untog

I'm absolutely the target market for this (I've even downloaded Sciter and tried it out before now)... and I had no idea this Kickstarter had been made.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I wouldn't assume there's no interest out there!

I played around with Nim a little and was amazed at how small the executables were: 10s of KB for something simple. Even Rust spits out 100s of KB, or even >1MB by default.

In the end I still went with Rust, simply because it's more popular, but my initial impression was that Nim is a really fun language to work in, and much much easier to pick up than Rust.

No. Biden did push for a prosecutor to be fired, something that the administration and other governments agreed on (the prosecutor was corrupt). But the prosecutor was not investigating Burisma.

A core assertion in the article is demonstrably fake. Biden did not pressure Ukraine to fire a prosecutor that was investigating Burisma. It's something Trump has repeated countless times and something that's been proven false countless times, but the Post still stated it as fact in the article.

Besides, the burden of proof applies here. "You can't prove it's not fake" is not a sensible approach. The burden is on the accuser to prove that the story is true, and the Post story does not do that.

It cuts both ways, though.

The road to hell (totally censored internet) is paved with good intentions (trying to clamp down on misinformation). But the road to hell (a society full of dangerously misinformed citizens) is also paved with good intentions (trying to keep the internet free of censorship).

I guess my point is that none of this is actually easy to navigate. Anyone saying "censor the story, it's no big deal" is missing the bigger picture. But IMO, so is anyone saying "disinformation is not a problem, it shouldn't be tackled".

It’s not like that doesn’t happen in the private sector as well, though. Literally can’t count the number of top execs you see parachuted into top jobs because they’re friends with the CEO.

The government should make open-source software, paying developers handsomely to do so.

I know I live in cloud-cuckoo fantasy land here, but I know plenty of developers that would love to work on projects for the civic good, but they don't because they also want to earn good money so that they can live comfortably, raise a family easily, etc. etc. So they go and work for Facebook and Google, etc.

There's an inbuilt assumption that government can't or shouldn't ever compete with tech giants for salary. But look at the incredible sums of money wasted on contracts with borderline useless consulting shops. You can't tell me that money wouldn't be better spent on hiring smart developers and project managers and just getting stuff done.

I know it'll never happen, but a developer can dream. There's no actual reason why it couldn't.

(you're not being censored for your political views, it's because you're posting too many times in one thread. I get the same alert sometimes)

Again, my point isn't that there are no Democratic Facebook execs, it's that they play both sides. To whit:

> Indeed, the three top leaders of Facebook's DC office all have extensive backgrounds in Republican politics: Vice President for Global Public Policy Joel Kaplan; Vice President for U.S. Public Policy Kevin Martin; and Public Policy Director for Global Elections Katie Harbath.

https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political-operatives

That article also outlines a number of right-wing friendly moves that Facebook has made in recent years, just as a counterpoint to the example being discussed here.

I agree with you that the vast majority of staff at these tech companies are Democrats, but I'm talking about the top-level execs. And once you reach that level you see the top tech companies play both sides of the political aisle as best they can.

> the preponderance of evidence points to some seriously bad stuff going on

Do you really think the Trump Justice Department would shy away from releasing a statement saying exactly that, were it to be the case?

> spying on your political opponents in the middle of an election campaign, based on some implausible allegations

Something the Justice Department have concluded an investigation into and have filed no charges. Perhaps it’s time to find a new talking point.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/13/politics/william-barr-unmaski...

You could just as easily counter and ask why anyone would expect a Republican victory when Democrats did so well in the 2018 midterms.

Previous result are only predictive to a point.

Big Tech also has plenty of close ties to Republicans: remember when Facebook’s Joel Kaplan appeared at Kavanaugh’s Senate hearing?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-facebook-exec-backs-kavana...

And find one of @pinboard’s regular threads on the political donations big tech companies make and you’ll find a lot of Republicans:

https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1152245502361997314

The reality is that once you’re as big as FB, Google and the rest you have enough money to play both sides of the aisle. Doesn’t matter who is in power, you’ve got them both under control.

As a fellow Brit: what you're saying definitely applies to US network TV shows, but really not to the vast majority of what Netflix does. I'm not actually sure Netflix has any shows with the 22-24 episode seasons you'd see on US sitcoms.

I'm curious to know what 90% of people do with their home assistant devices. I have a Google Home. I know it can do a huge array of things, but almost all I do with it is play music, control lights, and set timers. Siri can do all of those things.

