dragonsky

I think you are right and debate is needed, but unfortunately on online platforms debate is really hard to keep civil and respectful.

On platforms like HN where the audience is somewhat selective and moderation is possible you can have a reasonable debate, however on platforms like YouTube where views are money it can be difficult for creators to not play to the algorithm and go for the click-bate title with the emotive thumbnail with content that will attract the most views.

I think YouTube, by removing the money making imperative is at least removing that driver from the equation whilst leaving the possibility of still posting controversial material and allowing debate.

I am so tired of people implying that they believe in science. Science is not a religion requiring belief.

Science is a way of postulating that something may be real given the a available evidence. A true scientist should be ready to change their understanding of “real” when presented with new evidence.

Belief or faith is trusting something is real without evidence and is the antithesis of science.

Looks like a drone with legs more than a walking robot that can fly. I’m sure there is a use case where this type of agility is required, but I’m not really seeing a vast advantage over a drone or a legged robot for most usages.

Most took manipulation requires a solid base for leverage or lifting. I suppose if you set it ups as a drone with deplorable legs that could be useful when extra stability.

Looks like an RV minus the wheels. Why are these things held up as something "new" when caravans and RV's have been around for many a year.

I wonder how many of these feature requests are because the client does not understand how the software should be used? It could be that it is not designed to solve there problem, and having purchased it they are trying to get some utility from it. Would not be the first time that had been forced to use a system that was not suitable.

Just wondering what type of thing were you doing that would make you self conscious about your location? Please don't read anything much into this, just interested in what type of things people feel uncomfortable about having recoded.

For me the most uncomfortable thing I ever did was itemise how much money I had spent at different outlets. I discovered that I'd spent an incredible amount of money scuba diving over a 12 month period. Not something that I wanted to share with my partner.

The personal reveal on this is just how clueless I am about how many different definitions of religion there actually are. Who would have thought that religion was broken down by skin colour?

That said, this information is meaningless unless you control for the physical distribution of the religions across areas and compare that with the actual vaccination rates. Does religion really matter or is it just the religions relationship with it's location?

This article is both amazing and shocking.

That some random person could make a case against an ageing individual and with little evidence assert their incompetence and thereby become their guardian with full control of all aspects of their life is unbelievable.

Whilst I don't doubt that there are people (of all ages) who struggle with independent living, taking away their right to decide their fate is something that should never be possible except in the most extreme conditions and as an absolute last resort.

In a country that prizes individual freedoms this is completely unbelievable.

I've got 60 year old ops people in my workplace, we're certainly going to miss them when they leave. It may be that certain parts of tech consider 30 something to be old, but not everywhere.

Thank you. I just can't convert.

I'm guessing that you have never been on the receiving end of an explosive device.

This scares the shit out of me. Call me naive but the idea that somebody on the other side of the planet can set me as a target in a device that they just set and release is completely inhuman. If you want me dead, then do me the curtesy of at least putting your own arse on the line to achieve it.

The potential for this type of device to be cobbled together is well within the capability of pretty much any reasonably funded electronics hobbyist, and I think one of the reasons that we haven't seen it more frequently is that hitherto it's not been morally acceptable. If this type of weapon becomes mainstream in government arsenals then you can kiss that goodbye.

Looks like a guided claymore mine... Scary as hell.

with 4 hours talking nonsense to our colleagues and another two hours in coordination meetings.

Lets do that two hours work a day and get out into the garden. Is that ok?

One of the problems with how people consider the Vietnam war is that they don't understand that it was not the US military (and partners) against the North Vietnamese military, it was the US et el against the entire North Vietnamese population along with a lot of southern sympathisers.

If the aim of the US was to ensure that Vietnam did not end up being communist, then they had to convince the people not to become communist. What they did, in some of the most horrific ways possible, was to convince the Vietnamese people, and a lot of those in neighbouring Cambodia and Laos that the western democracies didn't care about them as people, they were just playing politics with their lives. This left the Chinese backed communists and easy road to winning the hearts and minds.

The US lost the military war because they lost the public relations war, both at home, and in the country they were trying to liberate.

If you look at later wars, Gulf War 2, Afghanistan, you could argue that they have learnt nothing. You will never win people over to your way of thinking by dropping bombs on them, that just ensures that they will never bow to your will.

The point is that you start to think how your words could be taken, not just assume people magically know your intent. Yes people should consider your intent as part of how they parse your words, but you are the one talking, it's up to you to do your best to make sure that your communication is clear and as free from the possibility of misunderstanding as possible.

