mikaeluman

I make the same observation as other people have made. These types of laws are being passed with increasing intensity and scope in most western countries.

They seem to follow the same idea. Purportedly they are being passed to stop crime or at least aid the investigation of suspected criminals.

The other set of laws are purportedly meant to stop the spread of infectious disease.

But the laws are clearly not well balanced in terms of privacy rights and personal freedom.

There is also this ominous synchronization between government and trans-national bodies such as the WHO with major technology firms; having the latter act as uncritical propaganda arms of the former - no matter the evidence or reasons for doubt.

Rather than discussion and reasoning, there is this flow of labels thrown around at dissenters, regardless of who they are and what they say.

If they critique transwomen competing with women they are called transphobic and accused of hate speech.

If they prefer not to take a vaccine shot and/or critique lockdowns and restrictions; they are called anti-vaxxers and accused of spreading misinformation.

All of this points in the direction of tyranny and totalitarianism. All we can do is vote with our feet.

As Trump himself stated: intuitively you want to leave. But it’s all subject to an analysis of consequences. Something this administration completely blundered.

US still has forces and bases in Okinawa, South Korea and Germany etc. The scale and purpose of the operation of course changes as the context changes.

Merely withdrawing “before 9/11” (as if that is some relevant symbolism…) was irresponsible and clearly not even planned in any serious manner.

I don’t have any defense for the Afghan army, it’s government nor the people. Many have come to Europe under false statements of age and now we are stuck with them. Many turn to criminality simply because the European job market has no use for them. It’s a horrible result for all involved.

It’s well known that US presidents since Bush have wanted to leave and not spend more dollars on these foreign adventures. Many arguments can be made that more countries in Europe should have made larger contributions to the war against terrorism.

Again, it matters in the manner how you scale down, and what you leave behind.

Had it been Trump (or anyone else) - of course I would have been equally critical. This immediately affects my life in Sweden; and it’s just horrible to see the consequences in Afghanistan with the Taliban barbarians subjecting the people to their tyrannical rule.

It’s not hard to see this area turning into a place for terrorist plots again. And then what. At least the Trump administration clearly has that in mind. It’s hard to imagine what Biden has in mind - if anything at all.

Regardless of the downvotes I’ve received I think it’s pretty clear now after the fact that the withdrawal is a complete mess and failure.

Once you go in - you at least have a responsibility for the manner in which you get out.

In particular for all the allies that helped you for the past 20 years and now are at risk.

The Afghan army couldn’t fight back once Biden forbade all service technicians to stay in the country and maintain the machines and veichles, and certainly not when the army was trained to work in coordination with US Air Force which hastily left.

It’s a complete failure all around.

The Biden administration doing this so haphazardly is irresponsible and with little to no reward - political or anything else.

Moving away from US centric debates on the economic value of this war and attempt at governance; I fear Afghanistan will again become a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism atrocities and also put increased pressure on Europe in terms of migration.

To the latter point, Europe is already on the breaking point here and further stress will probably - judging from recent experience - lead to further success of conservative and anti-immigration political parties.

Certainly evidence of climate change. The man-made part is of course not demonstrated in this piece though.

I rather don’t like the condescending attitude but will at least applaud the use of the word “skeptic” rather than “denier”; the latter being a more religious phrasing.

Disclaimer: I do think man-made climate change is happening and something very much worth addressing. The interesting part is simply what to do about it; on which people will disagree vehemently.

And who is to judge what information is “misleading”? Google staff?

I am glad I no longer use Google Drive for anything serious but I am terrified at the prospect of additional services going this way.

In the end we will have to migrate back to using local hardware that we can control ourselves and manage all backups and availability ourselves.

This policy follows recent years trend against liberty. Though that trend is long - it has accelerated terribly ever since Brexit, Trump and similar events where people chose differently than their supposed leaders had intended.

People who thought this would stop at banning Alex Jones may want to reconsider. You are next.

F# has grown a lot, and ha already been around for quite some time now.

So long as Microsoft makes sure F# is 100% supported in jupyter I see myself using it more and more to replace Python.

One huge item missing is a data frame library though. They started developing one last year but since then I have seen nothing.

Without dataframes it’s hard to convince myself to spend the time doing analysis. And Deedle is not up to par with pandas unfortunately.

You are trying to rationalize the usage of “black” and “white” while simultaneously seeming to agree with my point.

I would say this to you: if you believe a diverse set of skills, experience and personality are important (I believe they can be) then use categories for that.

Skills categories are judged from education and practical work tests.

Experience is judged from CV and references from earlier employments.

Personality can be assessed from tests and judged during interviews.

These aren’t perfect either, but they are far more relevant than: “oh, you seem brownish, how nice”

Very true.

It is a vague and meaningless concept. It has never been defined except by referring to antiquated notions of “race” stemming primarily from 18th and 19th century ideas.

In modern times, we’ve apparently added biological sex, sexual preference and a vague (and meaningless) concept of self-identity that can, apparently, cross all other definitions with impunity - even changing fluidly throughout the day.

To appoint people as “head” of this mess of ideas point to deeper issues in the organization.

Usually I am very skeptical of "soft" subjects like the humanities; but clearly this is unethical research.

In addition to wasting people's time, you are potentially messing with software that runs the world.

Yes, other platforms have targeted freedom of expression as well. In the same situation, they would receive the same comment.

This award would have made sense when YouTube really took off.

Lately YouTube has engaged in unpersoning - deleting people from the social consciousness. Stefan Molyneux and Alex Jones come to mind. Others have their accounts and videos merely suspended or demonetized for inane reasons, e.g Louder with Crowder.

Even doctors merely expressing opinions contrary to WHO officialdom get taken off.

This process has happened very quickly over the past few years and is the reason why alternatives are set to prosper.

