_ktx2

One thing to recognize is that HN has had an influx of new users that are pretty right wing, at times using veiled far right speech. Years ago, it was filled with people who had stock very left wing (at times ridiculous) views that I wouldn't call "counter-culture" either. I only know this because I've had to report many of them.

My hypothesis is that each of these groups come here after being kicked out or pushed out of wherever they usually hang out. The ones that remain on HN after a period of time are the ones that dang doesn't wear out via moderation or haven't been outright banned. They eventually learn to be good HN members and then stay.

As the author said, they're not reading this but I couldn't help but try to verify what they're saying is their truth: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=behnamoh

Edit: Actually, just filtering for their website: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=medium.com/parttimebe... This post is the highest comment count and point count that the author has ever received.

I found an Ask HN with 6 comments and one that the author objected to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32242160

There's an article on Electron terminal apps (and Microsoft Terminal?) that got some corrections/objections, but nothing obtuse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32360227

One article sparked a lively discussion on the security of python -m when the author advocated its use: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32156581 (this one was just their submission, not their story)

and the author has asked for personal/career advice, to which I saw nothing obtuse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32130535

I'm not sure what comments the author is talking about that are "hateful". People on HN can be a bit "difficult" at times, especially if perspectives or experiences diverge significantly. In general, I'll give this advice: When I post, I read the comments but don't engage. Engaging is unhealthy for me and it detracts from the current state of what I wrote (I am the kind of person that will go change my blog posts over time). For others the rule is "Don't read the comments". Personally, I think the author falls in the latter category - and that's not to say anything bad of it, it's just the way some folks are.

Just taking a step back here, I'm willing to bet OP and some of the other folks replying (like here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32338845) are just fulfilling predictions made here: https://spectrum.ieee.org/study-nobody-wants-social-robots-t...

This piece focused on a machines appearance, but later they comment that really what's at the root of peoples issues (the people that have them) is that they resent the anthropomophizing of machines in general - which I would take to include speech.

Yes, if I was commenting on a project or company that I had self-interest in (eg: reputational, monetary, etc) then I would add a disclaimer like everyone else here does.

If you're writing messaging systems and working on cryptocurrency you can figure out Algolia: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

You didn't need me to do that.

> How heavenly it might be if only every paid employee (and potentially, compensated advocate) of big tech, big copyright, big nation-state, big regulation, and big ideologies – as they pile-on the votes & comments here & elsewhere – were similarly open about their affiliations!

Luckily I'm not paid to talk about privacy. While there's probably some people who monetize privacy they're usually looked at negatively. Apple is a good case study of that. The closest you could get to saying that I'm paid to talk about privacy is my work on cryptography orchestration, but that was not built to be monetized - it was built to protect information and put users in control.

> My current & former affiliations are well-disclosed across my web presences...

> But I've not been full-time there for about a decade

> Yes, my work history is congruent with my beliefs about privacy & copyright on the internet, and prominently disclosed. (My jobs don't dictate my views; my views dictate my jobs.)

Doesn't really matter, disclose your affiliations - especially for the kind of wild statements you make (eg: comparing thread commenters to "big tech, big copyright, big nation-state, big regulation, and big ideologies".)

> Just as you misrepresented the Archive's process for exclusion as requiring a DMCA request – even though your own links complimented the Archive's "straightforward" process –

I didn't misrepresent it. https://medium.com/wednesday-genius/how-to-remove-your-websi... Quite literally, the most expedient way to get them to remove content is to frame it as a DMCA. Just because the changed process is "easy" or "straight forward" right now, doesn't mean that won't change on a dime. I already noted they removed a web norm and replaced it with email.

> you're now confusing an imaginary claim of "commons" (no rights) versus my narrower claim of traditional balance, fair use, and implied licenses.

I agree, commons is the wrong term, "fair use" is what IA legally rides on.

> And if you think the straightforward, sympathetic, norm-respecting noncommercial policies of the San Francisco' based Internet Archive are a threat to queer and other often-persecuted lifestyles

IA is part of the larger problem, I'm not playing whackamole with giant businesses acting badly, or as you put it pushing boundaries for some imaginary libertarian-esque greater good. Regulation will solve anyone who wants to host or do business on US soil.

> The Wayback Machine is a friendly canary reminding people of the risk and responsive to their concerns; others represent the fatal dangers of privacy blowback.

I am literally speechless at this logic. The idea that doing harm is somehow a canary for larger potential harm and is worth continuing to do is awful reasoning. IA can make their services less harmful without harming their larger mission, I've also proposed ways to do that that you have not responded to.

