mcpackieh

Ad targeting identifies a lonely person with self esteem issues. Tells them that they'll be more popular and attractive if they consume product. They consume product and of course it doesn't actually help, but more advertisements are already lined up to explain that they're still feeling bad because they need to consume even more product. The ads show unrealistically happy and attractive people, to reinforce the self esteem issues and encourage the consumption of even more product.

This is a standard business practice for the advertising and marketing industry. It's evil.

> The near collapse of democracy in the United States

So you propose a controlled demolition? That's what abolishing the right or opportunity to speak anonymously amounts to. Professional journalists don't need to be protected from anonymous jeers, if anything is killing their industry it's their failure to monetize and maybe you can blame adblockers for that, but not anonymous speech. And frankly, professional journalists have always predominantly been the mouthpieces of wealthy. Need I remind you that professional journalists working for the likes of William Randolph Hearst cynically provoked the Spanish-American War for profit? The glory days of journalism are an illusion that appears when you look back at the past through rose-tinted glasses. Whatever the answer is, it isn't to silence those who already have the least power, those who can only speak anonymously without corporate apparatuses to back them up.

> We've already lost a lot of our rights for peaceful protest. Inconveniencing people with your protest? That's the whole point of protesting isn't it?

Meanwhile in Canada: truckers honking is literally terrorism because it hurts my ears :(

> A pilot's access to a plane feels relevant to suicide (because it's an obvious way to kill yourself) but there's lots of ways to kill yourself that don't involve mass murder: a pilot is able to put a bullet in their head

You've given me a shitty idea that might work some of the time: We give every airline pilot a pistol. This way if they ever feel the urge to kill themselves they can do it in a hotel room instead of with the airplane. It ensures that the most convenient way for a pilot to die isn't crashing their plane. It will probably slightly increase the number of pilots who kill themselves, but decrease the number who do it by crashing their plane.

...hey, I did say it was a shitty idea.

> Can you really be ripped off by psychics?

Once I went to a psychic who offered to read my fortune out of a crystal ball. Later I found out the ball was actually glass. Glass! That's an amorphous solid, the exact opposite of a crystal. How can you divine any truth such a chaotic structure? The very premise is ludicrous; she may have a large glass ball but clearly she had lost the rest of her marbles.

I'm completely serious and I'm talking about normal websites found with a normal search engine. Most random websites I browse through work just fine with all javascript disabled. There will usually be things like comment sections or videos that don't load, but the content I'm actually looking for loads and renders fine. Sometimes the rendering of the website breaks and puts things where the designer didn't intend, but even in those cases the website is usually still legible.

By my estimation, 90% of websites work better with all javascript disabled (by works better I mean they displays the content legibly and doesn't waste my bandwidth or CPU time with superfluous nonsense). 9% need first party javascript enabled. 1% need more.

Here's a short clip of me browsing the top results for pecan pie recipes: http://0x0.st/HJUU.webm

I chose this example because I think it's relatively representative of normal web browsing without a techie/retro bias, but the same demonstration works with links from HN too. All of these pages are rendered with javascript disabled. Most websites behave like these. Websites that need javascript, like youtube or various social media sites (including github, the only site presently linked on the HN front page that needs javascript), are a small minority.

At least the fruit it comes from is actually orange (and is the origin of the name for the color I believe.)

But if you ever look inside of a fresh North American blueberry, they're pale green! European blueberries might actually be blue inside, I'm not sure.

There's at least some experimental evidence to suggest that race car sims with VR displays and steering wheel interfaces can train (some) real racing skills. But I really doubt that playing GTA with a console controller or mouse and keyboard do the same. Cars in GTA don't even behave like cars IRL, neither the ones you drive and certainly not the ones being driven by the computer. None of the muscle memory translates and any other hand-eye coordination skills transferring from one to the other is extremely dubious. With a VR headset you might have something to go off of, but otherwise GTA trains you to keep your head facing forward to the screen instead of on a swivel, so if anything GTA probably makes you a worse driver IRL.

> Genuinely curious, why does it matter if a relationship is real if the person is happy and mentally healthy?

It's like having an imaginary girlfriend in your head. If it makes that person happy then why do other people feel bad for the guy? Because although that guy may look happy, and maybe is happy right now, most people don't really believe that's a recipe for happiness in the long term. People see somebody on a path to loneliness and pity them for it.

In English, things that are orange are often called red. Particularly, but not limited to, hair.

Since they won't deign to explain it, I guess it's fair for me to go with my gut and assume that "Steel Perlot" means nothing and was chosen simply because it sounds pretentious.

