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This is silly - it's more about the mismatch between the custom of buying a person's time and paying for the outcomes an employer is looking for. The flip side of this is that employees are stealing from their employer whenever their attention wavers from the job, for example talking with co-workers or texting or web browsing or whatever.

The reality is that hourly pay is almost always a poor approximation for the expectations between employer and employee. Calling any deviation from strictly kept time for an employee in 100% service to their employer "theft" is just silly, whether it's an employee chatting about their weekend, or an employer asking for some extra minutes. Each should (and outside of artificial constructs like this article does) weigh total compensation against benefit / effort and decide if the relationship is worth continuing.

There used to be a great pic online showing all of the different timelines as swimlanes to show how they were all connected.

Here: https://d13ezvd6yrslxm.cloudfront.net/wp/wp-content/images/p...

Judging by the replies a lot of people agree with those concerned citizens. I hope that the majority are terrified by this. It is one thing to recommend masks for legit health concerns, but it's a very slippery slope that we've already gone far down towards them becoming a religious/ political talisman that signified whether you are willing to shut up and agree with your leaders, or be an "anti-masker". We need to be more outspoken about all these baby steps toward complete submission to superstition.

> The escalators I take to work are filled with the same desperate faces and vacant eyes I feel staring through me on the subway, except instead of standing still, they’re bounding up it, subconsciously aware that below their feet is yet another opportunity to optimize on an existing convenience.

This is a super pessimistic take on what the author is seeing. I the last five years I have worked between two cities in my country, one where the federal government is the major employer, one the financial center. Getting off the train downtown in the financial core, I see engaged, enthusiastic, and hungry people heading to work to make something of themselves. They bound up the escalator because they have energy and drive and want to improve theirs and their family's lives.

In the government town, I see lots of people with unfulfilling, boring, and secure jobs, and the whole vibe of the town is defeat.

For many people, competition and pressure are essential to enjoying life, and we want to optimize what we do to support that. Without the pressure we atrophy. There are lots of places (like a lot of government work) where you dont have to work hard and can enjoy other parts of life. But what I've seen is that usually it doesnt work that way.

If they cant support themselves, they should find something people do want to pay for. The universe doesnt owe the website creators a revenue stream.

I think there is also an element of short term vs long term reward. Things that are more likely to be worth paying for often are harder and longer term in some way (like university or even reading a novel) while ad delivered content generally is optimized to be easy to consume, and almost consequentially is very shallow. Because the goal is to keep attention, not to be comprehensive or useful.

So I think there is an argument that ad support, and attention focused platforms in general, do have a negative effect on the content.

I think part of the tension is that advertising (and other data harvesting) attempts to monetize content that has virtually zero value for a lot of people: take any of the articles on a typical HN front page - right now the top two are "Booting from a vinyl record" and "Exotic programming ideas". These sound interesting (and are already somewhat well targeted to me as a HN reader), but the content is still worth almost nothing to me if I have to sign up for something or watch an ad to view it. Now apply the same reasoning to most web content that I value even less, like random medium articles or Forbes techcrunch or something that are pretty much designed just to get people to click on them. Most internet content that we are considering here is just there to get you to look at ads, and so ironically not worth "paying" for in any way for most people.

So ad blocking puts the user in a funny position. It let's them continue to look at things they don't value much. And I think content creaters looking for views probably would rather complain about ad blockers than give users an ultimatum that could result in them just going somewhere else.

The timing of this is funny because I literally only switched to a mac from linux a month ago. I may be an outlier but I prefer the "polish" and user experience of ubuntu to apple - I find the unity gui to be easier to navigate and understand than mac, and I find the OS way less intrusive.

But what caused me to switch to a mac was the constant CPU and memory problems I was having with ubuntu.

Chrome and zoom both seemed to kill the machine when used for too long or in the wrong combination. That is the kind of problem I dont want to spend time debugging, and switching to Mac, it is gone, and my productivity is way higher, even accounting for the new annoyances.

But now between the new architecture and the moves for greater control over how I use my machine, I really dont know how to think about what I want my next computer to be. While I dismissed WSL in the past, I'd say it is becoming a contender again.

It looks good to me! One suggestion I did not see was to be able to add hair color and complexion. Some of the suggestions I had I would not have gone with because of mismatch with my skin & hair.

