arel

Not true. All historical white supremacy movements have been built on the narrative of genetic superiority. Skull shapes, race theory etc.

Although cultural superiority is entwined in this its only recently this became centre stage as a means to still advance the same old tired bigotry but with a mainstream friendly face.

This a (frankly lazy) narrative often used to dismiss demands for equality.

You might be able to point to isolated incidents but to view group advocacy as a whole as malicious power grab is simply not true and a gross misrepresentation.

A better question is probably do you think certain groups are wrong in their perception that they are unfairly treated?

If yes then you are not acknowledging a vast amount of very clearly expressed life experience and if no why be against them advocating for themselves as a group?

What you're missing here is in reality, your life experience, outcomes and how you are treated in society can be very much a consequence of your "identity".

All groups are advocating for is equality of treatment from institutions and from society at large.

Is that too much to ask?

Once we get to that place there's nothing more marginalised groups would love to do then to stop being defined by race.

The cargo culting and contrarian smugness on HN can be very annoying.

Not very representative of the entire real world of development.

There are options to target them specifically.

For example we could progressively make them sterile.

Serious question - Why can't we put our minds to it and kill them all?

Why can't we banish this mass killer and cause of immense suffering to humans and animals alike.

I haven't seen any compelling evidence that they form any vital component of ecosystems apart from obviously spreading disease and applying some adapation pressure - which we could eliminate like we have done with lots of other killers.

A serious investigation based on actual real verified events.

The series of secret meetings, lies and changing narrative from so many in the admin that were later exposed as false tells its own story.

Whether it could be proved as collusion, conspiring or is another issue. There is plenty of 'there' there.

Globalisation has many problems but _causes_ racism?

I would argue it's demagogues who take advantage of societal breakdown to inflame inherent racism.

More generally we also have a choice regardless of circumstances to not be racist. I can see how as a species we're not there yet though.

> All of the clips cut out all of the context

Categorically false

There are hundreds of videos showing the police brutalising peaceful protest. Watch them.

Single example - How about peaceful protestors at the Whitehouse being tear gassed, batoned and charged to make way for the president's photo op?

> With this idea in mind, I personally can't picture myself being able to remain calm and not overstep my boundaries sooner or later.

It's their job to remain calm and lawful under all circumstances.

They have the full force of state sanctioned violence at their disposal.

Watch some of the hundreds of videos on Twitter now and see if you can't see a rotten and brutal culture in US policing.

> Bill Gates knew (see ted talk), the rest of us didn't.

This assertion is false.

Generally speaking competent governments routinely do threat level risk assessments.

For example previous UK governments produced comprehensive pandemic response plans:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Cygnus

In the US the Obama administration produced a pandemic playbook.

Obama gave speeches highlighting the threat of pandemics and left a fully staffed pandemic response team:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-pandemic-preparednes...

However:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-n...

I hope this is not seen as a political attack but presentation of facts.

Some governments are simply more competent than others.

There's a painful cognitive dissonance that people seem to have about this disease - there isn't an option (unless you don't care about lots of people dying) where the economy doesn't take a big hit in order to contain the exponential phase.

It's not clear what the alternatives are?

I assume you're not advocating a no measures approach.

No lockdown even with social distancing still does huge economic damage and even then you would not get herd immunity - 60% infection rate is required.

The point is avoiding mass death. They care about their families lives too and not just economics.

It's not a 'political' choice or about 'optics'.

It's also not just 'old' people who are dying. It affects 50+ year olds in not insignificant numbers.

It depends whether you prioritise health or economics.

You can balance health and economics and choose to prioritise one _before_ the other.

It does however requires the political will to support the economy (and the poorest) whilst health care is prioritised to buy time during the exponential phase.

> for example the UK or Belgium

It depends when each country locked down relative to the number of cases and deaths at the time.

The UK is widely acknowledged (here anyway) to have acted too late in its lockdown as the were trying to pursue herd immunity.

Your underlying assumption is a) Sweden is reporting correctly and b) won't in future find excess deaths in the community - as other countries have:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-care-h...

UK coronavirus deaths more than double official figure, according to FT study:

https://www.ft.com/content/67e6a4ee-3d05-43bc-ba03-e239799fa...

Because of the huge amount of excess deaths that get assigned as probable covid cases. This is happening right now in the UK.