The reality is that there are people out there who say things with the intent to create hate or to hurt people, they then claim that "I was misunderstood". That is not good enough and this law makes that very clear, You are responsible for what you say, if you can't speak without being misunderstood, then maybe you should do everybody a favour and keep your mouth closed.

My thought is that anything that forces you to think about how your words and actions are perceived by others can only be a good thing.

People commenting have spoken about freedom, and related it to personal responsibility. I think this law is making that responsibility real. You spout hate and you can be held legally responsible, regardless of where you do it. If you have been reported, then obviously somebody who heard it didn't like it. Don't want to be reported, then think about who you are about to offend rather than just fire words out there ignorant of what pain they may cause.

Your (joke?) about witch hunts is a point in case... you are speaking to an open forum mostly in a country where witch hunts took place... There is a non zero chance that somebody in your audience is related to one of the people who got mixed up in the witch hunts... Joke for you, for them, maybe not so much.

I'm not saying don't use the term, it's in pretty common usage with little reference to its origins, but maybe we should start to think about the words we use, and how they may adversely impact people who hear them. In other words, take responsibility for what you say and be considerate of those who will hear your words.

Here they are talking about putting a significant time limit on solving the problem. I'd classify myself as being a reasonable programmer (and I get paid for it), but I generally don't dive from reading a specification into complete code within 15 minutes regardless of how simple the problem is. You spend time thinking about edge cases that you will have to make accommodation for, areas where the requirements are not well defined and need clarification and also talking to the person who wrote the requirements to check your understanding. specifications are rarely perfect, if they were, they would be code that could run.

Individual freedom trumps community welfare.

Who cares if my action causes problems for anybody else, yeah Freedom FREEDOM!!!! I'm the most important person in the world!!! ME ME ME ME ME My rights!!!! Freedom, oh and anything else is ism.

swap in whatever ism is the flavour or the month, I have no idea what any of them mean, but they are all BAD!!!

Sorry... couldn't help myself. There is something disgusting about how people cry freedom as an excuse to take actions that place everybody they encounter at risk.

It's not just NZ. Australian states have carried out similar decisive actions.

An example. We had one person in Brisbane (capital of Queensland) who was infected with the UK variant whilst working in one of the isolation hotels (used to isolate people returning to Australia for 14 days).

The infected person reported that they had travelled extensively through the greater Brisbane area during the previous days. Given the unknown factors around the increased ability to transmit of the UK variant, the Queensland government called a 3 day lockdown on Brisbane. No travel unless absolutely necessary (food, medical care, critical job) and if you were outside your house for any reason masks were required.

The three days were to allow the health department to trace all the contacts of the infected person and get them tested. General public were also told to get tested if they had any symptoms and testing facilities were reactivated across the area.

Three days later, no new infections and the restrictions, only retaining the mask mandate in confined areas for another three weeks. We are now about three weeks later and no new community cases.

So was the three day lockdown excessive. I don't believe so. Would the outcome have been any different if we didn't have the three day lockdown? As it turns out, probably not, but it has to be noted that the purpose of the lockdown was to force a stop in possible transmission and give the health department a chance to find out how many people had been infected. Turns out that the infection rate was very low (some immediate family).

If we'd found from the tracing that there was active community transmission there would have been an extension to the lockdown until the rate reduced.

But here we are, essentially living lives unrestricted our freedoms intact until the next time this thing escapes into the community. Then I trust that the government will take prompt action and the public will groan but comply and we will be inconvenienced for a short period before we again return to normal.

Australia has learned a lot about what works and are acting on it. I don't know what lessons can be transferred to the tragic situation in the US apart from showing what would have been possible if your government had taken this seriously from the start.

I feel very sad for your country and wonder how the greatest democracy on the planet has allowed individual freedom (if you want to call it that) to be considered so important that it has been allowed to compromise the freedom of all.

Yep, and Melbourne had it's "second wave" in the middle of winter. Locked down and got it under control. We've had the opportunity for things to go pear shaped, but due to decisive action, an educated and thinking public and fairly strict enforcement we've got no community transmission. The only issue we have is that our methods of isolating people returning to the country are proving to be somewhat inadequate with people like cleaners picking up the virus from the isolation facilities (Hotels). These issues are being improved and it looks like we are going to continue to be virus free.

As a member of the "Free World", not a citizen of the US, can I please be exempt from being lead by the US and any of its leaders.

There was a point in time when the US was seen as having some degree of leadership, mostly because it's military power. These days I think it's seen by many as being a bit of a bully boy only useful in keeping some degree of balance with the other bully boys.