"Twenty years ago" was the 1980s and I'll never believe otherwise.

They can downvote you but I don't think they can explain why you're wrong.

It's a pity the demise of flash killed a games/art scene, but the rest of the web is better off with flash gone and nothing new to fill that role.

The way some people used to make entire websites as flash apps that would bring old computers to their knees is not something I miss. Websites that should have just been static html, like a restaurant's website for their menu, were getting turned into monstrously inefficient interactive nightmares that wouldn't even load at all if you didn't have flash (which btw, broke constantly with Linux.)

This kind of superfluous interactivity is still possible with javascript/etc, but it seems to be less popular and is more likely to gracefully degrade (usually the relevant content still displays even if you have JS disabled.)

Governments asking or suggesting that media companies suppress a story, with the companies choosing to comply of their own free will, is nothing new. This is how most media censorship in the US and UK worked during WW2. Governments would explain to a newspaper or broadcast company that suppressing a story was in earnest best interest of the nation and the media company would usually comply voluntarily because they felt it was the right thing to do. There's a good argument to be made that this kind of thing really is good and proper; the government asking newspapers to stay quiet about D-Day preparations, and newspapers voluntarily complying, probably saved many lives.

But I'm worried. I fear that governments flexing this kind of soft power over media companies now in recent years is a sign of the times. I am afraid that governments see major wars on the horizon and that's why they're dusting off their old bag of tricks and asking the new tech sort of media companies to get ready to respond to censorship requests when the time comes. So it's not the wartime suppression of information that worries me the most, but rather the upcoming war it hints at.

Edit: If anybody can talk me down from this fear, I would sincerely appreciate it.

You can prosecute people for criminal threats without creating technical apparatuses for shaping and controlling narratives. Prosecuting people for speech that's illegal isn't incompatible with forums that allow people to speak their minds freely and unfiltered.

For instance, the US Postal System does not run my mail through content classifiers and filters to determine whether my mail should be suppressed or passed through. If I mail a death threat, the postal system will dutifully deliver it. Despite this, the government may still prosecute me for it. The government's ability to prosecute me for mailing illegal things is not contingent on the postal system having some nanny AI that reads my mail and shadow-bans me when it disapproves. Having laws that restrict speech does not necessitate creating automatic censorship systems. And "..but with computers" doesn't change this.

There's a somewhat similar sort of thing in New Jersey for development/training (not recruiting afaik), basically a warehouse with the superstructure of a cruiser/destroyer sitting on top of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Rancocas

Response to memefrog's [dead] comment:

> It's not deliberate, which is the question that matters.

I don't agree that deliberate or not deliberate is all that matters or the end of the discussion. In criminal law if you do something that could reasonably be expected to kill somebody without really desiring that outcome, you might still be guilty or murder or at least manslaughter. For instance if you drive your motorcycle at 200 MPH and crash into a family killing them, the fact that you lacked a specific desire to kill those people counts for something but it's not the end of the discussion.

> "[targeting the civilian workforce] isn't a thing."

You've obviously read my comment as commentary on the Israel/Palestine situation. Actually the incident I had in mind when I was writing that comment was the firebombing of Tokyo. If you go through official US documents about that, you'll find the justification that Tokyo had extensive cottage/light industry mixed in with their residential neighborhoods. Destroying that industry and workforce was in fact one of the official intents for firebombing Tokyo. However many of the bomber crews (who were all men, but I'm generally not one for gender-inclusive terminology anyway so you're not catching me in some hypocrisy here, lmao) were likely motivated by revenge for Pearl Harbor / etc and celebrated the civilian death toll. Not all of them I'm sure, but certainly some of them.

Anyway, I'm not here to pass judgement on whether the firebombing of Tokyo was or wasn't a war-crime, or whether or not the US was deliberately trying to kill Japanese kids. It has been debated for decades and that's precisely my point. It's not cut and dry, it's a matter that looks differently to different people who are looking back at it from different perspectives. It defies neat objective categorization, which is why counting 'civilian casualties' in one big lump, not differentiating by intent, is a useful thing to do.

I love the dazzle camo, it really does make the 'ship' hard to recognize as a ship.

Maybe not effective for it's intended purpose of frustrating the use of optical rangefinders, but it sure looked cool.

It was more than helpful; SpaceX would have failed without the COTS contract.