Couldn't you in fact make the opposite case?

Sweden as the outlier is not reporting accurately and others are?

The UK has seen huge excess mortality above the average which is being attributed to large numbers of undiagnosed deaths in care homes and in the community.

Its far too early to make any claims as to superior accuracy when almost every country is struggling with accurate testing across their entire population.

In which case you'd expect Swedens numbers to get revised strongly upwards.

Sweden also has no conclusive sign of flattening yet.

Big numerator / bigger denominator doesn't make the numerator go away.

Are you going to atoms in the universe next?

So following this logic lets shut down all hospitals and stop treating all illnesses?

And if we follow your premise that this is hysteria and we go back to work how many absolute numbers of people will die vs other causes of preventable death?

Herd immunity would still mean millions of dead people you'd have to step over.

The countries that thought they could go this route did a hard reverse once reality hit them.

Hysteria?

What negates this thinking is hard mathematics ie that all the other things don't kill at a _geometric_ rate. If left unchecked millions of people will die in a short amount of time.

Yes flu also progress similarly but we have vaccines for the flu and we manage it seasonally. Even considering the CFR for covid-19 will drop substantially it is still killing by OOM more people across all age brackets without co-morbidities (not to mention medics) which the flu doesn't do.

All of this has happened before (probably)

Very valid points!

It smacks of transplanting a rose-tinted view of 1950s academia into schools.

Teaching students in a modern school environment is a world apart from academia.

Also, entirely predictable down-voting, I imagine from engineers who have no experience of teaching.

Great job! I'd love to hear more about the calculations involved for the sun and moon paths and the implementation of the shadow maps. If you have the time and haven't already perhaps it would be worthy of a blog?

It's very hard to see how you reached this conclusion, which seems to show more knee-jerk bias on your part.

The article is (in the main) about our relationship to news. The ever increasing saturation of 'news' into our everyday lives with constant demands for our attention and the impact on individuals and society.

It actually advocates rising above news and connecting on a human level with each other rather than political in order to push the news cycle out of our lives.

Here are some quotes from the article:

"The belief that we’re morally obliged to stay plugged in – that this level of time commitment and emotional investment is the only way to stay informed about the state of the world – begins to look more and more like an alibi for our addiction to our devices."

"At Thanksgiving with your Trumpist uncle, the point is not to seek agreement or compromise, but to grasp that we are not fully defined by our political allegiances – and that, as Talisse puts it, “in order to treat each other as political equals, we must see each other as something more than citizens”. "

And the last paragraph:

"But it may be the only practical way for us to begin to foster a change. If the colonisation of everyday life by the news is damaging both to ourselves and to democratic politics, we ought not to collaborate unthinkingly with that process. Far from it being our moral duty to care so much about the news, it may in fact be our duty to start caring somewhat less."

Its both:

1. Platforms have a civic responsibility to not promote disinformation.

2. Citizens have a responsibility to escape their bias and bubbles and reject disinformation.

But in the current environment where even basic truth and sources are under attack by yelling 'fake news' where is the foundational truth on which to even arrive at critical thinking?

This is the authoritarian's great trick.

Critical thinking is hard work and discomforting, its much easier to pick a side and allow yourself to be manipulated.

We need critical thinking but more importantly we need to attack the tribalism and polarisation that prevent us even making the journey to critical thinking.

There is a point that is always missed about Electron - UI.

By using HTML, CSS & JS you have an extremely rich toolkit to create UI with constant improvements from browser vendors and standards bodies.

If a designer can create a pattern library in sketch then chances are it can be implemented using web technologies.

This is a much bigger and more active open platform when contrasted to the capabilities of a particular framework and community.

Theres another topic around whether you should detour from the OS UI look and feel. But most designers and product owners worth their salt are conscious of keeping known UX patterns and least surprise.

The single most annoying set of adverts on the internet. Hammy with extra ham on top.

> divisive social and political messages

If the actor is a foreign government and the intent is to destabilize a country thats ok with you?

Thank you! Just to note Temple Bar was moved from its original position: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Bar,_London

My evaluation of Thiel's ability to think intelligently, critically, with reason, nuance and with empathy just plummeted.

You want to change the world for the better Peter? Don't support a vitriolic demagogue.

I hope other leaders of our industry are able to show some backbone and standup to this idiocy.