Running Your Own Email Srever

I run my own mail server. I have run it since about 1995, initially on a 28k8 modem connection but the connection improved as technology became cheaper and now I’m running it on a VM on a Hetzner server which is also running domains for some small businesses. I make a small amount of money running mail services for those companies but generally not enough to make it profitable. From a strictly financial basis I might be better off just using a big service, but I like having control over my own email. If email doesn’t arrive I can read the logs to find out why.

I repeatedly have issues of big services not accepting mail. The most recent is the MS services claiming that my IP has a bad ratio of good mail to spam and blocked me so I had to tunnel that through a different IP address. It seems that the way things are going is that if you run a small server companies like MS can block you even though your amount of spam is low but if you run a large scale service that is horrible for sending spam then you don’t get blocked.

For most users they just use one of the major email services (Gmail or Microsoft) and find that no-one blocks them because those providers are too big to block and things mostly work. Until of course the company decides to cancel their account.

The Latest News

The latest news is that MS is shutting down services for the International Court of Justice after a panel of ICC judges issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [1] . This is now making politicians realise the issues of email accounts hosted outside their jurisdiction.

What we need is for each independent jurisdiction to have it’s own email infrastructure, that means controlling DNS servers for their domains, commercial and government mail services on those domains, running the servers for those services on hardware located in the jurisdiction and run by people based in that jurisdiction and citizens of it. I say independent jurisdiction because there are groups like the EU which have sufficient harmony of laws to not require different services. With the current EU arrangements I don’t think it’s possible for the German government to block French people from accessing email or vice versa.

While Australia and New Zealand have a long history of cooperation there’s still the possibility of a lying asshole like Scott Morrison trying something on so New Zealanders shouldn’t feel safe using services run in Australia. Note that Scott Morrison misled his own parliamentary colleagues about what he was doing and got himself assigned as a secret minister [2] demonstrating that even conservatives can’t trust someone like him. With the ongoing human rights abuses by the Morrison government it’s easy to imagine New Zealand based organisations that protect human rights being treated by the Australian government in the way that the ICC was treated by the US government.

The Problem with Partial Solutions

Now it would be very easy for the ICC to host their own mail servers and they probably will do just that in the near future. I’m sure that there are many companies offering to set them up accounts in a hurry to deal with this (probably including some of the Dutch companies I’ve worked for). Let’s imagine for the sake of discussion that the ICC has their own private server, the US government could compel Google and MS to block the IP addresses of that server and then at least 1/3 of the EU population won’t get mail from them. If the ICC used email addresses hosted on someone else’s server then Google and MS could be compelled to block the addresses in question for the same result. The ICC could have changing email addresses to get around block lists and there could be a game of cat and mouse between the ICC and the US government but that would just be annoying for everyone.

The EU needs to have services hosted and run in their jurisdiction that are used by the vast majority of the people in the country. The more people who are using services outside the control of hostile governments the lesser the impact of bad IT policies by those hostile governments.

One possible model to consider is the Postbank model. Postbank is a bank run in the Netherlands from post offices which provides services to people deemed unprofitable for the big banks. If the post offices were associated with a mail service you could have it government subsidised providing free service for citizens and using government ID if the user forgets their password. You could also have it provide a cheap service for non-citizen residents.

Other Problems

What will the US government do next? Will they demand that Apple and Google do a remote-wipe on all phones run by ICC employees? Are they currently tracking all ICC employees by Android and iPhone services?

Huawei’s decision to develop their own phone OS was a reasonable one but there’s no need to go that far. Other governments could setup their own equivalent to Google Play services for Android and have their own localised Android build. Even a small country like Australia could get this going for the services of calendaring etc. But the app store needs a bigger market. There’s no reason why Android has to tie the app store to the services for calendaring etc. So you could have a per country system for calendaring and a per region system for selling apps.

The invasion of Amazon services such as Alexa is also a major problem for digital sovereignty. We need government controls about this sort of thing, maybe have high tariffs on the import of all hardware that can only work with a single cloud service. Have 100+% tariffs on every phone, home automation system, or networked device that is either tied to a single cloud service or which can’t work in a usable manner on other cloud services.

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/yneduykr
• [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Morrison_ministerial_positions_controversy

There are a lot of people talking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a lot of moving goalposts in such discussions. I think that everyone who wants to advocate for it should publish what they expect to happen and what specific things they consider as victory conditions.

When Russia first invaded I thought they would win in a matter of weeks. I underestimated the determination of the Ukrainian people and the corruption and the incompetence and corruption of the Russian military. The first time I thought that Ukraine could win was when I read an analysis of the tires on Russian military vehicles breaking because of the cheapest available tires being bought and then not stored correctly to avoid damage, which led to the long stalled convoy. A successful military campaign requires many more difficult tasks than buying good tires and maintaining them correctly. An army that is too corrupt to buy the bare minimum of usable equipment and too incompetent to adapt to failures is not going to do well.

The Ukrainians have done very well with the equipment available, one example is their use of off the shelf drones for dropping grenades into armoured vehicles and for targeting artillery. While the Russians have responded by buying Iranian military drones because they lack the industrial capacity to make their own ones. From the time when the Russians first got bogged down the Ukrainians have been mostly retaking their territory slowly and steadily.

The Russians started the invasion with a significant advantage in aircraft, armoured vehicles, artillery, and ammunition. This advantage has been significantly decreased due to losses of vehicles and artillery, high rates of ammunition use, and Ukrainian capture of Russian equipment. The Ukrainians are getting new vehicles, aircraft, artillery, and ammunition from western countries while sanctions are preventing Russians from importing or manufacturing much.

Currently one important factor for Russia is the ability of their airforce to attack Ukrainian positions while out of range of Ukrainian air defence systems. The MANPAD systems are good for close support but not good for long range. A problem that the Russians will have in the long term is running out of spare parts and being unable to properly maintain aircraft. This will result in loss of aircraft due to accidents and the inability to repair aircraft that has even minor damage.

