skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As an employee, you kind of need history to be able to make a prediction like that, otherwise you will be a bit surprised when you see your employer is taking on contracts to enhance the military, to speak to the naivete that was brought up earlier.

While Windows might be used by the military, that doesn't mean it was built to enhance warfare, the same way if the military used Ubuntu you wouldn't expect Canonical employees to protest about it.
Militaries around the world already use the Xbox 360 controller extensively. As well as Surfaces, and of course the obvious like Windows, Excel, Word, etc.
Indeed, but by at home he means in the office too (he says as much), and I don't see offices don't this unless they have a real incentive to throw out the hardware they've invested in, perhaps in the not so near future when they inevitably have to replace it all due to failure the arm stuff will have a chance to take some share.
This sounds like a publicity stunt.

No group of educated people can seriously think this would have any effect...
I wish to see US military base in my country. This will be one of the best days in my life.
The thread wasn't banned off of reddit though, just his site and subreddit. So no such issues here.

Otherwise I agree with worrying about the big platforms, though for I dont think stormfront would be the case to be upset about. We need net neutrality, then user controlled social media based on open source and probably federated. At that point users can decide what to let onto their feed.
sharing ?
So your idea is that if maybe China/Russia(or the adversary of the day) does this then anyone should do it.

Even if China does not do it, does anyone else should do it anyway to be on top of China. Do you draw a line anywhere? like should everyone research weapons forever to try to get/remain on top?

My second point is even if you go ahead and do weapons let the people speak and have a debate, telling us that having more weapons is good is dogma IMO, debating this dogma and respecting the people that don't want to create weapons
should be a given in a free society.
Blues Legend Hasselbaink Tells Chelsea to Get Eden Hazard Deal Wrapped Up
Ireland’s Visa Delays: ‘We Wouldn’t Have Come Here If We Knew’
Some are mirror-ing their stuff on Bitchute and similar services but no one is giving up YouTube as far as I can tell.
The US military has killed far more civilians and promoted far more terror around the world than the Russian Federation or Al Qaeda. Your belief that war is good when enacted by your country is so childlike that it is literally promoted by cartoons and action films aimed at children.
The other thing they're missing is that it was also rife with child porn and snuff videos.

I too have nostalgia for the old days of the internet where there were lots of niche sites about specialist interests and things were easier to find, but I don't think the internet was ever really an idyllic garden of rational discourse. It was from nearly the beginning a manifestation of humanity's id.
What happens in China is the result of not having been brainwashed since childhood about how bad authoritarianism is.
And before that, different versions of windows. I recall going for an interview with some sonar guys looking at using Direct3D back in the late 90s.
Shit, i tripped, fell, and started reading HN in the dark. Oops! Good thing it has dark mode.
You have a completely different worldview, a completely different education, a completely different history, and a completely different upbringing.

For example, China never had the Magna Carta event that Western civilization had centuries ago, enabling a foundationally disparate view of government and society eons ago.

This is not a criticism of you. It's an explanation why you can't understand. You need to transplant yourself into Chinese history to understand its people. That in turn will help you understand its domestic policy, economic policy, foreign policy, and more.

Have gone through that process myself, lived in China for almost a decade now. I also didn't get it at the beginning. I'm an overall China bear, think its final destination is to be like Japan, but mainly due to secular trends beyond China's control. That doesn't stop me from figuring out things that I didn't know before. It's weirdly educational, as I didn't realize how intellectually arrogant, ignorant, and unwilling to consider other perspectives I was before. Perhaps still am. :)
Also see https://angel.co/syndicates
Not sure if there's more mocking or calling out, HBD and otherwise. The forum's focus on HBD seems something worth critiquing extensively.
Banking Innovations from 1950s to 2010s
And are not free to speak? The only option is to shut up and resign?
I'm constantly impressed by the quality of discussion here. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say HackerNews is the best calibre open forum anywhere on the web.

If it can't be discussed on HackerNews, it can't be discussed anywhere. The problem of polemic nonsense (nicely put) is at the scope of society, not HackerNews.

I'm not being flippant. If you can think of another online forum that would do a better job, please name it. Slashdot? Reddit? I don't think so. As far as I can see, the discussion in this thread seems civil and thoughtful.

I second _carl_jung. It just isn't necessary. Beyond that, it's not healthy to deem an important topic to be simply out of bounds to discuss. Is that the route to well-considered positions?

