59 karma · joined June 27, 2018
So it's not.
> In the US, hate speech isn't like being offended, it's not in the eye of the beholder. It's been covered a number of times by the Supreme Court.
I know. The point is that these people want hate speech to be illegal like it is in many other western nations. They want more censorship for the US, less in china.
This is different from us how?
> That is different entirely from what the typical Western country censors: advertising illegal drugs, child porn, hate speech, etc.
China also censors illegal drugs, child porn, "hate speech", etc.
You are right. China censors for the good of their own citizens and our censors do so for the good of us. Oh wait, that sounds exactly the same.
I love people who conflate "hate speech" with child porn and illegal drugs. Is physics "hate speech" to flat earthers? Should we censor physics? What's next? Hate thought? Should we monitor people's brain for hate thought. Science itself is hate speech to religious people. Should we censor science?
There are lots of facts that people on both sides consider "hate speech". For example, I consider your support of censorship hate speech. Should you be censored?
Just as I said, these people love censorship in the US but hate censorship in china. Makes me wonder who and what is pushing and funding such anti-liberal and anti-western "hate speech" in the US. In all my time on the internet, I haven't come across such openly fascistic and anti-liberal "hate speech" until fairly recently.
Any course or book on the Philosophy Of Science would cover that. Are numbers discovered or invented? Did the ancient hindu mathematician invent the number zero or did he discover it? You could argue that the symbolic representation of zero was invented ( or was it? ) but the idea of the number zero was discovered. The more you delve into it, the more you realize things aren't as straightforward as you might have imagined.
Or quicksort. Is it an invention or a discovery? You could go back and forth on it forever.
Google news and google search is also censored in the US, Europe, Middle East and everywhere.
Why is it that so many vocal ex-employees are against censorship in china, but demand censorship in the US?
I'm against censorship everywhere but the self-righteousness of these people when it comes to china is getting to be unbearable.
These ex-employees are saying google has to censor news and search because the internet is "too toxic" and causing too much division. This is precisely what the chinese authorities say to justify censorship.
And with the recent revelations of how politically driven and manipulative google is ( and has been ), I highly doubt the chinese or any country would allow google in without certain restrictions.
Shareholders select the board members. The board members determine the overall plan and direction of the company. The C-Suite ( CEO, CTO, CFO, etc ) execute the plan of and follow the directions of the board.
If the board members want to make drastic changes, they can ask the shareholders to vote on it. If the shareholders don't like certain board members or the changes or direction of the company, then can vote to remove board members and put in members they want.
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/040315/what-can-sha...
Normally, the CEOs do what the board wants and the board have a fiduciary duty to make money for the shareholders. So unless we have a rogue CEO going against the wishes of the board or shareholders, it's highly likely that most of the shareholders will support google's ambitions in china.
Do you think shareholders would have voted for Apple to leave china and leave tens of billions in revenue and profits on the table?
If anything, shareholders are probably asking google's board why google isn't doing business in china already.
Where are the pro-russian comments?
> but I wonder if the issues that Reddit identified with the campaigns by Russian entities may be as far reaching as YC.
You mean the nonsense they had to push to appease the media right? Glad you didn't bring up the $200,000 that some russian company supposedly spent on facebook to win trump the election. If the russians had been running a propaganda campaign on reddit, they did a piss poor job because 99% of the propaganda on reddit has been anti-russia since the very beginning.
> The content of the comments is interesting too, attacking the reputation of journalist.
So criticizing journalists ( an occupation that has lost an incredible amount of credibility recently ) means that you are a russian? I guess that makes 80% of the US population russian agents. But what about journalists who critize other journalists? Doesn't that make them russian agents too? Oh dear.
To me, the only suspect comment in this entire thread is yours. Or maybe that's because I'm a russian agent. /s
Seems like the whataboutism propaganda campaign has morphed into the "everyone's a russian agent" campaign. Wonder what it'll morph into next.
There are youtube videos of people using DNA sites to find their real parents ( some accidentally and some intentionally ). It's pretty interesting if you have the time.
