skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well shit, I guess we'd better send Mel Brooks to jail for The Producers
What If We’re All Narcissists?
I'd say that Ruby has symbols because Ruby has mutable strings.

If your strings are immutable and interned, they are as good as symbols; this is why Python does not have symbols.

ECMASript introduced symbols because JavaScript strings, while immutable, are not necessarily interned. Symbols are much cheaper to compare for equality: you only need to compare the pointers / ids, not actual string bytes.

Lisp has symbols for the same reason: Lisp strings are vectors, which are also mutable.
"Elon Musk's raging narcissism launches all-out $43B assault on his credibility and fortune"

Without any understanding that the his right-wing narcissistic suppliers who rage in public about being prevented from raging in public are not the sort of people who become good paying customers for a free platform.

This is like the universe seeing Elon Musk and issuing a course correction.

For the avoidance of doubt: this is dreadful for Twitter's longevity. Twitter's only sustainable future while staying true to its roots, is as a market utility co-owned by media companies.

A billionaire pouring money into a money-pit is fine only for as long as it holds his interest as a plaything (which might be a long time, considering his narcissism)
What resource are you talking about? Social media, or the internet?

Because the author clearly states that corporate social media are the problem, which I - and a lot of psychologists and sociologists - agree with.
>The heat pump itself is >100% efficient

Are you sure you aren't confusing the coefficient of performance with the efficiency? If a heat pump was >100% efficient, I could cool my house by leaving my refrigerator door open.
No, dehosting is a problem common across all socio-economic systems. It is even more prevalent in non-capitalist systems.

Much of the driving force behind today's dehosting is a result of increasing government intrusion into how information is shared on the internet. Congress has been openly threatening tech companies about "misinformation" for the past decade or so and this is a very predictable result.
Happens multiple times a day I've noticed.
So pretty much never going to happen unless said other sovereign nations make it painful for them.
To put an even finer point on it, you'll never ever see Xi or Putin say "I'm a free speech absolutist" or "let's have less censorship".

That so many people are taking the position of authoritarians, but presenting it as though they are protecting democracy, is truly baffling to behold. Elon removing these authoritarians from twitter's leadership and employee base, and restoring free speech principles, will be the best thing we've seen for democracy in a long time.
I realize technical accuracy is important, but I don't think any of your points take away from the main point I was making: Hitler was a democratically-elected politician; so comparing other democratically-elected politicians to Hitler is not an automatic non-sequitir; and blocking democratically-elected politicians who exhibit fascist and authoritarian behavior is a reasonable choice.

> First of all, the only reason they took the political path was because Hitler's coup against the German government in 1923 failed.

Sure; I knew about that (and other illegal activities) and was trying to think of a way to make it clear I wasn't including that in "everything". It wasn't really possible without being awkward and taking away from the main point; so I relied on my readers to understand the implicit limitation of "everything".

As for the rest, I could have said "mostly constitutional with some bending" and it would have had the same point. Obviously digging into it, the fact that Germany at that time didn't have a tradition of democracy, and its constitution was problematic, is important to know. But most people in the US, at least, don't realize that Hitler took a mostly legal route to power at all. That's the main thing I want to get across to people.
Accessing Stock Market Losses via Direct Indexing (2021)
I agree with your statements.

Every Billionaire who recently acquired a large media house[1] mentioned in the interviews as doing it for 'Upholding Journalism' or something of those lines which also implicitly meant 'Supporting right to free speech'.

But I'm bewildered about how this particular acquisition is only about 'Right to Free speech' vs 'No Right to Free Speech' and not really about hostile takeover of a business by a Ultra-Billionaire with impunity?

I guess that has something to do with how good Elon is at controlling the narrative, Even reputable news agencies start with 'Elon who claims himself as a free speech absolutist...'. And that was before he controlled Twitter.

Anyways, Two major social media firms seems to have consolidated with individuals who are supposed to run a social media firm.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45550747
Chances are there's not enough load balancers to handle sudden traffic spike, probably.
> their search engine is still the best, sorry haters

Naming or using the "hater" word in the sentence does not make us in the right side of the story.

Considering users of other search engines as Haters does not sound right.

You think is the best, fine.
Recently today, in this network, there is an analysis about it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31020229
Heatsink Skiving (2021) [video]
This should be noted as being from 2019.

Good article and it actually pays off with useful analysis, I feared a listcicle with just BS clickbait.

I think this is a good measure for how privately owned, public places (eg, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc) that are so large they aren’t actually curated. I think using these kinds of legal determinations of when free speech is abridged is helpful for productive discourse that doesn’t revolve into happy echo chambers.

