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BrazzVuvuzela

413 karma · joined December 14, 2021

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BrazzVuvuzela··on Facebook says it was wrong to ban Canadian MP’s Christmas message
> What people really mean when they talk about censorship is first amendment rights.

I don't agree. The snarky and smug "nuh uh, cuz it wasn't the government" responses [often maliciously] assume that complaints about censorship are talking about the first amendment, but I think people are generally aware that censorship can come from corporations too and their concerns are not limited to apparent violations of the first amendment specifically but are concerned with the more general principle of free speech (which predates the first amendment.)

BrazzVuvuzela··on How to automatically close those annoying “Launch Meeting” tabs from Zoom
I'd never trust it with any data I care about. HN doesn't even let you delete your account with post history.
BrazzVuvuzela··on How to automatically close those annoying “Launch Meeting” tabs from Zoom
So yes.
BrazzVuvuzela··on Intel apologises in China over Xinjiang supplier statement
Another word for basically the same thing, yes. Excommunication is top-down directed shunning.
BrazzVuvuzela··on Intel apologises in China over Xinjiang supplier statement
> I mean are they being forced to do it and not being paid for it

Slavery is forced labor, which is orthogonal to being paid. If you are forced to work but are also paid (perhaps rare, but not unheard of), you are still a slave regardless of the pay. If you aren't being paid but aren't being forced to work, you aren't a slave (that's called volunteering.)

BrazzVuvuzela··on Intel apologises in China over Xinjiang supplier statement
"Do with them"? That's a truly chilling way to speak of people.
BrazzVuvuzela··on Intel apologises in China over Xinjiang supplier statement
Cancel culture isn't that either. Cancel culture is a rebranding of 'shunning', which I bet predates humans as we know them. I bet our social monkey predecessors had such tactics figured out.

Read this and tell me it isn't 'cancel culture': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning#Overview

Bonus: 'shadow-banning' is stealth shunning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunning#Stealth_shunning

