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notmarkus

277 karma · joined August 16, 2012

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notmarkus··on Why the ransomware crisis suddenly feels so relentless
It's bad when bad things happen, no one will protect against bad things happening unless bad things happen, so it's good when bad things happen.
notmarkus··on The Muppet Show: Disney+ adds content warning of negative depictions of cultures
Will it be a good case study because it might expose "cancel culture" as non-existent, or because it might expose "cancel culture" as a tool used only to target those who don't toe the progressive line?

In other words, if the Muppets doesn't get "cancelled," is that evidence that "cancel culture" is a hoax, or is it evidence that "cancel culture" doesn't actually care about things like Swedish chefs, it only cares about conformity to a progressive worldview, which the Muppets arguably conform to?

notmarkus··on Statement on New York Times Article
I think the closing was effective in what it was going for: implying that this has all been a "grift." The abruptness is intended to leave the reader with a reverberating final note in their mind. "$250,000... $250,000..."
notmarkus··on Statement on New York Times Article
Consider that you know a lot about this topic and are disgusted by their handing of it. Consider that this might not be an outlier, and you may not be outraged by their handling of other topics simply because you know a bit less about them.

I don't know if this is true for you, but I've found it to be true for me. It took a good deal of time researching and revisiting to realize.

notmarkus··on Statement on New York Times Article
Thanks for including this link. I read the response before I read the NYT article. And while it was a pretty uninteresting article, the tactics used to obfuscate who holds what beliefs are laid bare. It's illuminating to see.
notmarkus··on Block The New York Times
Personally, all over. You have to know the biases of the particular source you're consuming, and take that into account with every article. It's possible to read NYT and get some good info from it, but you need to know when to look elsewhere for more information.

Some places I find myself frequenting more than others though: Democracy Now, Popular Front, Antiwar.com, Harper's. I also like Glenn Greenwald a lot — in my mind if you genuinely risked your life for one of the most important stories ever, I give you a lot of benefit-of-the-doubt.

Places I avoid completely: Fox News, CNN, Breitbart (do I even need to mention that?), Vox.

notmarkus··on Block The New York Times
Just a recent example, from yesterday:

One of their columnists made a big stink about not being allowed in a particular Clubhouse chat, and how it was incredibly dangerous for people to be talking without allowing the media in.

She then signed up with a fake name, joined a chat and immediately (wrongly) accused Marc Andreesen of "using the r-slur."

notmarkus··on Block The New York Times
I came to a similar conclusion after hearing their "The Daily" report on phishing attacks pre-election. They described the phishing attempt as "looking exactly like a Facebook login form" and then said that this level of sophistication could only be accomplished by a state actor — obviously Russia in this case.

I was blown away and had that same thought: if they got this so wrong, and I can tell because I know about the topic, what don't I know about that they're also getting so wrong?

notmarkus··on CDC website built by Deloitte at a cost of $44M is abandoned due to bugs
Are you saying this isn't an example of "government is the problem?"
notmarkus··on Agents raid home of fired Florida data scientist who built Covid-19 dashboard
Oh true, I thought the parent comment was talking about this DOH event specifically.
notmarkus··on Agents raid home of fired Florida data scientist who built Covid-19 dashboard
Who on the "right" is cool with this? Genuinely asking.
notmarkus··on Politically-correct witch-hunt is killing free speech
Yelling fire in a theater has never been a problem, it was only a metaphor used to defend the ridiculous supreme court decision that handing out flyers opposing the draft during World War I was an immediate threat to life and should therefore be banned.

No one ever called for bans on yelling fire in crowded places. The US government called for bans on distributing pamphlets that went against their first attempts at imperialism.

notmarkus··on Politically-correct witch-hunt is killing free speech
Sounds like you're pigeonholing Damore (of Google Memo fame) the same way that you don't want to be. You should read the original memo, and not an opinionated summary of it, it's not long. You may find that you were sold a lie about it.
notmarkus··on Rand Paul says no-knock warrants 'should be forbidden' in wake of shooting
What was disgusting about it?
notmarkus··on Senate narrowly rejects plan to require a warrant for Americans’ browsing data
Amend it so that the state could ignore that part of it too, just like they do with the rest of the 4th amendment?
notmarkus··on U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests
Corporations work by providing a product or service that customers believe to be worth more than the dollars and cents they're paying for it. It's inherently consensual. The only way a corporation begins to generate revenue is literally by attempting to please as many customers as possible.
notmarkus··on U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests
No, they just push for infinitely increasing military spending, which leads to needless wars resulting in millions of deaths.