Here are my specific predictions:

1. I predict that by the end of 2023 Russia will have a much smaller number of military aircraft through maintenance problems even if Ukraine doesn’t get long-range SAM systems.
2. I predict that by mid 2024 Ukraine will have air superiority. They will destroy many Russian SAM systems and be able to bomb Russian targets with little risk.
3. I predict that Russia won’t impose any significant new conscription programs on their population. Such programs are extremely unpopular and Russia doesn’t have the industrial capacity to equip a larger army as they can’t properly equip their current army.
4. Currently Ukraine is making slow but steady progress in retaking their territory in the East. I predict that before the end of 2023 they will have cut all supply lines to Crimea from the mainland by having artillery that can accurately cover all the distance to the coast of the Sea of Azov. I also predict that the bridge over the Kerch strait will be mostly unusable from now on (on average less than 1/3 the bridge capacity usable). As fast as the Russians can repair it the Ukrainians will bomb it again. At most they will have half of the road lanes available to cars and will be unable to transport any significant amount of military equipment.
5. Due to Russians lacking supplies I predict that Ukraine will recapture at least half the Crimean land area by the end of 2023.
6. The regions of Luhansk and Donetsk will be the most difficult to capture as they have been held the longest. I predict that the war will not end until Ukraine controls everything within their 2013 borders including Luhansk and Donetsk. The final victory may happen due to the Russian military collapsing or due to a new Russian government ordering a withdrawal.
7. I predict that Russia will make significant efforts to help Trump get elected in 2024. But even if they succeed it will be too late for him to help them much or change the outcome.
8. I predict that Ukraine will win this war before the end of 2025. Even if some of my other predictions turn out to be incorrect I predict that by the end of 2025 the military forces of Russia and Ukraine will not be fighting and that it will be because Ukraine has given the Russian military a proper spanking. If something like the “Troubles” in Ireland happens (which is a real possibility) that doesn’t count as a war.
9. I predict that Ukraine will not deploy any significant attack inside Russian territory. They will launch small scale attacks on specific military targets but do nothing that the Russian population might consider to be full scale war.
10. I predict that Putin will not lead Russia 2 months after Ukraine recaptures all their territory. He may not live for long after Ukraine wins, or the Russian withdrawal might happen because Putin dies of apparently natural causes.
11. After the war I predict that Ukraine will control all their territory from 2013 and there will be a demilitarised zone or no-fly zone in Russian territory.
12. I predict that after the war some parts of the Russian Federation will break free. There are many different groups who would like to be free of Russia and Ukraine destroying most of the Russian military will make things easy for them. A Russian civil war is a possibility.
13. I predict that the US will give minimal support to Russia after the war as a strategic plan to block China. I predict that the quality and efficacy of such support will be comparable to the US actions in the Middle East.

I welcome comments disagreeing with this. But please make specific predictions that can be tested and sign your name to them. If you don’t think that a certain event will happen when I predict it then provide a date when you think it will happen or a date by which the opposite will have happened. Also please show enough confidence to make multiple predictions. I’ve made 12 specific predictions, if you think I’m doing badly then make at least 3 specific competing predictions. If you think that Russia will “win” then define what a “win” means in terms of territory occupied when fighting between armies ends and when that will happen. Also if you think that Russia will win then please make a prediction about whether there will be a Ukrainian equivalent of the IRA and if so what they will do.

C Thi Nguyen wrote an interesting article about the difficulty of escaping from Echo Chambers and also mentions Epistemic Bubbles [1].

An Echo Chamber is a group of people who reinforce the same ideas and who often preemptively strike against opposing ideas (for example the right wing denigrating “mainstream media” to prevent their followers from straying from their approved message). An Epistemic Bubble is a group of people who just happen to not have contact with certain different ideas.

When reading that article I wondered about what bubbles I and the people I associate with may be in. One obvious issue is that I have little communication with people who don’t write in English and also little communication with people who are poor. So people who are poor and who can’t write in English (which means significant portions of the population of India and Africa) are out of communication range for me. There are many situations that are claimed to be bubbles such as white people who are claimed to be innocent of racial issues because they only associate with other white people and men in the IT industry who are claimed to be innocent of sexism because they don’t associate with women in the IT industry. But I think they are more of an echo chamber issue, if a white American doesn’t access any of the variety of English language media produced by Afro Americans and realise that there’s a racial problem it’s because they don’t want to see it and deliberately avoid looking at evidence. If a man in the IT industry doesn’t access any of the media produced by women in tech and realise there are problems with sexism then it’s because they don’t want to see it.

When is it OK to Reject a Group?

The Ad Hominem Wikipedia page has a good analysis of different types of Ad Hominem arguments [2]. But the criteria for refuting a point in a debate are very different to the criteria used to determine which sources you should trust when learning about a topic.

For example it’s theoretically possible for someone to be good at computer science while also thinking the world is flat. In a debate about some aspect of computer programming it would be a fallacious Ad Hominem argument to say “you think the Earth is flat therefore you can’t program a computer”. But if you do a Google search for information on computer programming and one of the results is from earthisflat.com then it would probably save time to skip reading that one. If only one person supports an idea then it’s quite likely to be wrong. Good ideas tend to be supported by multiple people and for any good idea you will find a supporter who doesn’t appear to have any ideas that are obviously wrong.

One of the problems we have as a society now is determining the quality of data (ideas, claims about facts, opinions, communication/spam, etc). When humans have to do that it takes time and energy. Shortcuts can make things easier. Some shortcuts I use are that mainstream media articles are usually more reliable than social media posts (even posts by my friends) and that certain media outlets are untrustworthy (like Breitbart). The next step is that anyone who cites a bad site like Breitbart as factual (rather than just an indication of what some extremists believe) is unreliable. For most questions that you might search for on the Internet there is a virtually endless supply of answers, the challenge is not finding an answer but finding a correct answer. So eliminating answers that are unlikely to be correct is an important part of the search.

