You know I was talking specifically about poliomyelitis, the infectious disease caused by the poliovirus, which in many countries (mine included) is called 'child paralysis'.
I live in a developing south american country. Whenever I'm in a conversation and someone starts questioning vaccines, the first thing I say is "Stop. Tell me, when was the last time you saw or heard of someone getting child paralysis?"
They have no answer, because usually the only people you can find carrying the effects of this terrible disease are over fifty years old. The last case documented in my country was in 1989.
What's also alarming is that a bunch of plastic is now clearly labeled 'BPA Free', and people think "problem solved", while quite a few studies show that these BPA free plastics have other, just as toxic, endocrine disruptors.
One of my favorite cartoons growing up was the japanese series "Space Battleship Yamato", where in the future the Yamato was rebuilt as a spaceship. Good memories! (I wonder, though, if I would still enjoy it, were I to re-watch the series)
Endocrine disruption (potential) of plastics in constant contact with skin is something I sometimes worry about, more for my kids than myself, but I'd like to ask anybody more knowledgeable if it really makes a difference: aren't cotton and polyester both dyed with synthetic dyes/paints, and that's ultimately what's in contact with our bodies? If this is a source of endocrine disruption, won't cotton affect me just the same? Wouldn't I have to wear undyed, natural color cotton to make a difference?
I know they're not equivalent. But banks have broken here too, and people lost a lot of their money. By the way, credit card interest here is over 300% annually. Can get up to 800 depending on the bank.
Maybe your money is pretty safe in your bank. My dad worked for 40+ years and paid every month his pension fund dues. When his company (a very big and old company in our country) went bankrupt, it was found that the pension fund was broke. They had been using money from the pension fund to cover whatever they had to cover due to corruption, bad administration, etc (it was illegally done so, by the way). Not only that, but the government knew about this, since it was a really, really big pension fund, and had stepped in as pension administrator for the past six or seven years. Didn't matter. The pension broke, the company broke, my dad and thousands of others were left without their retirement pay.
This is not some outrageous story over here. It was so normal that it didn't make any headlines. Two years ago postal workers have started to take a pay cut to cover a hole in their pension fund. The mail here is state owned, by the way, and it didn't matter. The directors took their money, the workers had to pay up.
I did my research, I wouldn't put money in Beanstalk Farms, or 99% of cryptocurrencies, but there are couple, two or three, crypto projects that I know are legitimate and secure, and I trust them more than the banks I have access to.
All the people I know who've read the novel agree with me that it was supposed to mean static. I wonder if anyone asked Gibson about this, since the advent of the blue screens.
Because moderation here works quite well and they usually aren't the ones being moderated. Like someone wrote earlier in this thread, why aren't the free speech advocates using less HN to debate hacker/tech stuff and using more 8chan or something?
>Now if you're not on the big platforms your opinion may as well not exist.
This view somewhat misses the point. If you get on the big platforms and become famous, TODAY, you might have an opinion that matters to quite a few people. What about BEFORE? What platform were the big youtubers using in 2002? The big instagram influencers, where were their voices being heard in 1998? Paraphrasing you, "their opinions didn't exist".
Except you can argue that we don't have only one twitter. We have many, and potentially thousands. I can fire up my own version of twitter in a couple of minutes. I (or my group, clan, subculture, whatever) can fire up my/our own facebook in minutes. OTOH I only have one electric power supplier to my home.
Neuromancer's opening line is probably one of the most remembered first sentences in american fiction. Every friend of mine who read the book, most of them in the 90's, seem to remember it verbatim.
Now that I think of it, do younger people know what he's talking about? I mean, at some point dead channels changed from the noisy grayscale beehive-like granulates to a still blue screen.
>their customer support is stellar, across countries.
People in the US have no idea how bad customer support can be in third world countries. If I go to a store and buy something (pair of shoes, book, backpack, can of paint) and 5 minutes later I go back and decide that it doesn't fit or even show that it was broken, I can't get a refund. The salesperson, manager, etc will tell me that I can exchange it for another product, but since "we already logged the receipt on our system" (or some other BS explanation), there's no way to refund the money, only exchange for something else. Amazon's customer service is 10 times better than whatever was here before it. Now a few others have caught up and today offer good customer service. But Amazon is still better.
This is only ok as a way to know. The person could then argue "so one minute before 12:00 AM is 11:59 AM, right?" If the person's not familiar with the convention, it makes sense.
You're right, there's probably more at play. Exposure to chemicals, pesticides in food, less time outside, more sedentary lifestyle, less sun exposure, more processed food. I was just saying that one car = one engine producing exhaust from fossil fuels (EVs a little less).