I’m not sure what the line is that prevents small sites from being abused with this (I can moderate comments on my blog according to whatever tyranny I like) but I think clearly massive sites that allow broadcasting to millions should have a more systematic and fair way of removing speech.
The vast majority of people are well aware that anything they put on a digital device gets vacuumed up. Whether make witty quips about corperate overlords or their FBI agent is immaterial.

I know HN has a lot of people who subscribe to beliefs in the same ballpark as "people are stupid and need to be helped" but rest assured, people are well aware that they're getting bent over when it comes to their data.
There is this constant borrowing of justification from the constitutional/legal side to argue that companies should moderate their platforms in a particular way.

Then there is just a marketing angle of saying you're free speech to pull users from the platform that you think is against free speech.

The whole thing feels really shaky as a genuine movement and feels more like regulating companies they don't like.
> I'm also quite skeptical of the "slippery slope"-style argument regarding IP connectivity. The number of available ISPs, web hosts, domain registrars, etc is pretty large.

We've already seen the goalposts move when AWS and CDNs were dropping politically unpopular clients.

If it helps, we're already pretty close to the end of the slope. There's a very limited number of last-mile ISPs, so we're only one Twitter mob / protest away from Comcast / Verizon / Cox / AT&T holding press conferences about how they're blocking politically problematic domains and IP addresses. Then it'll only be tech-savvy users with VPNs that can access "free speech," at least until those become the target of the mob, too.
> use something to sort and filter my feed

It wasn't even that long ago when we had at least some of those options via external clients.

That was until Twitter started to dismantle that possibility and limited external clients much more heavily.
So you’re assuming his motives based on his skin color? There’s a word for that.
Not quite web 1.0 but I do wonder if there's a market for services that are closer to early web 2.0 products.

For example something closer to Facebook circa 2006. No infinite scroll, a simple timeline, basic media sharing.

Would it be possible to make a reasonable profit by offering simpler versions of existing services just without the engagement dark-patterns we currently have. And if so, could you create enough disruption to move the needle back slightly?
Refactoring Toward Algorithms in Elixir
Regarding tesla, lots of companies survive entirely because of Government Subsidies. Resource extraction from public lands, no bid cost + contracts for defense department projects, last mile monopolies for cable companies.

You going to then argue "but we'd have it all better if there were no meddling government!" ? There are plenty of places that have no government and they seem pretty miserable.

People (ideally) select other people every interval of time to make important decisions (aka "government"); sometimes those decisions adversely affect some people and help others disproportionately (your job is cutting down trees and 99% of the trees are gone? Well, you may lose your job before cutting down that last 1% because the trees have value as trees instead of lumber; sorry them's the breaks).

Life is hard and full of difficult choices. There are winners and losers. It's better for everyone to make decisions by discussion and consensus rather than violence.

But free speech is "will the government arrest/fine/murder you for what you say (or don't say)" not "do I have to listen to you blather on when I'd rather not".

There's tremendous nuance to "free speech". If I'm a cake maker and you ask me to make a cake saying "Fuck Jewish Space Lasers!" can I say no I'd rather not? I'm not sure. Maybe I've got terms of service already, maybe I'm just a harried cake maker trying to be civil and a good person and I'd rather not be an asshole even by proxy. You could probably switch the message to "Happy anniversary Steve and Paul!" and offend some other set of people.

We seem to live in a society where some set of people just want to be rude and uncivil and force us all to watch like we're in a clockwork orange needing programming. Please no, and while you're at it I'd rather you stop pouring garbage into my father in law.
I feel like the biggest issue with Web 2.0 is the economic model. Most people probably still don't understand the amount of data collected and sold that funds a lot of social media. I often wonder what the internet would be like if data collection and advertising were gone and people had to pay for services they used.
> it all started with limits on the freedom of speech.

Twitter has nothing to do with freedom of speech though.

Or, to put it in a non-ambiguous way, Twitter is about freedom of speech as much as Coca-Cola is about "right to food, and its variations" [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_food
I think you need to look at history, "following people into the woods" and much worse than deplatforming has been ongoing for most of the existence of the US (and most/all other countries, just keeping it limited to a US discussion). I mean just look at what happened to people who demonstrated or supported civil rights in the 60s (hint:some were lynched), or gay lesbians in the 80s and 90s (and still). I actually agree that we need to move past these issues, taking a free speech absolutist stance is not the way. This is part of how these groups were and still are discriminated against.
> validated to make sure it makes sense

Indeed, I always thought that it's called "syntax checking" :)
What features exactly do you have under "comparable" here?
Microsoft has actual customer service

Just don't touch Teams and you'll be OK.
I have yet to read the full article but the first thing I noticed was that the plaintext links in the navigation pane and the small picture links in the links pane didn't appear until I turned Javascript on. I found this amusing. No comments on the article yet though.
Microsoft Office+Outlook+Teams is some of the worst software I've recently used. Poorly designed and poorly integrated with tons of overlapping functionality cracks where productivity goes to die.
> if i were to become a persona non grata to google, apple, HN, social media, etc., how would i talk to anyone? how could i do anything?

