skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
RMS was defending Minsky, awkwardly. As someone who has a history of social awkwardness, he should be forgiven for this. He's been a good steward of the FSF, which has doing important work in the service of free (read: non-backdoored) hardware lately. I know there are good people still at the FSF, but I can only hope they are as incorruptible and dogged as RMS.

The way this attack came suddenly out of the depths makes me suspect something coordinated. It's too similar to how Tor was seized, and how Linus was almost dethroned. There's something nasty afoot, and I don't like it one bit.
This analysis resonates with my experience. It also (somewhat) correlates with the Peter principal [0], people get promoted to their level of incompetence.

That said, I still remember “the rules” my High School math teacher told me about “Corporate Life”:
1. Be able to do your Boss’s job
2. Make sure you have someone that can do your job
3. Dress/act the part of your boss

1. Is important because the best way to prove you can do the role is to actually do it. If you can “step in” while your boss is elsewhere, it proves your ability.

2. Conversely, if you don’t have anyone that can take over your role, you are “stuck” especially if your role is critical

3. As mentioned in the article, your boss/their management needs to feel like you will be able to represent them appropriately. If they have any doubts, there is no way you will get the opportunity to prove you can.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/peter-principle.asp
The FSF is foremost about community, and only incidentally about software. He is, to put it absurdly nicely, not the sort of people person who should be leading such an organization.
Why do you need to trust Amazon? Just look at the reviews. Most AmazonBasics stuff has thousands of 4+ star reviews. It’s clearly distinguishable from the products with 15 questionable reviews.
Can you please link some claims of him harassing and propositioning and harassing students?
> Resigning does not seem like a big deal.

IIRC he had an emeritus position? So the big deal is his loss of reputation/prestige as a result of his involvement and/or comments regarding this scandal.

Aside: I am just relaying what I've read so far, I don't know anything about the allegations of offensive things RMS may have said or done.
I don't think the many people who have experienced his abuse directly, or the victims he is trying to minimize, would agree with your assessment of what's important.
My goodness, Stallman just got cancelled. I think it's absolutely fair to criticize statements he's made (I absolutely disagree with his statements on pedophilia), but not to pressure him out of the work to which he's devoted his life. Kicked out of MIT and the FSF? That's gotta be rough for the guy.

Always nice to see a few angry people on the 'net with out-sized voices manage to bring down an icon of computer science. No one should have his life ruined by a kangaroo trial in the court of public opinion. People don't make good decisions when they try to react and "do something"; it would make more sense to let things die down a little and get the facts on what actually happened. Then make a decision on how best to go forward.
For what it's worth, those are also hallmarks of crankery. A creationist will happily express ideas, ask questions, and demand proof of claims until the Second Coming. An anti-vaxxer will argue for more research and more caution and advocate for what they themselves regard as objective standards before letting their children be vaccinated - and all the time be effectively telling people that it's better to be dead than autistic. Supporting them for their apparent scientific interests is merely supporting their message. A homeopath has an entire field of professional associations, licensing, and regulation to point to.

What determines whether you're advocating for scientific inquiry is whether you're arguing in good faith for positions that are in genuine need of inquiry, not whether you have the trappings of scientific research.
There are subtleties about what constitutes a minor. The age of consent varies from 12 to 21 depending on the country [0]. That appears to include variation even in the US.

On the one hand, the law is very clear because there needs to be a clear line in the sand to decide if people get sent to jail or not. On the other hand, there are clearly open cultural questions about what we should get angry about. Pick any standard you like, and the majority of the world currently disagrees.

In my country of Australia we seem to be using 16. So in Australia maybe there was no crime at all. I dunno, I havn't looked in to this sort of law very deeply.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent
I think it is unfair to hound him over his latest statement about sexual assault. He is absolutely right that the term sexual assault includes actions that are so different that it can be used to unfairly destroy people's reputation. And if you are going to call someone a monster, it is better to more precisely define what type of sexual assault he did.

I myself was sexually assaulted some time ago. I was in an ordinary nightclub, I went to the mens room, and on walking out of the mens room some a-hole decided to slap my ass on the way out. I gave him a dirty look, maybe I should have had him kicked out of the club, but I don't think it was necessary to have him fired from his job or ruin his career.
This was a pretty good article about Blue Apron from last week: https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/recipe-for-disaster-the-...
Or maybe, as with Guido van Rossum (in an unrelated context), he's had a bellyful of our contemporary variations on the French Revolution.
In the 20th century the NYTimes acted as Stalin's mouthpiece for 50 years, denying the Soviet-perpetrated genocide in Ukraine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor#Walter...

Which, again, is worse than anything they've done recently.
Perhaps the "issue at hand" can be as simple as software for you.

