Hacker News Reader

offby37yearson Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went private for a while

Hate speech has been wilfully misconstrued to mean speech you hate.

offby37yearson Birdwatch Overview

> People alleging election fraud should present evidence of it.

Agreed, which is exactly why the topic should not be verboten.

offby37yearson Birdwatch Overview

Should discussion of election fraud be stifled due to “absence of evidence” then?

offby37yearson Birdwatch Overview

Or in January 2020 if it was contagious at all: https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152

offby37yearson Birdwatch, a community-based approach to misinformation

Groups search for consensus, individuals for truth. Without consensus groups fracture. Without truth we're destined for the next dark age.

offby37yearson Universal basic income doesn’t impact worker productivity

You're describing an artificial minority maintained through means-testing. That's not UBI.

offby37yearson Universal basic income doesn’t impact worker productivity

The dose makes the poison. The universal nature drastically increases the proportion, from a single-digit minority to a majority approaching 99%, who stand to benefit from increased redistribution. From there it's a spiral to complete redistribution.

offby37yearson Universal basic income doesn’t impact worker productivity

It simultaneously incentivises skilled emigration and unskilled immigration. It would drive an exodus of any entrepreneurial talent.

offby37yearson Universal basic income doesn’t impact worker productivity

Keyword: Universal basic income.

offby37yearson Universal basic income doesn’t impact worker productivity

UBI is a death sentence within direct democracies short of robot/AI provided abundance. Introduction beforehand sows the seed for a direct transfer of wealth from the 49% haves to the 51% have-nots.

offby37yearson Twitter Bots Are a Major Source of Climate Disinformation

That complexity is meaningful as it precludes precise modelling. Now that does not mean we should not curb CO2 emissions, rather it is the degree of opacity and uncertainty in a system, as well as asymmetry in effect, rather than specific model predictions, that should drive the precautionary measures.

Push a complex system too far and it will not come back. The popular belief that uncertainty undermines the case for taking seriously the "climate crisis" that scientists tell us we face is the opposite of the truth. Properly understood, as driving the case for precaution, uncertainty radically underscores that case, and may even constitute it.

offby37yearson Twitter Bots Are a Major Source of Climate Disinformation

There are 2 types of people. Those who think in statics and those who think in dynamics. Climate change is not basic back of the envelope calculation specifically because we're dealing with a dynamic system. The more complex the world, the less you can grasp it from academic studies.

offby37yearson Google threatens to withdraw search engine from Australia

"Private companies can do what they want"

offby37yearson Google threatens to withdraw search engine from Australia

No difference to EU dictating GDPR laws.

offby37yearson Vertical farms grow veggies on site at restaurants and grocery stores

You'd need an entire farm.

offby37yearson Janet Yellen suggests 'curtailing' cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin

The Bitcoin market cap is currently $653B. It's larger than all but 15 fiat currencies[1].

[1] https://fiatmarketcap.com/

offby37yearson Janet Yellen suggests 'curtailing' cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin

It’s not so much Bitcoin going up as the US dollar going down. An unprecedented fifth of all US dollars were printed just last year.

As predicted just two days ago[1], Bitcoin (and decentralisation in general) will be attacked under the guise of it being a vessel for circumvention of financial establishment right-wing censorship. "We must regulate it to prevent fundraising for another insurrection".

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25815634

offby37yearson Parler's home page is back online, but app still not in stores

Almost as if reporting reality is secondary to furthering ideological narratives, and from Reuters no less.

offby37yearson Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2°C: study from 2018

I'm not condoning the narrative, rather the opposite. Technocrats will attack decentralisation as it threatens their hegemony. My claim is they'll sell it under the guise of preventing domestic terrorism.

offby37yearson Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2°C: study from 2018

Prediction, Bitcoin (and decentralisation in general) will be attacked as a vessel for circumvention of financial establishment right-wing censorship next. We must regulate it to prevent fundraising for another insurrection.

offby37yearson Twitter shuts down account of Sci-Hub

It is a communication monopoly.

offby37yearson Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

If you need a hole dug by tomorrow and you have $1k to spend, you can either:

- Pay one person ($1k) with an excavator

- Pay ten people ($100/each) with shovels

offby37yearson Facebook's role in Capitol protest larger than previously thought

If he actually said anything directly calling for violence CNN and MSNBC would have had that clip on repeat for the last week.

offby37yearson Facebook's role in Capitol protest larger than previously thought

This should be worryingly obvious, with former Democratic Party staffers filling FAANG ranks, e.g. Andy Stone who is now Facebook’s policy communications manager:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-10-18/facebo...

And former FAANG execs filling the Biden transition team, e.g. Zaid Zaid, Christopher Upperman, Rachel Lieber, Deon Scott:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/30/biden-transition-fa...

https://twitter.com/StevenOverly/status/1337545418838831104

offby37yearson Facebook's role in Capitol protest larger than previously thought

> I don’t think you can, but, so what?

https://twitter.com/DC_Draino/status/1347574973972545536

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1334184644707758080

offby37yearson Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?

As a software engineer your leverage should be higher than near any other profession. This is why SV engineers are paid handsomely. Your productive output eclipses that of any profession without force multipliers. Your income should not be based on input (risk, comfort), but rather your output (scale, value).

offby37yearson Joint Chiefs remind U.S. forces that they defend the constitution

This memo contains no new information. It almost certainly confirms multiple vying factions within the military, otherwise why release this.

offby37yearson How Silicon Valley destroyed Parler

DDoSing is already an illegal cybercrime in the US. A DDoS attack could be classified as a federal criminal offense under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)[1].

Under Damaging a Computer, 1030(a)(5)

> The provision may also be used to prosecute the perpetrators of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which occur, for example, when an attacker overwhelms a server’s ability to process legitimate requests by overloading the server with a flood of illegitimate traffic.

[1] https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R46536.pdf

offby37yearson Telegram reaches 500M users and adds 25M new users this past 72 hours

Telegram has no servers or offices in Russia and was blocked there from 2018 to 2020: https://t.me/durov/117

offby37yearson How Silicon Valley destroyed Parler

The cliché about "screaming fire in a crowded movie theater" misconstrues limits on the 1A.

https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...