117 karma · joined March 23, 2022
As far as I can tell this isn't about tech, tech policy, a new medication, a new discovery about an old medication, science, etc. Seems like its just fodder for a political debate that is unrelated to this site.
Instead of politicizing HN, why don't you just toot this to your echo chamber on Mastodon?
As to the other information, you're more making the case that online tracking should be illegal (which I'd agree with). For the majority of people, they are either unaware or uninformed about how to prevent online tracking to a sufficient degree. If you're signed into your Google and Facebook accounts and then surfing the web, theres a good chance you're getting caught up in cross site tracking. Hell, even if you don't have accounts explicitly, its not like Facebook isn't tracking non-users. In the real world, stalking is illegal.
Also, in my state (Washington), IDs now have barcodes on them. When I buy beer at the store, the clerk doesn't even look at my ID; he/she scans it and thats it. I'd hope the information about what type of beer and how often I buy it isn't being stored somewhere but I'm just hoping.
We don't seem to have an issue with the government requiring businesses to check ID for alcohol, tobacco, porn (in the physical world), and firearms. Movie theaters check ID for rated R movies if you appear to be under 17. In fact, a lot of online retailers of alcohol and tobacco now require ID to be verified at purchase instead of at delivery.
Facebook/Twitter/TikTok/etc are not the digital town square; the most charitable analogy for them is they they are merchants in the town square. And the rules should still apply to them.
Furthermore, the behavior that was tolerated in the town square would not be close to what we tolerate online. And we don't afford kids the freedom in the real world that we do online. I am not sure why people think that requiring parental consent or age verification online is some sort of assault on personal liberty.
You idea of the town square is also outdated. Do you think the municipal government in Rome still meets at the Forum? And you did not address my point that even if it did exist as it did in whatever millennium you yearn for, would the behavior that is present on the internet be tolerated the same way? Was the Forum or Copley or Dock square known for adult men showing their genitalia to underage women? Your idea of a town square is antiquated and likely would not have tolerated the behavior you think the internet should just because its the town square. Case rested.
> The rest of your post sounds like moral panic.
Nice rebuttal there. If it's just moral panic, why does the data suggest that social media use its detrimental to adolescents' mental health and well being? Why is the effort to curtail social media influence on kids' a bipartisan effort in an increasingly partisan society? Even the misguided level of libertarianism you're probably advocating for understands that short of pure anarchy, there are some externalities governments have to address, chief among them are social media platforms that are evidently harmful to certain parts of society (young kids). Case rested.
Firstly, try to approach children in the town square while wearing a mask for anonymity; or try to hold up images of porn in your town square. You will not be there long, you'd likely be detained, and you'd likely be asked for identification.
Secondly, why do people think there is some sort of town square? I have lived in several large US cities and several small towns. In neither was there any sort of common place where we all congregated to address matters of the town. At best, there are city hall/city council meetings where the public can speak but at least in my town (and I know of many others), identification is required to prove that you live in the town!
Even the founding fathers, when writing under pseudonyms, understood that anonymity and circulation was incumbent upon them to maintain, not that they were entitled to it because "town square."
To address your last point: this is not simply some ill conceived moral panic/think of the children type moment. Go try to host - as an adult - an AA meeting or "computer meetup" with children that happens to be held in the local adult toy shop. See how well that goes for you. At this point, we know children are getting approached by adults at a large scale on instagram, we know children are getting exposed to a lot of adult content on twitter, and on the spectrum between innocent HOA meeting and damaging to society as a whole, its clearly more towards the latter.
I got off WhatsApp years ago so I am not sure what's changed but back then if you signed on from any random browser, it was able to sync everything instantly and you'd see all your messages. This was after they claimed that it was E2E encrypted. What was explained to me at the time was that you share your encryption key with Facebook and hence the syncing.
I am not sure why people always go down these weird avenues to try to justify their convictions. If what you believe you think is right (presumably why you believe it) then you should be able to argue your position on the merits rather than trying to sneak in why your position is correct by relating it to something more anodyne as justification.
The original argument was that the vaccine was like walking around a city and we don't educate people on the adverse side effects or risks of walking around a city. This is bad because people can choose to live in cities or not - whether or not you'll have the same employment prospects or whatever, you do not have to participate in city life. Now you're trying to make the argument that we put restrictions on society based on holding some sort of identification. I'm willing to bet society would look at those restrictions differently if the mere act of getting an driver's license carried the risk of cardiovascular complications (as alleged by this report).
Restrictions on society based on having identification =/= restrictions on society based on your covid vaccination status.
Vaccination risk awareness =/= pedestrian safety awareness.
Presumably, you believe the benefits of the vaccine greatly outweigh any risks, so why are you opposed to people being explained the risk before they get the vaccine? If you believe that the benefits outweigh the risks, why are you incapable of arguing that position? Why make a contrived argument that its like getting a drivers license or walking around a city when its patently not?