Most people kinda rank pedophile apologia--and, yes, I did read what he wrote, and yes, the chinstroking "most plausible scenario" is pedophile apologia--above that, though, and I would hope that you would at minimum grant that the level of understanding you seek to demand of everyone else.
“was to retaliate for Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election”

I suspect the entire rationale for these type of stories is to get the ‘Russia hacked the US election’ meme into the zeitgeist.
I too, am a fan of Stallman's accomplishments and I am sad that debate on this topic essentially can't happen.

That said, I think Stallman's position really is fundamentally wrong and problematic.

Legally, sex with underaged people is rape regardless of consent. Morally, that stance really is justified in the most common circumstance - when the non-underaged person has more power and experience than the underaged person. In the case under discussion, you have that in spades, double spades.

The sad thing is that individuals interested in freedom, who make serious contributions to some things called free, don't notice that the massive imbalances of wealth today have produced a situation where simple "free choice" is made a mockery of.

And yeah, the thing about inquisition atmosphere, imo, is that it doesn't reveal the rot behind all the "mere" abuse of power.
I'm pretty sure it was intended in the sense of "to finger a suspect" (cf git blame) rather than anything vulgar.

I think the tendency to take anything, in nearly any context, that could even maybe be vulgar, as vulgar 100% of the time, is actually relatively recent.
Is gamehag ok?
They've been giving steam games as long as you maintain some little task for them.
Or make the demographic info useless by intentionally clicking on ads at random costing them money.
Wow, wait. I get what your point is, but minors will continue doing it, and it is only with adults who they can’t consent with. Obviously minors can consent in some contexts, otherwise it would be a huge mess morally and legally (if two 14 year olds have sex, do they both go to jail because neither can consent? Also see the mess we’ve got into with kids sexting each other).

Let’s not criminalize kids being kids because of some strict morality code.
This is awesome. I used to think music was no big deal but after playing with this I realize I have no musical talent whatsoever.
He's a liability to the organization and to the legitimacy of the software it endorses.
He has resigned from the FSF https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns
Forget about the content of the statements for a moment.

Imagine a person expresses skepticism of an idea you consider "settled." Do you:

1. demand the person be let go from his/her current position

2. provide evidence that counters the skepticism

If the correct response is (1), then you yourself are at risk of a Stallman exit. Every one of us holds at least one point of skepticism that one or more groups will be deeply offended by.

The liberal idea, under assault form all shades of the political spectrum, depends on (2) being the correct response.
How do PCIe lanes tend to be distributed on ARM processors?
Ahem. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/please-forgive-us-at-blu...

That’s a parody from 2017. It’s probably more true now than ever. We actually cancelled our BlueApron last year in favor of another meal kit service - and might end up canceling them overall for grocery pickup from our local grocery chain.
Just to be clear, the Joseph Heller who wrote Catch-22 died in 1999.

But I wouldn't put it past this one to be him.
I mean, let's put aside whether the person might have reasoned the other party was willing. This line of reasoning is ridiculous. If someone appears 100% willing to you, and there's absolutely nothing different from a genuinely willing person, why should you be at fault because somebody else put that person under duress, or because they were lying (under duress or otherwise).

If someone does a 100% legal thing according the information they know, and is not otherwise negligent, there is no crime they should be charged with. As it happens, in the US, statutory rape is the only one I'm aware of that does not follow this criterion; even manslaughter requires negligence (although I'm not making a point about that).
In its most literal form I don't know if I would say I disagreed with the core of what Stallman was saying in the email (that "sexual assault" should perhaps be revised in its usage), but Stallman was tone-deaf at best to have pontificated on such a comparatively minor (and highly arguable) matter when he did and where he did. Worse, with what he wrote, there is a reading of the email where the subtext is that Stallman was trying to mitigate Minsky's culpability. I won't comment on whether I think that was indeed what he was trying to do, but it's not a good look, regardless of whether that is indeed what he was trying to do.

Many people will acknowledge the value of Stallman's stubborn, iconoclastic opinions. I'd count myself among them, and it's a little sad to see Stallman go from his pulpits. But on the other hand, I'm relieved: it might be in Stallman's constitution to be at all times a rational reasoning machine, impervious to emotion and sentiment, but this is not how most people are, and on many occasions Stallman has shown that he either doesn't understand or doesn't care about this. There are times when one should refrain from saying something that is merely correct because of the symbolic meaning it would have, or the emotional responses it would elicit.
Please keep it civil. Otherwise any good points you make could be obscured by your tone.
It's good context, but that one was focused on his MIT resignation, & predates his resignation from the FSF.
My only worry is finding a GUI I know I'll like. To my understanding, with Linux it's basically like legos. Beyond the kernel, you have a ton of choice in what you can use. I want the experience for a few weeks, before diving in fully. I also really like the gestures of Mac OS's trackpad and I don't want to give that up-- it enables a lot of productivity. I like being able to spawn a new desktop and three-finger swipe to the next in a linear fashion. I believe a lot of this has been recreated within the ecosystem, but I'm not certain.
The Time Machine (1960) Meet the Eloi / Books Crumble to Dust
I didn't say it would absolve Minsky. Somebody who has sex with a prostitute is lower than dirt in my book.
I think there are a lot of good candidates. Personally I am rooting for Ethereum. But Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Monero, are all good options. Even Bitcoin could be a good option but it seems like you said there are too many people working against that.
It looks like you're right about that reader beign confused.