There's a tendency by some to describe money paid out by the government for services rendered as "government funding", framed like some sort of unearned charitable gift given by the government to the company which entitles the government to all of the credit in the end. This is an immature point of view that is often the product of motivated reasoning (particularly, motivated by personal dislike of the people/companies involved. There's also some people who thought that capitalism would be trapped on earth with space being the exclusive domain of governments, and are bitter to realize that won't be the case.) Maybe your comment is reacting in part to this tendency, I find myself frustrated with it as well.

Nevertheless, the truth is that SpaceX didn't have the money to develop Falcon 9 until they got that contract. I think themgt is correct to say the creation of contracts like that in Europe could provide European rocket companies the same kind of opportunity to develop technology and prove themselves.

Don't forget armies of lawyers spamming hundreds of lawsuits at each and every step no matter how small.

Can't buy a screw without every single other company that might sell screws filing lawsuits. Repeat this for every part, every service, etc. The only winners are the legal parasite class who are very powerful in Germany. This kind of problem isn't unique to Germany of course, but they exemplify it. And if you try to cut through this BS then German people get spooked; I think due to their history they prefer being bogged down in legal BS and are prone to be suspicious of any attempt to cut through red tape. I don't think this will change until the collective psyche of Germany heals.

The difference between deliberate and accidental civilian casualties is not clear cut. For instance, what do you call it when you intend to attack the enemies soldiers with a bunch of bombs but you know a certain percentage will fall on civilians and you accept that inevitability and proceed anyway? Is that deliberate? Not quite, because it wasn't your intention. Was it an accident? Not really, because you knew it was going to happen and did it anyway.

Or what do you call it when you are deliberately targeting some civilians (factory workers perhaps) but you know they share their homes with children? Do all of the civilians killed count as deliberate, or only some portion of them?

Also, how do you determine intent? Suppose the official paperwork says "we're going to target this residential neighborhood because they have military-relevant cottage industry blended in with the population", but the men actually carrying out these orders are saying and thinking "burn them all, this is payback." Do you go by the intents stated on official records, or do the intents and feelings not committed to official records change the matter? It's the kind of thing that ends up getting debated by historians for decades.

I think you've lost track of the difference between other people and yourself. The words you're using seem to talk about how other people feel, but you're actually talking about how you feel and assuming that any difference between the two is rooted in ignorance.

> "your kids’ reaction"

Maybe this should be "my reaction as a kid", since you don't know that person's kids.

> "The emotions one feels"

Should be "the emotions I feel"

> "If people had to see their livestock suffer, they would make a different calculation"

Should probably be "seeing it changed how I feel".

People are more than the sum of our experiences, two people raised in the same environment with the same kind of experiences can have completely divergent values. Therefore it's wrong to assume that people would share your values if they had your experiences. In the case of meat eating particularly this should be obvious; the reality is that most people exposed to the industry, either for the first time as adults or as kids, don't turn vegetarian.

When I was in elementary school it seemed like we took a field trip to a dairy farm two or three times a year every year. Not some traditional dairy farm for tourists, but a big factory-style dairy farm owned by a big company that had farms and distribution covering the entire state. They showed us the calves in veal crates.

I don't think it turned many people off milk and cheese. Actually the grossest field trip we ever went on was to a potato chip factory, the stink of rotten potatoes was overwhelming. They never took us to a pig or chicken farm though, I've been to a few at other times and those would have beat the chip factory easily. A lot of people who grow up around cows say they appreciate the small (I do, to an extent) but I've never heard anybody say that about pigs or chickens.

Count chickens it's a plausible number. If you count things like small fish and shrimp then it's probably a severe underestimate. I guess he isn't counting those, self-described vegans often don't for some reason.

I probably eat a thousand anchovies a year alone.

>The depth of their trauma was a departure,

I get the impression that combat vets of WWI were no less traumatized, but society didn't talk about it and preferred to talk about heroism, duty, honor, etc. Traumatized soldiers were counter to the prevailing narrative, seen as an embarrassment that people didn't want to think about.

For reference, Russia's Baiknour is at 45.965°N (about a thousands kilometers difference, not counting longitude.)

A high latitude should work fine for Earth observing satellites that are suited for polar orbits, but I can't help but think it would make more sense for Germany to make a deal with France to share the Guiana Space Centre.

The last gas stations standing won't be in remote areas far from everything else. They'll be in heavily trafficked areas that everybody goes to regularly, particularly near grocery stores.

I think that's a default for anybody using the libinput driver or the synaptics driver.

My list of reasons to block all javascript by default grows longer by the day. 90% of websites don't need javascript at all to display the content I'm looking for, about 9% only require first party javascript, and the 1% left usually just gets me to close the tab and go somewhere else.