> Will they want to get in touch with the donor or her family?
Human beings are curious creatures. They will initially feel conflicted but the desire to know will prove irresistible. Perhaps to find half-siblings, to help build a family tree for their own kids one day and of course for family/genetic disease information.
There was a woman whose mother refused to tell her who her father was ( either because she didn't know herself or she hated the guy ). So she did a DNA test and matched a distant cousin and they talked and using the woman's age/birth location/etc, the distant cousin was able to tell her who her father was.
> If one side wants to connect, it's probably going to happen.
At this point, it's guaranteed. All it takes is just one person in your family ( parents, siblings, cousins ) to do a DNA test to narrow it down from billions to dozens. It's almost a statistical certainty that someone with direct genetic ties to you has sent their data in.
If your mother told you today that you were adopted, what's the first thing you'd want to do after recovering from the shock?
Counterintuitively, being a paid subscriber probably makes your data even more valuable to wapo and their advertisers so there is probably even more incentive to track you.
You are against corporations and nation states exploiting social media so you want corporations and nation states to moderate it? Doesn't make much sense.
Odd that you aren't calling for the moderation of traditional media.
All the wars, the arab spring issues and even trump isn't a social media issue, it's a traditional media issue. If you are truly worried about corporations and nation states exploiting something, you'd be up in arms over traditional media.
Was this guy a PR guy for reddit like the former google PR woman lambasting google?
What's with the childishness of these former tech people? Just because things haven't gone your way, you whine all day?
Reddit and social has made the world a lot better place. LGBT people are better accepted in society because of reddit and social media. People from religions like mormons are better able to separate themselves from the tyranny of their religion. Atheists are more accepted. A black president, something almost unthinkable, was elected partly because of reddit and social media.
I'd rather a world without nymag and journalists than a world without HN, reddit, etc.
Ever since trump's election, we've had nonstop propaganda from the useless agenda pushing journalists and their media organizations.
I wish these children would grow up already. The point of elections and life is that you win some and you lose some.
Instead of giving preference to useless news and magazines, social media companies should simply ban then just to give them a taste of their own medicine.
And what made reddit, twitter and much of social media so toxic isn't social media, it's journalists and media companies pushing their way into social media.
Reddit became toxic when it succumb to media pressure to give journalists and media companies special preference. And when major default subs like politics, news, worldnews, etc got handed over to the media and the democratic party.
Why is it that whenever wikileaks leaks anything, people whine about it?
We've done the same thing here. When relations with the US and China were bad, the news coverage of china is very anti-china. When relations are good, the news coverage turns good ( like the generous, almost fawning, Deng news coverage in the 70s ).
Of course it's the most noticeable or obvious during war time, but propaganda is ever present during peace, it's just more subtle.
That's the point of free speech and free assembly. People are allowed to be wrong.
I'd rather have too many people asking questions and investigating rather than too few.
How about stopping with the apocalyptic hyperbole?
> The scientists have told us its our final chance....
And "scientists" have been telling us that for decades now.
> I feel like the young people need to take charge of the world because the older generations have had their chance and not fixed it.
Or the old have lived long enough not to buy into hysteria. Maybe the older people are just wiser, better educated and have more experience? Or we could let the young people, who know nothing about anything, take charge.
> What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?
Nothing. No more than we can prevent solar flares, tornadoes or volcanic eruptions. We simply have to deal with it.
Climate change occurs naturally. It has existed before the industrial revolution. It has existed before humans. It will exist after humans. Trying to prevent climate is like trying to prevent the sun from rising in the east.
Is there room for us to mitigate human contribution to climate change? Sure. Would that matter. Probably not. Are there other areas we should be concentrating on? Yes.
Environmental preservation ( forests, rivers, oceans ... ). Species protection. Build better and walkable cities.
Global warming ( rebranded by PR firms as the silly "climate change" ) isn't the first apocalyptic hysteria by "scientists" ( and by "scientists" I mostly mean politicians, corporations, lawyers, etc trying to profit ).