> You've made unsupportable allegations of "flaunting privacy" or "direct attack on individual privacy"...

I supported both of those statements. They took a self-service, automated system that is a web norm (which you apparently like) and replaced it with emails for DMCA takedowns. You can disagree with me, but they're not unsupported.

> ...accused those who simply reason from copyright-history as making "bad faith" arguments

I reasoned that people like you know that your comparison to organized, for-profit publishers are not cogent. Every time you respond I become more confident of that assertion, especially when you accuse me of being a shill for some "big copyright" conspiracy.

Lastly, probably the most salient point I've ever heard:

> "Copyright holders aren't going to be happy with Freenet and Gnutella," Mohr said. "They are going to want to start monitoring people at the ISP level, and that means there is going to be a coming war between individual privacy versus network security."

Ironically, years later you went to work on what would end up becoming a privacy eroding tool. I wish I was talking to the gojomo of back then, I think there'd been a much more productive conversation than this has been.

As I've now learned, you used to work for the Internet Archive. You should probably start your statements with that.

> If you've taken no self-help measures to limit access...

robots.txt was a nice self-help measure.

> ... then bad actors, unobservable to you and regulators, will still be doing whatever they would like to do and can get away with.

Regulators still have to follow regulations. You are right that I can't stop someone from creating offline archives - but they're not really who I am worried about. Nor am I worried about the small servers that keep copies of documents during transmission, unless of course they're doing so for criminal reasons.

> Wait, why are books, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, pamphlets, & flyers a bad faith analogy?

Because they're comparing an individuals blog or Twitter profile to those things, of which they are not analogous. Not to mention you use rhetoric like this:

> If copyright maximalists & DRM fans

It just goes to show the juvenile nature that some people will stoop to in order to prove their point. In this case, "some people" is you. Not everybody out here are the little demons you've dreamed up in your soul; most of the people responding on this thread are just privacy advocates who have seen how these policies go wrong, often first-hand. A little further down the thread someone makes a very salient point about the queer community and how these tools are used in unmasking.

> Nor, allege criminality or 'bad-faith' against people just using the worldwide-web as it was designed, and enjoying readers' rights as they've been traditionally interpreted.

The internet as a technological invention did not arrive with legalities already paved. They were very much in flux and have been in flux. It's okay if you don't like that, but asserting that the internet was created with commons as the default is junk; that's a very US-American law that has dominated cultural perception. Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, we have countries figuring out nuanced ways to implement the right to be forgotten - notice none of that legislation is geared towards large corporations, it's focused on individuals.

---

Getting to the rest of your argument that wasn't distastefully written: I do agree that it shouldn't be a copyright free for all, but you can't have the Internet Archive and other folks creating weapons. There should be limits on both ends and I don't think those exist.

One really obvious limit is stop treating government entities and individuals the same. Stop treating large publishers and individuals the same. The former have immense resources to coordinate their communication and undergo thorough review processes, so their publications are more well thought out. Most blogs and social media posts are not nor do they have the same level of impact. Privacy advocates wouldn't need a copyright crutch if people could summon enough humanity and empathy to understand that. That would separate privacy advocates from copyright trolls on this issue.

---

Another edit

This is rich: https://twitter.com/gojomo http://xavvy.com/

You used to work for archive.org? That might be a thing you should call out in discussion.

Some posts:

- http://gojomo.blogspot.com/2001/01/

- http://gojomo.blogspot.com/2000/08/

- http://gojomo.blogspot.com/2002/07/

- http://news.oreilly.com/2008/06/gordon-mohr-takes-us-inside-... (This link looks dead)

- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,42438,00.html (This link looks dead, but was summarized by you as, "about the tug-of-war between personal privacy and copyright enforcement, March, 2001.")

There is an overlap in the two. Copyright can be used as a defense against folk who believe, "Everything on the internet not behind authentication is commons". Often these folks point to books, magazines, etc in reference to their argument, which is certainly bad faith, but that's why copyright arguments come up.

A reference to one such comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32150193

You are right, regulation is what solves this for good

Could be! However, making a direct attack on individual privacy should never have been an option. To make matters worse, the logic of, "We did this to government and military websites, so now we're going to roll it out everywhere" was quite broken for the time and remains so.

There's examples of how this works in a healthy way. Martin Manley is one scenario that comes to mind, where he overtly opted-in to having an archive stored about him upon his death: https://martin-manley.eprci.com/

One of the things I dislike the most about Internet Archive is their relatively open attitude of flaunting privacy on purpose: http://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-sear...

