skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> * In the eyes of the economy anything that has utility has merit, and capital certainly has very high utility.*

Depends on your utility function. Capital can certainly prove very useful for whoever is wilding it, but the near-edge of this sword can easily cut us when the wielder happens to be a sadistic psychopath. Or when the power of money corrupts the wielder. Or when the costs of building that capital (externalities such as pollution, rip-offs, lay-offs…) outweigh any later benefit…

> Fair […] [depends] on each person's morality.

Luckily, we humans appear to have a fairly stable morality across individuals. (There are psychological experiments on moral dilemmas, and as far as I know, they indicate we agree on most of the important things. Though there are some "off-switches" in our moral systems —religion, "following orders"…)

> * I for one, certainly do not want to live in a world where good health has no advantages over bad health, even if I was unhealthy.*

There are two aspects you need to keep track of. On the one hand, the absolute advantage, and on the other, the comparative advantage.

Height for instance is a comparative advantage. We tend to look up to taller people, merely because they are taller. So they're more followed, they "get all the girls", better jobs, and so on. But if everyone was taller, it wouldn't change a thing. That's a purely comparative advantage.

Health on the other hand has an absolute component. If we were suddenly immune to all diseases, the world would be a significantly better place.

In other words, you wouldn't care if everyone was taller, but you would like everyone to be healthy.
I'd like to reiterate that Obama was against gay marriage during 2008 and California, the most liberal state ever, voted against it. A lot changes in 6 years(1).

I'm a democrat in support of gay marriage because citizenship, benefits, and filing taxes jointly should be granted regardless of sexuality.

But this witchhunt is ridiculous. However, a shitty language like js being necessary to deal with every day, that is unforgivable.

1 - The male-born transgender Fallon Fox is hailed as a gay hero for fighting again natural-born women. I don't agree with this (male bone structure, went through puberty as a male), and I definitely can't see this happening in 2008 for sure.
No one is deluded into thinking Mozilla is a political charity.

They most certainly are a technology company and everyone knows that, so are the companies behind Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari. As far as I know none of the CEO's behind those companies are openly anti-gay marriage.

The public, and the employees of Mozilla have expressed that this is not an appropriate view for the CEO to hold and will move to other offerings if he is left. He used his freedom of speech to speak out with his wallet against gay marriage. Just as the consumers and employees have expressed that they will use the free market to go to competitors if he is not ousted.
Brendan Eich and the blurring of personal and professional lives
I'm getting the feeling he really did voluntarily step down to save the company. But if he wanted to fight it he might have a good case, as per California Labor Code - Section 1101:

>No employer shall make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation, or policy:

>(a) Forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics or from becoming candidates for public office.

>(b) Controlling or directing, or tending to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees.

>- See more at: http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/cacode/LAB/1/d2/3/5/s1101#sthash...

The other paradox is that this might do more damage to Mozilla than if he stayed, the reaction is pretty split but a lot of people see this as an act of cowardice on Mozilla's part. I'm personally finding it hard to respect how they handled it.
No, HN has extremely good vote ring detectors.

Blaming religion for the flaws of humanity got really old about 5 years ago. It reached its peak at Reddit but it's no longer popular. Turns out people realized that blaming an object (gun), a religion (islam, christianity), a movement (athiesm, feminism), or a philosophy (conservative, liberal) is dismissive of humanity's flaws.

When you get rid of religion, extremists do not go away, people find something else to be extreme about.
I think the gay rights activists have to resort to bullying precisely because their case is not supported by rationality. I also do not believe that this is a "civil rights" issue, nor do I believe that same-sex marriages should be legal. In fact, I don't even believe homosexual behavior should be legal.
But Bell's inequality says that these hidden variable theories are incompatible with the results of experiments. Real experiments. Like these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_test_experiments

It may be the case that there really is a hidden variable, but it would need to communicate it's value nonlocally, which I'd argue is stranger than the universe just being somewhat random.
Revenge never works.
No -- Artsy maintains relationships with galleries, not individual artists.
I thought some scientists hadn't really closed the book on bell's inequality, and though most agree with it there were some gotchas that leave room for doubt as to correctness

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5507848
You wrote the comment I was about to write, but I would also add: plenty of groups have come up with modifiers or completely new names to describe their marriages as they differ from the civil meaning of "marriage", so I'm not sure what the big deal is about putting the burden on (for example) religions to come up with something other than "marriage" by itself to use if sharing it with lgbt people getting married is just unimaginable for some reason.

See: handfasting, "celestial marriage"/"eternal marriage"/sealing etc. from Mormons (but having different names for their own marriage rites wasn't enough to stop them from supporting Prop 8 I guess...), common law marriage if you want to take the government out of the equation...
It might be ok if they were just his beliefs, but he was actively working to restrict the rights of gay couples.

