LV-426

> It is the British empire+US hegemony, since WWII/Cold War that makes English lingua franca as it is today.

To be fair, it's also centuries of important contributions from English-speaking countries in science, technology, industry, aviation, literature, etc, etc, as well as, since WWII at least, music, TV, film and other forms of popular entertainment.

From the article:

"Amazon likely has about 700 workers [in Ohio alone] receiving food stamps, more than 10 percent of its Ohio workforce"

I totally agree with this, including your 1 and 2, and the parent.

This very thread - with repeated posts about malware - demonstrates what "SourceForge" means these days to so many people.

It doesn't make sense to me that if the site is back to being one of the good guys, it keeps a name now mostly famous/notorious for bad practices.

Thanks. And yeah, that's one reason I always thought it was surprising if they didn't teach English, since it was the (primary) language of 'the enemy'. Plus whatever faults the USSR may have had, education seemed to be pretty good.

> early adopters, which take on more risk

I don't want to get into the debate on the definition of a pyramid scheme, but what was anyone risking by mining bitcoins for essentially nothing in 2009-2010?

Thanks. You may not be old enough to know from experience, but how does this differ (if at all) from the Soviet period?

AIUI Soviet citizens didn't generally learn English in (high/middle) school, which I always thought a bit surprising (assuming that's correct), and for some reason I have the idea German may have been taught in the USSR. (An idea which may simply derive from Russian being taught in East German schools.)

> English is tought as a second language (or third language in bilingual countries) in most of the world.

In primary schools, commonly?

> Can anyone outline the norms for English teaching in the rest of the region and the rest of the world?

I'd be interested in this too (or other languages, where it would be appropriate, such as the extent of French teaching in Canada, or Spanish in the USA). I suspect what Iran is apparently not doing any more is very uncommon around the world anyway.

I don't support this (more schools in every country should teach foreign languages in primary school), but AIUI from the article learning English is not now forbidden for young people in Iran, it's only now blocked in primary schools, where it didn't happen much anyway:

    The teaching of English usually starts in middle school
    in Iran, at the ages of 12 to 14, but some primary 
    schools below that age also have English classes.

> A complaint that Hacker News is a less agreeable place than it used to be.

Which makes the place no more agreeable.

> Whether that's true or not... <huge snip>

This is amazing.

I ask a question, and the only "answer" is simply an excuse to segue into a weird, patronizing, passive-aggressive wall of text that has zero to do with what I actually posted, and is nothing but a personal attack dressed up as a lecture on politeness. Amazing.

I guess you don't reach 10k karma on a throwaway by not having a gallery to play to.

Replying here, since the other post I replied to disappeared:

Despite the avalanche of downvotes burying my posts, not even one person can actually answer the question I asked:

The poster could have simply stopped typing after "Thank you for the explanation". He chose to unnecessarily add something more.

So, for everyone who disagrees with me: if what he said wasn't itself "snarky", what was it?

I disagree. Aside from the sarcastic "buffer overflow" comment, his comment was far more snide than any of the replies he seemed to be complaining about.

Since you take a different view though, as I asked in my post, if it's not "snarky" then what was it?

> which unfortunately seems to be getting rarer and rarer on this forum.

If this isn't unnecessarily "snarky" itself, then what is it?

snarky: (of a person, words, or a mood) sharply critical; cutting; snide.

Pretty funny how anti-tracking they are, in their daily submissions to HN, considering the number of resources from external sites - Google, Facebook, Medium, Twitter, Linkedin, etc - their page loads.

I wondered how many times the Russian takeover in DC was going to be reported, but this story is from last year (June, 2017).

Meanwhile, in 2011:

    From the studio in downtown D.C., it's Russia on your radio
    (Voice of Russia - previous name for Sputnik.)

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/07/04/us.russia.radio/index.h...

So basically they changed AM to FM.

I'm not against space exploration, but it's interesting to me that while we wonder about life on other planets, and dream of placing our own lives there, most of our own planet's life (which could help provide cures for all kinds of ailments) remains undiscovered.

> Did you have a substantive response to make?

Did you?

> I understand that you're not satisfied with how the events of Apollo 8 played out. What I don't understand is whence comes the belief, which you seem to cherish quite strongly, that your satisfaction or lack thereof is of any relevance to those events.

