dbsmith83

There is never a good reason for an `All ${large_population_of_people_defined_by_metric} are ${some_derogatory_thing}` statement

I used to hack away with Delphi back in the day. I tried getting back into it with Lazarus, but I really find Pascal syntax painful to work with again for some reason. It just has some strange conventions and I feel like I'd have to actually read a book to become proficient. A very different experience than learning, say, Kotlin where I could essentially pick it up knowing other OO languages and having a good IDE

You're clearly arguing in good faith and very polite. Just ignore the downvoters, since this is a sensitive subject. Later on people will come back and see your greyed out comment and upvote it just to offset the people overreacting

More funny when emotional people refuse to see simple cause and effect

True, there is a stark difference between the optimism before vs. the more dystopian outlook that a lot of people (myself included) share about it

'A just machine to make big decisions, programmed by fellas with compassion and vision...'

That stuff is cool and all, but revolutionary? Nah, it's all predictable. Doesn't hold a candle to the excitement of the early days of computers and the internet which was opening up the world and changing lifestyles

> HN will be the last dark dominion of Left-Hemisphere-Dominance to be dragged, demanding citations and invoking logical fallacies all the way, into the present.

Thanks for giving me a good chuckle this morning! God, this place is great.

True, assuming you can know for sure it can't come in. You could just delay the information coming out by a few moves so that even if it can get back in via an accomplice watching the game, it won't matter

> In my opinion, the pillars of coziness (in no particular order) are:

> - Customizability

Customization is what I loved about software in the earlier days of the internet. It was just fun! It seemed like we were heading for a future where the average user could eventually customize just about anything, but we took a sharp turn away from that reality, unfortunately.

> They also don’t have evidence that anything was illegal, since preventing misinformation & speculation isn’t illegal and might not be protected by the First Amendment.

IANAL (and I'm sure you aren't either), but if you actually read the wikipedia article you linked to, that specific area of constitutional law is vague and far from settled:

> The basis for this ruling was the Court's fear that "a rule compelling the critic of official conduct to guarantee the truth of all his factual assertions" would lead to "self-censorship".[15] This determination altered the theory of the 'false statements' free speech exception. Even if a false statement generally would be harmful for public discourse, the Court quoted John Stuart Mill in arguing a false statement in this context would bring "the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error".[16]

> Issues "of public concern"

The leading case on what an issue "of public concern" is Dun & Bradstreet v. Greenmoss Builders (1985). In Dun & Bradstreet, the Supreme Court considered whether a credit reporting service which distributed fliers to their only five subscribers qualified as an action of "public concern". As it was "hardly and unlikely to be deterred by incidental state regulation", the Court concluded it did not qualify.[5] This decision did not provide strong guidance on the issue.[20]

This vague area of law in regards to false statements of fact can lead to a variety of arguments over what is relevant or has public importance.[20][21]

(emphasis is mine^)

Anyway, I'm not arguing it was or was not illegal, since that is a matter for the courts to decide. You could be right, but I'm skeptical

> Why is it illegal?

You are asking why is violating the First Amendment illegal? Because that's how laws work here. The constitution is literally called 'the law of the land', hence violating it would be illegal

> Where is that stated?

Where is what stated? That this was a violation of the First Amendment? I mean, it's literally in the subheading of the article: "Censorship of wrongthink by Big Tech at the behest of the government is government censorship, which violates the First Amendment". I am not arguing it was or wasn't, I was just letting the OP know what the real issue is

The declaration may very well be 'misinformation', but that is a non-issue. The question being asked here is "Did the US govt violate the First amendment by illegally compelling tech companies to censor certain viewpoints?"

I don't think you gave this any serious thought. There are a lot of situations

https://www.nfl.com/news/officer-apologizes-after-delaying-t...

https://www.ems1.com/airway-management/articles/video-man-be...

I'm sure you could come up with many more possible scenarios

...until you get pulled over

> Cops who see the light can consider it "reasonable suspicion" to pull you over.