Sure, we can educate everyone on the risk of walking around the city as long as we don't require long haul truck drivers to walk around the city in order to later do their job.
What's worse is that at some point a lot of the restaurants that have made the current iteration of those cities what they are will not be able to weather the economic storm their own cities are putting upon them. Their voters will vote to increase wages arbitrarily, add on fees, regulations, taxes, etc. And then when their pad thai or poke bowl costs $27 for pickup or $38 delivered, they'll just stop patronizing that restaurant - whether out of financial necessity or some misplaced feeling that they are now getting ripped off from the price hike - until it goes out of business. I can't count the times I've heard "<insert restaurant/brewery/coffee shop> is just not worth it anymore." The bigger chains will be able to take the losses until they can absorb the entire market.
There will always be 3 Starbucks and a McDonalds in Times Square.
Putting aside your arrogance for a moment: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/META:NASDAQ?window=1Y https://www.google.com/finance/quote/MSFT:NASDAQ?window=1Y https://www.google.com/finance/quote/AMZN:NASDAQ?window=1Y
have seen increased profit and profit margins over the last year as well as huge increases in their stock prices. Not sure how you don't find that relevant in a discussion about income inequality but I also don't find anything else you said very compelling.
This isn't a thought experiment you have to run, there is actual data. All things considered VC's and high salaries for workers willing to take on risk has generally been good for SF. Look at other areas with similar politics and no VC funding and you don't see restaurant workers thriving. Portland's inequality has gotten worse and the livability for service workers has gone down even though its not a major benefactor of VC funding or ZIRP. If you removed all VC funding from SF, a lot of those restaurant jobs disappear. Tech workers making a middle class living off of investment money shouldn't be demonized. SF leadership and housing policy is your issue.
For a lot of addicts, the criminal justice system is their only chance at substance abuse help (mostly because they won't seek it on their own on the outside as we've seen in Oregon).
10,000 software developers losing their jobs in SF or Palo Alto are not going to make either of those areas affordable. Facebook's stock increasing in value 175% in 1 year is likely going to push some engineers into home buying compensation territory and the ones that can will start bidding wars for houses.
I'm not actually taking too much of a side here but its interesting how you view the ZIRP and VC industry as drivers of inequality as if VCs throwing enough money at startups so that some late 20s/early 30s person can make 180k/yr (plus some largely valueless equity) is the real problem. If anything VCs have made capital accessible to a class of people that would have otherwise been kept out of the party. During downturns and high interest rate periods, incumbents and bigger companies do well as they can weather the storm and buy up more of the market at a discount.
Even if you could drive up the interest rates to the point that these "generous endowments from VCs" and large companies cease to exist, the restaurant worker in SF won't start thriving. VC funding subsidized a lot of people's lifestyles in SF including the restaurant worker. There is not a substitute for building more housing.
A hypothetical back and forward might be something like:
“How does Facebook make money?”
“By selling ads.”
“Does Facebook ever target those ads to kids?”
“Yes”
“So is it in facebook’s financial interest for kids to spend as much time as possible on the platform?”
- Your tag line claims you’re an ML expert but you say you have 7 years of work experience and your LinkedIn doesn’t have any educational experience. I disagree with the necessity of degrees but 7 years of largely several month stints and no degree is hardly enough experience to be considered an expert in anything. If you’re into ML, that’s fine to put there but it’ll be off putting if there’s a stolen valor element to your profile.
- You have way too much written for some of your experiences. You were at CRATUSTECH for 7 months. If what you did was amazing enough to warrant what you wrote there, your previous managers would be knocking at your door right now. Pair things down so you don’t come off as inflating your contributions.
- You’re presenting your experiences in a confusing way. You have so much overlap that it’s hard to ascertain what your career narrative was. Most people who are experts in something weren’t able to reach expert level knowledge while jugging multiple jobs. Focus on your narrative so employers can determine if you’re the right fit.
- You’re commenting too much on stuff. No one is ever impressed by people’s comments online and the more opinions you share in comments the more liability it is for employers who already get to be picky right now. This isn’t to say you said anything wrong but if it were me, I’d just delete them to now have a busy activity section.
- Lastly, you need a better profile picture. If you want people to take you seriously put a better foot forward here. Even just a decently lit selfie. Don’t crop some photo of you and someone else out on a hike or whatever. Doing an activity is fine, but pose, smile, be by yourself.
Hope this helps.