Awarding this CEO merely means the award is not to be taken seriously.

YouTube (and others) appear to have lost the plot.

I tend to avoid it and support other platforms to encourage content creators to migrate.

It’s a form of extreme subjectivism that is just not practically feasible in any society.

Postmodernism is truly nefarious.

> RMS has (for some reason) tens of thousands of political notes on his website ready to be cherry-picked

It used to be quite okay to share your opinions, political or not, on your website.

It they concern anything that is of importance, some people will find it disagreeable and even offensive.

The fact that we are at a point where expressing this is somehow strange and it’s accepted that you can be subjected to cherry-picking and so should abstain from posting anything that might be considered controversial by some radical;

That’s a horrible place for our society to be in. I’m glad the competing support letter has far more supporters.

I’m tired but not surprised that we have to include politics in everything.

Make software better instead.

Same in Swedish: Mästare. Magister is also a word used in Sweden for teachers at schools.

I agree that the intense focus on changing names and appearances in general is at best a waste of time. It's a very US/UK-centric discussion.

"Master/slave" has no relevance at all in many countries like Sweden where serfdom (träldom) was forbidden or else ended in the 13th century and never involved foreign peoples.

"Whitelisting" and "blacklisting" have never been associated with skin pigmentation. This seems like a paranoid interpretation.

Meanwhile, the real problems still remain. I will say that I think even the author makes a serious mistake in framing the discussion around skin color.

These ideas about race that prevail in the discussion are not helpful and stem from poor scientific work in the 18th to 20th century.

The genetic diversity of Africa is more diverse than the rest of the world (https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article/study-africans-mo...).

To refer to all as "black" (or worse, "Black" with a capital B) is a simplification that has no relevance today.

I don’t think so. And of course we don’t conduct these surveys. But they are still requested from primarily US clients.

The author is dead.

Perhaps you would like to ask authors of books from earlier centuries to modify them so as to not be offensive.

Are you serious?

It’s bad enough that the company self-cancels the books.

But now we also can’t even have a secondary market for what already exists.

People have severely underestimated the influence these woke people have.

In my company, we receive forms from clients asking us to survey our employees for their sexual preferences and racial categories, essentially based on the same nomenclature used in nazi Germany.

It is completely bizarre and abhorrent.

At least this particular piece of poison is thus far resisted in Sweden.

All of this is connected and needs to stop. It starts with each and everyone of us no longer “just going along” with each new book burning and each new forbidden word they introduce.

Exactly. In German it’s meister and in Swedish mästare.

It has absolutely nothing to do with slavery.

Sorry if this offends someone but I think a lot of these newly verboten words nonsense stems from poor education and ignorance in the US.

This has serious implications for any business thinking about hosting their applications on Amazon or other providers.

I used to be a big proponent of doing this on AWS or Azure but with these actions there are suddenly real risks to consider.

The precedent has been set, and it will now be used to force down other businesses, when the time is right and there is a clear viable target for outrage.

Looks very good. Can’t believe we can just download the entire pdf free of charge. So helpful !

I'm not saying Google, Apple and Amazon have broken the law. If Parler sues them, then the courts can decide that.

I'm just expressing why I find this disturbing; as you seem to too.

In the long run, the market will solve this problem by creating alternatives. It is just a matter of time.

I can still express why I think these companies are taking the wrong actions and believe that they have the right to take those decisions. And that there is sensible alternative to a market economy.

I don't support "absolutely" free speech either. A line has to be drawn. I think it should be drawn as narrow as possible.

If someone promotes a campaign to hunt down an individual and murder him/her; certainly I wouldn't blame anyone for taking that content down. I think we already have a good tool for where the line goes and that is the law. E.g. you can't recruit and plan for terrorism and you can't spread child pornography among other horrible things.

This is something else. This is a situation where three major companies use vague paragraphs in their terms and conditions to target a specific platform.

What's next? If Parler self-hosts, will demands come to ISPs to shut them down? Where does it end.

Exciting stuff. Congratulations to you for this major release. We need more alternatives and the decentralized approach is certainly interesting.

I’ve said it before: I find this highly disturbing. Especially the sense in which it is coordinated. Amazon, Google and Apple acting together to shut down a platform that has been very clear about its stance on content moderation from the outset.

Free speech is not just any value. Sooner or later you will find yourself on the side of an issue where your speech will be attacked.

Then there is the always present double standard. Why did Twitter allow “Hang Mike Pence” to trend last night? Where are the suspensions and permanent bans?

Again, sooner or later we will all find ourselves on the other side of the double standard.

This is my conclusion as well. The standards we hold must hold for everyone.

But it is becoming hard to deny that the standards seem very conditional on whether you agree with the motives and end goal of the people committing violence or not.

I think what happened in the capitol was horrible and hope enough people get to face the consequences in court. Similarly what has happened in Portland and other cities throughout this year has been horrible, from what I can gather and your statement.

Yet events are covered completely differently.

While I think Trump is completely in the wrong;

He did not tell people to commit their crimes.

It is important to maintain a strict standard here. There are many people who speak of the dangers of fascism, but they are not responsible when antifa riot. There are many who speak of racism, but they (even organization leaders) are not responsible for when BLM protests turn into riots.

What’s happening now is disturbing. Not only Trump but dozens of other accounts have been purged.

Even the Parler app has been removed from the Android store. If it hasn’t been removed from Apple store I am guessing it will be.

The end result is a continued world-view split not only in ideas but in platforms; software and soon hardware?

Scott W has a great approach to domain modeling.

While he covers many topics, and almost all of F#, I think the way he uses the language to model a domain is what stands out as something that could really be of use in many real world applications.

Just looking at my own pet project of yatzy that I implemented in F# in a day, I used discriminated unions and enums to model all of it.