FillardMillmore

I don't think it was simply a comparison to the present that irked the GP, I think it was the comparison between Trump, who, for all his faults, isn't quite at the level of a guy who had incestuous relations with his sisters, had people killed for amusement, and had a desire to make his horse a consul. It is mostly a harmless admission of the writer's bias - if this was written in the early '70s, there'd be comparisons to Camp David instead of Mar-a-Lago most likely. I don't particularly think it detracts from the piece.

Just curious, why do you say that? I'm no expert in this field, but I thought the OSCP cert was viewed as being a valuable entry level cert in the field?

Like all things, different niches attract different people. There's a market for cyber security and if you're well-versed and highly qualified, you could certainly make as much, if not more, than a software developer. Of course, we could get into the cynicism of how corporations view cyber security professionals (i.e. as someone to blame when something goes wrong, despite not listening to their cyber security employees because it would hurt their quarterly earnings), but that's tangential.

> Suddenly, nobody seems to care that a conservative competitor to AWS is getting a huge account, shouldn't that be pereceived as a good thing? Why are the people who get banned so insistent on using services they claim are inherently unfair to them? Why not support companies that share your values?

Just spitballing here, but doesn't it seem that with the way things are going, Twitter/Facebook will become a silo for those who hold more left-leaning views and Parler/Gab will become a silo for those with more right-leaning views? I understand that there are some who only want to see their preconceived notions reinforced, but for those who are actually interested in an open dialogue and open discussion, aren't we losing something important if this is the result? It would certainly cause an already polarized populace to become more polarized, would it not?

They have a 'Send Feedback' utility in the bottom right of search result pages.

Once they can deliver my groceries as well right when I need them, I might be willing to sacrifice my privacy.

I was on my honeymoon with my fiancee and at the end of the night, we liked to relax by opening a bottle of champagne and watching Ancient Aliens. Don't get me wrong, both of us believe in the possibility of life in outer space but that show was funnier than most modern sitcoms.

Heck, even Monster Quest was more believable.

> They were not real friends but 'friends' of proximity. I had confused friendly with friends.

I had similar feelings before I left Facebook. This sort of thing even irked me back in high school, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why.

Every time it was my birthday, my timeline (or "wall" as I think it's known on FB) was inundated with Birthday wishes and greetings. Most of these greetings and wishes came from people who very rarely, if ever, talked to me on FB and oftentimes, never talked to me in real life (Usually my "true" friends would send me a direct message and wish me a Happy Birthday), and these people most certainly wouldn't know when my birthday was if Facebook hadn't reminded them.

It all just seemed so disingenuous, fake, and at the risk of exaggerating, inhuman. It all felt so joyless and disconnected. Before I left FB, I simply got to the point where I wouldn't comment, like, or interact with these birthday wishes in any way. Eventually, the amount of birthday wishes I received became less and less. Thinking about it now, I probably should've just removed my birthday from Facebook.

Regardless, I'm happier without Facebook and I certainly don't miss it.

First read about the Panopticon in Foucault's "Discipline and Punish". It was designed by Jeremy Bentham, the mind behind utilitarianism - in fact, I believe it was only put into practice in one prison, which Fidel Castro and Raul Castro were imprisoned in before the Cuban revolution. All this is somewhat tangential to the discussion at hand, but still quite interesting.

The parallels between the Internet/modern security state and the Panopticon design are obvious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidio_Modelo

I believe this is the post that is being referred to, for those who are interested.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19203617

That's not what QAnon is saying though. We've seen instances of government officials involved with pedophilia before, but QAnon and the pizzagate stuff is more precisely positing that not only is there pedophilia, but it's a highly coordinated effort within the government - and yes, that is controversial.

Most modern states with the necessary capabilities spread disinformation to other countries for their own political gain or the political gain of their allies, Russia is far from the only one.

I think the issue of political polarization is multifaceted, and social media and decentralized technological mediums are part of the cause.

Another one that may be worth mentioning is the elimination of the FCC fairness doctrine in 1987. This doctrine used to hold news companies with a broadcast license to a certain standard which is now gone - effectively allowing them to report on things with whatever amount of slant and bias they choose.