I realise I'm arguing from a position of relative ignorance here though. Perhaps there was a flood of spam and trolling that's been removed.
China is hardly starving, though. I think we're (The world as a whole) blindly running into a state of boundless surveillance. In former East Germany, many people did not mind being watched by the StaSi initially. But it became so pervasive that voicing an opinion was dangerous, and there was much resentment.
In my personal interactions with Chinese invididuals this resentment is also present, although they will not state it explicitly.
For instance: Wondering why in a communist country it cost money to get healthcare, while in Europe it's nearly free.
I feel like it's difficult to bring it up. What are you going to do... tell your friends/students their next job is at an unethical company?

Also, people generally believe it's quite possible to work on good things in a company that also does bad things. (And many of them indeed will.) So it's not the most compelling argument that you shouldn't work with X/Y/Z because they did bad thing W.
I'm guessing YouTube bans videos that promote self-harm and harm to other humans? At what stage does anti-vaccination material cross that line?

Governments already ban certain ways of promoting smoking and alcohol use in an effort to reduce harm. Why should anti-vaccination material be considered differently when people not being vaccinating can be directly linked to the death of others?
Except this newspaper publishes all letters from all comers making it fairly obvious censorship.

"Start your own website" is a brush-off when faced with corporate cenosrhip. People have tried it. Daily Stormer had several domains pulled, Gab had payment processors and Google Play ban them.

There is a very real problem with corporate harassment for views their management finds worthy of targeting and people are dismissing it because they like the targeting. For now anyway.
Do you use the same argument to oppose abortion?
There have been 15.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attacks_on_U.S._territ...
They're all there on H1Bs so the soldiers aren't really defending the workers' countries
I think that's a false dichotomy. Office software is general purpose, and maybe the military buys it like everyone else. AR gear for soldiers is not general purpose.

Similarly, criminals and non-criminals alike use public roads and internet, but only one of those groups would have need of a weapon with a ground-off serial number, for example.

So is the point the buyer, or the purpose?
The Biggest Problem with Hyperloop – Why It Will Fail Hard [video]
Why Late Bloomers Are Happier and More Successful
That book is both beautiful, interesting and entertaining. I highly recommend it.
Do something is better than do nothing.
> We have a family friend whose young daughter developed serious issues with autistic similarities after a vaccination.

Isn't that because those issues usually aren't visible before around that time? (I am neither a GP nor a psycologist though so this is just trying to apply common sense.)

I demand my kids gets all recommended vaccines. Because even if there was a (vanishingly small) chance of a kid getting autism like symptoms I can live better with that risk than the much bigger risk that that being unvaccinated presents.

> This is not necessarily a topic to be 'stamped out', and free speech has to transcend censorship, search engine companies hiding materials and discouraging the creation of those materials.

Free speech is important. I would like to use mine to point out that looking at some anti-vaxxers (I'm not singling out your relatives, they might very well be reasonable people) one might get the idea that any autism in their kids might have simpler explanation than a vaccine that millions of other kids take without issue every year ;-)

Edit: that last paragraph really feels bad. My point is I mostly do defend peoples right to free speech (I might even pay close attention to people who argue against AGW as long as they are trying to be honest and have a discussion, not a sermon), but when it comes to vaccines it is actually pretty much settled science that they save millions of lives, millions of hours of suffering each year.

If anyone still wants to debate it, I might even listen carefully, but it really helps a lot if the other part treat the subject with the respect it deserves.
Everybody Makes Podcasts. Can Anyone Make Them Profitable?
Yes, on one hand the filmmaker wants to do art, and naturally searches beauty in composition, story, photography... even with the gruesomest topics.

And on the other hand even if you tell the story of someone/something reprobable, it is their story, and stories are “virus” for our empathic minds - so we end up understanding and siding with the wrong ideas / actions when they are explored (because to explore them by focusing om them turns them into the protagonist of the story).

It seems quite essential to any narrative medium.
Interesting bit is that, I wanted to counter the Stock price argument but after checking current trend it’s back to former values from last year.
Well thought out arguments. cheers!
You can be lonely working in an office, too.

Most of my remote team has family and kids and remote work allows them to actually spend time with them and afford a house in a decent area.

Bay Area is great for single people and/or rich people basically.
Although I like dark mode, I don't use it. Because the web is by default white.

Suppose I am using dark text editor and the websites I often visit are dark. Still every few minutes I will have to visit a site with white background. My eyes will have to constantly adjust between dark and light backgrounds. It can't be escaped.

