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zcid

721 karma · joined November 4, 2010

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zcid··on Hospitals are suddenly short of young doctors because of visa ban
Millions of people are wrong.
zcid··on Zoom Acquires Keybase
You can also have investors that buy into a company because it is counterproductive to their goals. Not all investments are meant to produce financial profit.
zcid··on Google is not a search engine, but an ad engine
I do the same, but it seems that more and more reddit comments are also astroturfed so my faith in them is faltering. Finding authentic recommendations at this point is extremely tiring because I have to constantly be gauging a user's sincerity.

There are too many benefits to fake reviews and few downsides. And it's easy to spam these fake comments and reviews especially if you have the budget for a dedicated marketing team.

zcid··on It's time to ban cars from Manhattan?
While I like the idea of pedestrian areas, it does feel like this is another angle for our elites to prepare the lower classes for austerity. Owning your own home, eating meat, being able to raise a family; all of these are things that our parents and grandparents took for granted but are looking less and less likely to be affordable in the coming decades. Rather than fix our economic issues, the solution seems to be to frame them as unnecessary or even "bad".
zcid··on Explanation of the state of uBlock Origin and other blockers for Safari
Same here. Crazy to think that I've been using it for over 15 years and never had a reason to change. I've tried other browsers, but none of them gave me a compelling reason to continue with them.

I think the most probable reason for that has been the complete support for addons that no other browser ever did. For instance, why doesn't Chrome have support for vertical/tree-style tabs without using a separate window? That one feature alone keeps me on firefox. By removing the tab bar at the top of the screen, you regain a significant amount of vertical space on a laptop.

zcid··on Why I like Clojure
I heard somebody make a similar argument one time in regards to Common Lisp. He said that with Java you would have to wait several years sometimes to get a feature (assuming the language developers actually cared about the feature), but with Lisp, you could just implement the feature yourself. I've always felt this is one of the strongest arguments for using a lisp-style language.

Edit: this is possible too in languages like Elixer and Ruby using macros, but eventually the readability suffers and debugging complex macros in those languages can be a nightmare.

zcid··on Dropbox no longer follows symlinks to items outside of your Dropbox account
Their programs are simple and works well at the job for which they are intended. Why should I not use good software just because the developers' politics are not in vogue?
zcid··on CamScanner, a malicious Android app with more than 100M downloads in Google Play
"Professional journalist" just means you're a blogger that gets paid. And everybody has standards. Some people just like to wave theirs around a little more.
zcid··on From Mac to Linux – the setup I've grown to love
I still use a T420 and T430. Both are great for development use. The screens are lacking, but when you spend most of your time in the terminal or browser, you don't really notice.
zcid··on Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group
I don't get the Russia hate. Sure they have problems as a country, but how does that affect the average user? I would think that since I don't live there I can trust Russian companies more than I can ones in the US.
zcid··on Adblocking: How about Nah?
Even disregarding the many questionable aspects of consumerism, think about how many developers you know that have dedicated their entire ability to creating better advertising. The amount of brain power that has been spent on marketing (largely) unnecessary products to consumers is staggering. I hesitate to suppose where we could be if those abilities had been directed elsewhere, but I expect the world might be a much better place.
zcid··on If You're Poor in America, You Can Be Both Overweight and Hungry
Can you show me some examples of cheap junk food? A bag of chips and a soda costs about the same here as a pound of chicken or pork and any one vegetable side.

Go down the frozen meal aisle where I'm assuming most unhealthy people shop and it's far more expensive than buying the raw ingredients. Sure it requires more effort to cook from scratch, but you can't throw money at people not willing to put in the work and expect better results.

zcid··on Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working (2017)
Can I ask why this comment was detached?

I feel it was relevant to the point the OP was making concerning legislation vs popularity among the citizenry.

zcid··on Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working (2017)
Same-sex marriage never achieved enough support to be legalized [0][1]. It was voted against throughout the country including liberal states such as California. Same-sex marriage was legislated by a small number of judges.