Why don't you try ensuring that everybody votes? Seems to work for Australia. You end up with politicians who are interested in appealing to the broadest range of voters rather than trying to make it difficult for the people who would vote against them to vote.

If you think people are too stupid to vote, then you're not trying hard enough to ensure that they have the issues explained to them.

How easy is it to go from "you don't understand civics" so you can't vote, to "you have the wrong religion" or "you have the wrong skin colour" you can't vote.

so it comes down to education. Without an properly educated population who have been taught and encouraged to think for themselves we are at the mercy of those who peddle falsehoods for their own benefit.

It's not enough to have a commentator say that something should or should not be believed, the public themselves needs to have the tools to be able to weigh and verify and come to their own conclusions.

There will of course be some who regardless of education will be lead, but we can do a lot better than we currently are.

I'm not actually sure of that the news media are willing to carry every message.

From where I'm sitting (In Australia) the US news media seems to be quite free and happy to limit their coverage of output from the White House. Now the news media are commercial companies and I'm guessing their thinking is that they don't want to broadcast material that their audience finds distasteful or unappealing so they limit what they broadcast.

My first reaction to the banning of the President was to wonder how I get an unedited account of what (however bizarre) he is saying and it's proving to be somewhat difficult. Maybe he's given up and gone back to playing golf so nothing is being said.

I think the media companies are in a very difficult position. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have been placed in a position of a primary outlet for any number of public personalties and as such have a degree of moral responsibility to clearly and without alteration transmit the words of those personalities. The problems start when the personalities use the platforms and the comment systems associated with them not as a conduit for information but as a soapbox to persuade people to believe dangerous falsehoods and organise illegal activity.

The question is, where is the line drawn.

Can I post fiction on Twitter? Of course, and there are many authors who do just that, posting stories in small chunks. Can I post satire? Yep, the Onion does this regularly, with their audience fully understanding that what they read is not factual. Can I post blatant damaging falsehoods about identified people? Well yes, but I'm guessing that I could be facing deformation charges, and I'd probably be reported to twitter and banned.

So the line is drawn, post what you like, but don't cause damage with false information. This again raises the question, should the news media broadcast the words of public officials if those words are false and potentially damaging?

In an ideal world we would have a well educated public with finely tuned bullshit detectors who would be able to safely consume unedited false content, being able to determine for themselves what is and isn't true. Unfortunately in most countries we have a significant proportion of the population who are unable to determine attractive falsehood from fact which leaves the news media in the position of editing/censoring words to try to limit damage.

Smarts are what you rely on to get by whilst you gain experience.

In my experience there is a correlation between income and inability to deliver on projects. Seems some people spend all their time convincing management of there value rather than delivering on their jobs.

When you consider the complexity of the act of driving I'd say a majority of people driving are pretty good drivers, the alternative would be a significant accident rate resulting in impassable roads.

You might want to explain who Limbaugh, Glenn, Orielly, Carlson etc are for those of use outside of the US bubble

I've observed and participated in a reasonable number of projects, both IT and otherwise. In my experience there are two problems that seem to exit in every project that either failed or had to go on to life support:

1. The deliverables were not clearly defined and maintained. How can you deliver something if you don't know what it is? In many cases there is either not a clearly defined and understood deliverable. This leads to every project officer having a different idea as to what they had to deliver leading to disagreements and conflicts and allowing external manipulation and scope creep.

2. People who have a vested interest in the successful outcome of the project are not directly involved in the delivery of that project.

How many times have you seen a project team employed to deliver "the new product", only to then have it handed over to the operational support team, who then have to try to work out what this monster is that they have been given and how they are every going to get it to work in the way it was originally specified. You see this a lot when you have a system replacement being designed and developed by an external team, then handed to the people who supported the old system.

Who best knows the task the old system was designed to complete, who knows the edge cases and peculiarities that system had to handle, and in most cases, who came up with the work arounds that kept the old system working. If you are going to replace a system, and you are going to maintain your current team to support the new system, then get them working on the development of the new system. Not only will they be invaluable in identifying edge cases that the project architects may not be aware of, but as they are going to be the ones who will have to live with the new system, they will do their bests to make bloody sure that it's going to do what is's supposed to. Oh and make sure they are in a position to call out things that just won't work.

But the job needs to be done, so supply and demand comes into play. In a resource rich world Why should somebody doing a shitty job be paid low wages.

If you need the job done and because we are not resource constrained you are going to have to do something to make that job attractive. Maybe even address the things that make the job shitty or even do the work to automate it so the janitor can become a dancer like he always dreamed of.