If someone is citing references to support their argument and they can only cite fringe or extremist sites then I won’t be convinced. Now someone could turn that argument around and claim that a site I reference such as the New York Times is wrong. If I find that my ideas were based on a claim that can only be found on the NYT then I will reconsider the issue. While I think that the NYT is generally accurate they are capable of making mistakes and if they are the sole source for claims that go against other claims then I will be hesitant to accept such claims. Newspapers often have exclusive articles based on their own research, but such articles always inspire investigation from other newspapers so other articles appear either supporting or questioning the claims in the exclusive.

Saving Time When Interacting With Members of Echo Chambers

Convincing a member of a cult or echo chamber of anything is not likely. When in discussions with them the focus should be on the audience and on avoiding wasting much time while also not giving them the impression that you agree with them.

A common thing that members of echo chambers say is “I don’t have time to read about that” when you ask if they have read a research paper or a news article. I don’t have time to listen to people who can’t or won’t learn before speaking, there just isn’t any value in that. Also if someone has a list of memes that takes more than 15 minutes to recite then they have obviously got time for reading things, just not reading outside their echo chamber.

Conversations with members of echo chambers seem to be state free. They make a claim and you reject it, but regardless of the logical flaws you point out or the counter evidence you cite they make the same claim again the next time you speak to them. This seems to be evidence supporting the claim that evangelism is not about converting other people but alienating cult members from the wider society [3] (the original Quora text seems unavailable so I’ve linked to a Reddit copy). Pointing out that they had made a claim previously and didn’t address the issues you had with it seems effective, such discussions seem to be more about performance so you want to perform your part quickly and efficiently.

Be aware of false claims about etiquette. It’s generally regarded as polite not to disagree much with someone who invites you to your home or who has done some favour for you, but that is no reason for tolerating an unwanted lecture about their echo chamber. Anyone who tries to create a situation where it seems rude of you not to listen to them saying things that they know will offend you is being rude, much ruder than telling them you are sick of it.

Look for specific claims that can be disproven easily. The claim that the “Roman Salute” is different from the “Hitler Salute” is one example that is easy to disprove. Then they have to deal with the issue of their echo chamber being wrong about something.

• [1] http://tinyurl.com/y7rutdur
• [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
• [3] https://tinyurl.com/yg68dtco

The Smithsonian Mag has an informative article about the history of the game Monopoly [1]. The main point about Monopoly teaching about the problems of inequality is one I was already aware of, but there are some aspects of the history that I learned from the article.

Here’s an article about using modified version of Monopoly to teach Sociology [2].

Maria Paino and Jeffrey Chin wrote an interesting paper about using Monopoly with revised rules to teach Sociology [3]. They publish the rules which are interesting and seem good for a class.

I think it would be good to have some new games which can teach about class differences. Maybe have an “Escape From Poverty” game where you have choices that include drug dealing to try and improve your situation or a cooperative game where people try to create a small business. While Monopoly can be instructive it’s based on the economic circumstances of the past. The vast majority of rich people aren’t rich from land ownership.

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/yyuukne3
• [2] https://tinyurl.com/y6cq5t9d
• [3] https://tinyurl.com/y5p88ubd

Currently there is political debate about when businesses should be reopened after the Covid19 quarantine.

Small Businesses

One argument for reopening things is for the benefit of small businesses. The first thing to note is that the protests in the US say “I need a haircut” not “I need to cut people’s hair”. Small businesses won’t benefit from reopening sooner.

For every business there is a certain minimum number of customers needed to be profitable. There are many comments from small business owners that want it to remain shutdown. When the government has declared a shutdown and paused rent payments and provided social security to employees who aren’t working the small business can avoid bankruptcy. If they suddenly have to pay salaries or make redundancy payouts and have to pay rent while they can’t make a profit due to customers staying home they will go bankrupt.

Many restaurants and cafes make little or no profit at most times of the week (I used to be 1/3 owner of an Internet cafe and know this well). For such a company to be viable you have to be open most of the time so customers can expect you to be open. Generally you don’t keep a cafe open at 3PM to make money at 3PM, you keep it open so people can rely on there being a cafe open there, someone who buys a can of soda at 3PM one day might come back for lunch at 1:30PM the next day because they know you are open. A large portion of the opening hours of a most retail companies can be considered as either advertising for trade at the profitable hours or as loss making times that you can’t close because you can’t send an employee home for an hour.

If you have seating for 28 people (as my cafe did) then for about half the opening hours you will probably have 2 or fewer customers in there at any time, for about a quarter the opening hours you probably won’t cover the salary of the one person on duty. The weekend is when you make the real money, especially Friday and Saturday nights when you sometimes get all the seats full and people coming in for takeaway coffee and snacks. On Friday and Saturday nights the 60 seat restaurant next door to my cafe used to tell customers that my cafe made better coffee. It wasn’t economical for them to have a table full for an hour while they sell a few cups of coffee, they wanted customers to leave after dessert and free the table for someone who wants a meal with wine (alcohol is the real profit for many restaurants).

The plans of reopening with social distancing means that a 28 seat cafe can only have 14 chairs or less (some plans have 25% capacity which would mean 7 people maximum). That means decreasing the revenue of the most profitable times by 50% to 75% while also not decreasing the operating costs much. A small cafe has 2-3 staff when it’s crowded so there’s no possibility of reducing staff by 75% when reducing the revenue by 75%.

My Internet cafe would have closed immediately if forced to operate in the proposed social distancing model. It would have been 1/4 of the trade and about 1/8 of the profit at the most profitable times, even if enough customers are prepared to visit – and social distancing would kill the atmosphere. Most small businesses are barely profitable anyway, most small businesses don’t last 4 years in normal economic circumstances.