Bizarre? Sounds like you don't know how to use the 3 shells

I have not worked on a system where the performance mattered so much to consider not having a FK. I personally think that the key relationships should reflect the nature of the data. It prevents a lot of errors so that new devs don't create data which should not be able to exist. Don't make invalid data have a chance to exist or be representable. Make it difficult to pollute the db because relying on your app layer is risky

- A good full body workout routine with some weights to build core strength. I avoid really heavy weights since that can increase my odds of having bad form to compensate and then hurting myself. Just sticking to light and medium weights has been very beneficial.

- Use a standup desk for part of the day.

- Look up some physical therapy moves for the specific part of your back which hurts and do them a few times a week when you wake up or go to bed. My pain is usually in my mid back, and I discovered a couple moves which have helped reduce the occurrences of spasms.

Ah right, "morally indefensible". Except that people do defend it from a moral standpoint. Maybe not your moral standpoint, but a moral standpoint nonetheless. The fact that you are so blind as to be able to even see the other side of the issue just reaffirms my statement that you are the problem

No offense, but I think you need to engage a history book and some other news sources to break out of your bubble. The only difference is that one party is more aligned and recently successful than the other.

You actually believe that the right lies, but the left generally acts in good faith? That's...cute. Your lifetime must not be very long. Both parties are full of dishonest slimeballs. If you only see one side of it, you are being tricked

Ah, just put anyone who disagrees with you into the "bad people box". You are the problem

> My personal hypothesis is that companies are doing an organized, long term pull out of offices, but are resisting doing it all at once because they'd impact each other's commercial property values. This confusing state we're in is purposeful.

I doubt it, because most companies rent their space and they wouldn't care about the impact to the building. I think your premise is flawed:

> There's always that minor percentage of employees who cannot develop successful patterns to work from home. As the pandemic showed, these folks are the minority today.

Sure, maybe most people can develop 'successful patterns', but that doesn't mean that most people are most productive at home (in the eyes of company heads). The term 'successful patterns' is relative given the situation, and right now that means doing the best we can given the circumstances.

Anything related to medicine/biochemistry can get cringe-y pretty quickly here. I think the problem is that the crowd here is generally pretty intelligent, but they know it and it's a coefficient > 1 on the Dunning-Kruger effect

Hah, what does that mean? Grow up and start exploiting kids? No thanks. I don't need to recruit kids to fight culture wars for me

I can't help but see a lot of people using /s for a strawman

Meh, low-grade harassment to you might be completely acceptable conversation to other people, and that is the crux of the issue. Voting is used to identify bad-faith responses. If certain people can't handle responses which are in good faith, then I am personally glad that they are not participating. Those are not the kind of people that make good discussions anyway.

The comments have been really interesting to read here. On the one hand, I am relieved to see the number of other people who see a lot of this as silly at best, and dystopian at worst, like I do. On the other hand I see a lot of parallels with Paul Graham's recent post on heresy[1]. It seems like many people here want to be free to dissent without repercussions, but when reading thru the comments on the Heresy piece, it seemed like many people were very dismissive of the piece because they couldn't get over Paul not specifically naming a heresy. Isn't speaking out against this language erasure a heresy because of the fear of being cancelled?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30977147

Which wrongthink is not the issue being discussed here and is beside the point. This is about principle. The issue is not being able to hold any wrongthink beliefs (and discuss them) while also holding a job. If you can't think of anything which may be true but also offensive enough to get someone fired for proclaiming it, you may be guilty of being a 'conventional thinker'.

I don't think the policy means "pretend it's positive intent even when you know it isn't". If you have actual reasons for why it is not positive intent, you should be able to explain them (and your employer should listen, obviously). You should be able to still talk to that employee about taking credit for the work. It just might help the tone of that meeting to be not completely accusatory at first. If your employer is ignoring you and telling you to assume it is positive intent, then that would be an abuse of it.

> If a math wiz can ace their math class without studying I'd question why they're not taking a harder math class. Alternately if the math wiz want to focus more on literature (or whatever else) this semester wouldn't it more efficient to skip the math class entirely? ... I can't fathom why anyone would waste so much of their own time and money on a class that isn't going to teach them anything.

I agree, but unfortunately you can't just test out of required classes much of the time.