I honestly don't understand this argument at all.

To answer your question, you could:

- Use one of the thousands of other available email hosts/search engines/cloud providers/etc besides Google or Apple
- Pick up the phone and talk to people to get things done
- Leave your house to talk to people and do things
- Find something enjoyable to do with all of the free time you've gained now that you're off of social media and HN

But more importantly, you're saying that without those companies you somehow can't live your life? In that case I just flat-out disagree. I believe that most people make social media out to be more important than it is, and this feels like the extreme of that style of argument.
> Well... Aren't the twitter bots then the bad actor?

Of course. But what does that matter? All you've done is assign blame. The person still had their game experience ruined. With a different design, that might not have been possible. This is like spam protection -- it's not Gmail's fault that you're receiving spam, but they're the ones in a position to stop it.
> Moderation on HN is based on tone and quality, not content.

... That is still content-based moderation, since it's based on the actual text being written and not the circumstances (time, place, manner) of its writing.
And I believe their disdain for mentalism comes from James Randi.

Here's an hour long presentation that James Randi gave at McGill University:

James Randi - Investigating Pseudoscientific and Paranormal Claims
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRqlvqHBVCg
Yes. I own the domains. And if they go through with this I will move and leave Google's ecosystem entirely.

It will be a huge pain in the ass trying to do it for my grandparents though.
Let's ignore personality and societal issues for a moment and look at the value proposition. The 'best and final offer' of $54.20 per share is just too low to be acceptable for major investors.

Just over year ago, Twitter shares traded at about $70 per share. Musk's offer is about 25% lower than last years peak. There's no reason to assume Twitter shares can't reach the same levels ever again, nothing much has changed fundamentally over a year.

Musk's offer is a cash only offer. $43 billion is a lot of cash. That's a lot of Tesla shares to sell, or massive loan. If Musk thinks Twitter is that valuable to take such risks, current major investors will probably want to unlock that value themselves.

I think the takeover offer is just as believable as last week's announcement that Musk was joining the Twitter board.
Do you think Google is reading the contents of drive documents? I struggle to make the connection between those kinds of business apps and advertising.

Perhaps they get some usage data of how/when people work?

I do believe much of what Google does (i.e. chrome) is to benefit their ads business, but I think it's a bit cynical to think that's true of every product they have.

FWIW I've worked at companies that use both Microsoft + Google suites (mostly drive + calendar + mail) and generally preferred Google's. I did not have any issues like the post mentions.
> 1) The number of digital outlets. Utilities tend to be regulated when there are no alternatives or merely 1 alternative (especially when monopoly is being intentionally granted for the purposes of not duplicating infrastructure). We're not hurting for options in ways to talk to each other these days.

It's anecdotal, but I don't feel this to be true in my personal life. I am not on Facebook by choice. But I feel like it impoverishes my life in a number of ways:

1. Most of my family and friends post their life updates on Facebook.
2. My neighborhood uses a Facebook group for most communication and coordination.
3. Several local companies use their Facebook pages to broadcast their events, sales, etc, and as their primary form of outreach.
4. Several local hobby groups do the same.

In each case, this is general communication and information that I want in my life, but I can't get it easily. Even when I go out of my way to get it (private conversations, visiting websites, etc), I still miss things because Facebook has the network and it's the primary way my communities communicate.

So while in principle I agree with everything you said, in my own life I empathetically agree with the subjective sense that it feels like a utility. It feels like living without something important in some ways.

(It was easier when I was married and my wife was on Facebook and could relay information to me. Also anecdotal, but I've heard of this arrangement a number of times.)
Oh, I was not suggesting they be an aggregator. They should get people to produce original content and pay them per view like YouTube.
This is like Warren Buffett's hostile takeover of Berkshire Hathaway (then a failing textile company) because their CEO made him assmad, that ultimately just prevented him from becoming even more disgustingly rich.

Musk is gonna be left with a pile of worthless, shit stock. Of course once one of the streaming services releases a docu-drama about Twitter's rise and fall (like they did for Theranos, Uber, and WeWork), Musk can charge decent money to play himself.
I think a distinction should be made between restrictions (on speech) by government, and restrictions by private entities. The former is dangerous, the latter is necessary.

