WillDaSilva

Did you mean to post this elsewhere? I don't see how it applies to this post.

I often find myself struggling to write good examples. I find this post has decent advise on the matter, but finding realistic situations that can be distilled down into an example without needing to overburden the reader with context is hard.

It will never cease to amaze me how absurd anti-abortion rhetoric is. There are no strong cases against allowing abortions from a secular perspective. The ethics surrounding the issue are still up for debate - certainly there are interesting questions about moral status / personhood, and how we assign worth to that - but without the introduction of concepts like a highly valuable immutable soul you can't reasonable make a case for banning access to abortions. At best you can make a case for promoting measures that have been shown to reduce abortions like comprehensive sex-ed and access to contraceptives.

So if secular people can't make a case for abortion, that leaves us with religious people. Predominately Christians in this context. But their texts don't have anything to suggest that life begins before the first breath taken by an infant. The bible even contains instructions to carry out abortions in some cases [Numbers 5:11–31]. So why would religious people so overwhelmingly be against allowing abortions?

Well there we get into the true reasons behind the modern anti-abortion movement. It's a purely political matter designed to secure a voter base. And secure one it has. The religious right is willing to put up with - even celebrate - practically any number of abhorrent things from politicians so long as the politicians claim to be against abortions.

Even if the religious people did have legitimate religious objections to abortion, as opposed to it being a political matter that was sold to them, we shouldn't allow something like that to affect the government. Governments ought to be purely secular institutions, and so without a compelling case against abortion from a secular perspective governments should not take any measures to limit access to them. It's unfortunate that those in charge don't care much for topics like bioethics, and will instead enact policies that lack secular justification as a means to secure power.

Related:

https://twitter.com/cmuratori/status/1412111871398715398

https://twitter.com/roytries/status/1412457848676757505

See also the author's fork of git which supports the `git update` command: https://github.com/felipec/git

That's a great resource in general for Python extensions, but doesn't have much to say about packaging and distributing them. For that the best resources I've found have been to look at what large/complex projects that use them do, as they've often had to deal with many of the odd cases that often come up.

Using Cython adds another layer of complexity to the packaging/distribution that that link does not address. Fortunately now that you can specify build requirements in `pyproject.toml` Cython has become significantly easier to use on that front, but there are still some less than obvious bits to say the least.

Maybe I should publish an overview of Python best practices for publishing C extensions (with or without Cython).

In digging into whether the hive/hivemind is one robot or many, and whether our gut bacteria are part of us, Tom has basically stumbled into the illusion of the self as a distinct thing from the rest of reality.

The idea that we all have (numerical) personal identities, and not merely qualitative identities, is very appealing to most people. I think that's the largest reason the concept of a soul or individual spirit is so widespread - we want to be able to create a hard-line division between us and the rest of reality. But that division is imaginary.

Whether we consider it to be one robot or many, or whether we consider our gut bacteria to be part of us or not should then be a matter of pragmatic semantics. Instead of asking "is the division there/real?" we should ask "is this imaginary division useful?".

For the case of the hive/hivemind, I think it might make more sense for a repair technician, for instance, to think of each physical unit as a separate robot, but a developer for the hivemind might find it more useful to think about the whole system as a single entity.

Great recommendations all around. It'd be nice if they went into how they handle dealing with C extensions, as that adds a large amount of complexity to a Python project, and most of the published advice on the topic is quite old.

EDIT: Mentioning `pyproject.toml` and the relevant PEPs would also be great (i.e. PEP 621, PEP 517, etc.). Fortunately Poetry is compliant with these PEPs.

What you've described often goes hand-in-hand with a two-party system. That way everyone finds themselves voting for what they believe to be the lesser of two evils.

Alternative voting systems (e.g. ranked choice systems) aren't some sort of political panacea, but they could help a lot with this issue. A populist thrives in an environment that does not support nuance. It would be harder for them to be successful if they were running against, say, 6 viable opponents rather than 1.

I hope we can address some of these major problems with democracy, because the alternatives generally aren't great.