This reopen movement is about cutting unemployment benefits not about helping small business owners. Destroying small businesses is also good for big corporations, kill the small cafes and restaurants and McDonald’s and Starbucks will win. I think this is part of the motivation behind the astroturf campaign for reopening businesses.

Forbes has an article about this [1].

Psychological Issues

Some people claim that we should reopen businesses to help people who have psychological problems from isolation, to help victims of domestic violence who are trapped at home, to stop older people being unemployed for the rest of their lives, etc.

Here is one article with advice for policy makers from domestic violence experts [2]. One thing it mentions is that the primary US federal government program to deal with family violence had a budget of $130M in 2013. The main thing that should be done about family violence is to make it a priority at all times (not just when it can be a reason for avoiding other issues) and allocate some serious budget to it. An agency that deals with problems that affect families and only has a budget of $1 per family per year isn’t going to be able to do much.

There are ongoing issues of people stuck at home for various reasons. We could work on better public transport to help people who can’t drive. We could work on better healthcare to help some of the people who can’t leave home due to health problems. We could have more budget for carers to help people who can’t leave home without assistance. Wanting to reopen restaurants because some people feel isolated is ignoring the fact that social isolation is a long term ongoing issue for many people, and that many of the people who are affected can’t even afford to eat at a restaurant!

Employment discrimination against people in the 50+ age range is an ongoing thing, many people in that age range know that if they lose their job and can’t immediately find another they will be unemployed for the rest of their lives. Reopening small businesses won’t help that, businesses running at low capacity will have to lay people off and it will probably be the older people. Also the unemployment system doesn’t deal well with part time work. The Australian system (which I think is similar to most systems in this regard) reduces the unemployment benefits by $0.50 for every dollar that is earned in part time work, that effectively puts people who are doing part time work because they can’t get a full-time job in the highest tax bracket! If someone is going to pay for transport to get to work, work a few hours, then get half the money they earned deducted from unemployment benefits it hardly makes it worthwhile to work. While the exact health impacts of Covid19 aren’t well known at this stage it seems very clear that older people are disproportionately affected, so forcing older people to go back to work before there is a vaccine isn’t going to help them.

When it comes to these discussions I think we should be very suspicious of people who raise issues they haven’t previously shown interest in. If the discussion of reopening businesses seems to be someone’s first interest in the issues of mental health, social security, etc then they probably aren’t that concerned about such issues.

I believe that we should have a Universal Basic Income [3]. I believe that we need to provide better mental health care and challenge the gender ideas that hurt men and cause men to hurt women [4]. I believe that we have significant ongoing problems with inequality not small short term issues [5]. I don’t think that any of these issues require specific changes to our approach to preventing the transmission of disease. I also think that we can address multiple issues at the same time, so it is possible for the government to devote more resources to addressing unemployment, family violence, etc while also dealing with a pandemic.

• [1] http://tinyurl.com/ydc96see
• [2] http://tinyurl.com/ycvy65re
• [3] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2013/12/08/basic-income-australia/
• [4] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2019/01/13/are-men-the-victims/
• [5] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2011/12/09/some-ows-stuff/

As a follow-up to my post with Suggestions for Trump Supporters [1] I notice that many people seem to have private definitions of words that they like to use.

There are some situations where the use of a word is contentious and different groups of people have different meanings. One example that is known to most people involved with computers is “hacker”. That means “criminal” according to mainstream media and often “someone who experiments with computers” to those of us who like experimenting with computers. There is ongoing discussion about whether we should try and reclaim the word for it’s original use or whether we should just accept that’s a lost cause. But generally based on context it’s clear which meaning is intended. There is also some overlap between the definitions, some people who like to experiment with computers conduct experiments with computers they aren’t permitted to use. Some people who are career computer criminals started out experimenting with computers for fun.

But some times words are misused in ways that fail to convey any useful ideas and just obscure the real issues. One example is the people who claim to be left-wing Libertarians. Murray Rothbard (AKA “Mr Libertarian”) boasted about “stealing” the word Libertarian from the left [2]. Murray won that battle, they should get over it and move on. When anyone talks about “Libertarianism” nowadays they are talking about the extreme right. Claiming to be a left-wing Libertarian doesn’t add any value to any discussion apart from demonstrating the fact that the person who makes such a claim is one who gives hipsters a bad name. The first time penny-farthings were fashionable the word “libertarian” was associated with left-wing politics. Trying to have a sensible discussion about politics while using a word in the opposite way to almost everyone else is about as productive as trying to actually travel somewhere by penny-farthing.

Another example is the word “communist” which according to many Americans seems to mean “any person or country I don’t like”. It’s often invoked as a magical incantation that’s supposed to automatically win an argument. One recent example I saw was someone claiming that “Russia has always been communist” and rejecting any evidence to the contrary. If someone was to say “Russia has always been a shit country” then there’s plenty of evidence to support that claim (Tsarist, communist, and fascist Russia have all been shit in various ways). But no definition of “communism” seems to have any correlation with modern Russia. I never discovered what that person meant by claiming that Russia is communist, they refused to make any comment about Russian politics and just kept repeating that it’s communist. If they said “Russia has always been shit” then it would be a clear statement, people can agree or disagree with that but everyone knows what is meant.

The standard response to pointing out that someone is using a definition of a word that is either significantly different to most of the world (or simply inexplicable) is to say “that’s just semantics”. If someone’s “contribution” to a political discussion is restricted to criticising people who confuse “their” and “there” then it might be reasonable to say “that’s just semantics”. But pointing out that someone’s writing has no meaning because they choose not to use words in the way others will understand them is not just semantics. When someone claims that Russia is communist and Americans should reject the Republican party because of their Russian connection it’s not even wrong. The same applies when someone claims that Nazis are “leftist”.

