skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Humanity has yet to find a greater way to seek objective truth than the scientific method.

This discussion started as an exploration of the claim that [all] religion is based on misinformation. And I can see, upon reading that word, how someone could interpret "misinformation" to connote a negativity towards religion. I personally do not see it that way, rather, as an accurate and objective description of the phenomenon. This is because believing in religion requires faith, and to "have faith" means [look at discussion above].

In other words religion is a paradigm based on information that cannot be proved true (not just that it hasn't been proved true). I would classify the above as misinformation -- information that cannot be believed (i.e. rationalized). Choosing to believe anyway is each individual's prerogative, but I don't think it changes how we should talk about it.

I don't mean this as a critique to living a life of faith. Though I personally cannot "have faith" (I cannot believe a person walked on water), it doesn't mean I don't believe in God or the values that many religions profess. It just means that "God" means something different to me. It probably means something different to everyone. As you say, "It's personal".
1. 4chan has active and responsive moderation for all content. Illegal content is removed quickly.

2. 4chan is extremely simple - there is a max of content, content is anonymous, and old content decays and is removed. There are no notifications, replies, searches, etc.
Well maybe in the eyes of US law, but what that's not a given for, well, me or perhaps others on HN. Take "the US highway network" for example. It can just as easily be used to transport black-market items, child porn, weapons, drugs, etc as it can transport ice cream bars. I support it. Tor just as easily supports drug sales as it does star-trek reviews. I support it.

Can't say for sure, but I think it's hazardous to assume we all prescribe to the exact same notion of the limits on free speech.
Name a single fox pundit who properly uses gender pronouns. They're all still on twitter.
I hope this gets to discovery. There was clearly some coordination between Facebook and Twitter simultaneously taking down offical Trump accounts, Google and Apple simultaneously taking down the Parler app listing, and then Amazon removing them from AWS. Slack chatlogs exist, and if those are made public, the public backlash is going to be real.
> How the rest of the world judges them isn't relevant, and would be the same as someone in the US talking about how things are going in Zimbabwe as they look to us here.

Nonsense. Of course, people’s opinion of internal politics is relevant. If it wasn’t, we’d still have apartheid in South Africa, for example.

And no, the rest of the world is not a single monolithic group, but the vast majority of it (especially in comparable western democracies) thinks trump is a laughing stock.
> It isn’t really a credible source.

are there any "credible sources"? nowadays eveything is biased. the trick is being aware of the biases in your sources and reading sources with different biases.
That doesn't matter at the end of the day.

Facebook employee decides what posts to show you → Facebook Inc is responsible for picking and choosing content (exercising editorial control) → Facebook is a publisher.

vs

Facebook employees write post engagement algorithm → Facebook computer program decides what posts to show you -> Facebook Inc is responsible for picking and choosing content (exercising editorial control) → Facebook is a publisher.
I'll just leave this here:

[1] "It turns out that Facebook also buys data about your offline purchases. The next time you pay for a burrito with your credit card, Facebook will learn about this transaction and match this credit card number with the one you added in Messenger.

In other words, Messenger is a great Trojan horse designed to learn everything about you."

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/23/facebook-knows-literally-e...
From 2018!

[2] "Google now knows when its users go to the store and buy stuff.

Google has begun using billions of credit-card transaction records to prove that its online ads are prompting people to make purchases – even when they happen offline in brick-and-mortar stores [...] Privacy advocates said few people understand that their purchases are being analyzed in this way"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/05/23...
From 2017!

Consumer data is the gold the consumer appears to be giving away, unwittingly or carelessly, regardless of the regime or geographic location.
Why can't I download these files from archive.org? All of the interesting files are marked as "not available for download"
It was a ride range to indicate how large it is and meant to illustrate a point. You're asking for a fact is really just a way to say "I don't like your opinion so I'm going to challenge something that's obviously intended as a hyperbole" to discredit your statement in some arbitrary way.

Alright, AWS may not own 80% of the market, but let's be fair; it's fucking massive. On top of that Cloudflair has taken down websites before. DigitalOcean and DreamHost have removed people's hosting with less than 24 hours notice[0]. NameCheap and GoDaddy have both revoked peoples domains with less than 24 hours notice[1].

Initial searches seem to show AWS owns 50% of the market by themselves. You add in DO, Azure and GCE and that number quickly climbs[2].

[0]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/

[1]: https://twitter.com/GoDaddy/status/896935462622957573

[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2019/08/02/amazon-...