To clarify further, however, Minksy was not dead "before any of this hit the news"; he died in January 2016.

Claims against Epstein had significant publicity much earlier than that; as just one example, in 2015 the Prince Andrew - Epstein connection was making headlines due to the Virginia Roberts case.[1]

[1] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bbc-planning-panorama-...
A 'minor' is a societal construct that varies over cultures and time. In Biblical Jewish cultures this was set at puberty ~ year 12. In some modern Islamic cultures its may be ~ year 9. In japan it used to be 13.

Minors cannot consent because society has removed that right from them.

Now I suspect we may agree on the general outcome of these rules, but I do find these 'religious' arguments distasteful, regardless from which camp they get issued.
Yes, hence my question about using NFAs for std::regex!
Thanks!

Now, can anyone ELI5 the high-level goal of this exception? At a glance it looks like GPL2 folks are still not happy with the patent provisions of Apache 2.0 and this is added to appease them.
> Demanding the same standard of evidence we demand in court and science to disrupt human power structures helps those with power retain it and use it against those who have less power.

Okay sure, but you're talking about loosening a standard for accuracy of conviction... This means that you can decrease failures to convict truly guilty people—but in equal proportion you will also increase convictions of innocent people.

This does not sound like a well thought out strategy.
Unfortunate witch hunt against an innocent, if strange, man. I could go on but people don't want to hear anything other than the hateful things that they believe.
> To be fair to Stallman though, he later recanted on those positions.

To be fair to his critics, he only said that two days ago, which is after the CSAIL mailing list postings were made public.

> Why are we going after MIT scientists instead of those prosecutors and Epstien's associates.

I'd hope we go after both.
On the same tabloid that blatantly lies on the headline of another article about the same issue?

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-sci...
tech will thrive with the diverse experiences of morons too fragile to handle adult discussion
That sounds rough. I had a kidney scare earlier this year due to creatine. Luckily I recovered by being off of it. Can you tell a bit more about how your kidneys got to their current state? Could help me or somebody else out.
I’m allowed to criticize him after reading what he actually wrote, right? Because I did and came away from it with the conclusion that he’s evil and shouldn’t be anywhere near anything resembling a leadership position.
> "Point is the media is making this out to be an indictment on some SV tech bubble"

Its not the media, I think its just true. Had WeWork IPO'ed under the same conditions a year ago, I think it would have been 'fine'. but the glut of SV unicorns losing money, hating investors, and slowing growth has got people highly concerned.

This list of companies (slack, lyft, Uber, Pinterest, beyond meat, crowdstrike, tesla, spotify, Pinduoduo, Dropbox, Snap, Domo, Blue Apron, Box, Shopify, Zillow) has 310 billion in market cap and -18.67 billion $ in revenue (back of the envelope calculation).

If I missed anyone or made a typeo/mistake, let me know
how I came up with the numbers:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L2ElCY853kgWACC3Q48Q...

EDIT: I am not saying all these companies are bad; I am invested in some of them! Just that the sheer size of these companies and their total losses are unnerving lots of people to such a point that the market had no appetite for WeWork.
Is there an original source anywhere? Was this a private mailing list thread? I’d just like to see the content on its own not surrounded by a medium blog or vice commentary.
Thanks. I know we're supposed to just upvote when someone hits the nail on the head, but this comment summarises my internal conflict on this perfectly.
I Heart Oil and Gas T Shirts – Teespring
Was he though? It seems to me that all that Stallman said was lets please figure out exactly what Minsky did.
" I am sad that debate on this topic essentially can't happen."

It could happen if your point about power and consent was taken as a given (at least in the context of this topic).
Direct link to the document:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420...
I'm not well-versed in C++, so I'm a bit confused about the difference between the C++ Standard Library and the Standard Template Library (STL). Wikipedia tells me that they're related but technically separate things, yet this GitHub page says:

> This is the official repository for Microsoft's implementation of the C++ Standard Library (also known as the STL)

and appears to use the two terms interchangeably. Is this the C++ Standard Library or the STL?
This may be an appealing idea in the abstract, but there are people who sincerely hold the view others are subhuman and deserve to be raped and killed, and there are people who believe it’s fine to have sex with kids.