I buy lottery tickets when the prize is really large. My four best friends and I will chip in and we'll buy a few tickets. Then we'll spend the next week or two on our whatsapp group having fun about what dumb s*t each one will do with the money, what kinds of pranks we'll be able to lay on each other, etc. It's lots of fun and for about ten bucks, it's money very well spent. It wouldn't be this fun if we were just pretending to have bought tickets.
I've known a bunch of hippies/anarchists/free spirits or whatever who took acid. I've also know a lot of squares/lawyer types/bank tellers who never took any acid (most never even smoked pot). Thirty years later, there's a percentage of the hippies who seem to be happy, have a pretty good outlook on life, respect and care for other humans and the environment, are people who seem to have most of it figured out. There's also a pretty big percentage of them who now just guzzle beer at bars and watch football, and are assholes to their wives and kids. When I look at the other group of people I've known, the squares, the percentages are pretty much the same.
Right, religious fanatics don't really exist, it's just rhetoric. You can confirm this by noticing how they never really blow themselves up. All the temples from african religions that are burned or destroyed every year in my country is just a made up thing, since the fanatical christians who burn them don't really do it, I'm just falling for their rhetoric. I don't know how it is going in other countries, but religious fanatics have held positions of power here, quite a few times.
No, no, no, no, no... you're wrong here. Mrs. Damares Alves, Minister of Woman, Family and Human Rights Cabinet really believes this stuff. She believes it 100%. And when Bolsonaro (the president) says that men wouldn't be gay if they were beaten enough as children whenever they did feminine stuff, he says it with conviction. He really believes this stuff. A lot of his tactics are just copied from Seteve Bannon/Trump (Bolsonaro actually hired Bannon), but the difference is that he actually believes 100% in the ideological views he espouses. If you elect a hardline evangelical fanatic to the White House, and he starts spewing bible stuff, would you say he doesn't believe it, it's just politics?
I'm Brazilian, living in Brazil, and I wouldn't mind heavy economic sanctions imposed on my country to force us to take preservation seriously. Our government will say "the first world countries destroyed all its forests to become developed. Why can't we?" and I wouldn't mind those countries replying "Sure you can, go ahead, but so can we economically sanction you as heavy as we think is necessary to make you chance." This president is a joke regarding the environment. A joke. Outside of environmental concerns, here are some pearls: his Minister for Women, Family and Human Rights said on a lecture how Disney's Frozen movie shouldn't be watched by girls, because the princess who lives alone in a castle an isn't married is obviously lesbian, and Disney is out to brainwash girls. This is not out of the ordinary for her to say. The president of the state foundation for the preservation and promotion of african-brazilian culture has said that slavery was good for africans. The Environment Minister was caught hearing during a crisis that, since the focus wasn't on the environment, they should seize the moment to 'steamroll' over environmental legislation because few would notice. How do you expect the Amazon situation to not get worse with this guy in power?
Five years ago you would have been right. Today, many corporations in neighboring countries will gladly accept a million dollars in bitcoin as payment.
I think parent means that by weakening your government's ability to do things without due process is strengthening it. Assuming that your government has at its basis a respect for such things as due process, individual privacy etc.
Ah, fond memories of reading Mondo 2000 and Boing Boing, and there was also 2600 and a few smaller ones, and BBSs made you feel like an early resident of the future sprawl. I'll just link here to a cool comic that sometimes pops up on HN, and is pretty good regarding the whole vibe of the period:
Yes, it is being censored, because in most parts of said faraway land there is a total restriction of content. How about "you can't criticise the government anywhere, but we'll let you do it when you're alone inside your house, but only in the bathroom with locked doors, so it's not a 'total' restriction." Yes, this is censorship, and different from "well, this private company will restrict your message to the public on it's own platform because it goes against its policy, but you're free to publish your message on your own blog, write your own book, shout it out in the public square, etc."
> My view is that, in general, companies should not censor. Free speech is good.
Really? Should HN moderatos literally let every post go on unchecked? If someone starts posting links to a Kardashian selfie blog, or to NSFW stuff, why should HN allow it? It's NOT censorship, HN is in no way obligated to allow everything on its site. Free speech is good. Heck, it's awesome. You want to post NSFW or Kim Kardashian, go create a blog. It's pretty much free and you can reach the whole world.
You're right, the example I gave is different from coding. I did change the subject a bit, sorry for that. By the way, my kids do some Micro:Bit programming whenever they want, and I chose not to force them into it, as in not having a structured 'learn block coding with dad' hour. If they want to do something with their Micro:Bit, they power up the computer and do it, for as long or little as they want. If they want my help, I'll help, and that's it.