Edit: Also the lawsuit itself also claims AWS has 1/3 of the hosting market.
Because she will write the censorship rules of DSA/DMA: https://twitter.com/zoobab/status/1348701932618182657
That it works better. I'm wondering because of this submission the other day:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25623858
Let’s be clear, access to cloud computing companies like AWS is a competitive advantage because it requires less upfront capital and less engineering time to manage. I can 100% see why Parler would prefer having access to AWS compared to running their own hardware.

Ianal, so I can’t judge the merits of this legal case. To be honest I’m surprised Parler can find lawyers willing to bring it to court on their behalf, or banks willing to process transactions to pay said lawyers.
Honestly, if leftists start calling for violent Revolution because they lose an election, I’m not going to be too upset if they get deplatformed too. Perhaps I’m just too comfortable with my life, but I suspect most other people would agree.
Yes, the purpose of moderation is far wider than "I don't want to see this post". It is there to protect people from malicious activities, and also very importantly, it is there to shape the community. Moderation is needed to set limits of what is and isn't accepted in a community. If those limits are not present, communities quickly succumb to its worst elements.
Bitcoin won't magically "stabilize" if it hits 50k/100k/1m, it will crash, just like its doing now…

This isn't a crash. 10-15% corrections are normal and to be expected. There's always resistance at round number milestones—$20,000 then $30,000 and now $40,000.

In the not too distant future, $40,000 will look quaint.
And if he was arrested prior that indicates some awareness in advance of what might have unfolded. I’m probably alone in the opinion that it shouldn’t have been given the go ahead, especially amidst a pandemic. Protests seem unreasonably dangerous in today’s world.
Ads based on the subject matter isn't the problem. "Targeted algorithmic advertising" in this context is building a profile of the viewer, and running ads based on that profile.

At its simplest, it's the ad network deciding that you were recently seen visting toyota.com, so it'll show you 4 ads over the next hour for Toyota vehicles, to help cement that association. At its worst, it builds up an individualized profile over the course of months from thousands of websites (with google ads everywhere, you bet!) and allow advertisers to practically target viewers based on a psych profile.
Perhaps if Parler had suggested they use mTurk to moderate, AWS might have given them a bit longer? What position would that have put Amazon in, if the moderation was being done via their service, but the end result of the moderation was still 'unacceptable'?
Yeah, people want to have their cake and eat it too. They want every device to support and pass through every modern feature, the highest speeds, and the fastest charging, but they also only want to pay less than $5 per USB interface, and they want full backwards compatibility with all historic devices. It's just not possible, we are pushing the boundaries of what's possible physically. Apple solves the problem by over-provisioning everything; but as you note, Apple products are expensive.

Additionally, there are hundreds of manufactures making equipment that uses the USB ports, but which don't follow the specs beyond what's needed to "make it work", and they can't be stopped through legal or trademark enforcement as they're largely-foreign, and they just fold and re-appear as a different company if ever challenged legally.
I have that exact same light panel. I have no idea how the manufacturer got away with it -- they're not a small company at all.

I also have no idea how they ever thought that was a good idea vs just using a barrel plug.
Died? No. Murdered. Murdered by MIT and JSTOR
> censored by a few giant private companies that self-police what can and can't be said

But you have to keep in mind the other side of that - the protections around freedom of speech were put in place at a time when it was inconceivable that a majority of people in the country had the ability to be seen and heard _by the majority of other people in the country_. In near real-time, anytime. And that they could do so in a way that meant often they did not have to accept any consequence for the wider-ranging effects of their words.

Separately I also have to wonder if the knowledge acquired as a result of that would have affected their framing. In particular the advances in psychology and group psychology, and in understanding how it's possible to use this instant mass communication to manipulate even people who are on guard against manipulation.
Voters are not forced to shut up, though. A big portion of them are just mad that a) other people don't want to listen to them or b) that they're asked to express themselves without being extremely rude or aggressive.
Would love some pointers to read up on. I am imagining something that talks about how provincial governments work, any factions at play, day-to-day politics of getting things to happen whether by official process or informal etc.
Just one remark about your COVID denial president. He got the vaccine way faster then Europe. Especially Germany where the vaccine was developed as well. Not sure how many would be saved if Germany ordered in the same way.
I can't get started with Signal for the last few days.

It rejects the correct SMS confirmation code it's sending/receiving itself :)
Thank you for mentioning that this situation 'slows the political process down' while also speaking of the end-result as one that 'kinda works'.

When viewed from a dispassionate distance I feel that the desire for 'political expedience' is a major factor in the extreme polarization of US politics today.
> Russia investigation had credible evidence and resulted in multiple arrests and convictions

The comment I responded to mentioned elections in Russia, unrelated to Russian election interference in 2016.
How is saying "problematic" = "blasting"???
My comment isn’t throwaway. It was intended as a counterpoint. If you seek some clarification, then ask.

