Hacker News Reader

alfromspaceon 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

That's a goofy thing to say. There are millions of 4chan users, and at least hundreds of thousands of 8chan users and visitors. They don't "murder indiscriminately" any more than Twitter users do.

And gee, wow, you posted a comic where the author's self-insert tries to talk to a totally crazy and unreasonable Drumpf Nazi, who is a blatant hypocrite and makes a fool of himself, confirming your political biases and allowing you to impute terrible motives to millions! How will we ever recover?

alfromspaceon Seattle-area provider becomes haven for online extremism after El Paso shooting

I don't really understand the reasoning so many people here have behind shutting down 8chan. Twitter, Facebook, and many other mainstream websites are replete with mass murderers. The response presumably will be that those sites are also replete with non-mass murderers - I agree! So is 8chan. Then the response presumably will be that the vast majority of 8chan users aren't mass murderers, but the site doesn't have a legitimate purpose like Facebook and Twitter and is "a breeding ground for hate".

Now we're in the business of deciding whether a site has a legitimate purpose because potentially (and I haven't seen any data on this - it sounds true, but would be nice to have before making these big assumptions) an outsized proportion of its users discuss controversial subjects. So, okay, private companies don't have to associate with 8chan...now we're seeing supporters of 8chan creating their own companies and services and choosing to associate with them, who inevitably are accused of creating "havens for online extremism" and hate and often are cut off from payment processors, banks, and other essential services a company needs to get by. I wonder - when this "just build your own website/hosting company/payment processor/undersea cable" free market treadmill reaches its logical conclusion, if people somehow do manage to build their own banks and undersea cables and whatever, won't they all be accused of the same thing and face some fresh shutdown attempt?

Let's just be honest, many of you don't like the content of their speech and want it gone. I would rather have an honest debate about whether free speech should exist or not rather than these ancillary discussions that don't really have much to do with the true intentions at play.

alfromspaceon 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

The Constitution as a whole is, but interpreting the 14th amendment is still a hot topic.

alfromspaceon 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

That's the crux of the whole problem. The government passed unpopular policies and tried to morally "correct" its people from the top down. It seems most people gradually caught on and normalized those changes, but it isn't surprising to me at all that some/many didn't. I'm wholly on the side of civil rights, but lately I wonder about whether the experiment of using the federal government to try to bring together a big landmass full of people who too often really despise each other along ideological and/or ethnic lines is failing.

Here we are talking about curtailing free speech because the majority can sometimes be wrong and evil, which sounds fair, but that raises the question for me of whether constantly doing things that most people don't want in the name of social progress will create a stable society. I wish I was wrong, but I think not.

alfromspaceon 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

So many unexamined assumptions here. I sort of understand the appeal of channers just calling folks like yourself a nasty name and checking out rather than spending every discussion parsing out "the patriarchy" and what true leftism is. It gets exhausting.

alfromspaceon Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing

Rural and small town living is the way to go for me. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone here defending the aesthetics of cookie-cutter suburbs.

alfromspaceon California Police Are Sharing Facial Recognition Databases to ID Suspects

I see far more slippery slopes than slippery slope fallacies. It makes me want to reject these kinds of ideas from the get-go, because the pasts of our bureaucracies and representatives have given us really no good reason to believe every great new idea won't be expanded far beyond its scope sooner or later.

alfromspaceon California Police Are Sharing Facial Recognition Databases to ID Suspects

This is something I think is justifiable in time-sensitive cases like tracking down a kidnapper, but I fear there's no way to grant such power and expect its use to always remain narrow. In my opinion, most issues in our country come from the compounding of lots of well-intentioned systems built up over several centuries that no longer even remotely serve their original purposes.

alfromspaceon As crime dries up, Japan’s police hunt for things to do (2017)

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019.html

Important to look at the whole picture. Even if we were to decriminalize all activity for all drugs, and assume 100% of drug crime inmates don't deserve to be there and should go free, it would nowhere near "empty" state and local prisons.

Also important to note that the vast majority of those incarcerated for drug crime are not in for possession, and even most people in jail for possession pleaded down from more serious charges.

alfromspaceon As crime dries up, Japan’s police hunt for things to do (2017)

Do you really think our high prison population is because of drugs? Violent crime in America is really quite high.

alfromspaceon Database of police who shoot citizens reveals who’s most likely to shoot

What statistics am I ignoring? I'm talking about the ones from the OP's post.

alfromspaceon Database of police who shoot citizens reveals who’s most likely to shoot

Statistical disparities aren't evidence of racism.

And let's not pretend we haven't been talking about a supposed epidemic of white cops shooting innocent black people for no reason for years and years now.

alfromspaceon Database of police who shoot citizens reveals who’s most likely to shoot

So it sounds like the entire national narrative about racism and law enforcement we've been having for years now is built on sand.

alfromspaceon Inaccurate chart led to unwarranted fears of 5G wireless technology

Sometimes I think Russia has my best interests at heart more than the USA.

alfromspaceon Corsica's 'fox cat': On the trail of what may be a new species

I didn't know rats carried rabbis.

alfromspaceon Corsica's 'fox cat': On the trail of what may be a new species

Again, I don't believe there's any evidence Toxoplasmosis makes people irrationally interested in cuddling with cats. I had a blood test done at my doctor's office to investigate a swollen lymph node and they included the toxo test on the panel.

alfromspaceon Corsica's 'fox cat': On the trail of what may be a new species

Probably has more to do with how humans are wired to react to their "cute" or baby-like appearances, e.g. large eyes and heads.

I can also say I've always wanted to bury my head in cat tummies, and I recently tested negative for Toxoplasmosis. AFAIK, the infection is more correlated with making men more introverted and depressed and women more extroverted and manic.