How would you feel if your CEO was actively working to get your rights restricted, regardless of if he didn't change any company policy.
Excerpt from most recent smoke alarm recall from CPSC:

> In cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
> (CPSC), Universal Security Instruments Inc., of Owings Mills, Md., is
> voluntarily recalling about 34,000 smoke alarms. The smoke alarms can
> fail to alarm when smoke or fire is present. A capacitor in the alarm
> can burn out, releasing smoke and melting the cover.

> Universal has received three reports of alarms failing, releasing
> smoke. There has been one report of minor smoke damage to the wall of a
> mobile home. No injuries have been reported.

> Consumers can identify the recalled models by removing the alarm cover
> from its base and looking for the manufacture date code and model
> number. The smoke alarms are made of white plastic and have the
> manufacture date code and model number imprinted on the back of the
> alarm.

https://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2000/CPSC-Universal-Security...
> I could list dozens of important Catholic scientists over the centuries

How does that disprove that the Catholic church might have prevented scientific progress?
See, this comment is why we need to do a better job of keeping stories like this off the front page. There's nothing in the comment you replied to that indicates any cavalierness about "gay rights", and yet, there it is: the nasty comment accusing another HN user of bad faith. Right on cue.
Mob rule wins the day. Sigh.
... as if yelling back at him was going to make the thread any better.

Only the flag button on the story can save us now.
Hard work actually has very little to do with success. Effective work is what matters.
It absolutely is a bigoted opinion that he holds and essentially comes down to denying a group of people happiness for no good reason.

Yes, but note how you have framed the situation. What if the person with the opinion also sincerely believed that his position was not bigoted and was not denying anyone happiness? Who then is the arbiter of whose opinion is right? Somehow I don't think it's a good idea for democratic processes to label the side that is wrong as "horrible people." Otherwise, why have a democratic process at all?

he partially brought this on himself, and not just by way of a $1000 donation 6 years ago, but also how he reacted to it recently.

What specifically did he do recently?
I would assume it's just sent through the API with the iOS App's app credentials (they are open and out there). That specific set of app credentials allows the OAuth endpoint for email + password sign in through the API. Maybe some other database got hacked and the user credentials were used on twitter.
They shouldn't feel guilty, but if thy were hired by their
friend in the early 2000's, with no programming experience,
and the friends father set up the Everything; Don't act like you were the Horatio Alger of the Computer industry.
I remember a whole lot of drinking, not much programming,
and a large company buying your company out. The company
looked at your company and shut it down. My real agrivation
is this "friend" don't tell me what a cake walk it was back then(he made it out like they were all geniuses)--yes, when
I found out the real scoop, I was a little surprised he didn't ever come clean with me. The problem was I gave this
dude a fair amout of money when his family pretty much cut him off, and we were all at the age when we were looking for
a little help.(The dude was always broke whenever we did anything.) I'm not bitter, but just surprised. I guess
he was trying to impress his girlfriend with all the genius
stuff?
Perhaps someone else more knowledgeable can chime in -

Isn't true randomness unverifiable? In other words, it seems (to me) that there is no body of evidence that would verify that a particular event was "caused" by (i.e. was the result of) true randomness (as opposed to the result of hidden events/variables)
What about the past statements of MS executives?
e.g. "A Microsoft legal representative has said during a hearing in the European Parliament that open source actually presents a higher vulnerability risk."
Yeah, and here's a third thing: Prop 8 support is mainstream TODAY! Sure, maybe it's extremely unpopular among the hackernews crowd (including myself) but let's not forget that Prop 8 support is hardly fringe. Prop 8 actually passed! In California!
There is a difference between not supporting gay marriage, and choosing to spend $1000 to actively support its prohibition with no personal return besides an increased probability of not seeing same sex couples married in the future. I find it sad that the opponents of gay marriage make a majority in the US, and I am happy to live in a state where they do not.
"people and companies have the right to choose not to associate with those who hold those views" If his beliefs are religiously motivated, actually companies do not have the right to discriminate based on that. And imagine a modified version of that statement used to justify forcing out a gay CEO: "people and companies have the right to choose not to associate with people who believe in and act upon homosexual beliefs"
"Donationcrime" would be considered the equivalent of "speechcrime" under the current Supreme Court's interpretation of the law.
FYI, the radical American left's approach to public policy is that you should wage total warfare on everyone who disagrees with you, and attempt to punish them in any way possible. Deny them business, deny any notion that they are intelligent or decent human beings, et cetera. There is no room for pluralism, and intellectual honesty is of secondary importance at best.