Generally the aim of a political debate is to convince people that your cause is better than other causes. To achieve that aim you have to state your cause in language that can be understood by everyone in the discussion. Would the person who called Russia “communist” be more or less happy if Russia had common ownership of the means of production and an absence of social classes? I guess I’ll never know, and that’s their failure at debating politics.

• [1] https://etbe.coker.com.au/2018/09/01/suggestions-trump-supporters/
• [2] http://tinyurl.com/yazeq3cw

I’ve had some discussions with Trump supporters recently. Here are some suggestions for anyone who wants to have an actual debate about political issues. Note that this may seem harsh to Trump supporters. But it seems harsh to me when Trump supporters use a social event to try and push their beliefs without knowing any of the things I list in this post. If you are a Trump supporter who doesn’t do these things then please try to educate your fellow travellers, they are more likely to listen to you than to me.

Facts

For a discussion to be useful there has to be a basis in facts. When one party rejects facts there isn’t much point. Anyone who only takes their news from an ideological echo chamber is going to end up rejecting facts. The best thing to do is use fact checking sites of which Snopes [1] is the best known. If you are involved in political discussions you should regularly correct people who agree with you when you see them sharing news that is false or even merely unsupported by facts. If you aren’t correcting mistaken people on your own side then you do your own cause a disservice by allowing your people to discredit their own arguments. If you aren’t regularly seeking verification of news you read then you are going to be misled. I correct people on my side regularly, at least once a week. How often do you correct your side?

The next thing is that some background knowledge of politics is necessary. Politics is not something that you can just discover by yourself from first principles. If you aren’t aware of things like Dog Whistle Politics [2] then you aren’t prepared to have a political debate. Note that I’m not suggesting that you should just learn about Dog Whistle Politics and think you are ready to have a debate, it’s one of many things that you need to know.

Dog whistle politics is nothing new or hidden, if you don’t know about such basics you can’t really participate in a discussion of politics. If you don’t know such basics and think you can discuss politics then you are demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger effect [3].

The Southern Strategy [4] is well known by everyone who knows anything about US politics. You can think it’s a good thing if you wish and you can debate the extent to which it still operates, but you can’t deny it happened. If you are unaware of such things then you can’t debate US politics.

The Civil rights act of 1964 [5] is one of the most historic pieces of legislation ever passed in the US. If you don’t know about it then you just don’t know much about US politics. You may think that it is a bad thing, but you can’t deny that it happened, or that it happened because of the Democratic party. This was the time in US politics when the Republicans became the party of the South and the Democrats became the centrist (possibly left) party that they are today. It is ridiculous to claim that Republicans are against racism because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. Ridiculous claims might work in an ideological echo chamber but they won’t convince anyone else.

Words Have Meanings

To communicate we need to have similar ideas of what words mean. If you use words in vastly different ways to other people then you can’t communicate with them. Some people in the extreme right claim that because the Nazi party in Germany was the
“Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei” (“NSDAP”) which translates to English as “National Socialist German Workers Party” that means that they were “socialists”. Then they claim that “socialists” are “leftist” so therefore people on the left are Nazis. That claim requires using words like “left” and “socialism” in vastly different ways to most people.

Snopes has a great article about this issue [6], I recommend that everyone read it, even those who already know that Nazis weren’t (and aren’t) on the left side of politics.

The Wikipedia page of the Unite the Right rally [7] (referenced in the Snopes article) has a photo of people carrying Nazi flags and Confederate flags. Those people are definitely convinced that Nazis were not left wing! They are also definitely convinced that people on the right side of politics (which in the US means the Republican party) support the Confederacy and oppose equal rights for Afro-American people. If you want to argue that the Republican party is the one opposed to racism then you need to come up with an explanation for how so many people who declare themselves on the right of politics got it wrong.

Here’s a local US news article about the neo-Nazi who had “commie killer” written on his helmet while beating a black man almost to death [8]. Another data point showing that Nazis don’t like people on the left.

In other news East Germany (the German Democratic Republic) was not a
democracy. North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is not a democracy either. The use of “socialism” by the original Nazis shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than the recent claims by the governments of East Germany and North Korea.

Left vs right is a poor summary of political positions, the Political Compass [9] is better. While Hitler and Stalin have different positions on economics I think that citizens of those countries didn’t have very different experiences, one extremely authoritarian government is much like another. I recommend that you do the quiz on the Political Compass site and see if the people it places in similar graph positions to you are ones who you admire.

Sources of Information

If you are only using news sources that only have material you agree with then you are in an ideological echo chamber. When I recommend that someone look for other news sources what I don’t expect in response is an email analysing a single article as justification for rejecting that entire news site. I recommend sites like the New York Times as having good articles, but they don’t only have articles I agree with and they sometimes publish things I think are silly.

A news source that makes ridiculous claims such as that Nazis are “leftist” is ridiculous and should be disregarded. A news source that merely has some articles you disagree with might be worth using.

Also if you want to convince people outside your group of anything related to politics then it’s worth reading sites that might convince them. I often read The National Review [10], not because I agree with their articles (that is a rare occurrence) but because they write for rational conservatives and I hope that some of the extreme right wing people will find their ideas appealing and come back to a place where we can have useful discussions.

When evaluating news articles and news sources one thing to consider is Occam’s Razor [11]. If an article has a complex and implausible theory when a simpler theory can explain it then you should be sceptical of that article. There are conspiracies but they aren’t as common as some people believe and they are generally of limited complexity due to the difficulty people have in keeping secrets. An example of this is some of the various conspiracy theories about storage of politicians’ email. The simplest explanation (for politicians of all parties) is that they tell someone like me to “just make the email work” and if their IT staff doesn’t push back and refuse to do it without all issues being considered then it’s the IT staff at fault. Stupidity explains many things better than conspiracies. Regardless of the party affiliation, any time a politician is accused of poor computer security I’ll ask whether someone like me did their job properly.

