Hacker News Reader

vyhdon Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

I wouldn't call it "obvious" that someone would accept another's opinion without any info to back it up and then extol it, though it's very interesting to me that you did.

vyhdon Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

I'm sure you would, but at least do us the decency of bringing data and leaving hyperbole out.

vyhdon Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

This is a wildly incendiary ideological rant and it has no place on HN.

vyhdon Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

What data did your friend use to come to that conclusion? Would you be willing to share so we can come to our own conclusions based on the evidence presented?

vyhdon Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

That's what a free market is, yes.

edit: or would you prefer "that's what a free market does"? Either way, this is a remarkably incendiary, and frankly absurd, attempt to recast voting with one's wallet as "dictatorship".

vyhdon AI ethics research conference suspends Google sponsorship

HN, in the general case, values civility over decency when the two conflict.

I regard it as a fundamental flaw; your mileage may vary.

vyhdon AI ethics research conference suspends Google sponsorship

Citation please.

vyhdon SolarWinds CEO blames intern for password leak

I am deeply ambivalent about my tenure at Amazon overall, but I unconditionally applaud the level of psychological safety in their dev culture: there is a shared understanding that any system failure caused by a single person is necessarily a failure of the process that governs changes to that system.

If there were any singular behavior I wish every tech company would adopt, it is that level of perspective on what makes a system reliable.

vyhdon Gig Workers Have Nowhere to Pee (2020)

There really isn't a discussion to be had, unless you seriously want to try the claim that "shallow" and "substance-free" don't have substantial overlap.

Just accept that your comment did not live up to the guidelines set by this site, and try to learn from that.

vyhdon Gig Workers Have Nowhere to Pee (2020)

They're referencing the site guidelines, so this statement is demonstrably false.

vyhdon Gig Workers Have Nowhere to Pee (2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

vyhdon Facebook shuts popular stock trading group amid GameStop frenzy

Normative statements are based on one's observations and interpretations of facts, and that basis can be meaningfully scrutinized.

vyhdon Facebook is banning leftwing users like me

I'm not dang, but I'm going to refer you to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, because this is remarkably inconsiderate and inflammatory rhetoric.

vyhdon Facebook shuts popular stock trading group amid GameStop frenzy

> "But they're really really actually super-duper truly totally bad!" isn't a valid argument, since many, many people can use it and they will.

It is absurdity to make the claim that, since anyone can say anything, no meaningful concept of objectivity can exist. Interesting how often it recurs in "free speech at any cost" argumentation.

vyhdon Vuejs rejects close to 75% of outside contributions

No, they got it right the first time. "Everything is political" is a reminder that we do not exist in a cultural vacuum. More pointedly, the simple act of existing in a space as a minority invites what you'd call "politics".

If your existence has never felt "political" to you, cherish that. I've been on the receiving end of many slurs and the occasional attempted assault, and I've watched politicians and pundits debate on cable TV whether I deserve to have the same rights afforded anyone else. I didn't choose to exist "politically", but I sure do notice when folks don't speak up against challenges to my existence because they view it as "politics" and therefore not worth their attention.

vyhdon Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

You refuse to acknowledge that sedition actually occurred, choosing instead to worry over a theoretical slippery slope of censorship that somehow ends the United States.

QED. Safe to say we're done here.

vyhdon Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

> loaded words

The literal definition of sedition [1] is:

  If two or more persons [...] conspire [...] to prevent, hinder, or delay the
  execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or
  possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof

1. Do you deny that the Capitol building was breached by force?

2. Do you deny that Congress was in session at this time?

3. Do you deny that the breach of the Capitol hindered the Congress's ability to certify vote totals for the presidential election?

If the answer to all three of those is "no", then we are literally talking about sedition.

[1]: https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-18-crimes-and-criminal-pr...

vyhdon Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

The United States will be done in by... stamping out the free expression of openly organizing to commit sedition against the United States.

Spare us.

vyhdon Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

It's a damning indictment of "big tech" that it took Democrats having a trifecta in federal government and a violent mob breaking into the Capitol during a congressional session to get this level of investment in moderating, well after the hate on their platform has metastasized.

vyhdon Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

> Increasingly, you step out of line once with the Left-leaning mindset, you are muted or banned.

Citation needed.

vyhdon Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

A tale as old as HN itself: a service enforces its own Terms of Service, and commenters fall over themselves to defend an absurd absolutist ideal of "free speech" even when it directly leads to a violent mob committing sedition against the United States.

Spare us, please. Reconcile your ideals with what's in front of you today before insisting that we need to live up to those ideals.

vyhdon Our Response to the Violence in Washington

Non sequitur.

vyhdon Our Response to the Violence in Washington

You may notice there's quite a gulf between "uncomfortable" and literal sedition [1].

> To oppose by force the authority of the United States government; to prevent, hinder, or delay by force the execution of any law of the United States

[1]: https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-18-crimes-and-criminal-pr...

vyhdon Sharrows, the bicycle infrastructure that doesn’t work and nobody wants

At what scale? How does it compare to the 6,600 pedestrians killed by drivers in 2019 [1]?

Is it even within three orders of magnitude?

[1]: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a31136893/pedestrian-death...

vyhdon YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

I agree that the fault ultimately lies with the Bush administration for making false claims. However, it is _critically_ important to also place fault with the media outlets who simply repeated those claims, abandoning their duty as a check against the state.

vyhdon Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission

This is literally the only take I've read in this entire comment thread that has a firm grasp on the entire picture. Thanks for that.

vyhdon FB to curb internal debate over sensitive issues amid employee discord

It's more akin to "a virus is less likely to spread if fewer people are in contact with known carriers", a.k.a. deplatforming.

vyhdon Twitter tags Trump tweet with fact-checking warning

Identifying lies doesn't require perfect knowledge of all truth.

vyhdon Tell HN: Triplebyte reverses, emails apology

Hopefully this proves to be an illustrative lesson: the best apologies are almost as good as not doing something that requires an apology at all.

vyhdon Woman who designed Florida's Covid-19 dashboard removed from her position

Fortunately, most of the public are not making that demand. It's well worth keeping in mind that those people are vastly outnumbered: https://xkcd.com/2305/