I don't consider this a problem. Copilot was trained on public repos, so these secrets had to be checked into public repos. They were already totally public, and should have been invalidated/replaced and redacted. Copilot might result in previously undiscovered published secrets being found, but that's not much worse than anyone finding one under normal circumstances.

The issue of deleted repositories being available through it would still exist. Whether or not GitHub should be blamed for that is another matter.

And eBPF stands for extended Berkeley Packet Filter:

> eBPF is an extended BPF JIT virtual machine in the Linux kernel

It's really quite an amazing tool, especially since you can use it to run sandboxed programs in kernel without changing kernel source or loading a kernel module. These programs can be written using a limited dialect of C.

Some examples of its use can be found here: https://github.com/iovisor/bcc/tree/master/examples

I wonder how much better this would be at capturing information that doesn't translate well into text representations of speech.

Consider how with word2vec there are relationships in the embedding space between semantically related words. I would expect the examples of that for word2vec (e.g. king -> queen being a similar translation as man -> woman) to apply here too, but can it also do things like place regular questions and rhetorical questions in different regions of the embedding space based off of of the inflection in the speech?

It would also be interesting to see what relationships exist between equivalent words in different languages within the embedding space. I suppose something like that is probably already used for text translation neural networks, but maybe some notable differences exist when dealing with speech directly.

I tried to access this on mobile, and it just bugged me with a recurring banner telling me to use the app. No information about what this website/service is about. No clear links to such information.

I strongly oppose the notion that one can be healthy/fit at every size, and I don't view claims that overweight people should lose weight as intrinsically body-shaming, but I still think this is a good move.

Those who are buying ads on Pinterest for weight loss aren't doing so out of good will and a desire for people to be healthier - they're doing so to generate profit. They have no interest in actually helping a person change their lifestyle so as to lose weight, keep it off, and become healthier, as those people do not make for repeat customers. Also it's harder to sell a "lifestyle change" (i.e. the information one could use to go from being overweight to a healthy weight) than it is to sell ineffective and sometimes dangerous alternatives such as diet pills and plans.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or serious. Could you please explain what you mean? Studies have shown that temporary diets (as opposed to lifestyle changes) rarely lead to long-lasting weight loss, but that's a far cry from "it has been scientifically proven that weight loss is impossible".

> [pathlib] is a good object-oriented solution

I'd agree that pathlib is a good solution, and that it's an object-oriented solution, but I'm hesitant to call it a good object-oriented solution. It uses some object-oriented hackery to work as elegantly as it does. I approve of this decision, but it leads to some weirdness such as the inability to subclass `pathlib.Path`. Instead you need to subclass `type(pathlib.Path())`, as the method resolution order changes once it is instantiated:

    >>> from pathlib import Path
    >>> Path.__mro__
    (<class 'pathlib.Path'>, <class 'pathlib.PurePath'>, <class 'object'>)
    >>> type(Path()).__mro__
    (<class 'pathlib.PosixPath'>, <class 'pathlib.Path'>, <class 'pathlib.PurePosixPath'>, <class 'pathlib.PurePath'>, <class 'object'>)

In any case, weirdness like this can make for an even better learning opportunity!

Nothing new, certainly, but still worth examining. If we are not content with the current power structures, then we should be wary of changes that further intensify them.

We need not totally avoid such changes (i.e. shun technological advancements entirely because of their social ramifications), but we need to be mindful of their effects if we want to improve our current situation regarding the distribution/concentration of wealth and power in the world.

Exactly, in all cases the disruption was localized, and the broader power structures were largely unaffected. The richest among us - the owner class - were not significantly affected by all of these disruptions. They owned diversified portfolios, weathered the changes, and came out with an even greater share of wealth and power. Those who were most affected by the disruptions you listed were the employees of those companies/industries - not the owners/investors.

I was debating bringing up disruptors when I made the grandparent comment. My 2 cents: they can shift the balance of power at the very small scale (e.g. "some random nobody" getting rich, or some rich person going bankrupt), but the large scale power structures almost always remain largely intact. For instance, that "random nobody" may well get rich through the sale of shares in their company - now the company is owned by the owner class, who were previously at the top of the power hierarchy.