Covering for Nazis

Decent people have to oppose Nazis. The Nazi belief system is based on the mass murder of people based on race and the murder of people who disagree with them. In Germany in the 1930s there were some people who could claim not to know about the bad things that Nazis were doing and they could claim to only support Nazis for other reasons. Neo-Nazis are not about creating car companies like VolksWagen all they are about is hatred. The crimes of the original Nazis are well known and well documented, it’s not plausible that anyone could be unaware of them.

Mitch McConnell has clearly stated “There are no good neo-Nazis” [12] in clear opposition to Trump. While I disagree with Mitch on many issues, this is one thing we can agree on. This is what decent people do, they work together with people they usually disagree with to oppose evil. Anyone who will support Nazis out of tribal loyalty has demonstrated the type of person they are.

Here is an article about the alt-right meeting to celebrate Trump’s victory where Richard Spencer said “hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory” while many audience members give the Nazi salute [13]. You can skip to 42 seconds in if you just want to see that part. Trump supporters try to claim it’s the “Roman salute”, but that’s not plausible given that there’s no evidence of Romans using such a salute and it was first popularised in Fascist Italy [14]. The Wikipedia page for the Nazi Salute [15] notes that saying “hail Hitler” or “hail victory” was standard practice while giving the salute. I think that it’s ridiculous to claim that a group of people offering the Hitler salute while someone says “hail Trump” and “hail victory” are anything but Nazis. I also think it’s ridiculous to claim to not know of any correlation between the alt-right and Nazis and then immediately know about the “Roman Salute” defence.

The Americans used to have a salute that was essentially the same as the Nazi Salute, the Bellamy Salute was officially replaced by the hand over heart salute in 1942 [16]. They don’t want anything close to a Nazi salute, and no-one did until very recently when neo-Nazis stopped wearing Klan outfits in the US.

Every time someone makes claims about a supposed “Roman salute” explanation for Richard Spencer’s fans I wonder if they are a closet Nazi.

Anti-Semitism

One final note, I don’t debate people who are open about neo-Nazi beliefs. When someone starts talking about a “Jewish Conspiracy” or use other Nazi phrases then the conversation is over. Nazis should be shunned. One recent conversation with a Trump supported ended quickly after he started talking about a “Jewish conspiracy”. He tried to get me back into the debate by claiming “there are non-Jews in the conspiracy too” but I was already done with him.

Decent Trump Supporters

If you want me to believe that you are one of the decent Trump supporters a good way to start is to disclaim the horrible ideas that other Trump supporters endorse. If you can say “I believe that black people and Jews are my equal and I will not stand next to or be friends with anyone who carries a Nazi flag” then we can have a friendly discussion about politics. I’m happy to declare “I have never supported a Bolshevik revolution or the USSR and will never support such things” if there is any confusion about my ideas in that regard. While I don’t think any reasonable person would think that I supported the USSR I’m happy to make my position clear.

I’ve had people refuse to disclaim racism when asked. If you can’t clearly say that you consider people of other races to be your equal then everyone will think that you are racist.

• [1] https://www.snopes.com/
• [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics
• [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
• [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
• [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
• [6] https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/09/05/were-nazis-socialists/
• [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally
• [8] http://www.c-ville.com/daniel-borden/
• [9] https://politicalcompass.org/
• [10] https://www.nationalreview.com/
• [11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
• [12] http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-senate-leader-mcconnell-there-are-no-1502895707-htmlstory.html
• [13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_salute
• [15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_salute
• [16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute

In Australia we are about to have a federal election, so we inevitably have a lot of stupid commentary and propaganda about politics.

One thing that always annoys me is the claim that we shouldn’t have small parties. We have two large parties, Liberal (right-wing, somewhat between the Democrats and Republicans in the US) and Labor which is somewhat similar to Democrats in the US. In the US the first past the post voting system means that votes for smaller parties usually don’t affect the outcome. In Australia we have Instant Runoff Voting (sometimes known as “The Australian Ballot”) which has the side effect of encouraging votes for small parties.

The Liberal party almost never wins enough seats to make government on it’s own, it forms a coalition with the National party. Election campaigns are often based on the term “The Coalition” being used to describe a Liberal-National coalition and the expected result if “The Coalition” wins the election is that the leader of the Liberal party will be Prime Minister and the leader of the National party will be the Deputy Prime Minister. Liberal party representatives and supporters often try to convince people that they shouldn’t vote for small parties and that small parties are somehow “undemocratic”, seemingly unaware of the irony of advocating for “The Coalition” but opposing the idea of a coalition.

If the Liberal and Labor parties wanted to form a coalition they could do so in any election where no party has a clear majority, and do it without even needing the National party. Some people claim that it’s best to have the major parties take turns in having full control of the government without having to make a deal with smaller parties and independent candidates but that’s obviously a bogus claim. The reason we have Labor allying with the Greens and independents is that the Liberal party opposes them at every turn and the Liberal party has a lot of unpalatable policies that make alliances difficult.

One thing that would be a good development in Australian politics is to have the National party actually represent rural voters rather than big corporations. Liberal policies on mining are always opposed to the best interests of farmers and the Liberal policies on trade aren’t much better. If “The Coalition” wins the election then the National party could insist on a better deal for farmers in exchange for their continued support of Liberal policies.

If Labor wins more seats than “The Coalition” but not enough to win government directly then a National-Labor coalition is something that could work. I think that the traditional interest of Labor in representing workers and the National party in representing farmers have significant overlap. The people who whinge about a possible Green-Labor alliance should explain why they aren’t advocating a National-Labor alliance. I think that the Labor party would rather make a deal with the National party, it’s just a question of whether the National party is going to do what it takes to help farmers. They could make the position of Deputy Prime Minister part of the deal so the leader of the National party won’t miss out.