In this case, Brendan Eich is a bad person. Clearly his donation means that he is incapable of interacting with anyone who is gay or any of his political enemies in a civil manner, and will go out of his way to marginalize their contributions to Mozilla. Therefore we should attempt to punish him by kicking him out of his job.

Postscript. No representations are herein made about the non-radical American left, other lefts, the American right, other rights, the existence or nonexistence of a radical center, the merits of any policy proposal of any group including the left (radical or otherwise), et cetera.

Post-postscript: See also this comment, wherein a HN user argues that we should start boycotting any company who employs anyone who voted for Prop 8. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7470443
Today you learned that how? Are you unaware that there is a large portion of the population that think that gay marriage should not be recognized by the state?
But we can look to states like Washington - where there were 2 votes - 3 years apart on gay unions. One established domestic partnerships with all the state-granted rights and responsibilities of marriage. The other legalized same sex marriage.

They both passed with nearly identical results. To me that indicates that a pretty large percentage (at least in Washington) of the electorate that opposes same-sex marriage, opposed anything - no matter what it's called.

Yes, there are some people who really are concerned about the name of the relationship, and he might be one of them. However, based to the Washington results, they seem to be in the vast minority of those who oppose same sex marriage.
Meh. Zero traffic feels worse.
Apparently this was too embarrasing to remember?

I remember it just fine. The people exercised their right to boycott, Phil Robertson exercised his right to stand by his beliefs, A&E exercised their right to capitulate to the outrage, and then they exercised their right to reverse their own decision. I don't see the problem. The same thing played out in this case except that as of yet, Mozilla hasn't reversed their decision.

This is unashamedly wrong. Federal law in the US currently delegates this decision to the States.

And? My point is that the law is morally indefensible. What practical purpose does prohibiting gay marriage serve except to arbitrarily stigmatize a class of people? Nobody materially benefits by prohibiting gay marriage, it doesn't free up more marriage slots for the rest of society, it just unnecessarily complicates the private lives of gay couples who want to be married.

Because the rights of single old and young people woudl be irreversibly harmed by their existence.

How? Heterosexual single people can get married whenever it suits them, but for some reason gay couples shouldn't be allowed the same freedom, because... why?
>... then you still see gay people as fundamentally different from and less than straight people.

/s/gay people/homosexual behavior/g

/s/straight people/heterosexual behavior/g

Societies have a right to regulate the private behaviors of their citizens, including (and in fact especially) sexual behaviors. Societies also have the right to determine which sexual and interpersonal unions they will bless and which they will not.

Public homosexuality is a behavior, not a biological trait. People aren't administered a test to check for a "gay gene". It only comes up when a person engages in homosexual behavior.

Under your argument, it is not possible to make anything legal or illegal, and we must simply say, "You see thieves as somehow less than non-thieves, and that makes you a bigot. Thieves can't help it, there is a biological imperative that they engage in theft."

You may state that you believe theft is more damaging than private sexual behavior, and others may disagree with you. A dialog could be had if one side wasn't so busy trying to bully the other into submission with name calling like "Well, if you don't agree with me, you're automatically a bigot".

The point is that behavior is being regulated here. People are being punished or rewarded based on their behaviors, not unchangeable biological traits like sex or race, and not private philosophy or the exposition thereof like religion. There is nothing wrong with laws precluding certain sexual behaviors or laws refusing to solemnize and acknowledge certain sexual unions.
That... is interesting.
USA online sales and wholesale Nike shoes from China factory
I've taken a different approach to the audition -- I have something that would take a developer 8 hours to do: something that we do in the core product, but, in an entirely different context.

For example:

"At LowBudget Brands, we provide reservations, customer support, front desk software, and backend support for property owners who want to own a successful hotel brand. A large portion of our travelers may not know which television station to turn to or have their smartphone or other device know set to the local weather, so, LBB wants to build a solution that:
-> Provides Hotel managers to create an account that allows them to set their property number and zip code
-> Queries Weather Underground to determine the three and five day forecast for that zip code
-> Generates a single page .pdf file with that content
-> Mails the hotel the day's weather at 3 in the morning.
"

If you've gone through the interview process, we know that you have experience with API's, background tasks, and PDF generation...or two of the three. I pay a flat rate of $200 for this task, and then we throw it away once they're either hired or we decline.

We provide a Vagrant file and an amazon t1.micro instance if that's easier, and that's proven to suit our needs rather well...
Employees don't want to work for people who use their wealth to campaign for discrimination against their co-workers, and businesses don't want to do business with companies whose CEOs are known to campaign for discrimination against their employees.