Societal attitudes towards free speech have changed a lot in recent times. I believe this is related to technological advancement and the rise of social media. The advent of social media has made it too easy to spread dangerous levels of hate and false information online. Malicious individuals and groups now have the power to reach hundreds of millions instantly, at no cost to themselves. It started off innocently enough, with cat videos uploaded to YouTube, but soon extremists were taking advantage of social media for radicalization purposes, adversarial nations were spreading fake news to influence who gets elected, and others were even live-streaming mass murders. This has caused an upheaval in attitudes towards free speech. Enough is enough! There needs to be limits. Communities started imposing limits to free speech. Society — as opposed to governments — have decided that some censorship is in order. This is a natural evolution of societal norms. This particular evolution was a reaction to the excesses and abuses seen in social media. Some censorship, by private parties such as Twitter, as opposed to absolute free speech, will be the new normal.

We live in a new world; the old norms no longer apply.
> SQLite vs nightmare distributed abominations

Don't see the benefit of using SQLite over a RDMS like MySQL or Postgres, especially if users are still in the tens of thousands.
Vercel is probably their biggest competitor, but I can't speak to their uptime.
Not enough people are aware of the Paradox of Tolerance:

"The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly paradoxical idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
> Now the web has become a cesspool of toxic content.

I strongly disagree. The web not only achieve but greatly exceeded it's potential. But the web has transitioned from being a destination to being a tool. Like all tools, it can be misused.
Google’s Ad Products have - over the last few years, in the pursuit of “smartness” —gotten progressively dumber and harder to use, making all sorts of bad and often unchangable decisions on your behalf, and having really awful interfaces for trying to make any sorts of edits and apply them anywhere. And I say this as a technical marketer. Facebook’s ads products are a godsend compared to the awful nonsense that is Google Ads.
Newton is so long ago I can't imagine it matters, but Einstein wrote papers for the Physical Review which is still around.

This blog post claims Einstein had one paper peer reviewed

https://michaelnielsen.org/blog/three-myths-about-scientific...

and it is backed up by this

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2117822

That said, gravitational waves (the subject of that paper) are pretty strange, they run headlong into the problem that you can't allocate the energy and momentum of the gravitation field in a local way. (For the electromagnetic field you can write down a formula for the energy/momentum density as a function of location and time, for the gravitational field you can't.)

Physicists are struggling today with this locality problem, for instance the "event horizon" of a black hole in GR is not a local property and that leads to a lot of confusion, particularly over

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewall_(physics)

which is a much more significant paradox in my mind than that long-settled information "paradox."
Twitter claimed it was a mistake, that's all the information we have. You're claiming they are lying, you have to offer evidence to prove that claim.
I'm sorry, you think every social media company censoring a story at the same time was somehow a mistake??
"Twitterized" - means you can no longer absorb anything but simple concepts that can be delivered in a few lines, due to too much time spent on Twitter. To quote some early 20th century propaganda monkey, "The essence of propaganda is to take a complex subject, reduce it to a simple concept that a small child can understand, and then repeat, repeat, repeat."

That's what Twitter is ideal for, and that's what political and media types use it for. Add in siloed echo chambers like Facebook groups and Reddit subreddits... I urge everyone to flush it all down the toilet.
That sounds like room for innovation, rather than an unfair trick. If you can find ways to achieve high temperature cheaply and easily, you get better efficiency.
> It was a weird time

Torture time is so long. A generation loss is bearable. A couple generation loss seems like hell. I'm pessimistic that we are going to a worse era.
If climate change were a bipartisan issue, I'd expect more diversity in the sorts of bumper stickers I see on trucks coal rolling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal
I agree!

I'm shocked to see a fun and positive comment on HN and not sarcasm, irony, or the endless steam of 'what I think the world's must successful man should do'
Which of Google's productivity apps collect your data for ads? Can you provide some proof?
Gotcha. Yeah, IT for the parents & grandparents is definitely a challenge for things like this.
tell that to Julian Assange or Edward Snowden.
I imagine it was crushed by the Mush traffic.
Electric cars are a great plan if you're an electric car company, though.
Do you realize just how disconnected sales and operations are? Look at your organization chart. They connect at the CEO.

My previous company lost customer data. Someone deleted a previous employee's account which surprise contained a production customer website. We didn't halt sales and outreach.

I mean RSA lost all of their encryption seeds in 2011. Every account was compromised. They still do sales today.
"single-handedly" is a red herring. None of the listed entities needs to band up with another to have a great effect on political or social outcomes.
Another option is Rathole, also written in rust

https://github.com/rapiz1/rathole
As if the West didn't have social credit system. Not too long ago, there was a discussion here about algorithmic tenant scoring, and there were users here defending the practice. In China there's at least some legislation to curb abuses. In the US, not so much.