jokermatt999

Does anyone here have any experience in getting photos off of old RAZRs? I have a similar phone that (I believe) uses the same firmware. It looks like the software to do so (Motorola Media Link?) was offline, or at least I couldn't locate it anywhere. I've got some photos of an old friend who passed away on there, but no way to get them off.

Did you miss the indictment of the DNC hackers that also detailed the DC Leaks being registered by GRU? You should catch up on that if so.

Valid criticism. I posted emotionally. I will further educate myself on actual statistics and put together better edited and sourced posts in the future rather than knee jerk rebuttals. I appreciate you even using the repetition in calling me out, because that's a cheap rhetorical crutch I lean too heavily on.

At this time, I'm forced to admit you're right. The numbers I'm aware don't seem to currently show my bleak predictions of mass unemployment, so it's just a less rational gut-feeling type of belief that is unjustified of the weight I've assigned it. However, I still wanted to respond to this post (albeit a day late) because it was an effective and worthwhile callout. (LMGTFY is always a tad too harsh IMO, but your tone is 100% justified in context of my post's tone, and knocked some sense into me)

In my defense, I have avoided digging further into statistics because, well, if it's "different", can I even trust the numbers? But dammit, I try to be rational and justified. If I think unemployment numbers might be missing wider cases, I need to verify that. If I'm going to hold a belief that inspires strong emotion, there needs to be strong evidence. I can't just blithely imply that "oh no it may already be happening!!1"; I need to bring more to the table to discuss than emotion and rhetoric. Humbly, thanks.

Maybe this time it is different. Maybe the massive capabilities of modern robotics and AI are more transformative than the assembly line and sewing machines. Maybe our society isn't ready to handle mass unemployment from entire categories of jobs being eliminated.

Currently, I see a few ways this could go. One is the bright shiny utopia of robot servants and abundance for all. I don't think it's likely.

The other is a world that clings to jobs as long as it can. A society that demands its citizens' labor to pay for their own basic needs, even as more and more people are unable to cobble together enough part time work and benefits to support themselves. The desolate turn to drugs or suicide, perhaps rioting eventually. People demand industries be brought back, long past the point they're a viable career. Under debt and unemployment, the economy collapses.

I see a lot more political support for the latter.

There's also the possibility that new technology creates new jobs. That seems like wishful thinking to me. Do you think everyone will be AI programmers and robot engineers? I don't see that happening today...but I do see those old jobs being eliminated, right in that article.

To save others from panicked searching, Stewart Brand still is not a naive utopian; he has not died.

Naively, yes, yes I did. Dammit Facebook. There's a reason why I changed the settings. I figured it was like browsing the new queue here.

Good news! http://cubicle7.co.uk/our-games/the-laundry/

Am I the only one who views Facebook by Most Recent? They don't make it easy, and I don't think you can default to it, but I just point all my bookmarks to https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr

Still though, Facebook could be so much better. The problem is that a profit-driven social media site is always going to have different goals than its users. Free ones seem to never gain traction. Currently, most of my friend groups are switching to Discord, but that's basically just going back to IRC without having to understand NickServ and such.

As many others have pointed out though, Facebook got bland when everyone's parents joined. Private groups somewhat help, but it really does need to be more directly baked in to the design. It's far too late for that now, but I dream one day someone will finally make the Facebook killer. Until then, I use Facebook, because it benefits me more than not using it. Shallow interaction, peoples kids, etc? That can easily be fixed. For me, the boost in mood I get from reconnecting to old friends makes it worth all the pain. I was a hold out too, and didn't join until ~5 years ago?

I think the problem is it's almost a utility at this point. Most everyone I know (non-techy crowd) is on it. If you aren't, you truly do miss out, which sucks. But do you know anyone who doesn't work, or want to work at Facebook who would say "I love Facebook!" Tweak all you want, but it's too much a behemoth to love.

Fair enough, perhaps not "cosplay" as a broad definition, but in the sense of modern fandom organizing "cons", I found it interesting it went back decades earlier than I'd assumed. I knew there were Star Trek conventions in the 1960's, but I would've never guessed as early as before the US entering WWII. Of course costumes and enjoying stories probably date back to before writing, but I thought the modern form was much newer.

Ok, fine. They still have to inherit that money. But as they grow up, the rich baby will have access to better nutrition, better education, a less stressful environment, etc compared to the poor baby. That's without considering fetal health/nutrition. There are many known factors that can affect a child's health, growth, and intelligence, and therefore success.

I don't think the distinction of "babies have $0" is relevant when considering all the other potential advantages. What are you getting at with that claim? I don't think it's particularly clear, judging by the other replies.

Asteroid mining would disrupt the market for many rare elements, but I think it could be less chaotic than people think. It's not going to be like the Gold Rush where a deposit was found and prospectors flocked to it. It'll be a massive undertaking, almost certainly with multiple nations working together to achieve. The time between the project becoming public and the resulting mined resources being delivered would give markets time to settle on a price.

That said, yes, asteroids mining could certainly affect the price of gold, but not necessarily destroy all its value. There's a price floor set by the industrial applications for it.

With BitCoin, there is no floor. If no one wants to buy your BitCoins, you can't do anything else with them. They are just data representing proof of work, but no outside value.

Along similar lines, The LA Times' series on opioid addiction was gripping. It offers a story of how some people fall in to worse and worse spirals.

http://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/

I hadn't seen that Cincinnati Enquirer article though, so thank you for sharing. I'm not looking forward to hearing about the suffering, but I feel the need to educate myself. I worry this is the new normal.

Edit: God, the pacing of that article...all the lives lost in short vignettes, names unknown, punctuated by daily death/overdose numbers for just one city? Horrifying when you realize what a tiny facet this represents of the national suffering due to this epidemic.

