salmonfamine

> Its about governments powerlessness to control the message from foreign cooperations likely influenced by foreign governments.

Fair enough, that is also an issue.

> Maybe 0.000001% of it is 'protecting users'.

I think we need to bring in concrete examples here. Consider GDPR -- would you characterize that as a governmental entity protecting its users?

> Again, probably 0.0001% of Users will so even if you give them the option.

I kind of doubt that. Facebook has introduced limited control over certain aspects of your feed and everyone I know has used those features. Even non-technical people I know routinely complain about suggested content, non-chronological feeds, and so on. These are popular (if not nearly-universal) concerns.

> So hurting users even more in the process?

Ok, I was off the mark there. I just mean that there are problems with the current platforms that expose real vulnerabilities into public discourse and democracy that have been exploited, and will be exploited much more thoroughly in the future. So doing nothing is not sustainable.

> So what? You want to ban all websites with a comment section that are for profit? What about non-profits that make the founders rich by simply paying out a huge wage? Do you mean it should only be allowed to run on donations?

No, I'm just pointing out that a for-profit structure necessarily clashes with the public value that these platforms produce. The only platform that escapes this conflict and functions quite well is Wikipedia. I don't think that's an accident.

> The things you say are easy to say, but hard to actually make in the real world without running into many more complications.

Yes, of course. My point is that we need to start thinking of solutions. If doing nothing had no consequences, I would be heavily in favor of doing nothing. But I believe it's clear that things are going quite wrong.

> What if the US bans them, and Britain does not. Do you want the US government to systematically control the internet to prevent US citizens from using that British websites?

I don't want anything to get banned. I don't want any government to unilaterally control the internet. I just want people from every country to have some democratic input into the massive tech platforms that heavily impact their daily lives. Perhaps international data rights legislation is the solution. I don't know. But we need to start taking these problems seriously and discussing real solutions -- not just creating federated Twitter clones that offer an unwieldy UX that the average user will never adopt.

Yeah, good questions.

I'm not advocating an end to global platforms. And I don't think the democratic oversight should come from the US government. The end goal should be a website like Wikipedia -- non-profit, maintained and perhaps even funded by users.

In fact, I think a lot of the fragmentation of the internet you see abroad is a reaction against the powerlessness of users and governments against the unassailable power of these corporations. Maybe, if we are able to give users some degree of control over the design and policies of these platforms, we might be able to preserve the global internet. Some of that fragmentation -- as you see in the OP article -- is simply a result of governmental authoritarianism, which is a problem either way.

I think the first step would be to re-align some economic incentives by creating digital rights laws. GDPR is a good first step. So establishing something similar in the US. This itself is a hugely complicated step that could go very wrong, and due to the corrupt nature of US politics and the desire for large tech companies for regulatory capture, the potential pitfalls are many.

Then, if we manage to get that right, I think we need to find a way to create legislation that requires these platforms to give their users control regarding how content is presented to them -- essentially, the ability to control their feeds.

I don't know how we would manage to transition these companies to a true non-profit model. As long as they remain for-profit, they will fight and subvert these efforts every step of the way, even after they became law.

However, I think we are increasingly seeing how dangerous and unsustainable the current model is. Perhaps the best way to accelerate data rights is accelerationism -- making the exploits and faults in these platforms as visible as possible by "hacking" them.

I think before the advent of mass-media it probably worked reasonably well. A subscription-based revenue model seems to work ok.

I think a reliance on advertising is what has pushed things to the degenerated state we have now. And social media has practically dictated that reliance.

I think we're encountering a fundamental conflict between an unregulated free market and a digital economy that doesn't have any notion of scarcity or cost. The old paradigm just doesn't fit. And the result is that a handful of tech employees and billionaires can wield outsized influence over the dominant media channels and public forums of the entire world without any democratic input or regulatory oversight. The fact that anyone on the so-called Left supports the rights of these corporations to wield that influence by appealing to laissez-faire principles -- ("they're private companies, they can do what the want!", "If you don't like Twitter's policies you can go start your own site!") -- is mind-boggling.

I think we need social media to operate as a non-profit like Wikipedia, and I think drastic action is the only way to do so. Building alternatives won't work. A for-profit model is just not compatible with the nature of social media.

This is a facetious reply, but I don't think the government's punishment of free speech violations would have to be totalitarian to be highly concerning.

Likewise, I think allowing a handful of tech employees and billionaires to control what is and is not free speech -- without any democratic control or regulation -- is also highly concerning.

It blows my mind that the so-called left is advocating for the right of private, global, monopolistic corporations to act with impunity.

How do you find non-on-call jobs? Seems like that’s just expected of devs these days. I have a very “chill” on-call policy but it still gives me a ton of anxiety.

If you've been on Tumblr recently, you'll know that it's a pretty hands-off place. You get the general sense that Yahoo! fired everyone who worked at Tumblr and now it's just running on a server somewhere.

Poorly and never

It's a strong word. However, I've found that very few people I know outside of the tech-world bubble have remotely favorable opinions of Twitter, Facebook, or Google. I realize that's anecdotal, though.

This attitude of "tech for tech's sake" at the cost of everything human is so absurd on its face that I have a hard time believing that even these SV-bubble VC's truly believe it. But apparently they do. This is why people hate Silicon Valley and everything tech nowadays.

Historically, technology -- even when it has caused massive disruptions -- has generally enhanced people's lives by freeing them from a harsh constraint imposed by nature. If you have a refrigerator and a microwave, you don't have to worry so much about gathering food and spending all day cooking. If you have birth control, you don't have to worry about choosing between your sex life and your future.