Here are some of the "end of the world" events cassandrized by "scientists"
Climate change. Global warming, Global cooling ( from 1940s to 1970s ). That's right folks, before we were going to boil to death, we were going to freeze to death. Of course there are the supervolcanic eruptions. Asteroid strike. Of course dire warnings of nuclear holocaust. Then there was malthusian prediction of death by population growth. Boy was he wrong about that one. "Scientists" even warned of extinction of humans by race mixing - look up social darwinism. Now we laugh at that.
So take a deep breath. The world is not going to end anytime soon. Climate change happens with or without humans. We'll adapt like we always have.
That's a nice sentiment to hold, but that's simply not true. All societies are formed by the elite for the benefit of the elite. If others benefit in the endeavor, it's simply an accidental side effect.
Industrialized human society is no different than the industrial animal farm. The industrial animal farm doesn't exist for the benefit of the animals. It exists for the benefit of the people who own, run or rule the farm.
> This is why the government usually sponsors education, for example.
Modern education system in the US and UK and everywhere was created to indoctrinate the students into a particular belief system of the elite, produce future factory workers and to keep child labor from competing against adult laborers. It was one part to serve as innoculation against "wrongthink", one part to produce factory workers who can read simple instructions and to remove labor supply ( child labor ) from a society which couldn't produce enough jobs for its adults. A reason for the constant increase in education demands from jobs is simply because there aren't enough jobs to go around. A solution is to keep successive generations longer and longer in school and out of the work force. But a side effect of this is that students are indebted more and more. And debt is slavery as adam smith pointed out.
> I believe the start of the problem was the rise of neo-liberalism, holding the market and competition above all else.
The problem predates neoliberalism. Neoliberalism ( and neoconservativism ) is just national industrialism writ large ( international ). It's the natural progression from national industrialization of the past 200 years.
Journalism isn't vital to democracy. It didn't exist in the democracies of ancient world ( greece or roman empire ). It didn't exist during the founding of the US.
> Journalism is an important counter-power.
It can be a counter to power or it can be a servant to power.
> Without journalism you wouldn't be aware of corruption, abuse of power and many other things.
Of course we would. Do you really think people weren't aware of corruption before journalism?
Journalism, like all institutions, can be used for good and evil. And they can be corruptible. It can be used to shed light to corruption or it can be used to hide corruption. It can be used to hold the powerful accountable or it be used to spread propaganda for the powerful. In the US, journalism has primarily been for the latter. Feel free to read up the history of newspapers and who created them. It was wealthy( bankers or tycoons ) and politicians who created our prominent newspapers.
> They are here, they exist.
If they do exist, they must exist as independent journalists.
The problem with modern society is that journalists have duped everyone into thinking they are essential and they are objective/good/fair/etc. I don't think anyone paying attention believes this any more. The problem with journalism is that there are no checks and balances. Nobody holding journalists/journalism to account. A lot of it has to do with the fewer and fewer corporations owning so many media outlets and of course the ideological conformity enforced in almost all of the media.
Actually, the union makes it harder to confront china because of the collective nature. It's like if a group of ten people going to the movies vs 10 individuals. The group has to compromise while individuals don't. There is a reason why china is so pro-EU. It's why china wants britain to stay in the EU.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/18...
The EU can't confront china if it is going to hurt greece or one of its members. But norway can because it is free to act on its own interests.
https://thediplomat.com/2016/01/sino-norwegian-relations-5-y...
> China obviously can’t blacklist the EU.
And obviously EU can't blacklist china either.
> As it stands, no individual country dares do it.
A few individual countries do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Taiwan#Ty...
10 years ago, the media was scaremongering over chinese investment in brazil. I remember thinking that china was buying brazil and then I found out that the largest foreign investors in brazil was the US and the netherlands and china was a distant third. Don't remember reading articles about how we were taking over brazil or how the dutch were though.
5 years ago, the media was scaremongering over chinese investment in africa. Oh no, china is taking over africa. Turns the largest investor in africa was the EU by far and that european business dominated the african market. Also, there was hysteria over china leasing farmland in africa. Turns out the saudis, koreans and a bunch of other countries also lease land all over the world.
