prossercj

So what is the solution? A law that requires services to cancel auto-pay after a month (or so) of inactivity? Or at least requires them to provide an option or setting so that users can have this behavior as desired?

> Unfortunately the place shut down shortly after I moved away.

Clearly you were their most important customer, eh?

Okay, I'll bite. Pardon my ignorance, but this is a new concept to me. If you have no inner voice, how are you able to speak? Surely you formed those words in your mind before writing them. Is it that you only do so when speaking to others, and never to yourself?

> And perhaps most importantly, we got rid of the absurd mentality that what happens in other families is none of our business

I agree with your general sentiment (more recognition and treatment of mental illness is a good thing), but this line troubles me. Most of what happens in my family should stay in my family. Our business is our business. It's no one else's business. There's nothing absurd about this. There may be exceptions (and a child with severe, untreated mental illness may be an exception), but like all exceptions, they are special cases, not the norm. Let's not do away with all privacy in a rush to "turn the tide"...

At the risk of losing credibility in this community, I'm going to voice an opinion which I think belongs to the silent majority: I do not want to customize anything. I want to read the news and check my bank account with as little drama as possible. More customizable settings always means more things that can break. If the best feature of Firefox is that it has lots of things to configure, that's a negative for me.

But this is coming from somebody who really would like to embrace better privacy...sigh...

Holding out hope for the DuckDuckGo browser on Windows. The current beta is decent, but extensions are yet to come, which means no ad blocking at the moment. That makes it essentially unusable with today's internet

To what extent does the law allow persecution?

Not sure if this qualifies as an "app", but I wrote this little powershell script to test for an active internet connection. Beeps when connected. I use it almost every day, because my cable modem takes a variable length of time to boot up, and I got tired of checking manually

  $connected = $false
  while($true)
  {
   if (-not $connected)
   {
    $connected = Test-Connection www.google.com -Quiet
   }
   else
   {
    Write-Host "Connected"
    [console]::beep(1000, 500)
   }
   Start-Sleep -Seconds 2
  }

It's not a full course, but this set of principles influenced my approach to design:

https://anthonyhobday.com/sideprojects/saferules/

EDIT: To be clear, not the author. Just found this on HN at some point

Following this argument, perhaps the line about Sam being "not consistently candid" is an indirect reference to his preferring the closed approach...i.e. they wanted him to be more candid, not in his reports to the board, but with the public, regarding the research itself.

Anyone using a geothermal heat pump with radiant baseboard heat? I have an existing oil boiler that I would love to upgrade to geothermal, but I don't want to install air ducts. I know some systems exist for this (like WaterFurnace [0]), but I have some concerns about whether it can get hot enough for this kind of system. Haven't spoken to the company who would actually install it, but I'd love to hear any success or failure stories.

[0] https://www.waterfurnace.com/residential/products/geothermal...

I have this theory that one day gas stations will be used primarily for their EV charging stations, which they will power by burning gasoline

For many in America, the race issue is more about who we are as a nation than it is about practical results. We want to identify as abolitionists, who defeated the slaveholders and moved toward "a more perfect union" (a line from the Constitution which Lincoln echoed in relation to the war).

The disagreement is essentially about the best way to achieve equality, which though a nebulous term is accepted as a goal without debate, even though the definition of the term can be widely different, as in this case. The conversatives argue that we can only achieve equality by being colorblind. The progressives argue that we can only achieve equality by consciously addressing inequality.

I see some merit on both sides. I tend to lean toward the conservative view, but I recognize moments in our history where active intervention was both noble and necessary (desegregating schools, for example). The question is whether those actions were special cases or are examples for us to follow going forward.

A poem in the style of Ezra Pound, by Bard

    Lotus flower,
    Out of the mud,
    Stands above the water.

    She is the symbol of pure beauty,
    Rising from the mire of the world.

    She is a reminder that even in the darkest of times,
    There is always hope for beauty and renewal.

    Lotus flower,
    Open your petals to the sun,
    And let your fragrance fill the air.

    Let us all learn from your example,
    And rise from the mud of our lives,
    To find our true beauty.

Edit: Bard also taught me how to post this here with proper formatting, after a couple of errors

> Some ideas researchers are currently looking at: connecting young people with information about mental wellness or health; promoting accounts that have been shown to make people feel better about themselves; or prompting teens to check in with peers who are having a rough day.