I don't understand why developers use dark text editors when the sites they are building are white. They visit that every few seconds.
I think this is a really key point to consider with remote. I'm fortunate enough that I have a dedicated office space in my house I can use for remote work, but even then there's occasional issues with my kids not really understanding the difference between working and being available to play. If I was in shared space, it would be a nightmare.
Like Amazon gives a flying fuck about their employees wellbeing.
There are plenty of factors that play into how or why a forum turns to shit. You're right that size or "niche" isn't always the dominating factor, but in most cases, it's clearly important. There are, on the other hand, plenty of incredibly niche and focused communities that do turn toxic and insufferable (as any Darkfall game shows). People are complex and we tend to talk in short-hand because we don't have the time or desire to write entire papers about why people tend to suck when you put them together.
10 Secrets to Donating $10,000s to Charity While Attaining Lifestyle Freedom
U.S. Student-Loan Delinquencies Hit Record
> As someone who will end up paying for that agenda, I'm less enthused.

I'm less enthused that you're not paying your fair share for the current agenda.
Microsoft is a defense contractor. They've been working closely with the military since the 90s. I'm not sure when people decided to suddenly ignore or forget this.
Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain
We're doing a very dangerous thing here. We're crossing the line between computers computing, and computers advising. When a computer computes, you can be assured the answer is correct. When a computer advises, the average person takes that information at the same value. There's a long laundry list of reasons why this is horrible. I went over a few in my essay about platforms being the enemy. http://tiny-giant-books.com/Entry2.html?EntryId=recEUbufzhAv...

There's a deeper moral/ethical issue at stake here. If you program a computer, you are responsible for that computer never presenting a misleading view of reality to the user. People don't distinguish between their tax program, GPS, and voting on reddit. When you use the interface to guide or subtly mislead people? You're hurting millions of people just a tiny bit at a time.

So many net-level effects involve these tiny changes that are impossible to evaluate. That delays or completely obfuscates the feedback loop. Very bad stuff here.
I see no objections regarding use for porn in the article.
> The precise explanation is complicated, but hinges on the fact that 163 is what is called a Heegner number.

These are the nine Heegner numbers:
1, 2, 3, 7, 11, 19, 43, 67, 163

Here is a python session:

>>> import gmpy2
>>> gmpy2.get_context().precision=1000
>>> pi = 2*gmpy2.acos(0.)
>>> f = lambda i : gmpy2.exp(pi * gmpy2.sqrt(i))
>>> f(163)
mpfr('262537412640768743.99999999999925007259719818568...

> Or take the mathematical relationship fancifully known as “Monstrous Moonshine.”

I wouldn't qualify this as a near miss... This relationship has been shown to hold exactly. I guess in this equation "196,884 = 196,883 + 1", the +1 looks like a glitch, but if you look at the larger pattern it is not a glitch.
Pinterest Restricts Vaccine Search Results to Curb Spread of Misinformation
All vaccines have primary and secondary failure rates. Primary failure occurs if you get vaccinated but you do not develop antibodies (This is rather crude description of immunological memory but let just stick with it). Secondary one occurs when you get vaccinated, you develop antibodies but once you contract the disease you still get it (e.g. you immunological memory does not kick it). Both of these are well known effects and are subject of research to develop more effective vaccines.
So even in population where 100% people get vaccinated there is insignificant percentage of those who are still susceptible to given disease.
> "You missed the many, many articles on surveillance in the US and how that discussion isn't a prerequisite for discussions about China."

I must have... The last ones I remember are from like 2014, and as I recall there wasn't much signal in the noise. Feel free to link me to the most recent discussion (DDG shows me nothing - zero results - for the past month when I search "surveillance" on this site, no idea why).

While it might not be a prerequisite, isn't it sort of important context? Because I haven't seen any signs of improvement on this front, while I've seen a very sharp rise in the number of China related posts.

> "you point out that the poster has an interest in stories about China, but not how that's a problem."

I mean, if this site and it's users want to talk about China that much more than the US that's fine, but how is it a problem for me to point that out? And is it perhaps a little disingenuous to call a consistent 40% China related post history with over an 80% negative connotation "an interest in stories about China"?
"you’re a member of a team not the boss of the team."

Surely the boss is still a member of the team, otherwise he is chilling, collecting pay checks for nothing.

I don't like the ring fenced sub-team mentality that this comment allows.

Bosses that are not a member of the team, are not proper bosses.

Maybe "figureheads".
Fair point, but junk food does way more damage than not vaccinating. Yet there's no crackdown on McDonalds
Worry about your own eyes.
What is the ethical consideration here? Augmented reality headsets aren't weapons.

I find it unrefreshing to see employees warping something benign to achieve personal attention. This is a fight in search of a subject.
Android phone users are a subset of all of humanity, so yes.
That last one really drives me nuts. Isn't having a moral compass almost the opposite of loyalty (at least in cases where both are involved)? Maybe not 100% opposites, but enough that it would seem they don't belong together like that...
It's incredibly easy for youtube to exclude certain ads from certain channels.