According to the FBI, in 2013 there was 334 hate crimes committed against LGBTQIA+ people [1]. The US population back then was 315 million [2]. In 2013, according to Gallup, 3.6% of Americans identified as LGBTQIA+ in 2013 [3]. Which means the crime rate was 1 per 33,952 persons, or normalizing to per 100,000 as crime is usually reported is 2.94 per 100,000 which is on par or LOWER than any other category of heinous crime for that era. In fact, 2013 has one of the safest years on record [4].
Furthermore, public sentiment had already switched in favor of same-sex marriage before it was even legalized, according to Pew research [5].
What world were you living in?
[1] https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim... [2] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population... [3] https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-tick... [4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-... [5] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2013/03/20/growing-supp...
Reading the past by todays standards are why social progressives are starting to lose ground. They just can't accept their win.
If anything, things are probably worse from a sentiment perspective for gay people now because a bunch of heterosexual liberal white women use pride parades to act completely shamelessly under the guise of being warriors for a movement they aren’t otherwise a part of.
You almost act as if some people stumbled upon great software/infrastructure and improperly started charging people to use it. This isn’t some mountain spring some company claimed and is now charging the tribes down stream for access.
The communities on Reddit aren’t the valuable part. I don’t visit 99% of the subreddits. The valuable thing is I can go on one site, find a subreddit for everything I’m interested in, participate with the same account and have no learning curve/same UI/UX as the other communities I’m a part of. You can try to argue that those communities being there is what’s valuable to me, but without Reddit they all wouldn’t be on the same site.
Your argument reads as some poor adaption of the labor theory of value. Right now Reddit isn’t profitable, as long as these economics hold, no one is going to fill in for Reddit if it were to close. And all the mods and users can’t change that.
My thinking goes something like: a line of densely parked cars up Polk street with a bunch of people with their phones out at night making it hard to tell who is holding a flashlight probably means you need more cops patrolling the area to prevent crime vs my now suburban street with a few cars and no one walking at night means it would both be easy to spot opportunistic burglars and unlikely they'd hit up my street mostly for lack of targets.
I, too, could be wrong as I am saying this with no data.
On the real though, this pining for SF's old status quo because it fulfilled some weird grunge fantasy is just getting old. Yeah SF was a grimy, shitty, somewhat cheap place to live filled with equally shitty art and crap bands. It was shitty all the way from the 1960's until the early 90's when a homeless guy wandered in the TV repair shop we were at in the mission and pulled a knife and me and my brother while my dad was at the counter. Maybe it was great before then and maybe a lot of the people there want it to be better. Sorry if you don't get what you want.
Bee Tee Dubs, bro, people from or who live in SF don't call it San Fran.
update: I am guessing this is what your non-linear part is about; I missed that on first read.
Not sure why the subdomain is download because you do not have to download anything.
This particular laptop supports s3 sleep (under config > sleep state).
The thing I am objecting to is the notion that if an illegally used gun was used in a crime it must have once been a legally possessed gun, and (the implicit policy prescription) that the way to curb illegal gun possession is by limiting legal gun possession. While that last part probably tracks, because of my ideological beliefs, I'd rather we exhaust all other options before limiting legal gun ownership. And even then, again because ideology/convictions, curbing legal gun ownership is probably not a thought I'd entertain at the ballot box.
Just like drugs, humans, etc, guns are also trafficked. The vast majority of gun homicides are done with handguns and largely gang related. Not all of those guns weren't at one point legal guns in the US - where the gang member either stole them from a law abiding citizen or walked into a gun store. All handguns in the US require background checks and you have to be 21 years old to buy.
Then there is the fact that our incompetent government does things like Operation Fast and Furious (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal) and, no, the ATF using private businesses to funnel guns into the hands of people who would not otherwise be able to acquire them is not the same as firearms that were once legal.
Here is another bit from the NEJM using CDC data from 2016: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsr1804754
Whats interesting is that the gun deaths were higher in 2016 than they are now (roughly 2900). What this suggests is that firearms becoming the leading cause of deaths is not because of a rise in firearm deaths but because the number of vehicle deaths have been dropping off as well - which should be evident based on how little people drove over the last few years.
Edit: also alarming that the per capita rate is increasing as overall gun deaths are still on the decline. That can't be good (if our youth population is declining that rapidly).
If you use 1-19, firearms are the leading cause of death, if you use 1-17 they are not. In almost every other context we consider 18-19 adults.
I’ll update this comment when I find the source but I believe if you use the definition of minors that we usually use elsewhere (under 18) firearms are not the leading cause of death.
It's a separate debate for us to argue what is more harmful to children/minors/teens - news/sports/entertainment media vs social media but with our current legal framework these exemptions kinda make sense. If what you are worried about is brainwashing, being solicited, general harm from both users and algorithms, its probably true that that is less likely to happen to a kid in the comments section of an ESPN article than it is on reddit/4chan/tiktok/instagram - and when it does happen at least there is someone to hold somewhat responsible.