> The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has been considered by some to be a contributing factor for the rising level of party polarization in the United States.

The main agenda for the doctrine was to ensure that viewers were exposed to a diversity of viewpoints. In 1969 the United States Supreme Court, in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, upheld the FCC's general right to enforce the fairness doctrine where channels were limited. However, the Court did not rule that the FCC was obliged to do so. The courts reasoned that the scarcity of the broadcast spectrum, which limited the opportunity for access to the airwaves, created a need for the doctrine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

So effectively, we have echo chambers on TV and social media fed by algorithms and analytics, wherein people can participate to confirm their biases and preconceptions without having them challenged.

I'll be disappointed if Super Metroid doesn't make this list of yours.

Some of these seem fairly intuitive once you learn the origin - others, like "biff", you'd never guess.

> "I can confirm the origin of biff, if you're interested. Biff was Heidi Stettner's dog, back when Heidi (and I, and Bill Joy) were all grad students at U.C. Berkeley and the early versions of BSD were being developed. Biff was popular among the residents of Evans Hall, and was known for barking at the mailman, hence the name of the command."

Considering the command is used for mail notifications, it's actually quite clever.

Well they haven't done long-term testing, but this definitely sounds like a step in the right direction.

I quite like the favorite feature. I did not know until reading this post though that you could favorite comments as well - I'll be sure to utilize that in the future.

Others have mentioned that the favorite feature is of little utility because they are using other bookmarking software (browser/browser extensions, etc.). I would say, personally, that I still love the favorite feature on HN because my typical collection of bookmarks contains a whole variety of things - history, politics, music, self-help stuff, etc. The stuff I read and favorite on HN are of an entirely different set of information and curiosity and thus, I really do find it useful to have them all collected in one convenient location.

> sidenote: Lol this post is the 20th most favorited article now.

Would that make this post a meta-favorite?

The difference is that being an athlete isn't considered taboo.

Perhaps my experience or usage of the browser was different from most, but I would not characterize my experience with Firefox pre-Quantum as "slow and buggy". I rarely noticed bugs and it always seemed to be as fast as Chrome was. Granted, I did have ad-blockers installed and I never ran benchmarks but I never noticed much of a difference.

I tend to write longer e-mails - but I agree with you, long-form and short-form e-mails are both optimal for different situations.

The problem seems to be that it's a judgement call - and I'm not exactly sure of all factors/variables that are involved in that judgement call. The subject at hand, the audience, the depth of the e-mail thread to which you're replying, time-sensitivity of the subject, etc. - they all play a role. But my default position tends to be that I'll save time explaining in future e-mails by providing all relevant details at hand now.

I work in an IBM i shop and concur that it is a powerful and elegant machine. All the old hats who've worked on it for most of their life, at least in my experience, still refer to it as the AS/400, rather than referring to it as the IBM i (before it was called IBM i, it was called System i).

Despite this, I can confirm that many of our non-tech savvy users and managers think of the machine as old and antiquated simply because of the way most of our user-base interfaces with the machine (TN5250 connection - green screen). I kid you not, many of the managers think we'd be better off replacing our IBM i with a new out-of-the-box machine, despite the fact that we have decades of homegrown programs and processes that have been built and customized on the i.

I don't understand why they'd store a cache of fireworks next to a cache of ammonium nitrate. And what kind of rent-a-welder wouldn't be aware enough of their surroundings and the associated risks that they wouldn't properly secure the perimeter from sparks?

I'm not the conspiratorial type, but it really does seem like there's some other information that we're not getting.

Do you happen to have a link to those studies?

Is it possible that if Mozilla folded or stopped supporting Firefox that the open-source community would continue to support it?

For anyone who didn't know what was meant by 'the new Silk Road':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative

Wait - can you explain what you mean by this a little more? Stuck in a cult "by choice"? What cult? How were you stuck "by choice" if you weren't rational?

Maybe I missed it, but how exactly is the source getting leaked? Who has access to this stuff and why has it taken so long for it to be leaked?

Curious find though. Always wanted to play as Luigi in the game back in the '90s.

I'm getting an unresolved IP from this. :(

Okay, I'm familiar with Chomsky, point taken, thanks!