Both are horrible, let's be real.

notmarkus··on U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests
What meaningful changes have people affected in democratic republics in the recent past? Companies that don't keep up with customers' desires go out of business all the time.
notmarkus··on U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests
Corporate power comes, largely, through government power. Corporations coopt the government and use its power to protect or enrich themselves. Why would corporations want to weaken that?
notmarkus··on U.S. judge blocks Twitter's bid to reveal government surveillance requests
What does that have to do with anything?
notmarkus··on Dianne Feinstein's reply to constituents' opposition to EARN IT act
"Conspiracy" makes it sound like the US government hasn't been building the largest spying apparatus in history over the past 2 decades. Reality says otherwise.
notmarkus··on Humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview
I'm enjoying the amount of pushback this is getting here on HN, given that we all probably think we're not victim to this, and are actively exposing ourselves to be.
notmarkus··on Creating a Magical Videobooth for a Wedding
Reminds me of a little Sam Saccone project from 2014...

https://github.com/samccone/light-paint

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lrWmQsVXog

notmarkus··on Going hungry affects children for their whole lives
This was me for most of my life. But it was cucumbers and pasta with butter (no sauce, no cheese). I took the radical step of my first cheese pizza at 23 while working a long shift at Domino's.

At 25, I took a long hike with a good friend. Afterwards, we stopped at a Thai restaurant, I ordered a garden salad. Halfway through, I looked at my friend's chicken basil and thought, "My aversion to new food is purely mental. I can do this." I took a bite of his chicken, it was the first meat I'd tried without it being coerced, I tried not to overthink it and found that I enjoyed it. I ordered the same dish for myself. Within a few months I was eating beef tongue, oysters, roasted ants, you name it.

I'm not sure if my parents would have been able to break me out of my pickiness. If I overthought what I was eating, I'd gag, and I think that was the original seed of the issue. That's an unpleasant and embarrassing experience, and I think it happened very early in my life, earlier than I can remember. So I believe I developed an aversion to trying new food, and the overthinking/gagging became a self-reinforcing cycle.

What seemed to work for me was the combination of being tired and truly hungry — not just "I want to eat" but "my body desperately needs sustenance" hungry — along with being hours from home and in a place where everything on the menu was foreign to me. I don't know if you can replicate this scenario with your 14 year old, and I don't know if it would have worked for me at 14. Maybe I was just ready for a change in my life. But being malnourished affected me negatively, and I wish I had resolved it at 14 when I was still developing, rather than 25 when it was too late.

notmarkus··on Facebook, YouTube Blindsided by Mosque Shooter's Live Video
> You, similarly, are just providing cover for these terrorists.

That's a pretty intense claim, in what way is OP "providing cover"?

notmarkus··on TSA announces “biometrics vision for all commercial aviation travelers”
I'm pretty sure I didn't take my shoes off when exiting Vietnam. And definitely didn't when traveling from Saigon to Hanoi.
notmarkus··on Why Does “=” Mean Assignment?
It's ...odd... but I've always liked the simple elegance of (Meditech's) MAGIC languages. Strict left-to-right, even in assignment and in math. Instead of "A gets 1" (A = 1), it's "1 goes to A" (1^A).

    > 1^A
    1
    > A+A^A
    2
    > IF{A+A*A^B B}
    8
notmarkus··on Show HN: Nothing.js – A chainable mock object which always returns itself
> The implementation uses Symbol and Proxy behind the hood so you might need to use appropriate polyfills...

Does anyone know of a working Proxy polyfill? I've never been able to find one.

notmarkus··on GlassPhone
It's doubtful that anyone would fire an employee looking at fine art. The more realistic issue is that some coworker might be walking by and catch a 0.5 second glimpse, think they saw something that they didn't, maybe turn it into a bigger thing or at least start a conversation or two about it, and months later maybe a boss is less inclined to give a big raise or promotion, because there's a sliver of a worry that this person might be problematic.

It's never as black-and-white as "boss walks by and fires person looking at art."

notmarkus··on RIP Redux: Dan Abramovich Announces Future-Fetcher
This might be one of the most poorly written articles I've ever seen on HN.
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