I'm not a huge fan of Facebook (been off the platform since 2012), but these are great ideas, especially the last one. It's refreshing in the midst of all the doom.

> The Sackler family is conclusively and directly responsible for at least 18,000 deaths in the united states

Do you have a good source for this? I'm genuinely curious. I've heard about the opioid crisis and Purdue Pharma but not this particular family. I see that they were on the board of Purdue. How were they directly connected to the deaths?

For anyone like me inspired by this quote, here is an audio recording and transcript:

https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeche...

This reminds me of something one of my CS professors said about when he worked in industry. They had a joke:

"We may work slowly, but our products are bad."

Nobody laughed, so he added, "You don't think that's funny today, but in five years you'll think it's hilarious."

Can confirm, I think it's hilarious.

The opening session of the house committee investigating the attack contains first-hand accounts from officers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HutK2vVFqLM

How did you acquire the belief that it is better to consider and weigh evidence? And on what scale are you weighing the evidence? And where did you acquire that scale?

+1 for the phrase "spear-hunting mega fauna"

I've had to think hard about engaging with you, because I don't think you're engaging in good faith. I didn't say that chiropractic is a science, nor did I use the word "theory."

In fact, it's not scientific, and that's why I consider it valuable. It can see things that science misses.

Science is often the best method we have, but it's far from infallible. And the idea that there must be a total disconnect between science and mysticism is simply false. Many of the best scientists have had a mystical bent (Einstein, Newton, Bacon).

Not OP, But I've also had some success with chiropractic. There is some wackiness to avoid out there (the ones who treat it like a spirituality), but the one I go to currently takes a disciplined approach. They only target a few specific places based on thermal scans on the spine.

Their argument is that subluxations (misalignment of the vertebrae) impair nerve function, kind of like having a kink in a hose. Misaligned vertebrae press on nerves and make them less able to deliver signals from the brain. Those signals trigger healing, so by relieving the pressure, the body becomes more able to heal itself.

Native desktop apps running on personal PCs.

No, really. It's a cycle.

> Slack is definitely important because it lets people acquire some sense of personal agency again.

Care to elaborate on this? I was with you right up to the end. In what ways does Slack provide a sense of agency? I feel this might be true in my experience too. Is it because it allows for quicker feedback and validation?

Do you have a source for this? I'd love to see them move in this direction based on the success they've had with VSCode.

Edit: Nevermind, found one myself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ri7TmPeqLc

> Now take it a step further: your mind is now a part of a collective globally connected network.

I think you just described the Borg from Star Trek

> I find myself smiling trying to think of the situation that caused a specific law to be made.

I feel this same way about two rules at my college that prohibited (1) building an igloo and sleeping in it, and (2) rappelling from the windows of residence halls.

Just an anecdote on this, a few years ago (in a university town in the US) I was in a bookstore and overheard a small group discussing what sounded a lot like New Atheism. What stood out to me was one of them arguing passionately for greater group solidarity, saying that they shouldn't squabble over whether they call themselves secular humanists or atheists or whatever. So these people are still out there. Of course, in this same town social justice activism is much more prevalent, and there was something pitiable about this group, as though they knew that their brand of politics isn't in favor anymore. But I was struck by how strongly some of them still wanted to change that. I'm not an atheist, but I think groups like this can provide a healthy counterbalance to the kind of fervor being discussed here.

Just want to stop by and say that I love FreeTaxUsa too. They have exceeded my expectations these last three years. No gimmicks or upselling, just straightforward forms with labelled boxes matching those on the government forms. Free federal filing, $13 for my state filing. Remembers my AGI and other relevant info (i.e. employer's address) from year to year. Less than an hour to file everything this year. They do also offer a deluxe product which includes assistance in case of an audit.

I have no formal connection to them, just a very satisfied customer.

I was an early customer of Simple, and transitioned to Capital One after the sale to BBVA. The killer for me was that Simple would no longer send out checks through the mail, which was how I had become accustomed to paying my rent.

They also pushed for customers to not use personal checks for anything (at one time they didn't even offer them), which I now find kind of foolish. So after they ended the check-by-mail service, there was no way for me to get a check to my landlord. And it was just kind of a big middle finger to someone who had been a loyal customer.

I guess in the days after the Great Recession we were all hoping for some kind of financial revolution that never came. Simple closing today seems to certify that those hopes are gone.