This whole discussion is a good reminder why any analysis is always subjective. If there is an actual fault in the underlying numbers, fine, but what I see reading the thread is people finding ways to justify why the data is incomplete, there are still more people dying, we need to fear covid, etc.

I've seen the articles that talk about excess deaths, and then the posts are all affirming that yes, we need to fear covid, people are dying, etc.

I think there is obvious evidence that covid is a real disease that kills people, but the cherry picked reactions that people have to data saying different things drives home that analysis is always political, not some kind of objective thing we can hold up as beyond criticism.

See climate change...

And lots of media fed panics also only become clear in retrospect, e.g. Y2K.

Market value is hypothetically based on present value of future earnings, not immediate value to society. Unless Moderna's business plan is to ransom humanity to extract the most value possible from covid, it should not be surprising that there is more value in a longer term business.

It also says something about the in incentives that drug companies trying to maximize market cap have.

Just because you believe that there is some benevolent authority that we can just "give up liberty" to an everything will be ok doesn't make it the only opinion, even if it's easier to think about.

It's easy to see how if there is attention and power that comes with a big enough crisis, everything suddenly gets framed as such a crisis (see rights violations, climate crisis, war on drugs, bullying, etc.) So you better hope that whoever gets to exercise absolute power in the case of a crisis is on your side and shares your values.

Those who trade liberty for security get neither as the saying goes. But I think the above is well understood, and I guess rejected by some, because I see so many positions that think giving away our freedom is ok.

What we really need are stronger politicians who can unite people and find compromises between freedom and public health measures, that help us collectively move forward. This crisis has shown how weak politicians have become (and how horribly technocrats and corporates have been at filling that void). Leadership is not forcing people to do stuff, that only makes society more divided and undermines attempts to solve problems. We need leadership and we don't have it.

Normally I'd ignore that, but yes, that's the classic argument to try and short circuit real debate by making us think that one death anywhere is worse than small actions we can take. I disagree, just like I think we should be able to create other social policies that don't save everyone but that try to compromise between the kind of world we want and the safety of its inhabitants. It's hard to think about and takes strong leadership to navigate, but instead of talking about that we focus of hyperbole and hashtags

I think the biggest flu shot proponents have been given a much greater voice with covid and would not want to back down from it now.

Exactly. In all of the mask discussions, there should be more focus on the kind of life we want and less on the science of masks. I think it's pretty obvious that masks have immediate infection control benefits, and always will.

But it's a perfectly valid opinion that the benefits do not outweigh the societal impact of treating each other like infection vectors instead of having normal social behavior (as well as the option to wear a mask or stay away from people if your priorities are different).

I would rather risk death than live the rest of my life in a bubble, and there needs to be more of a discussion of what people value and the tradeoffs we're making.

Its interesting to me that for most of modern history, the value of performing arts like music was in the performance. Then recorded media were invented and there was a fleeting moment in the 20th century when distribution was controlled, and the value of that invention was captured by a small group. And now it seems things have equilibrated so that the value of recording is distributed more broadly again. I don't know if there are other examples like this in different parts of the economy (obviously it's the same in video), but it feels like a good study in how technology disrupts an industry and then disrupts is again.

Yes I agree with you, I have had some songs I like disappear too. But with a subscription model, I can stop paying them when the value isnt there anymore.

A good example is that I cancelled Amazon prime this year because with add-on items and ineligible items it stopped providing any value over just meeting the minimum order $ for free shipping.

That seems orthogonal to my point that what spotify achieved, for me at least, was being a better value for money than copyright infringement. It's worth $10 a month to have all the music accessible in one place.

The licensing agreements that spotify negotiates are between them and the artists, and if artists are unhappy they can take it up with Spotify. But hopefully artists realize that for recorded performances, there is a sweet spot where the convenience of a subscription has a higher value than trivially accessing pirated recordings.

I just want to mention that what I like about Spotify is I dont have to bother figuring this kind of thing out, because it provides music I want to listen to at a price that is completely reasonable.

What you're describing is true for most "business intelligence"

> Manuka is a versatile sugar substitute that’s lower on the glycemic index,” he says. “It won’t spike your blood sugar levels immediately in the way white sugar does.”