I understand that you're not satisfied with my posts about how Apollo 8 played out. What I don't understand is whence comes the belief, which you seem to cherish quite strongly, that your satisfaction or lack thereof is of any relevance to anything.

> You're definitely coming off as an edge-lord for calling this inane.

And you're definitely coming off as an idiot using a term like "edge-lord".

> Today, I'm sure Twitter would melt because of it (you can't even have a shirt people don't like without causing outrage)

I have no interest in Twitter - so unfortunately I don't know which particular chip on your shoulder you're rambling on about - but you should probably save your hot take on the issue for a relevant thread.

> but the country was very different back then.

Yes, instead of melting Twitter people merely filed lawsuits.

> Plus these missions were more than a scientific endeavor, because it took more than science to put everything in place for it.

Did it take God creating Earth in the first place?

> It was the biggest accomplishment by us as a species, so they wanted mark it with what they considered the most important thing in their lives.

So it's the biggest accomplishment by us as a species, but really all about what three guys in a can want?

> To me it's cringey that you can't look at it objectively without taking some kind of offense to it. But hey, that's just me.

Good for you.

> You are conflating the official position of the organization with a statement made by one of its employees on company time.

1. It was not one person, it was everyone on board.

2. Describing NASA trained professionals, paid by NASA, in their NASA gear and NASA hardware, representing NASA on a monumental, history-making, multi-billion dollar NASA mission into deep space as mere "employees on company time" is beyond ridiculous, frankly.

Thanks. I wasn't aware of that. I just remember the first time I ever saw that footage, couldn't believe what I was hearing, and haven't forgotten it.

My own objection isn't even about government/state promotion of religion - though I'm not particularly a fan of that - it's that a scientific body like NASA comes out with "God created Earth".

And I wouldn't even mind that if NASA stated it was their official position. Then anyone is free to decide on their scientific credibility.

Instead we had an organization making itself look ridiculous by unnecessarily pandering to beliefs it couldn't possibly officially hold.

I'm glad they got the Earthrise Photo, because otherwise, six months before Apollo 11 gave the world a line which even impressed the Soviets, Apollo 8 would be remembered for this cringey, inane stuff[1]:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToHhQUhdyBY

[1] To avoid misunderstanding: this isn't an atheist/anti-religion post, it's about the aptness of such an utterance by personnel on a top scientific mission, from one of the world's top scientific agencies.

Edit: * sigh * and insta-downvote bot strikes again

> I am talking about how big your opportunity to create something in the US is no matter who you are and where you are from compared to other places.

What does this even mean?

Please give a specific, concrete explanation of how and why it's easier for someone to "create something" (create what?) in the USA than in the EU or Canada.

> Canada actually has a very strict immigration politics compared to the US then sure.

And yet apparently accepts around three times as many new immigrants per year than the USA, as a percentage of population.

> The tough people were the ones who endured what it meant to live in the US in the beginning. There weren't tough when they went on a boat but they soon became just as their children and their children.

So is the USA the land of opportunity or the land of greater hardship and toughness?

People don't typically leave the country they know and love for another land, unless enduring hardship already. OTOH, while they may believe (at least in part due to propaganda[1]) another land will provide greater opportunity, that doesn't mean it does.

[1] The UK government notoriously considered an ad campaign a few years back about how bad life was in the UK, to deter immigration.

But not north of the 49th parallel?

> You are missing a very important point which is that the US is a country of immigration and of different states the US is a very very very big country.

And yet not even the biggest country in North America, an entire continent of immigration; the only difference between the people in what is now the USA and what is now Canada was the degree of loyalism to the British.

> America IS the land of opportunity and I would challenge you to find any other country which provides better opportunity and still protect your rights as well.

For that not to be just an empty slogan you'd have to explain what you mean by "opportunity" and "rights", to which races and genders those opportunities and rights have historically applied to in actuality, and how you think every other country suppresses or represses those rights or opportunities.

> So the country is build on tough women and men.

The USA was "built" (leaving aside how) by, among others, Danes, Dutch and Germans. I don't understand how they suddenly became tougher, just by stepping on a boat.

Edit: and there goes the autodownvote bot, within not even enough time to read this post.