Do you know what system they replaced robots.txt with? Email, one that is filed as a DMCA request: https://medium.com/wednesday-genius/how-to-remove-your-websi... https://jonathanwthomas.net/how-to-get-your-website-out-of-t...

Sometimes, it's probably good to not push the envelope without trying to establish consensus in good faith first.

I think you're getting some snark because corporations are firing up a renewed interest in these kinds of metrics and as part of that they're starting with all the old ones (and motivations) that didn't work. Your messaging was fine, and your product has a clear audience (developers), this is just the fallout of industry bad behavior.

Usually when I hear people talk about backdooring it's usually on the network stack. On a phone that would be a modem.

Most devices, even in your computer (eg: laptop battery) run an OS. There's a good talk somewhere on how we've lost our way with OS design and now need to write an OS that looks at a single machine as a distributed system.

1Password went from being buy once upgrade forever to SaaS. A lot of folks bought back when that was the package (and business model) so it's viewed relatively negatively here from some folks. I don't blame them, but also, I think 1Password is a success. I just don't think they'd have been viable under their original business model.

> The tiny minority of black bloc protesters aren't anyone American politicians constituents

I don't even know what black bloc is. These are the folks: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/stor...

That area is near where I lived and where I'd visit often. I guess to you it's not a problem, but to me it was very visible. Also entirely anti-liberal and they faced very little if any formal condemnation.

> Far left antics don't touch them at all; as for The Squad, they're some of the most responsible politicians in this country.

Ilhan Omar is the antisemite I was talking about, and it wasn't some one-time occurrence either [1]. AOC, to me, is an agitator similar to Matt Gates or Ted Cruz. As for the rest of the "the squad" I have no idea what they do.

Liberals suppressing free speech is almost entirely grass roots, it's a certain type of liberal constituent that's grown over time. As I said earlier, the DNC generally has a mechanism for keeping them out of office, but there are notable exceptions. I don't think constituency is something to ignore though.

A notable example of how these constituents do things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich#Appointment_to_CE... While I don't agree with Brendan on a lot (if you search through my account I've argued with him on here before), using extra-legal measures to force someone out of a position especially after they've tried to make amends was fairly sickening. The cherry on top was that it was over two past political donations during a time when those views were certainly mainstream. Examples like this aren't really hard to find and, no, I'm not going to sit here and enumerate them for you. Especially as you've been bragging about how intellectually superior you are.

1: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/6/18251639/il...

Some things from that indexer you linked are problematic, but others certainly aren't. As I said, I don't question that the right does bad things with their power. I do question your denial that the left does. It seems odd to me that so many right and left folks don't question their own camps, or worse, have gotten to the point where they play no true scotsman with bad behavior:

> I don't know what to tell you to get you to see that substituting some rioting anarchist self-proclaimed leftists who have no representation in our politics for the liberals I referred to is insulting to my intelligence.

I guess one primary differentiator in our views is that you view the actions of representatives as more important than the actions and hegemony of constituents. I do not.

You didn't mention any current legislation specifically, just that there's legislation on-going.

> you went "both sides"

I don't know why people like you act like this is a bad thing. The left isn't good, or really great. In fact, it kind of sucks, just a little less than the right. White-bashing has become common place and acceptable in left-leaning circles, misandry has taken off like never before, when I was living in San Diego I watched self-proclaimed leftists in Ocean Beach dressed in all black, helmets, and baseball gear beat the shit out of people with bikes, knives, and CS gas. A prominent antisemite has been allowed to not only stay in office but also continue in committees and receives praise to this day.

On the other hand, you're right that the right has allowed bad behavior to make it into the actual representational ranks with those like MTG (there are more, just an example). From my perspective, that doesn't make the left any much better than the right, other than that they have some material functions within the DNC that allow them to keep those kinds of people (who are still constituents) away. I do think the RNC needs to implement these functions, and I understand why they didn't, but the US never would've gotten a world with Donald Trump had the right implemented super delegates the way the left does.

Maybe instead of acting like the left is a rosy and immaculate institution you should examine the fractures in the facade that people try to cover up with warm rhetoric.

In my experience, it's not fruitful to argue with folks like you. You're just going to believe what you believe, as if politics and current events are football or religion. Best of luck.

You're definitely repeating some of the misinformation in the form of reductionism. The situation with WMDs in Iraq was definitely wrong, but doesn't rise to lies. Two different countries were saying that they suspected these weapons were in Iraq, where Al Qaeda was heavily present, and often protected. The cherry on top was that in the 1980s Saddam had not only manufactured chemical weapons but he used them as well. Saddam refused to allow UN investigators in, and thus we had the Iraq war. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_des...