My point is to paint the picture that leveraging extremes doesn’t work. It is often the case that the west, in particular the U.S., assumes their way is the best and that this way should be applied, forcefully if necessary, elsewhere. In reality, the world’s two most powerful nations, that is the U.S. and China, are at the extreme opposite ends of political and economical ideology. One has corporations controlling everything and the other has the government controlling everything. In both cases, it is an extreme but minority so-called elite group that controls the fate of the people.

My lament is this scenario, because it is clear, at least to me, that the ideal is somewhere in between.
The point is that homosexuality has indeed been viewed as odious and immoral in the past, and platforms like Grindr would have been eliminated just as easily as Parler some time ago (on some bullshit TOS violations, no less).

The real concern here is having Big Tech decide what you’re allowed to believe in. AWS et al should be treated as a public utility not bound by a private TOS, unless you want AWS to control what information you receive and who you can associate with.
Edit: It seems an awful lot like parent hasn't reviewed any particular case, just using media talking points.
So I would trust the article as much as I would trust Song Qing.

What does that mean in this context? What do you know about Song Qing that the rest of us don't that makes him untrustworthy? A quick search didn't come up with anything. Do you have an informative link?
My absolutely essential XTerm settings:

! Convert Meta-x into "ESC x", not "ø"
XTerm.VT100.metaSendsEscape: true

! Allow HT (TAB) in paste; i.e. do not convert to space character
XTerm*VT100.DisallowedPasteControls: BS,DEL,ESC

! Assume window titles are UTF-8 encoded
XTerm.VT100.utf8Title: true

(Add to your ~/.Xresources and/or ~/.Xdefaults file.)
100% agree - but I think this can only be solved via legislation.

Amazon has too much market power if it can shut down another company at the push of a button for something that isn't illegal (even if it's distasteful).
> Rosa Parks getting kicked off for being black is one thing

A thing that was legal when it happened.
As long as we agree the correct response isn't inaction.
It's an extremely credible source, in reality.
It's a continuation of what we've seen by big tech over the past several months and years.

You've got Kathy Griffin tweeting photos a decapitated Trump head (https://twitter.com/kathygriffin/status/1323893513226870786) which gets no penalty or ban. This isn't glorifying violence?

Yet, people on the right are being banned daily without explanation for things much less egregious.

EDIT: if you disagree, maybe try having a conversation instead of downvoting.
Did they also perjure themselves when they stated the Amazon letter was published in buzzfeed before being provided to them?
You are most probably right, there are some naive believers here and there in those companies, but for the most part C suite cares about being aligned with the establishment to keep their revenue streams and their control intact. Trump is just a useful tool for them at this point - "see we are your ally/servant, we fight the Trump movement".
"The fact you used the "carried a weapon across state lines" line suggests that you may be consuming biased reports."

No, its clear. He was not defending his home or his business, he traveled 90 minutes by car to play soldier. It was not his neighborhood that was "under attack" and this wasn't self defense. He was not going about his life when someone threatened him, he went on a mission. He entered a dangerous area with a gun with full knowledge of the range of outcomes.
Random stock up 100x due to an Elon Musk tweet
> If/when this lawsuit gets publicity, my guess is a lot of C-suite executives are gonna be looking over their shoulders and evaluating how screwed they'd be if their current cloud provider decided to deplatform them.

Do you really think there are “a lot” of companies which host user content, refuse to moderate it, and refuse to deal with complaints forwarded by their service provider? Most C-level people are going to look at this and say “that's why we follow our contracts” or “I'm glad we don't have to worry about legal action against a rogue customer potentially impacting any infrastructure we share with them”.
Unreservedly no. Any company big enough to have this kind of power, like Amazon or Google, is without doubt hosting illegal content somewhere in their data centers. I don't think youtube or AWS should be shielded from legal effects of what their users do, if they don't extend the same principle to their customers. On top of that, I'm a staunch free speech advocate, so I definitely don't agree with the recent trend of censorship and cancel culture.
I can understand this point of view, but will the same standard be applied to anyone who advocates punching Nazis?
What to expect from the first-ever virtual CES
It is the nature of commerce that you must enter into contracts with other entities. The internet itself is federated but most people don't ever have a chance to see it that way because it mostly just works.

Even if you bought your own physical servers, you still need an agreement with an internet carrier and a colocation facility.

