non-Apple employee whose globally dispersed family relies on iMessage to stay in touch, I have a vested interest in the security of my family’s iPhones. I know it’s rare for Apple employees to comment, but it would be great if someone from Apple can comment on whether these libraries are being re-architected in some way. This will cut through any FUD that arises from this disclosure / discussion.


I think that the best part is that he still has papers from when he was a kid on floppy disk. He was afraid of not being able to recover them, when the @textfiles symbol was sent out and http://archive.org 's Jason Scott came up to bat. https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1097251935453876224

It there is anyone who can recover those files to a modern readable format, even if only in an emulator, it's him. Also, if you have any old Apple II, C64, or other vintage floppies, he's love to archive them. He's always up for copying....that floppy.


Internet sleuthing leads me to believe he works at AWS as a senior program manager.


This will give the techies a reason to give to their bosses to pay off that technical debt that has accrued with these systems. Every system that uses outdated websites will need to upgrade. And they will have two years to do it. It makes the argument go from the nebulous "it will make us safer" to the concrete "things will not work".

And yes, it's a heavy handed way, but the fact there are "There are still some essential government, military and corporate websites relying on these protocols that will not be updated any time soon" shows the soft touch isn't working.


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