A lecture at LCA 2011 which included some inappropriate slides was followed by long discussions on mailing lists. In February 2011 I wrote a blog post debunking some of the bogus arguments in two lists [1]. One of the noteworthy incidents in the mailing list discussion concerned Ted Ts’o (an influential member of the Linux community) debating the definition of rape. My main point on that issue in Feb 2011 was that it’s insensitive to needlessly debate the statistics.

Recently Valerie Aurora wrote about another aspect of this on The Ada Initiative blog [2] and on her personal blog. Some of her significant points are that conference harassment doesn’t end when the conference ends (it can continue on mailing lists etc), that good people shouldn’t do nothing when bad things happen, and that free speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences or the freedom to use private resources (such as conference mailing lists) without restriction.

Craig Sanders wrote a very misguided post about the Ted Ts’o situation [3]. One of the many things wrong with his post is his statement “I’m particularly disgusted by the men who intervene way too early – without an explicit invitation or request for help or a clear need such as an immediate threat of violence – in womens’ issues“.

I believe that as a general rule when any group of people are involved in causing a problem they should be involved in fixing it. So when we have problems that are broadly based around men treating women badly the prime responsibility should be upon men to fix them. It seems very clear that no matter what scope is chosen for fixing the problems (whether it be lobbying for new legislation, sociological research, blogging, or directly discussing issues with people to change their attitudes) women are doing considerably more than half the work. I believe that this is an indication that overall men are failing.

Asking for Help

I don’t believe that members of minority groups should have to ask for help. Asking isn’t easy, having someone spontaneously offer help because it’s the right thing to do can be a lot easier to accept psychologically than having to beg for help. There is a book named “Women Don’t Ask” which has a page on the geek feminism Wiki [4]. I think the fact that so many women relate to a book named “Women Don’t Ask” is an indication that we shouldn’t expect women to ask directly, particularly in times of stress. The Wiki page notes a criticism of the book that some specific requests are framed as “complaining”, so I think we should consider a “complaint” from a woman as a direct request to do something.

The geek feminism blog has an article titled “How To Exclude Women Without Really Trying” which covers many aspects of one incident [5]. Near the end of the article is a direct call for men to be involved in dealing with such problems. The geek feminism Wiki has a page on “Allies” which includes “Even a blog post helps” [6]. It seems clear from public web sites run by women that women really want men to be involved.

Finally when I get blog comments and private email from women who thank me for my posts I take it as an implied request to do more of the same.

One thing that we really don’t want is to have men wait and do nothing until there is an immediate threat of violence. There are two massive problems with that plan, one is that being saved from a violent situation isn’t a fun experience, the other is that an immediate threat of violence is most likely to happen when there is no-one around to intervene.

Men Don’t Listen to Women

Rebecca Solnit wrote an article about being ignored by men titled “Men Explain Things to Me” [7]. When discussing women’s issues the term “Mansplaining” is often used for that sort of thing, the geek feminism Wiki has some background [8]. It seems obvious that the men who have the greatest need to be taught some things related to women’s issues are the ones who are least likely to listen to women. This implies that other men have to teach them.

Craig says that women need “space to discover and practice their own strength and their own voices“. I think that the best way to achieve that goal is to listen when women speak. Of course that doesn’t preclude speaking as well, just listen first, listen carefully, and listen more than you speak.

Craig claims that when men like me and Matthew Garrett comment on such issues we are making “women’s spaces more comfortable, more palatable, for men“. From all the discussion on this it seems quite obvious that what would make things more comfortable for men would be for the issue to never be discussed at all. It seems to me that two of the ways of making such discussions uncomfortable for most men are to discuss sexual assault and to discuss what should be done when you have a friend who treats women in a way that you don’t like. Matthew has covered both of those so it seems that he’s doing a good job of making men uncomfortable – I think that this is a good thing, a discussion that is “comfortable and palatable” for the people in power is not going to be any good for the people who aren’t in power.

The Voting Aspect

It seems to me that when certain issues are discussed we have a social process that is some form of vote. If one person complains then they are portrayed as crazy. When other people agree with the complaint then their comments are marginalised to try and preserve the narrative of one crazy person. It seems that in the case of the discussion about Rape Apology and LCA2011 most men who comment regard it as one person (either Valeria Aurora or Matthew Garrett) causing a dispute. There is even some commentary which references my blog post about Rape Apology [9] but somehow manages to ignore me when it comes to counting more than one person agreeing with Valerie. For reference David Zanetti was the first person to use the term “apologist for rapists” in connection with the LCA 2011 discussion [10]. So we have a count of at least three men already.

These same patterns always happen so making a comment in support makes a difference. It doesn’t have to be insightful, long, or well written, merely “I agree” and a link to a web page will help. Note that a blog post is much better than a comment in this regard, comments are much like conversation while a blog post is a stronger commitment to a position.

I don’t believe that the majority is necessarily correct. But an opinion which is supported by too small a minority isn’t going to be considered much by most people.

The Cost of Commenting

The Internet is a hostile environment, when you comment on a contentious issue there will be people who demonstrate their disagreement in uncivilised and even criminal ways. S. E. Smith wrote an informative post for Tiger Beatdown about the terrorism that feminist bloggers face [11]. I believe that men face fewer threats than women when they write about such things and the threats are less credible. I don’t believe that any of the men who have threatened me have the ability to carry out their threats but I expect that many women who receive such threats will consider them to be credible.

The difference in the frequency and nature of the terrorism (and there is no other word for what S. E. Smith describes) experienced by men and women gives a vastly different cost to commenting. So when men fail to address issues related to the behavior of other men that isn’t helping women in any way. It’s imposing a significant cost on women for covering issues which could be addressed by men for minimal cost.

It’s interesting to note that there are men who consider themselves to be brave because they write things which will cause women to criticise them or even accuse them of misogyny. I think that the women who write about such issues even though they will receive threats of significant violence are the brave ones.

