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PlzSnowon Libertarian communism

"The rise of communism in China, although violent and of the state-socialist kind, also brought hundreds of millions out of poverty."

Indeed, absolute world poverty has halved over the last 30 years because of state-socialism. Oops sorry, it was capitalism that halved poverty, not socialism. What a mistake to make!

PlzSnowon Libertarian communism

Thanks for the link!

Do you have a similar great and concise introduction to Nazism or other related extremist totalitarian ideologies?

PlzSnowon Libertarian communism

"That was state socialism, not a true communist society."

Ah. the "No true Scotsman fallacy". It would be funny it it weren't for the countless millions of tortured and murdered women, children, peasants...

PlzSnowon Libertarian communism

The communist ideology resulted in the torture/execution/starvation of, what, 100 million working-class people?

People don't go about saying "I'm a fascist, let's give it another go, maybe it will work this time, sorry about the millions of dead children".

So why do people think it's OK to say they're a communist?

PlzSnowon [dead]

Most inequality in the UK is because rich people are getting much richer. But the poor people aren't getting poorer, they're getting richer too. Standard of living for poor people has increased hugely over the last 50 years.

PlzSnowon The sad state of web app deployment

I think Discourse is an over-engineered catastrophe, a prime example of highly-skilled technical people unable to make business decisions. As the author says, this a web-forum software, all it is doing is displaying some text on a page and maybe sending an email. This was a solved problem 15 years ago with PHP. But they wanted to re-implement everything in a technically-purist manner, and end up with the absurd situation where you need to install a virtual container to perform one of the most basic computing functions there is: displaying text on a page. And that's just the server-side, the client rendering is so over-engineered that it only works on the very latest browsers. TO DISPLAY TEXT! Completely bonkers. They needed a "user-experience evangelist" or whatever you call them on that team.

PlzSnowon OpenSeadragon: A pure JavaScript high-resolution zoomable image viewer

On my Macbook the swipe to zoom in/out works beautifully well.

PlzSnowon We're changing our name (back) to StackOverflow

OK here goes, slightly OT. The name StackExchange is hands-down the worst name I have encountered for a Top100 website.

It is absurdly bad.

I remember them discussing it on the StackOverflow podcast. What were they thinking? It is a mainstream QA website. Call it something like Popzoozle or QuizQ or Anserr or something... but StackExchange???? Have you ever in your life heard a non-techie person say "wow I love StackExchange"??? The branding has zero impact.

PlzSnowon Facebook's New Spam-Killer Hints at the Future of Coding

My jaw actually dropped when they said "they used a programming language called Haskell."

Were all my prejudices against the business practicality of functional languages wrong?

Nope.

"Biilmann no longer uses Haskell. It’s not entirely practical."

EDIT: ... and to say, if Facebook can't attract superstar Haskell programmers, then what chance any other startup?

PlzSnowon Report: U.S. average daily mobile game time drops over 30% in a year

The 30% decline mirrors my behavior and certainly that of my friends. Anecdotal I know. Increased time spent watching streaming video, especially "let's play" gaming type videos/eSports.

Blaming in-game-purchasing is a red herring. It's easy and human-nature to blame your pet hate for problems. See Trump and immigrant-blaming.

PlzSnowon Report: U.S. average daily mobile game time drops over 30% in a year

It's not true. Reasons for the decline are that people are using their mobile devices for other things. Read the article.

PlzSnowon UK surveillance “worse than 1984” says new UN privacy chief

Perhaps the UN privacy chief should actually read 1984, then he would realise how silly he sounds.

PlzSnowon Samsung disabling Windows Update?

absurd nonsense

PlzSnowon DeepMind uses the Daily Mail as a huge training corpus for text comprehension

edgy stuff

PlzSnowon The village and the girl

These "immersive" stories will disappear once the realization that the ROI on them doesn't work. Expensive to create, but no income generated because no-one reads them because they are annoying.

The only companies left using them will be those with no concern about ROI such as here; the state-funded BBC.

I'm sure it looks good on the designer's CV though. Who cares about the people who have to actually read the content...

PlzSnowon China's Man-On-the-Side Attack on GitHub

It's also how I feel about the RT-watching population of the US.

PlzSnowon Ask HN: I want to write a simple webapp, how should I start?

For what you describe, perhaps an Excel spreadsheet would be best.

Although if you're just looking at learning how to CRUD, then it's a good learning exercise.

PlzSnowon Amazon Goes After Dropbox, Google, Microsoft with Unlimited Cloud Drive Storage

Amazon Cloud Drive is useless because it has no synchronization. You need to manually upload and download files whenever they change.

Useless!

PlzSnowon Ask HN: Do you take nootropics?

NO!

I investigated nootropics extensively. If you want to know the fruits of my research:

* anything that "works" has a very pronounced psychoactive effect on the brain. Which is scary in the long-term.

* by far the biggest cognitive boost you can get is SLEEPING WELL! Do this FIRST! It's easy to fix and gives a huge boost in output.

* caffeine works as well as many nootropics, with little to no side-effects if taken sensibly. Also combine with Theanine if wanting to venture into the world of "probably works and has harmless side-effects".

PlzSnowon “Implement text editor DOM updates manually instead of via React”

But that means the technology is being chosen to suit the developer, and not the end-user.

PlzSnowon “Implement text editor DOM updates manually instead of via React”

Why have "acceptable" performance, when I can have "stunning" performance (Sublime Text). I am a professional, and my tools should reflect this.

PlzSnowon Waiting for the sea

These "immersive" stories will disappear once the realization that the RIO on them doesn't work. Who actually sits down and passively consumes media in this half passive/half active way?

The only companies left using them will be those with no concern about ROI such as here; the state-funded BBC.

PlzSnowon “Citizenfour” Awarded Oscar for Best Documentary in 2014

I understand the social justice thrust of your argument, and I understand the political narrative that wishes to categorize this as "execution". Unfortunately no-one really agrees apart from your fellow-travellers on the extreme-left.

PlzSnowon “Citizenfour” Awarded Oscar for Best Documentary in 2014

This is your argument? If I think Greenwald/Socialist Worker are absurd extremes of opinion, then I must be a neocon?

That is the black/white logic of a toddler or Disney movie.

PlzSnowon “Citizenfour” Awarded Oscar for Best Documentary in 2014

"Real mystery where that came from."

I hope you're not saying I'm one of them/a spook/lizardman. Because I really like this website and it depresses me that it's slowly being infected with the conspiracy mindset.

PlzSnowon “Citizenfour” Awarded Oscar for Best Documentary in 2014

It's not up to the person arguing the status quo to prove the status quo. It's up to person with the extraordinary theory to provide the extraordinary evidence.

PlzSnowon “Citizenfour” Awarded Oscar for Best Documentary in 2014

If the only people agreeing with you are Glenn Greenwald, Socialist Worker and Esquire, then maybe your argument has a problem.

PlzSnowon “Citizenfour” Awarded Oscar for Best Documentary in 2014

It fits the definition of "combat" used by almost everyone. And basically no-one would define it as "execution". So there's your problem there.

PlzSnowon “Citizenfour” Awarded Oscar for Best Documentary in 2014

Your definition of execution would not be recognised by any sensible person or institution.

PlzSnowon “Citizenfour” Awarded Oscar for Best Documentary in 2014

"there are US citizens that are being executed without even a trial"

Wow! Edgy stuff. You should present your evidence, it would be the news story of the decade. You do have evidence I presume? It's not as if you would write something so outlandish based purely on conspiracy theories?