Now it's the chinese investment in the EU. Nevermind that the EU is a much larger economy than china and the EU invests far more in china than vice versa. I mean come on.
Facebook bought instragam for $1 billion even though there was no significant revenue or income. But the potential for growth of instagram itself and the photo sharing social media space was immense.
With established companies like walmart in establish spaces like retail, you know what you are getting. With tech unicorns, it's a bit of a gamble.
Sorry, I don't believe you. The median income in india is between $500-$1000. The media income in the US is $35000. You seriously claiming money isn't the driving force?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income
> Here is a short list of things I can not do while on a H1-b visa: Make and sell art, perform for an audience, publish on a blog or a youtube channel that’s monetized, mine dogecoin, tutor students in India or any country online, trade stocks at a frequency that someone might consider “day trading” etc.
"Make and sell art"? Dogecoin? It's hard to take you seriously when this is the list you provided.
Does the nytimes tech team ask "Why are we spamming HN everyday for"? I doubt it. They just do what they are paid to do.
The same thing for all tech workers and all workers in general. The construction worker building a luxury tower isn't asking "why are we building this for". He just wants to get paid and paid well.
"Do no evil" is no more real in the tech world as "fair and balanced" or "all the news fit to print" is real in the news world. It's just empty slogans for PR.
It isn't contradictory. The french did colonize vietnam and force cash crops on vietnam ( like all colonial empires did ). But during the indochina war ( 1st and 2nd ), vietnam's coffee industry ( and all non-war related industry ) crashed due to the war itself and sanctions levied by the US/France. Vietnam was pretty much barred from trading with the western world, their primary market.
As the indochina war drew to a close and the coffee industry revived because of friendly soviet-vietnam relations and the opening of markets in soviet dominated europe. It wasn't just coffee, lots of vietnamese immigrated to soviet dominated to work and study as well. At one point, the largest non-white communities in eastern germany, poland, etc were vietnamese.
Yes. Neanderthals as a population don't exist anymore.
The house cat and tiger shares 95% of the same genes. If tigers disappeared, you wouldn't consider it an extinction because we have house cats around?
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0918/House-cats-and-t...
Also, the common ancestors of humans and the common ancestors of cats became extinct a long time ago. Are you saying those "creatures" aren't extinct because humans and cats are around?
Edit: An additional example for those interested. Birds today share same genes as tyrannosaur rex.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-dinosaurs-shr...
So the secret is so important that congress is under a gag order. The two highly valued companies in the US ( Apple and AMZN ) has a gag order. But litle old bloomberg doesn't have a gag order. Isn't that a bit unbelievable?
> Guys, you are worse than the ZeroHedge and similar conspiracy forums...
Doesn't this apply to bloomberg and the media as well? The entire country is immersed in conspiracy. Not sure why you are attacking HN and zerohedge in particular. What's with the sudden attack on social media with attacks like "conspiracy"?
What do you expect of us? The discussion has to involve conspiracies because the story deals with conspiracy. Either bloomberg is right and the chinese ( or possibly other actors ) are involved in a conspiracy to spy on us in ingenious ways. Or bloomberg is wrong and they are involved in a conspiracy ( knowingly or not ) to spread disinformation. Or it could be a misunderstanding.
"I trust Apple to run this CA and gate access to it _far_ more than I trust my personal self to do so. This security improvement will make me safer, as well as my non-engineer coworkers, and my mom."
Holy goodness. In the 2000s it was Google will save the world "Do no evil". Now it's Apple "Keeps us safe".
Could be. But there are a lot of good and thoughtful finance writers. I don't see their articles spammed here on the weekly like clockwork along with the fawning worship. It's almost like the article is just posted to talk about how great levine is and not the actual article. Just seems odd to me that's all.
> And if there’s any financial news site which would have an incentive to avoid clickbait it would be Bloomberg because it’s subsidized by the rents it extracts from its terminal and data business, and this is one service they provide to those customers so they have an incentive to provide value.
I'm well aware of what bloomberg is.