Renting a Linode is a convenient shortcut but you need that one contract with Linode. Linode can, does, and should enforce terms of service.

You can run a website off your home internet connection with a $20 raspberry pi, but your ISP can, does, and should enforce terms of service.

In theory you could become an ISP by entering into a peering agreement with other ISPs. Internet providers do this. Those ISPs will have their own terms, some of them may not regard content but I expect all of them would specifically defer to local law regarding the transported content.

"Bulletproof hosting" is the concept being discussed here. It is literally named that way because armed government agents coming to shut the site down or confiscate servers will be resisted.

Now call me a fanatical sheep, but if one think it's necessary to have that kind of hosting to get their political stories, they might just be seeking out extremely radical sources.
> Then I block them on WhatsApp, so I don't relapse

That's the key move, it takes guts
> They're [Parler] just too unsympathetic of a plaintiff, imho.

I don't know that sympathy has anything to do with the merits of their case.[1][2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jun/27/aclu-assist-kkk-...

*edit--formatting
So it's just there to cover bases then? It's basically impossible to win a defamation case when the subject is a public person no?
I have one question for you. At what point do you begin to question your ideology for it's intolerance, double standards, and moral inconsistencies? Have YOU learned nothing from history, ironically Hitler's rise to power, to even question the dogma being fed to you regarding racism and violence? I'm not saying you have to tolerate or even agree with your opposition. However, I'd challenge you to not partake in the past dictator's favorite action of belittling and scapegoating his political opposition. You are contributing to the very acts you espouse to be against by labeling all of your opposition as racists, mentally ill, brainwashed extremists. All you've demonstrated with your words is violence is okay, so long as you agree with the cause as we experienced COUNTLESS acts of violence in the US riots occurring throughout the year.
Tell that to my favorite ice cream shop that was smashed to bits on Melrose. Or the synagogues on Fairfax that were defiled. Or the vehicles all over DTLA that were set on fire. Or the man who died of smoke inhalation in a Minneapolis shop because he couldn't escape the flames.

At least 19 people died last summer. Don't downplay it.
> I say: why, again, don't you want your police service to be able to infiltrate these groups and observe these people, and arrest them as they see fit?

That is not how it works. The police does not need this. They also will not really use it. However, this does give repugnant ideas a place to spread. It normalises them. It makes things much, much worse.
No - I recognized what you were saying by your last non-quote bit at the bottom. I was just pointing out that this quote really supports (IMO) the "trump-side" of this whole issue.
People thought the same thing about apple when Jobs died but it's up 900% in the 9 years since his death
Is there really any "AI"? It seems to just take the title and apply it to 4 templates.
They need to also demand "design for reparability". I had a dryer where to replace a thermal fuse, you had to remove all the outer panels and a bunch of other things to replace a tiny component. They could implemented a service panel on the back which you could unscrew to replace that part.
No, with caveats. Free speech underpins our (speaking for the US) nation. Even violent speech helped create our nation in the first place.

Completely obliterating these platforms is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yes - and this is my caveat - we should be keeping a tight rein on hate speech, on inciting violence, and on death threats. But, and this is key to me, these kinds of things are the minority of discussion occurring, and should be treated as the outliers they are.

For better or worse, these platforms are the public squares of the internet; if people can't speak freely there, they can't speak freely on the internet. Private company or not, they have a monopoly on what speech appears on the internet, and an individual's right to free speech should be regulated accordingly.
I'm providing an example on how efficient software can run on limited hardware resources.

I'm not advocating for old hardware. (facepalm)

More tips: use powertop. Use CLI-based stuff. Download email locally in bulk/batches.

Don't use software that does home-calling or any other unnecessary network traffic.

1 large monitor is more efficient than a dual screen setup
True about Facebook. But didn't they completely re-invent themselves once the white suburban soccer moms took over, and then again when all the drunk racist uncles came on?

I feel like you are right about the need for an original purpose. And would add that at such a momentous time when everyone can see the consequences of private, centralized media selling attention so efficiently, is it really impossible that the situation rises to that level of original purpose? The seed of a new community might just need a great spark.
Why is it better for Chinese billionaires to run the country than the CCP? Seems like just trading one master for another.
Hard to tell now that it’s down. But I find it pretty hard to trust him on this. One, it’s been fairly well documented that people were organizing the attack on Parler [1]. And two, as I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, there’s the obvious loophole that many who participated in the attack simply haven’t been arrested at all.

[1] https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2021/01/08/far-right-ins...
iPhone 7 with dead NAND netbooting unmodified Ubuntu 20.04
Do you have any sources to support the claim that the West will separate production within a decade or two?