BrazzVuvuzela··on The secret Uganda deal that has brought NSO to the brink of collapse
You're only feigning surprise.. right?
BrazzVuvuzela··on Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter
Correct, but Chomsky wanted people to believe it was lies.
BrazzVuvuzela··on Scientists find preserved dinosaur embryo preparing to hatch like a bird
If a body, then why not an egg?
BrazzVuvuzela··on Scientists find preserved dinosaur embryo preparing to hatch like a bird
It doesn't matter. YECs would say god created it to test them or the devil created it to trick them, it doesn't matter how precisely or imprecisely you word headlines about dinosaurs they still won't believe it. Stop worrying so much about whatever stupid things they think, you're not going to bring them to sanity around by being super pedantic.
BrazzVuvuzela··on The Belgian government has removed ‘backdoor requirement’ from new law
Quantity has a quality all of it's own. Wiretaps against a specific individuals is a lot different than dragnets covering an entire nation.
BrazzVuvuzela··on The Olkiluoto 3 EPR plant unit started up
Wind turbines in cold climates also require deicing. If you don't deice them, the performance drops dramatically. Deicing takes power too though, a few percent of the total turbine output depending on how often it's needed and how much downtime the turbine has.
BrazzVuvuzela··on You can't lure employees back to the office
With construction or moving? I'd rather keep my home the way it is, thanks.
BrazzVuvuzela··on You can't lure employees back to the office
I guess I got lucky then.
BrazzVuvuzela··on You can't lure employees back to the office
Yes well, open office plans and cubicles are awful, no argument there. But a real office with a door can be attractive relative to the situation many people have at home.
BrazzVuvuzela··on You can't lure employees back to the office
That assumes your town has such coworking facilities. Maybe a safe assumption in cities, but definitely not in all towns nor for people living in more rural areas. And if you're going to commute to a coworking office in the same city that your normal office would be in anyway, it seems a bit pointless. A commute is a commute.
BrazzVuvuzela··on You can't lure employees back to the office
It's also important to consider that many people don't have homes that are conducive to working, because there are many other people in the house, or because they don't have the space for a dedicated office, or any other number of reasons. This isn't applicable to everybody obviously, but offices should be able to compete on these fronts.
BrazzVuvuzela··on Stealth bomber in flight on Google Maps
Incidentally, the F-117's fighter designation was a misnomer; they were only armed with bombs.
BrazzVuvuzela··on Bugs are evolving to eat plastic
It's probably easier to list the invertebrates that aren't commonly called bugs than those that are. Squid, octopus and jellyfish get a pass. The immobile ones like corals and sponges as well, but I think that's about it.
BrazzVuvuzela··on Bugs are evolving to eat plastic
If you're speaking colloquially, earthworms are bugs but they aren't insects. If you're being pedantic, houseflies are insects but they aren't bugs.
BrazzVuvuzela··on Julia Computing's co-founder involved in government mass surveillance project
Seems like an arbitrary distinction which is considered important for historical/cultural reasons particular to America. Why is the federal/state boundary the important boundary, and not the state/county level? Or not the county/town level? Or the global/national boundary? Even having 3 or 4 layers of government is an arbitrary cultural trait. It could be one or two, or five or six.
BrazzVuvuzela··on The bulldozer vs. vetocracy political axis
They don't see it unless they choose to go look at it. I can stand on a step ladder and look over my neighbor's fence. But if I do that then start complaining that the grass in his back yard is too dry and ugly, then who's the asshole? My neighbor for having ugly grass, or me, who went out of my way to look at it?
BrazzVuvuzela··on Against 3x Speed
TTS ebooks at 500-600wpm is easy for me, though I usually top out at 2.5x for audiobooks. I'm not sure what the conversion factor between those is, but TTS is definitely faster.
BrazzVuvuzela··on Amputated fingertips sometimes grow back (2013)
It seems somewhat plausible. Identical twins often have broadly similar, although still distinct, fingerprints: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22558204/
BrazzVuvuzela··on The Webb telescope has 'perfectly misshaped' mirrors
It's not "misshaped" if it's precisely the way it's meant to be. The media need to stop trading credibility for clicks, before they run out. I flagged this article, if the idea is to give HN a pretext to talk about Webb, there are plenty of better articles out there to use.
BrazzVuvuzela··on Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China
He means the One China Policy. But CogitoCogito is right. China is only be "contained" by Taiwan in the hypothetical circumstance of a war; during peace time they obviously have no trouble sending ships around the world and are not contained in any sense. And the only reason they haven't been able to bring Taiwan into the fold is because they keep making psychotic violent threats. All China needs to do to completely resolve any problems with Taiwan is stop being nuts.

China obviously doesn't want the matter resolved peacefully, if at all, because they use this conflict for internal control.

BrazzVuvuzela··on Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China
To be clear, I'm not faulting the EU for it. The EU should be concerned more with their own security, particularly if America gets tied up with China and is consequently less capable of helping to defend the EU against Russia.
BrazzVuvuzela··on Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China
My sub-point is America would deny the validity of China's invasion of Taiwan regardless of whether China's accusations against Taiwan were accurate or not, meaning the accuracy of such accusations isn't relevant. The outcome is the same. People in the EU might roll their eyes and say "ackshully china is right and taiwan really is making nuclear weapons", just as they once rolled their eyes at America's bogus claims about Iraq, but what would/did that change? A fat lot of nothing.

But my main point is that if Taiwan wants nuclear weapons they can make their own, so there is no sense in America giving nuclear weapons to Taiwan. And if America did, that would provide China with 'valid' casus belli anyway. I think PRC spies would be no less aware of plans to import nuclear weapons than plans to make them.

BrazzVuvuzela··on Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China
> Of course the West would still try to dispute it

Yeah, that's what I just said.

> the world saw through WMDs in Iraq

And Iraq got bombed anyway, it's a great example of how the actual validity of a casus belli doesn't matter.

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