I feel like this is one of those moments that shouts “Hacker News is not typical”. A lot of people are employed through recruiters, including for Facebook, Google and the rest! Aiming to impress the CEO is all very well, but it’s not common.

Eh? Contract tracing has been effective in a bunch of countries. And the framework Apple and Google worked together on works great and protects privacy.

The problem is the government incompetence and/or malfeasance, not contract tracing itself.

> The only way back to normality is herd immunity.

Contract tracing seems to have worked out great in many countries. And you’re entirely discounting the possibility of a vaccine here. Given that a lot of people will have to die in order to achieve herd immunity (and the science isn’t even clear on exactly how many yet, nor on the long term implications for those that survive a COVID infection) I’m not sure blanket assertions are the wisest choice right now.

I imagine that would be hugely disruptive to people’s lives, given how central social media is these days.

Besides, you’d presumably only do this to US users. So if someone wanted to spread some piece of viral misinformation they’d just post it under a non-US user and promote it.

I don’t mean to sound like I don’t care about that. But it’s not a binary choice: if we had a government that actually cared then we could shut down while financially supporting those who lose their jobs. But we don’t, so we don’t.

Oh, I actually agree with you that it’s complicated and we don’t know if we’re making the right choice, that’s what I was trying to get at with “it’s too early to tell”. The reality is we won’t know what the right level is for a long time, if we ever do. My preference is to lean on the cautious side. My dispute with the OP was their blanket assertion.

My partner lost their job because of COVID. Please don’t make assumptions about people you don’t know.

Based on what?

Does it?

I ask this as a New York resident: how many restaurants is one life worth? I was here back at the peak of the COVID outbreak when there were refrigerated trucks being loaded with bodies because the morgues had run out of space. It deeply, deeply sucks that a lot of restaurants are going to close. I hope that in time others will reopen in their place... it’s an underreported fact that a lot of restaurants close every year, I’ve had it happen to many favorites. New ones come.

To me personally, that loss is a price I’m willing to pay to stop the exponential increase of a pandemic. Maybe you’re right, though. Time will tell. Maybe the economic devastation will ruin NYC for years. Or maybe we’ll get the “v shaped recovery” we’ve been promised. Either way it’s too early to tell.

There was a Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas that shut down because it didn't get enough numbers. So I'd be wary of assuming a project like this would be a huge success.

I'm a fan of Star Trek but I have to admit it doesn't have anywhere near the level of cultural force as something like Star Wars, or Marvel movies. For shame.

I think OP meant internal network bandwidth. Ethernet isn't going to help you if you have a 5mb/s DSL line.

> I don't know why this is such a challenge for the US work cohort.

> Your personal politics around parties, constitutional issues, housing, healthcare etc are irrelevant to the company

As someone who moved to the US: of course my opinions around healthcare are relevant to my company, because they provide my healthcare! It's an insanely stupid system in America, but it's the system that exists. Healthcare then bleeds over into things like marriage equality, because that can decide whether your loved ones get health coverage or not. And into maternity/paternity leave for the same reason, and because the federal government mandates no minimums for either, giving companies another wedge of power in personal lives.

That's why CEOs saying "politics" shouldn't get involved is tone deaf at the least. The CEO's politics are already involved in my life! If it was paired with the CEO campaigning for universal healthcare because they don't want to be involved in my personal life I'd give it at least some credit, but somehow it never does.

You didn't read the article, did you?

Crypto currencies are political! One of the most commonly cited reasons for using it is to avoid government scrutiny and intervention. So how on earth could Coinbase operate a workplace free of politics?

What they mean is that politics they don't want to talk about is bad at work. And they get to decide what those topics are. Which, to be honest, I'm not as wound up about as others are. But "no politics" sounds like a neutral, objective statement. It isn't anything of the sort.

We sort of already have a 3D environment: windowing systems. But every IDE I’ve used in years instead uses tabs. Perhaps something of note there.

This isn't really true. The people making the decisions will have more or less zero insight into the data format being used to store data, they'll just know that data is stored.

IMO, a much more likely scenario: a brittle, haphazard system was set up with extremely short notice at the start of everything. One administrative snafu led to another, ran into "well, it's working so let's not touch it", and we got to where we are today.

Yeah I think the giant out of town multiplexes are screwed. But they’re probably also a lot cheaper to redevelop into something totally different.