One of the things I also remember from this time period was about why 9/11 happened even though some individual agencies had bits of information. It was discovered these agencies didn't share information so as to protect it. FISA and The Dept of Homeland Security are direct reflections of their own internal criticism.

I was raised never to trust the government. I served in Afghanistan under two different presidents and I definitely get what it's like to witness lies and misinformation spewed across TV stations while your reality on the ground is very different. These days I have a healthy distrust for government still, however, I expect to see reports and trajectories change when those institutions mess things up. This is what composes "trust" for me now. That's the best I feel that I can expect from any large bureaucratic organization government or otherwise.

I was in a similar position as you. West coast liberalism is not great, I struggle to call it liberalism when I hear some people speak. That said, if you have liberal friends on the East coast chat with them. The culture there is loads better in my opinion.

I've been using 1Password for years now, the auto-fill always works. I don't use their command line stuff much, and I have some read some legitimate criticisms about how they communicate secrets on unix-like systems. Apart from that, I'm not sure I understand the dissatisfaction in the comments. Can someone enumerate what's wrong with 1Password? Are tools like BitWarden any better?

I'm a very sparing user of social media, but after work I do love to play games. I play games with people I know IRL as well as a litany of people I've never met - true to my old 90's and 00's gamer days. Now, there's Discord.

I was pretty skeptical the first time people implored me to join a Discord server, but I've found some communities are very dope. I've discovered that managing peoples behavior online is like trying to herd sheep in a straight line. The flock always goes forward, that much is constant. There are sheep on the left and on the right side of the herd that push the herd onto a new trajectory, a lot of the time I don't think they even know what they're doing, but if you take a step back you can watch it occur in real-time. A leader, who likely doesn't know they're a leader, starts acting in a certain way, which causes the shift. Then another leader clashes with that leader by proxy, which is what I describe as the other side of the herd. These bounding behaviors almost never keep the flock constrained, they cause the flock to split.

These leaders are disposable though. They're placeholders for culture, language, collections of experience, values, etc that people identify with. It takes having conversations with troublemakers and making their effects known in plain language. Some people will get it, moderate their behavior despite their culture, language, collections of experience, values etc and some won't. Those who won't will either leave on their own or get banned.

> Right. It’s our fault, that is, men’s. We live in a society in which we we have disproportionately had the power. And this is the result.

I find gender blaming conversation to be reductive. The decline of men and boys is not men's fault nor is it women's fault. Dare I say there's little data to show either way, nor is it really helpful in healing from a dysfunctional society that has failed you on a systemic and individual level.

Even worse, the way some people will wave their hands and use the word "power" to justify why men should be successful is pure misandry and a misunderstanding of the availability and avenues of power. A boy that grows up with an undiagnosed learning challenge is not afforded power or privilege, despite blanketly being regarded as powerful due to their gender. Parallel examples to this are countless.

> Why are women doing better in certain areas?

Easy. Feminism. It's the societal block for the broader representation of a spectrum of views that are women-centric that has significant force in society. They provide programs that are often woman-exclusive, advocate and raise alarms on issues, etc... There is nothing like this for men because modern rhetoric opposes the idea that men can be a victim to much of anything.

The point of the post seems to be, "Maybe stop treating men and boys like the villains in their own story, don't make scarecrows out of other groups as has been historically done, and use positivity to create a culture that men want and strive to be a part of."

> The opposite happened. “Nobody became more moderate,” said Bail. “Republicans in particular became much more conservative when they followed the Democratic bot, and Democrats became a little bit more liberal.”

This is accurate of right wingers, but it skimps on an observation I've noticed. As polarization increases, liberals become more tolerant of their own extremists. Most Democrats I've known throughout my life owned guns, valued the principle of free speech, would never get caught putting down an entire class of people, etc yet all of these are common views to, in some way, argue against as a Democrat these days.

One could argue it's the popularity of progressivism and how it's cultural values are now eroding the average Democrats, but I'm not quite sold on that idea. My pet theory has been that "own the libs" builds tolerance for extreme views because they further agitate the right, so it was interesting to see them highlight the rights agitation with the left. For now, I'll stick to calling myself an independent until all of this blows over and we can go back to having beers instead of talking about politics and our "values" for entertainment.

I definitely have healthy friendships, I was just sharing a learning.

I was on SSRIs for a time until my thoughts became so irreversibly cloudy that I weened off and stopped. After that I coincidentally stopped drinking, my weight dropped, and now I've stopped using weed for the most part. My anxiety doesn't go away, even if I go ride my bike for hours.