I know, I said that in my post:

    It makes sense to have Usenet in an email client, 
    because they are closely related, but not many people
    use email clients any more, so not many people are 
    going to find Usenet that way.

For some reason your post reminded me of a list I saw quite recently of (surprisingly working) open/free news servers (maybe dotsrc was on it).

I can't seem to remember or find the exact list or page I saw before, but for anyone interested here are a couple of sites with a few of the other servers I remember.

Note: I haven't tested these, some may not work, some may not be deliberately open (perhaps just misconfigured), some may not allow posting, some may require registration, some may carry only a few local groups, etc etc etc.

Also, this post is related to text usage; if any of the following servers carry binary groups it's unlikely they'll have complete files.

    blaine.gmane.org freenews.netfront.net news2.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de
    news-archive.icm.edu.pl news2.neva.ru gandalf.srv.welterde.de

https://freenews.maxbaud.net/free-usenet.htm

And here:

    news.tin.org news.prz.edu.pl gandalf.srv.welterde.de pb1.pair.com lugnet.com 
    ingebrigtsen.no freedommail.novaithelp.com news.alaska-software.com richelieu.ac-versailles.fr 
    news.cadsoft.de news.omnitel.net news.tugraz.at news.mt.net.mk news.man.rzeszow.pl 
    serv3.vsi.ru news.szaf.org pair1.php.net news.sotcom.ru news.mozilla.org x6.develooper.com 
    hq.tin.org news.grc.com iad.wholesalenewsinc.com news.math.ncu.edu.tw bbs.math.ncu.edu.tw 
    news.securecomp.org guest.dogagent.com ddt.demos.su news.dbase.com newsfeed.iif.hu 
    news.iif.hu vm-news.spline.inf.fu-berlin.de news.spline.inf.fu-berlin.de mx.sotcom.ru 

https://www.freeusenetnews.com

The company providing the world's most popular email web interface should have been the prime candidate to provide web Usenet, but instead they saw Usenet only as a means to get people on to their own terrible Google-only groups (while producing such a monumental amount of spam, trolling and abuse to Usenet, many people to leave altogether).

A better idea than a web interface IMO is Usenet access simply built into a browser by default. It makes sense to have Usenet in an email client, because they are closely related, but not many people use email clients any more, so not many people are going to find Usenet that way.

If Firefox had an option to open newsgroups, with proper filtering (not just on the overhead headers, but on the HEAD of each message), I would use it all the time, and I believe many thousands of other people would too.

Not only free, but you don't even have to register:

https://news.aioe.org/manual/faqs/#f2

I agree about Reddit being Usenet-like. Unfortunately it's a really horrible version of Usenet, partly thanks to the number of unpleasant people who use it, but also due to the karma system - in theory a way to collectively highlight good posts, but in reality often simply becoming an end in itself (karma whoring, playing to a gallery) and a weapon (people burying legit posts they simply don't like/agree with).

On Usenet you could filter anything you didn't want to see, which is reasonable, but you could not - as on Reddit, or HN - make it more difficult for other people to read it too, which is not reasonable, and simply helps to create a hostile, cliquey, poisonous echo chamber.

Cliques did exist on newsgroups, but they had less tools at their disposal. In fact one of the reasons people left Usenet for inferior moderated web forums is because while they could (quite rightly) control their own experience, they (quite rightly) had no ability to control the group.

Ironically, although Usenet is considered to be dead these days, it's in some ways in better shape than ever.

20 years ago it suffered from its popularity, under attack from spammers and trolls attempting and often succeeding in destroying newsgroups.

These days it probably has more users than it had before the mid 90s internet explosion, whereas spammers and trolls have largely moved on to bigger audiences elsewhere.

It's strange for me to read people talking nostalgically about how the internet was better in the past, about online forums they were a part of 15 years ago, or Reddit or 4chan, and seemingly have no experience or even knowledge of Usenet.

And that something as similar and simple to use as email is ignored by people who rue the loss of old (web) forums.

Unlike web options Usenet is no-nonsense, free, has no admin headaches, no advertising, no Evil Corp owner (or potential sell out to Evil Corp when the community grows enough), it's anonymous, private and allows unrestricted speech (within applicable law, obviously).

All it requires is for people to use it.

Poor white men arguably have more in common with poor women of other races than they do with rich white CEOs or presidents, but, you know, divide and rule.