Much of what Silicon Valley has produced in the past 10 years is software and platforms that 1) actually appeal to base, primitive instincts via advertising and 2) directly reduce human liberty by constraining privacy.

We need technology that has a purpose. It seems like the EU is the only governing body that actually understands this.

I agree that, subjectively, it seems like the popular discourse surrounding the nature of science is not exactly philosophically rigorous. And I agree that some people seem to hold quasi-religious views of science.

Maybe I totally misunderstood OP, but it seemed like they were conflating the state of popular discourse with the state of academic philosophy.

As an aside, I don’t think that people are likely to stop trusting in science or the scientific community because of the state of discourse surrounding science. I think that people are much likely to distrust science simply because they don’t like certain findings or it’s not politically aligned with them, imho. At least in America.

1) It’s hard to say “no” to this because it’s not clear what you mean. Do you mean to say that I’m painting religion in the guise of religion?

2) here are several definitions: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science

It's hard to actually address this comment since it's such a ramble, but I think you make some disingenuous rhetorical moves that deserve to be addressed.

You employ a rhetorical move that some theists have used in the past -- namely, casting doubt on the veracity of scientific beliefs by painting them in the guise of religion.

This is also a convenient move that lets you characterize huge swaths of academia that disagree with you by questioning their psychological motives for holding the beliefs they do.

And now that philosophy and science are reduced to priesthoods, what makes them better than religion? After all, most atheists "have some personal, emotional reason for not believing in God rather than a well-thought out chain of reasoning; but most people believe things for personal and emotional reasons, so it isn't surprising." As if the motivations behind a given belief have any ramifications on its truth value.

This effectively allows you to justify belief in God without actually making any arguments for it -- as if in the hypothetical vacancy of science and philosophy we're left with no choice but to default to theism.

I would encourage you to investigate the philosophy of belief and God in more detail, and to be "open to discovery of truth even when [you] may not like it." There is a great deal more literature on the subject than the pithy writings of Dawkins et al (of whom I am no fan) that deal with the subject in much greater detail, and with much more nuanced arguments than you're giving the entire discipline of philosophy credit for.

Also, for the record, I am not an atheist or an agnostic. I am not a philosopher, and I didn't even major in it college. There's a lot of great philosophy out there I haven't even tried to tackle. But I appreciate its value.

I think it's clear you're arguing in bad faith. And I'm disappointed that such an argument is the first thing that comes up on an article like this on HN.

This has been explored in linguistics. People do have an innate sense of grammar. However, language use changes over time, of course, and it's absurd to try to prevent that. Here's a good example -- as you said above, "People just know how to speak right." Of course, many English teachers would love to tell you that you're supposed to say "speak correctly" -- but why? It's a widely understood use of the word "right" and most people wouldn't think anything of it. Having standards about written language are necessary and helpful, but arbitrarily dictating the use of words based on their history is not necessary or helpful.

Anyone know the easiest way to migrate to GitLab?

It is skewed by part-time workers, I suppose, although I don't see why they should be excluded, but it explicitly states that it does not take into account non-workers.

The National Book Award is pretty prestigious in the States.

Anecdotally, it seems that a lot of the 40+ engineers turn into "architects". Not sure if that still counts as a "programmer" by this article's definition.

Good points. I have heard that some trades have a hard ceiling, since managers do tend to have college degrees. I don't know much about it, though.

It is actually pretty high for an individual earner. According to this (https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/) which is sourced from the Census Bureau, it's at approximately the top 25% of earners in the US.

Yes, absolutely. And those network effects I mentioned above significantly contribute to high-skill job markets in many cases.

It's much more complicated than that. Weather is a huge factor. Network effects are not so trivial or easily displaced. Walkability and public transit are major factors that contribute to those network effects and establish a city's culture -- which is a very difficult thing to reproduce. Not to mention politics. It's easy to say "just move to Shreveport!" But many, many people would feel very uncomfortable moving to these locations due to their religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or whatever. And maybe the city itself is much more liberal than its surroundings. However, there are still genuine political concerns that many individuals would have for policy decisions made at a state-level that would directly affect their well-being.

The major argument people from the midwest or the south give in favor of their locations is lower house prices. Many of the "trendseekers" have no interest suburban tract homes. I think the people advancing this argument should understand that a home is, for many, just one factor amongst many in determining where to live, and in many cases is not the strongest. Shreveport, LA is not "uncool" because of some accident of trendiness. It's uncool because it's uncool. There are no strong networks there, no extensive public transportation systems, no walkability, no political protections for marginalized groups -- etc., etc. It's a lot more than just trendiness.

I say this as someone who has never lived on either coast. Just keep in mind that much of America seems unappealing or unfriendly to people who are not from here for legitimate reasons.

If you don't mind me asking...how? I imagine you would have to be coming from far north to South Austin in order to reach that level of commute.

You cited the extension but did not link it. I'm interested in it. Could you provide the link?

An investigation is underway and has found the Russian government culpable. Maybe the Russian government should have thought twice before poisoning a British citizen on its own soil and tearing apart their relationship with Britain?

I have scoliosis and a chronically screwed up upper back. If I sit at a desk with a bad ergo setup, I will experience back pain within 30-45 minutes. I'm pretty tall, so the majority of desk setups are, by default, too short, and force me to hunch over my keyboard. A good chair helps as well.

Besides that, regular exercise helps tremendously. Seriously, if you do not exercise at least twice a week, I would strongly advise making beginning to do so your highest priority.

Not sure what the HN position is on commenting bots, but can we automate this process? Someone has to do it every single time a NYT/WSJ/WAPO article gets posted.

I believe they are in the process of sunsetting HipChat. It was not successful.

Is this not the impetus behind the "data engineer" title that's been thrown around lately?