The things that give me anxiety are largely social. How people think of me at work, my appearance, what women think of me, and how they perceive how I act. The only thing that helps is shutting these thoughts down with CBT. I've dubbed this my, "Nobody cares Mother Fucker™" routine.

I've noticed relying on my friends to vent just sours relationships. As much as people gloat about support systems, it's mainly a farce. People will only tolerate hearing so much of your internal dissonance, concerns, and stressors. People want to enjoy you, for the most part. Maybe a partner will be there for you, but not likely in my experience (though, I'm unmarried, so take what I say with a grain of salt.)

She's been on Planet Money and discussed her ideas, where they come from, etc before. I don't think I'd quite do them justice explaining them myself. Apparently she's now a chair of the FTC as well (which I was unaware of).

If you want a raw view of her views on anti-trust: https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/e.710.Khan.805_zuvfyyeh.p...

In one of the podcasts she dives into the history of anti-trust. She talks about how after Standard Oil we convinced ourselves everything was a monopoly and stifled a lot of innovation, which led to some reforms later and the anti-trust we have today which are demonstrably too permissive. She has picked on Amazon (as a wider corporation) quite a bit, but a lot of it has to do with the practices of their ecommerce division and the extent to which Amazon can compete with it's vendors. Basically, she believes there's a middleground to be found between the two anti-trust time periods and that it's important to be concise in how we do that. You can see some of her specific criticisms in the article above.

A more full bibliography can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Khan

I highly suggest "The Separation of Platforms and Commerce" as that's the one that resonated with me, having worked in the startup world.

I was talking about the American Revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution

That's when our first/temporary government was formed, and it's purpose was the fight the British.

> I believe American Culture is one that supports each other and society, we have just lost our way and we are in a bit of a battle for the soul of America. It is being hijacked by super individualist who forget they are part of something bigger and that they have a responsibility to society as much as society should respect the individual.

We are a nation that celebrates political individualism, which is where the term "liberalism" (little L) comes from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism Individualism is not at competition with the characteristics you described, but it does put freedom squarely on the individual for better or for worse. The counter to this, which you might favor in the moment but regret in the long-run, is collectivism.

I've been programming since I was about nine. I still love writing software as much as I did the day that I figured out that you could compile code. Corporate code gives me the kind of feels that I see in other comments here about burnout. I often tell folks that when I go to work I am a shell of the man I really am, git clone --depth 1 if you will. It isn't necessarily the code itself that bothers me; it's the incentive structure, it's the way managers and executives commonly lie or manipulate you with stories and narratives, and the politics. It's like I can see all of that in the actual code. I can see where someone stayed up way too late, or compromises were made with an overzealous executive or manager. I came into engineering because I loved to code, I stayed for the money, but when this career is long gone I'll probably still tinker with code.

"Mastering Software Engineering" smells of professionalization. What's to master? Algorithms, data structures, patterns? To me, the mastery of software engineering is learning to learn and identifying what things to learn when. There will be a thing after coding, and the same kind of people will inhabit that job, I suspect.

Just to address your Electron mini-rant:

I've been trying to build a desktop application for the entire pandemic. In my professional work I work on infrastructure products (think software engineering, not DevOps or SRE). My skills are not really outfit for frontend development or desktop development. Shocking stuff, my ineptitude, I know (/sarcasm)

I ended up learning some JS and I wrote a desktop app with the help of a package called Wails for Go. It's electron-like in many ways, but lets me code up a "backend" in go while JS is resigned to doing things it's good at, like UI. Eventually, though, I struck the gold mine. I actually made a native desktop app in Go with an immediate mode package. It looked like shit, but it worked. I then went on to design a command line variant as well.

My chief takeaway after doing all of them: even my native code resembled the patterns found in JavaScript based UI developments. This basically implies "ELM is everywhere" to some degree, even in Frontends that don't explicitly say it. QT's QML is JavaScript that's pre-compiled for desktop. Sciter is the same way. You can gripe about electrons size, computational, and memory efficiency, but the opposite (native programming for UI) requires an order of magnitude of very niche programming that will only be useful for this purpose, of which any cool thing (like syntax highlighting) that you might want to do will need to be done for the first time. Just a quick reminder, again, I'm not really a fan of or regular user of JavaScript or TypeScript.

What I'm saying is, there are tradeoffs to be made. I don't blame a bunch of startups investing in a JavaScript desktop app when you can absolutely produce a stable cash cow with minimal skillset change and leave a handful of teams building independent threads and daemons that JavaScript can pass work off to that it can't do.