If you're the CEO of a company and you are a known bigot, you are a a ticking HR timebomb. Eich can find plenty of jobs in the industry, but he isn't fit to lead as CEO given his prejudices and his unwillingness to admit his mistakes
But what the precedent of this event does, is drag our society one step deeper into the idea that groups pressuring companies to do (b) is "just how things are" in the US.
Not much, unless your target demographic frequently uses one of the listed sites. For a niche market product, you're unlikely to see much benefit by spamming your startup all over these sites.
Hey Mike. Help me come up with a term that's like "political prisoner" but without the imprisonment part.
"There is a difference between not supporting gay marriage, and choosing to spend $1000 to actively support its prohibition."

Care to elaborate on what that difference is?
After using the toilet, do you wash your hands, or just wipe them?

You've just demonstrated why washing toilets are superior. I cannot understand our misplaced, hollow pride in not adopting something which simply works better. I've even heard some especially crazy people try to say the japanese toilets are "perverted" - the hold tradition has on some people is just insane.

Japanese toilets are simply better. For some bizarre reason we've resisted adopting them here. It boggles the mind.
I voted for gay marriage in the last election in my state, but honestly that rationale seems extremely strained. Yes, government has a legitimate interest in defining marriage as it confers certain benefits to certain people. The "rational basis" test should not be one that questions the validity of the exclusions/inclusions within the law, but rather if the government has a legitimate interest in law in question. It should not have been the burden of the proponents to prove that the government had a rational basis for excluding gays from marriage.
Mattermark Daily – Thursday, April 3rd
Does Oxytocin make you lie?
I really don't think you read the entire article, but: "As another aside, Bell’s Inequality only proves that the reality assumption and locality (nothing can travel faster then light) can’t both be true. However, locality (and relativity) work perfectly, and there are almost no physicists who are willing to give it up. Except for Bohm, who’s an ass."
The gay rights issue is much more complicated than "oppose gay mariage == EVIL".

A huge number of people supported the proposition - a really huge number. Do you think they all were bad people? Do you think this particular, say, 30% of the population of California are bad people who should never run a company?

If you're not isolated in a liberal pocket of a huge city, you know and like and respect some of these people, and you think they can do a fantastic job at many things. And by the way, it seems to have been fine for Eich to be CTO, but end of the world for him to be CEO, explain that.

The truth is both sides are wrong. Marriage is defined between and man and a woman, that's just the meaning of the word applied to people. And it shouldn't mean anything to the law, there should be no tax implications, no child rights implications, nothing. Also, by the way, all religions are just not true.

Of course, thinking these things makes me EVIL to just about everyone. I'm not sad though, just really cynical. Politics is just one irrational side shouting at the other, saying that anyone who doubts their side for a second is evil. Anything logical doesn't matter until it happens to come into fashion. I just avoid it all to the greatest extent possible.
Bohmian Mechanics is an interpretation of Quantum mechanics which does not have any "true" randomness.

It is effectively a hidden variable theory consistent with quantum mechanics.

So at least some physicists do not believe in true randomness.
Bell's theorem is based on the assumption of free will, see eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism
Normally I'd agree that stories with a high political divisiveness content should be kept off the front page.

But this is a story about one of the most prominent people in tech and one of the most prominent companies in tech. In addition, it has ramifications for everyone who wants to run or own a company. So it very much belongs on the front page of HN.

The fact that a lot of the comments will be inflammatory is predictable, if sad, but that's no reason to try to sweep it under the rug. A different approach is needed for stories like this one that are otherwise perfect fits for top-of-HN material.
> ...you might be the one receiving this treatment.

If at that point I'm wrong, then good. If at that point I'm right, then that will be an injustice, but whether Eich was forced out or not will have had zero bearing on that.

Like it or not, the CEO of Mozilla is a public figure, and people are entitled to have opinions about public figures and to voice those opinions, and Mozilla is free to consider those opinions when choosing a CEO. This is literally how every boycott or other similar action happens.

No one (that I know of) called for the government to remove Eich, no one called for him to be lynched, they called for Mozilla to remove Eich or for Eich to resign or, failing one of those, for people to stop supporting Mozilla. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. What you call "thoughtcrime" has another name: public discourse.
The bolded fonts look nasty in Chrome on Windows.
FYI, the radical American left's approach to public policy is that you should wage total warfare on everyone who disagrees with you, and attempt to punish them in any way possible. Deny them business, deny any notion that they are intelligent or decent human beings, et cetera. There is no room for pluralism, and intellectual honesty is of secondary importance at best.

Sounds a lot like the "open season" policy Scientology uses against anyone who is against Scientology.
Wow, you really wouldn't guess from looking at this map that Lithuania has some of the best fibre infrastructure in the world, and the fastest upload/download speeds per dollar (or litas, in this case) in the world.