Society can absolutely decide not every point of view is worth debating.
i agree with you
Oops I meant XZ1 compact.
Figma is pretty successful and is written in C++ compiled to webassembly:

https://www.figma.com/blog/building-a-professional-design-to...

https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-...
Honest question if anyone knows more details. VCs these days are very focused on the "SaaS Quick Ratio": https://www.cobloom.com/blog/saas-quick-ratio-how-to-measure... (Blue Apron isn't quite a SaaS business but close enough for this metric).

The idea is that it not only measures growth, but measures new customers in relation to churn, with the idea that it's a lot easier to have a long term successful business if you have, say, 1000 new customers and 50 that leave in a month (net 950 new customers) vs. 5000 new customers and 4050 that leave in a month (though also 950 net new customers).

Blue Apron was legendary for its huge churn rate and commensurate high customer acquisition costs. Curious what its quick ratio was, and whether it was just basically ignored.
Conformity and intellectualism are not mutually exclusive. Intellectualism doesn't imply contrarianism, as there are a great many intellectual pursuits that involve studying and continuing traditional bodies of knowledge such as Confucianism, or Mathematics and Science.

Korean culture definitely venerates academic achievement, even if those achievements shouldn't include upheavals in social philosophy, and even if there is a strict social order for determining who is allowed to have creative license. Simply learning the lessons of the past, and skillfully transmitting them to future generations, is a more important social function than making new advances.

I would go so far as to say that one of the causes of American anti-intellectualism is the fetishization of groundbreaking discovery to the extent that being a skilled teacher is looked down on. An intellectual community can't survive across multiple generations without a respected class of specialized teachers who also deeply understand the topics they are tasked with passing on to children. The dominant attitude in America is that teaching is for failures; the saying goes, "those who can't do, teach."
They had an excellent service, which upon having recipes we promptly dropped. It simply wasn't worth it and even cooking 3 means a night was too much.
Wonderful link. To be objective, one of my most recent handful of boxes arrived recently because I forgot to cancel it. Every few weeks, I login to turn off the next months' worth of auto-scheduled deliveries. The ingredient quality is still there. A third of the box is broccoli and it's still $60, so those features haven't changed.

I go to the grocery store and re-make a good number of the recipes. I'm appreciative of the expanded palate BA has given me as well.
Since I discovered a USB DAC/Pre-amp, I no longer miss headphone jack. My headphone sounds even better using usb dac/pre-amp from audioques. I recommend this setup if your phone don't have headphone jack and you still want to use your expensive headphone. Link here: https://www.audioquest.com/page/aq-dragonfly-series.html
The standard of evidence is lower in civil cases than criminal ones. Taking away someone's bodily autonomy is different than saying you can't have a prominent role at a prestigious institution. You don't (or shouldn't) have an inalienable right to power.

And, again, the facts aren't even in dispute.
First, claiming ignorance isn't a strong defense. It wouldn't hold up in any court in America, so I have no reason to buy it as an argument.

However, if it did, to be fair, you would have to seriously consider if it is reasonable to assume that person was ignorant. For example, if you know your friend is a drug dealer and he asks you to "drop off a bag at another house", you would get the book thrown at you even if you didn't know they were drugs in the bag.
No, they're saying that asking someone to resign from their job shouldn't require the same burden of proof as convicting them for a crime.
Forgiving someone doesn't mean letting them keep positions of power or avoid accountability.
There are certain crimes for which intent doesn't matter, legally. This is one of them.

And likewise from a moral perspective: Minsky did harm her. Regardless of his knowledge of the situation at the time, I would expect him (were he still alive) to apologize and do whatever he could to try and heal the pain he caused.

However, I do also think it would reflect much differently on his character if he knew all the details of the situation he was in vs. if he did not. That, from what I've seen, is still unclear.

Consequences and intent both matter.
In my original post, 'making mistakes' was put before 'out of context', the Internet doesn't allow anyone to have a 2nd chance of doing anything. Once you are branded as something, it will stuck with you forever, erasing any previous achievement or contribution you have done. And I don't like that.
MIT is allowed to use whatever behavior criteria MIT likes when determining who gets to participate in MIT.

Also don't be surprised if lots of disparate organizations agree that certain behaviors are inappropriate.

RMS and others are free to say or do whatever they please, but they aren't free from experiencing the consequences (social or otherwise) of their choices.
Maybe you need to flip that envelope around because I don't know how you get that much negative revenue.
They're the ones that made Amazon get those Data Trucks lol
I'm still rocking an iPhone 6 and Apple stopped updates for me. I can't install iOS 13. I honestly don't have much desire to upgrade. I only use it for Music and podcasts with the occasional call or text message anyway.
There is a mailing list thread that was copied and sent to VICE.

Note, the headline and article body of this post contain lies to make the story more clickable, but if you scroll to the bottom there is a widget that contains the 20 page mailing list thread. The other participants’ names besides RMS were redacted. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-sci...