The sugar in honey is roughly a 50/50 mix of glucose and fructose, there is nothing metabolically special about the sugar. Fructose has a lower glycemic index because it is metabolized first into triglycerides- it may be better for diabetics in some circumstances but has also been blamed for why people drink too much pop, because the glucose fructose sweetening doesnt leave you sated. From a purely sugar perspective, honey is basically HFCS.

Agree 100% with you but would add that from the perspective of a lot of business people, the bar for expert is actually pretty low and however far over it you are, they dont actually get any more out or you because they don't know what to do with you. What a lot of businesses want is someone they can call an expert but that still operates within the realm and understanding of a non specialist manager.

Nothing wrong with this roadmap but I'd suggest that this and similar ones are squarely in the "trade" category of formation, where the focus is on a large number of practical topics instead of a more solid grounding in the fundamentals, that mostly dont even concern themselves with practical dat science - what I would call the "university" approach, but maybe not in the sense of a modern university.

For work as a tradesperson, it is worth only focusing on the practical application- and I'm saying this genuinely. But I think it should be clearly distinguished from the different kinds of lasting benefits that a more solid fundamental education provides, including the flexibility to adapt.

I'm very biased here, having studies Electrical Eng and CS before modern ML was remotely mainstream, and comparing my conceptual understanding and what I learned in school about math and linear algebra with the way things are understood by tradespeople with far more knowledge of modern tools than me. So crotchety old person- maybe, but I'm happy I went to university.

For most low value sites e.g. inc.com type random news that ask me to sign up to continue, I just dont use them, because the value they provide is lower than how I value creating an account.

The same is true for recaptcha, I usually just don't use a site if they make me use it. I have stopped donating to charities because they use recaptcha and would never buy from an online store that uses it. The same as I would never go to a bar where you are searched on the way in, or buy a pizza from a place with a central call center that makes me wait to make an order. If a business wants to treat me like shit, I just wont use it.

So people should only want things they personally like to do to be legal?

I was thinking closer to common behaviors that are known to be unhealthy... drinking pop, not exercising, whatever. If someone is trying to kill themselves I think its different and they should get help. But we cant be hyperbolic about what that means and try to force everyone into a norm that values long term health above all else, because of how it encroaches on freedom.

A more realistic example of what you're saying could be like when people get those big holes in their ears. It's clearly destructive to the body, I personally think its gross, but there is no good reason to limit people's right to do that. The limitations on freedom that preventing that behavior would entail is far worse than letting it happen.

Personally I find marijuana smoke way more irritating than cigarette smoke, at least second hand outside.

Maybe I'm reading too much in to your comment, but with cigarette smoking there is a lot of the "if you want to destroy your lungs" attitude that I hypothesize stems from the puritain "if you want to prioritize enjoying something over long term health, I'll be especially harsh towards you". I 100% understand the infringement (or at least encroachment) on your right to enjoy the outdoors and believe it is very rude to expose someone to obnoxious smoke. But judging the "destroying your lungs" aspect is nobody's business but the person doing it. You may not have meant it this way, but I have seen a lot of people who do.

Edit - also, marijuana smoke is hazardous, just like tobacco smoke. Why would it be more benign?

I agree with you that it is very obnoxious and super rude to be doing in an area close to other non-consenting people. I also think that a law about where you could smoke would inevitably be abused and not serve anyone: for example, is it really a police matter that you can smell your neighbors smoking weed, or that someone is doing it to near you in a park. I think we need to get away from this tattle tail mentality and work on being clearer with people when their behavior is interfering with our enjoyment of our surroundings. Being polite about smoking pot needs to become a social norm, not a law.

And just as a concrete example, I would rather see tax money go to an ad campaign that says "a lot of people find the smell of pot disgusting, smoke it away from others" than into law enforcement.

So previously they were illegal and you bought dried mushrooms from some guy in a pool hall (maybe I'm dating myself). Its hard to imagine that legalizing them is a step back. People automatically see legalization as an excuse for more bureaucracy and regulation - how about starting with the premise that the world didnt end while people bought it illegally, and ease in a minimal way to ensure safety and quality, which must be well understood for all the other foods and natural products already sold, instead of doing the regulatory power grab of "oh we need a whole new framework!"