I'm not making an argument for or against so please don't debate me on the merits of this issue. I am merely pointing out that the people did not decide this issue. A very small number of elites did.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_legislation_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_constitutio...

zcid··on YouTube bans content “showing users how to bypass secure computer systems”
No problem. I don't see a problem with exclusionary platforms as long as they aren't using their extreme dominance in multiple areas to maintain a monopoly. I guess what I am looking for is a cap on wealth and power.
zcid··on YouTube bans content “showing users how to bypass secure computer systems”
A slippery slope is only a fallacy if you can't demonstrate a downward slide. Once you can demonstrate that slide, the issue needs to be taken more seriously. I believe that over the last two years, we have seen a dramatic increase in censorship from the most powerful companies in the world. I'm not even sure that our governments have the will or power to stop them at this point.
zcid··on YouTube bans content “showing users how to bypass secure computer systems”
Or maybe instead of this being a conspiracy of brigades, more people are waking up the dangers of too much control in the hands of a few powerful people?
zcid··on YouTube bans content “showing users how to bypass secure computer systems”
How about they disallow all the illegal content you are using as examples? Legal speech should not be censored.
zcid··on YouTube bans content “showing users how to bypass secure computer systems”
Facebook is just as restrictive as Google. Vimeo doesn't compare to YouTube in any way. To follow the analogy of the parent comment, Vimeo is like only being able to publish on the Amazon app store.

If we accept this ownership of the digital space by corporations, our future is looking very bleak.

zcid··on It took a decade for the Declaration of Independence to matter in American life
As a side note, his home town, Charlottesville, canceled the holiday celebrating Thomas Jefferson's birthday[0][1]. It seems to me that our society is too focused on condemning historical persons for their flaws than celebrating them for their noteworthy deeds.

[0]https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jul/2/charlottesvi... [1]https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/07/03/as-trump-predi...

zcid··on Journalism Job Cuts Haven’t Been This Bad Since the Recession
A lot of people like myself just don't care anymore. I don't know a single publication that I really trust anymore. All of them have heavy bias or just outright lie.

As important as the idea of journalism is, the institution itself is rotten. I'd like to think faith can be restored, but if anything changes, it'll probably be for the worse.

zcid··on I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids
It's not apparent to me from the article that this woman is making a serious attempt to make up for those absences. That she wrote this almost seems like a celebration of her choice to de-prioritize them. My father would be gone for a week, but then home for a week. When he was home, he was 100% available to us.
zcid··on I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids
Those dads are shitty parents too.
zcid··on I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids
I don't want to be too harsh, but I can't respect her decision. It's selfish, and not properly caring for the next generation is a dead giveaway of a sick society.
zcid··on I’ve Picked My Job over My Kids
Same here. My dad was military when I was young and during my teenage years had another job that took him away from home for about half of the month.

I wouldn't ever disparage him for it. He provided well for his family, and most of my favorite childhood memories are the times we spent together. To this day, I try to spend as much time with him as possible while I still can.

I can only hope that I give my kids as much of myself as he did.

zcid··on Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side
Except a lot of people don't like Google having persistent cookies that track your web usage. Why should giving up that data be a prerequisite for accessing a website?
zcid··on Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side
So, I still have to whitelist Google in uMatrix and allow cookies for this to work. Even after doing so, I get a 0.1. I reloaded the page to check for variation as some other users mentioned but get the same score each time. I guess Google is saying I shouldn't be allowed to use the internet.
zcid··on Google’s new reCAPTCHA has a dark side
And what about the other 99.99999% of people that use the web? Do they also understand what is going on behind the scenes?
zcid··on Reinventing Firefox for Android
I love the address bar at the bottom. It feels so much better on a mobile device. As a whole, this version is much nicer to use than the previous versions.

My two main gripes are the default search engine and telemetry. Both of these options should be set by the user on first launch. I don't want to use Google and I don't want to send data to Mozilla.

zcid··on A Growing Problem in Real Estate: Too Many Too Big Houses
I can't seem to reply to your other comment so I do so here.

It is entirely different to move your company or business to another country vs another state. Most people are not going to expatriate and most companies wouldn't gain much from doing so. Property is already much cheaper in Mexico, but you don't see anybody with a high-skill workforce moving there.

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