I'm not sure I've got a fully formed concept here, but I'm throwing it out in case someone finds it interesting.

Re: long-tail movements and switching contexts between work and home, I wonder if a better example isn't much better user or persona management. Every person is interested in more than just one thing, and can conceivably be looking for the same word in two contexts. Down below, a multi-lingual speaker has given up on predictive keyboards.

What if we could enable users to switch personas/contexts as intuitively and easily as people code-switch in real conversations? Setting up the profiles would be messy and cumbersome at first which probably kills the idea dead in my hands. I'm not knowledgeable enough about psychology or machine learning to figure out if that could be solved automatically.

A business supplies you with currency to trade for the basic necessities. A farm can provide those directly.

An attempt to convey a message to extraterrestrials based on mathematics and physics. Regardless of one's opinions on the probability of intelligent extraterrestrial life, it's interesting to consider the challenge of transmitting meaning with almost 0 context.

"Sarcastic" would probably be the best fit. Good point also.

What are the foreign policy implications of this? Every single other country's reaction that I've seen has been to beg the US to stay in the accord.

I believe flags push content from the front page. I went to check Lists > Active to see if there was an HN thread on this, because I expect politics to get flagged off the front page of Hacker News.

(Granted, I just think this is "politics" because there's been several events I've expected would end any normal president, but haven't, so...I just really don't know anymore)

Giuliani literally said on Fox News. Watch the actual video, don't just complain about media bias. The evidence is right there in the linked article.

“I'll tell you the whole history of it,” Giuliani responded eagerly. “So when [Trump] first announced it, he said, 'Muslim ban.' He called me up. He said, 'Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.' "

Better source for you?

Honestly, even as a former Bernie supporter, I don't know if political analysis that indicated it can still be called reliable. I've heard his team produced data showing Bernie would win versus Trump, but most polls also thought it was a sure victory for Clinton. While 538 pointed out there was just a "normal polling error"[1] between Clinton and Trump (and I haven't dug as much into the post election analysis due to being distracted by more urgent matters) it seems like the polling clearly missed support for Trump.

I think he would have done a good job at picking up votes from the "disaffected" crowd that voted Trump over Clinton as a protest, but there's certainly the possibility that he would be lose votes for being too far left.

At this point, I certainly still wish Bernie won, seeing as Trump is president regardless, but I don't think there's necessarily a solid counterfactual that he would've beaten Trump. Either way, I think some of the blame can certainly be placed on Democrats pushing more of the same when people were clearly calling for a change.

[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-is-just-a-normal-...

What lessons would you like to include on such a site? Off the top of my head, my favorite things about Hacker News: high level civil discourse, lack of humor (no, seriously, humor easily crowds out good discussion on other sites), excellent layout (collapsible tree comments), anonymous speech with ease to creating new accounts, light handed and responsive moderation. There's not much I don't like: narrow focus on tech rather than just general good content (but that is why it was created), no easy way to collapse a comment tree when you've scrolled partway through it, and... that's really it.

What specifically would you like to differently? I'm interested in more good discussion sites.

Because I have a habit of browsing NYT first thing in the morning, I tend to use Incognito mode. Never had it go through the nag screens then, but part of it may be ublock origin.

I'm pretty sure Muta flocks were a winning strategy of Starcraft 1's AI tournament, actually, so good call.

While it is "just how things work" (both meanings intended), it goes against a core ideal for the United States. I'm not sure if "class mobility" is quite the term I'm looking for, but basically the idea that the common everyman could be elected and have a say in running the country. While the founding fathers were understandably wary of direct democracy, the average citizen still has somewhat of a say with their vote. Seeing that these important decisions are made by elites, behind the scenes, before the election even happened (!) is a major blow towards that ideal.

I won't pretend to have a better solution, however, so I mostly agree with your post.

HN also seems to dislike the New Yorker's writing style. They tend towards more narrative than informative/dry.

You may want to look more into communes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commune) to see what does and does not work about this arrangement. Unfortunately, most of these examples are going to be skewed because of the selection factor (what causes a group of people to recuse themselves from wider society? Radical politics, religion, or often just cults), but there's still something to be learned there.

While technology makes a self-sustaining community require less human labor for food, water, shelter, etc, there's still the issue of technical maintenance. 3d printer filament, machines parts and repair labor aren't free.

For another perspective, you could also look into the Seasteading movement. I can't say I'm too well versed in this field beyond a passing interest, but I think there should be quite a bit of information on the logistics of it. The governance (or lack thereof) would be the interesting part.

I'm surprised the term "disparate impact" hasn't come up. I'm too well versed in anti-discrimination law, but it seems like this is the term for exactly what they're trying to avoid.

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

You're getting downvoted because this article is actually not an example of the NYT's slanted coverage. Don't get me wrong, they've had some shamefully distorted articles (especially the infamous updated Bernie article), but this is just a short data visualization.

1) Seems to be increasing accepted. However, it looks like we're still on the early side of it, and the transition is going to be difficult. There will likely be a time when there are nowhere near enough jobs to go around, and not enough aid for the unemployed.

2) I wouldn't say this is widely accepted. On any topic about Universal Basic Income, one of the common refrains against it is "the dignity of work", and that labor gives purpose in life. I don't agree with that necessarily, but it seems to be a view held by a sizable segment of the population. You'll also see it come up in situations where welfare is mentioned.

I came to the same conclusion after reading it, and the entire time I read the article I was hoping for more evidence of the title. I still agree with his actions (especially in light of how previous whistleblowers were treated), but I don't feel like this article delivered what was promised. I'm actually disappointed by that.