It is very similar to the current situation, but intensified. Technology tends to be an intensifier for existing power structures.

"False dichotomy" implies more than just the fact that "the two are not mutually exclusive". It further implies that the speaker in question has implied that the two are mutually exclusive, when they are in fact not.

Strange that Firefox's reader view cannot be enabled for this post. Probably because instead of using `<p>` tags or similar, the content of the post is contained within a `<font>` block inside a table, with `<br>` tags separating the paragraphs.

Not having the content inside of `<p>` blocks is a departure from Paul Graham's older content, and a confusing one at that.

EDIT: It looks like the posts with the "Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator." banner are contained within a `<p>` block, and can be read with Firefox reader view, but those without the banner are not within a `<p>` block, and cannot be read with Firefox reader view.

They note right after that:

> it turns out that we can achieve a similar programming model without using virtual DOM — and that's where Svelte comes in

The abstraction is valuable, but its cost need not be so high. I do wish they'd elaborate on what Svelte does differently though, or link to another post which elaborates.

These visuals I regularly experience are similar to those experienced on shroom, but far less intense/intrusive/encompassing.

They're fairly distinct in sensation from visuals experienced through imagining, which are fairly distinct from daydreaming, which are fairly distinct from dreaming.

I wish we had a language expressive enough to share these qualitative experiences - my writing does little to express them.

It's hard to explain because it isn't like seeing the actual objects I'm about to list - these visuals all morph into each other, and sometimes it feels like I'm seeing an idea rather than an object, if that makes any sense. Using Ganzflicker for about a minute I recall I saw:

- some strange smooth shapes, like two glass hourglasses on either side with oil refracting light, with a blob sliding through the middle of them

- A cat's face

- A forest with non-existent animals running through the tall large-trunked trees

- A palace full of marble columns

- Some sort of grand tower that went out into space, and seemed to branch out like a rope being made

There were all many more abstract things, typically in between (or as a transition between) the more identifiable parts.

This is extremely cool. Within about 10 seconds in a lit room without white noise playing I began getting fairly vivid visuals. I'll be sure to come back to this to get the full experience later, and complete the questionnaire.

For reference I tend to get interesting/vivid visuals whenever I close my eyes for a few seconds, often when I look at a finely patterned/textured surface, and sometimes when I look at basically anything when I've gone >36 hours without sleep. The visuals from this are more intense than those I get from simply closing my eyes though, and more interesting/changing than those from looking at tiled floors or popcorn ceiling.

They mention using git to version Unison code, and point out how there'll practically never be any version conflicts because of the immutable / append-only nature of the language.

Doesn't that mean that the git repository will only ever grow, and that old code will stick around forever? I hope I'm misunderstanding because that would be unfortunate if true.

Definitely true to some extent. I think the degree to which it applies corresponds to how deeply a person engages with an individual post/thread. Having long conversations in the comments of a post is probably not conductive to shortening attention spans. Ideally we could mimic the sorts of deep conversations that can be had with small groups of people/friends in-person. Maybe Hacker News would benefit from live updating comment threads so that people wouldn't have to refresh the page frequently to have a back-and-forth conversation.

> We got to make sure the work life balance is in order for people to have the time and money to afford a family and give adequate support like daycare etc.

Stuff like this can and does result from bureaucrats / policy-makers deciding what an ideal number of children (for the well-being of the society) is. You say "that regulates itself", but clearly the things you listed (work-life balance, economic prosperity, daycare, etc.) are not self-regulating. You also mention specifically that this matter doesn't need centralized solving, but that's different from what you went on to say, that the factors that go into determining how many children are had are self-regulating. A decentralized approach does nothing to guarantee that.

Whether you like it or not, the government has a large influence over all of these matters. Choosing to not regulate them is a choice that will affect how they turn out. Likewise, the very structure of the economy and social systems will affect these things. A government can not avoid determining what those are like, whether by the government's active influence over them, or its more laissez-faire approach. When you have a monopoly on violence, you cannot truely recuse yourself from what happens in the society around you, and if you lack a monopoly on violence then you aren't really a government.