> they want to put their ads on platforms where they don't have to.

Are they going to change platform? To what?
I'm still in my early years of professional, so guess I'll wait for more low level and engineering focused roles open. Thanks.
Curious why you chose to use the word brainwashed there.
Doesn't every browser extension increase the attack surface a bit? It all comes down to your personal risk/reward profile. I can't live without an adblocker, a Vim emulator and a dark theme in my browser, but I don't use anything else.
As the popular quip on HN goes, 'The majority of mobile web tech fortunes have been built on avoiding the costs of consequences and regulation, while retaining all the profits.'

> when what‘s good for the individual may not be good for the public as a whole

Is as good a summary of what Facebook has done wrong as anything I've read.

The problem is not that Facebook and its ilk are inherently evil, but that they seem willfully ignorant. Ignorant that past a certain scale they have an obligation to the public: an obligation very different from the laissez-faire world The Facebook started in.

The internet majors seem to be gradually awakening to this, but I'd argue that only Apple (with their stance on privacy) and Google (with their internal privacy counterparties) really grok the change. And to be fair, both have business models that can tolerate having principles.

When you've got a recommendation algorithm that could push someone to suicide or change an election outcome, you have a responsibility to optimize for more than corporate profit.
I have had a quick run of an analysis - Academically vs Self trained Computer Engineers among my peers.

From the small sample, it shows very strong correlation between working in ethically questionable organisations and finishing Academia.

Is the opposite for most of my Self trained peers.
Too Much Structured Knowledge Hurts Creativity, Shows Study (2017)
Don't Trust Everything That Goes on the Kaggle Discussion Forums
Content creators say that demonetization is not only about the profits as such videos have less exposure as well (they won't go trending, they won't be recommended if you are not subscribed, etc.)
I really, really wish I got a penny every time I get accused of wanting to censor conservatives simply because I criticized them.
Angular Promises – A Quick Intro
> First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

> Because I was not a socialist.

> Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

> Because I was not a trade unionist.

> Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

> Because I was not a Jew.

> Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

A translation of the German poem by pastor Martin Niemöller [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
I agree. Probably doesn't help the point get across...
New OpenGL Driver for Intel Gen8 GPUs Merged into Mesa
We shouldn’t call china a communist country. It’s something else and calling it communist doesn’t explain anything other than maybe the words they are using.
> Of course, given what we now know regarding the depth and quality of post-invasion planning for Iraq, it's questionable whether there would be any meaningful difference.

Increasing warfare precision is always beneficial. It isn't about the belligerents in the conflict, but the civilians in the crossfire and potentials for collateral damage. If technology advances coupled with training reduce rules of engagement violations the people on the ground are the biggest winners.
At my German university that was a topic that regularly came up around internships, job fairs, and among those currently graduating and looking for jobs, with a wide range of opinions.
If you scroll all the way to the bottom, you can see a Product Details box where Wolfram lists the specific products he currently uses. According to that, the satphone is an Iridium 9555 (https://www.amazon.com/Iridium-9555-Satellite-Kit-Packaging/...).
Can somebody explain what this is supposed to be? (Pet peeve: links on HN with zero context... is there a blog post?)

I select a game, and it just renders gibberish. I get I can use the mouse and WASD to "move", but it just renders glitching vertical bars of random colors in both Chrome and Firefox, no matter what game I pick or where I "move".

The "About" explains precisely nothing except controls to use. Tried on up-to-date Chrome and Firefox on macOS.
> People have tried it. Daily Stormer had several domains pulled, Gab had payment processors and Google Play ban them.

I don't see this as a "problem," per se. There are no guarantees in life that you will have unfettered access to services like this, particularly if you use them in a manner the providers deem against their terms.
In an authoritarian state, appearing to care about how authoritarian it is is bad for your health. I suspect the Uighurs care deeply about their treatment while also knowing that doing so visibly will get them "re-educated".

(The treatment of this in Three Body Problem is fascinatingly oblique, for example)
A major difference is not vaccinating yourself can cause the death of others.

How you encourage healthy eating and moderation is also a very complex topic in comparison. Vaccination is a much more binary choice (you vaccinate or you don't), and is highly effective.
That is a great summary, thank you.
> Augmented reality headsets aren't weapons.

Who you sell to can always be an ethical consideration, even if the product isn't "unethical" in itself.

> to achieve personal attention.

What makes you think these people would want "personal attention"? Isn't the attention here mostly a risk?