Not Being Patronising

Craig raises the issue of not being patronising, which is of course very important. I think that the first thing to do to avoid being perceived as patronising in a blog post is to cite adequate references. I’ve spent a lot of time reading what women have written about such issues and cited the articles that seem most useful in describing the issues. I’m sure that some women will disagree with my choice of references and some will disagree with some of my conclusions, but I think that most women will appreciate that I read what women write (it seems that most men don’t).

It seems to me that a significant part of feminism is about women not having men tell them what to do. So when men offer advice on how to go about feminist advocacy it’s likely to be taken badly. It’s not just that women don’t want advice from men, but that advice from men is usually wrong. There are patterns in communication which mean that the effective strategies for women communicating with men are different from the effective strategies for men communicating with men (see my previous section on men not listening to women). Also there’s a common trend of men offering simplistic advice on how to solve problems, one thing to keep in mind is that any problem which affects many people and is easy to solve has probably been solved a long time ago.

Often when social issues are discussed there is some background in the life experience of the people involved. For example Rookie Mag has an article about the street harassment women face which includes many disturbing anecdotes (some of which concern primary school students) [12]. Obviously anyone who has lived through that sort of thing (which means most women) will instinctively understand some issues related to threatening sexual behavior that I can’t easily understand even when I spend some time considering the matter. So there will be things which don’t immediately appear to be serious problems to me but which are interpreted very differently by women. The non-patronising approach to such things is to accept the concerns women express as legitimate, to try to understand them, and not to argue about it. For example the issue that Valerie recently raised wasn’t something that seemed significant when I first read the email in question, but I carefully considered it when I saw her posts explaining the issue and what she wrote makes sense to me.

I don’t think it’s possible for a man to make a useful comment on any issue related to the treatment of women without consulting multiple women first. I suggest a pre-requisite for any man who wants to write any sort of long article about the treatment of women is to have conversations with multiple women who have relevant knowledge. I’ve had some long discussions with more than a few women who are involved with the FOSS community. This has given me a reasonable understanding of some of the issues (I won’t claim to be any sort of expert). I think that if you just go and imagine things about a group of people who have a significantly different life-experience then you will be wrong in many ways and often offensively wrong. Just reading isn’t enough, you need to have conversations with multiple people so that they can point out the things you don’t understand.

This isn’t any sort of comprehensive list of ways to avoid being patronising, but it’s a few things which seem like common mistakes.

Anne Onne wrote a detailed post advising men who want to comment on feminist blogs etc [13], most of it applies to any situation where men comment on women’s issues.

• [1] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2011/02/10/lca2011-harassment/
• [2] http://adainitiative.org/2012/10/open-source-software-open-to-all/
• [3] http://blog.taz.net.au/2012/11/18/done/
• [4] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Women_Don’t_Ask
• [5] http://geekfeminism.org/2012/09/17/how-to-exclude-women-without-really-trying/
• [6] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Allies
• [7] http://www.alternet.org/story/82222/men_explain_things_to_me
• [8] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Splaining
• [9] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2012/11/08/rape-apology-lca2011/
• [10] http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/ted_mail/0013.html
• [11] http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/10/11/on-blogging-threats-and-silence/
• [12] http://rookiemag.com/2012/05/it-happens-all-the-time/
• [13] http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2008/06/men_feminism_ne

I recently had a medical appointment cancelled due to a “computer crash”. Apparently the reception computer crashed and lost all bookings for a day and they just made new bookings for whoever called – and anyone who had a previous booking just missed out. I’ll probably never know whether they really had a computer problem or just used computer problems as an excuse when they made a mistake. But even if it wasn’t a real computer problem the fact that computers are so unreliable overall that “computer crash” is an acceptable excuse indicates a problem with the industry.

The problem of unreliable computers is a cost to everyone, it’s effectively a tax on all business and social interactions that involve computers. While I spent the extra money on a server with ECC RAM for my home file storage I have no control over the computers purchased by all the companies I deal with – which are mostly the cheapest available computers. I also have no option to buy a laptop with ECC RAM because companies like Lenovo have decided not to manufacture them.

It seems to me that the easiest way of increasing overall reliability of computers would be to use ECC RAM everywhere. In the early 90’s all IBM compatible PCs had parity RAM, that meant that for each byte there was one extra bit which would report 100% of single-bit errors and 50% of errors that involved random memory corruption. Then manufacturers decided to save a tiny amount of money on memory by using 8/9 the number of chips for desktop/laptop systems and probably make more money on selling servers with ECC RAM. If the government was to impose a 20% tax on computers that lack ECC RAM then manufacturers would immediately start using it everywhere and the end result would be no price increase overall as it’s cheaper to design desktop systems and servers with the same motherboards – apparently some desktop systems have motherboard support for ECC RAM but don’t ship with suitable RAM or advertise the support for such RAM.

This principle applies to many other products too. One obvious example is cars, a car manufacturer can sell cheap cars with few safety features and then when occupants of those cars and other road users are injured the government ends up paying for medical expenses and disability pensions. If there was a tax for every car that has a poor crash test rating and a tax for every car company that performs badly in real world use then it would give car companies some incentive to manufacture safer vehicles.

Now there are situations where design considerations preclude such features. For example implementing ECC RAM in mobile phones might involve technical difficulties (particularly for 32bit phones) and making some trucks and farm equipment safer might be difficult. But when a company produces multiple similar products that differ significantly in quality such as PCs with and without ECC RAM or cars with and without air-bags there would be no difficulty in making them all of them higher quality.

I don’t think that we will have a government that implements such ideas any time soon, it seems that our government is more interested in giving money to corporations than taxing them. But one thing that could be done is to adopt a policy of only giving money to companies if they produce high quality products. If a car company is to be given hundreds of millions of dollars for not closing a factory then that factory should produce cars with all possible safety features. If a computer company is going to be given significant tax breaks for doing R&D then they should be developing products that won’t crash.