Can you also guarantee with absolute certainty that you'll never forget them anywhere another person who's unaware of the contents or the danger could find them?
If I buy a lawn mower, I don't expect anyone to guarantee with absolute certainty that there will never be a person who thinks 'hey maybe I can just stick my hand in there to unclog it' and gets their fingers chopped off. Probably a wrong analogy but I can't even be bothered to think it through, of course fermenting food causes things to explode, how is that even remotely the fault of the manufacturer? I loathe the times we live in where everything needs to be padded and cushioned because heavens forbid we start expecting people to think for a second. I mean, the valve requires a crevice where all sorts of things can grow (I've seen them, I've cleaned these things after they were left in a school bag throughout two weeks of school holidays with food in them), I'm not going to complain that it would somehow be Thermos' fault if one of my kids got sick off something getting stuck in there. At some point, there is such a thing as 'personal responsibility'.
I get your take that people should take the responsibility for things they are doing.
Without arguing your point there are a couple more things to consider from the perspective of the company and the society at large.
From the company perspective, if their product gets a bad reputation the sales will be worse. This could even extend beyond the one product. It doesn't matter if it is fair or nuanced at all. Even if everyone is a moron, investing in protecting the morons from themselves could be a good business decision.
From the society perspective, there is a positive-for-business intent in forcing a baseline for consumer safety and satisfaction. Threading that needle is of course hard but it makes it easier for a free market of consumer products to exist as a whole if the consumers can offload some of the investigation required before committing to something. The idea is that in a 100% buyer beware situation there is less buying overall and the market can't be big and as full of options because the cost/risk of buying isn't worth the end goal. You can make the counter argument that the trust should be part of the brand value but it might enable new companies and new products more effectively (making more good options in a free market) to reduce the consumer risk of purchasing their products.
Additionally, if everyone is doing the same prerequisite research (is this safe before I buy), it makes sense to consolidate this step either through curation/certification groups (the people who care fund it themselves - makes sense for specific preference choices [eg "plant based", "cruelty free"] or niches [eg "gluten free", "non gmo"]) or regulation (everyone funds it collectively - makes sense for broad application like "will I get food poisoning" and "am I risking being maimed").
Beyond personal purchases there's also society wide implications worth preventing for things like if a million cars exploded or if 10% of profession X and profession Y ended up losing fingers.
Like I said, not arguing with you about if people are dumb and if companies should be required to pay to deal with that, just pointing out there are other reasons a system might be in place beyond just a patronizing nanny state situation.
>Can you also guarantee with absolute certainty that you'll never forget them anywhere another person who's unaware of the contents or the danger could find them?
Why does he need to do that?
We're talking about a product that lightly injured ~20 people for ~8mil units sold and seriously injured ~3.
Should be be keeping his champagne in a protective enclosure?
I've seen Champagne disappear faster off the shelf more so around MBA's who are celebrating accomplishments having dubious value, compared to engineers who have actually achieved remarkable milestones ;)
Keep in mind that the story is actually embedded in Kafka's "The Trial", and discussed by two characters within that story, who have very different views of its meaning.
I think it is very deliberately written to be impossible to "understand". If you think you have found its clear and unambiguous meaning, you're wrong.
Yep. Really. As I said, not because Europe was very peaceful (although most of these conflicts were extremely underwhelming if compared to what ended the era: WW1)
Everything everywhere ever (except perhaps some of the larger wars in China) was underwhelming compared to WW1. That's why it's so famous.
But you were specifically claiming that Europe was "more peaceful than places like the areas of the ottoman empire", which is frankly absurd. I mean, we're talking about a region that had a Thirty Years' War, an Eighty Years' War, and a Hundred Years' War!
Unless... if you're talking about WW1 "ending the era" - were you talking only about a shorter timeframe prior to WW1? If we look only at the 40 or so years before 1914, then indeed Europe had a fairly peaceful period (Belle Époque, Gründerzeit) while the Ottoman Empire was basically starting its death throes.
> The server that delivers the page never receives the content, never knows which site you are viewing, and has no way to find out.
Technically true, practically a lie. Because that server delivers the Javascript which decodes and presents the content, and that Javascript absolutely has the ability to inspect, modify/censor, and leak the content (along with fingerprints of the browser).
> no host to pressure, no platform that can decide your content should not exist.
Except for https://nowhr.xyz, which becomes a single point of failure for all of these sites...
> A mission that merely orbited Venus and returned without attempting to muck about with airships might be an intermediate step on the way to Mars.
I think that's exactly what the article is arguing for. The part about manned airships is just a whimsical aside to the much safer, entirely feasible, and nearly as scientifically valuable prospect of using unmanned balloons.
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