andrewem

I went to a social gathering of former co-workers using Gather.Town. Each person has an avatar which they walk around a 2-dimensional map. You see video (and audio) of everyone within a certain distance, and apparently if you’re in a “conference room” you see everyone in there. It did replicate the behavior of in-person parties where you groups would form, and people would join them or break off to find a new group. It was far better for the purpose than trying a Zoom call with 50 people, where there’s a single awkward conversation.

Some of the user interface was confusing as a first-time user, but overall it was effective and people wanted to do it again.

You know what scares the shit out of me, to use your phrasing? The people on that site murdering me or overthrowing the government, so that they seize power and elections end or become irrelevant.

“The free Internet” has value, but it’s not the only thing that has value. When it conflicts with other values, then there has to be a nuanced resolution.

The UK had laws which were much more favorable to people who sue alleging slander or libel, and they caused significant problems which led to their being substantially changed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law

Edit to note: the kinds of changes you’re suggesting seem great when the plaintiff is a small company suing the New York Times, but what about when a very large company sues a small newspaper or blog?

I think this is related to the contagion heuristic:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_heuristic

Here’s a 2011 HN post describing that claim about an unscalable feature in more detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2370291

(That was linked from http://highscalability.com/blog/2007/11/13/friendster-lost-l... but I had to fix the link, since it went to apps.ycombinator.com which must have been the HN URL at the time. Maybe dang can update DNS to make those old links redirect? Everything after the host was still correct.)

I think there are at least two cases where JVM interoperability is relevant. The first is when a company is already using the JVM and so knows how to deploy and monitor it; in that case, it’s easy to choose because it presumably imposes limited burdens on the company’s operations people. The second case is when you want access to some mature environment, so that all kinds of packages and services are available to support it, but don’t have a commitment to any one in particular yet, and Clojure qualifies because of the JVM; in that case, a non-JVM language like Python, PHP, or Ruby might also work.

Wikipedia has some comments from him about it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451_(1966_film)

I posted the link to this interview because it’s between two writers who were deeply influenced by Ray Bradbury and knew him very well. The interviewee is a poet and former head of the National Endowment for the Arts, and as he describes was deeply influenced by reading Bradbury’s stories as a child. The interviewer wrote a biography of Bradbury in close collaboration with the subject.

Today I learned that Care Bears are called Bisounours in French

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Bisounours

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/12/11/anonymou... has more information on this topic (and in my opinion is a better article)

Do you know if the beneficial ownership information is (likely to be) subject to the Freedom of Information Act? I ask because this kind of information can be in the public interest.

Edit: the Washington Post article on this says “ The general public won’t have access to the ownership data, a disappointment to anti-corruption campaigners, who say public scrutiny would help combat criminal activity.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/12/11/anonymou...

The other notable thing about “just like a startup but in a big company” (often for startups which have been acquired) is the frequent claim that the startup will be left alone by the rest of the company. Every single process and incentive is against that remaining true.

Maybe in some cases you can hope for the acquired startup to be the pet project of the acquirer’s founder/CEO?

I mostly agree with you. On the topic specifically of whether protests over the summer were a significant factor in spreading the virus, I haven’t seen evidence that’s true. This article is from August so practically ancient history now, but it describes an analysis concluding the protests weren’t a major factor. If there is evidence to the contrary I would love to see it.

https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/08/11/racial-justice-prot...

“Taking charge of your fertility” is basically about how to gather and analyze data about your body’s functioning, in order to achieve a desired health outcome (specifically, pregnancy).

*Kreps, not Krebs

I saw someone riding a cargo ebike with a kid on it and went home excited to get one. Then I discovered it weighs over 70 pounds, which I can’t imagine working since to get it to my basement storage area requires carrying up several steps then down several more through the cramped bulkhead door. Maybe some people are strong enough for that not to be a significant annoyance, but I’m not one of them.

I agree with what I think is your argument that “bureaucratic” tools used at a company with many thousands of engineers aren’t necessarily appropriate for a much smaller company. For example, the system of ownership by directory in a monorepo alluded to in other comments is unnecessary if you have a handful of engineers or a few dozen. Or the system like their “readability” reviews that you can read about elsewhere online (eg https://www.pullrequest.com/blog/google-code-review-readabil...)

It’s when you get to a bigger size that you (probably) need to worry these cases.

Yes. People driving kill thousands of pedestrians every year.

People act like “but cars kill more people!” is an argument in favor of whatever dangerous thing they’re talking about, not an argument against the way cars and roads are designed and operated.

This is a student paper, and it’s from 1998 not 2001, according to this page which lists many other student papers from that course over several years:

http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/projects_whole.html

Online or not, and social group must be protected from bad actors or they will drive everyone else away. As an example, long ago I knew of a group for single adults which had one creepy guy who drove away all the women, and of course their absence drove away the men. The creator of the group took the lesson, and started a new group which required permission to join; the way it worked was you would briefly talk with the founder, and as long as you didn’t seem like a creep you were in.

This from the Wikipedia article on Commodus does indeed seem very bad: "Citizens of Rome missing their feet through accident or illness were taken to the arena, where they were tethered together for Commodus to club to death while pretending they were giants."

If that interests you, see the philosophical debates about the nature and existence of consciousness, e.g. https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/13/the-consciousness-d... and the follow-up https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/04/03/magic-illusions-and...

I thought of this connection because of the philosopher Daniel Dennett's writing about the Sphex wasp.

The author is this rather famous novelist: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwidge_Danticat

From reading the Wikipedia article, it sounds like "run by" overstates his role, but wow nevertheless.

Thanks for the mention of Kakoune, which I hadn't heard of. This page on its site makes a pretty interesting case for the power of its command model over vim's (though I haven't been a regular vim user for many years):

https://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html

Speaking of not being allowed to enter a polling place wearing curtain clothes:

"Since Tuesday, she has become known as the “Topless Voter.”

The woman, who ripped off her T-shirt after objections that it was too political to wear inside the Exeter polls, said she has no regrets.

“I said, ‘Well then, can I vote naked?’ He turned to me and said, ‘If you want to.’ So I took off my shirt,” she said.

She said she kept on her mask because removing it would have been “unhealthy.”"

https://www.unionleader.com/news/politics/voters/topless-vot...

Can someone summarize the lessons or approach of that talk?

The adjective form of Democrat is Democratic. Perhaps as a German the author is unaware that usages like "all the democrat votes are ignored" are repeating the Republicans' deliberately insulting word choice.

Edit: thanks to currymj below for the link to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

Thanks for that excerpt. The part I found most terrifying is that not only was the patient given no real treatment, but "Eight years passed without...neurological follow-up", meaning even an examination to see what his status was.

I don't know anything about Benton Harbor, but here in the United States being told a town has "bad schools" tends to be very highly correlated to large non-white population. I just looked it up and oh hey, Benton Harbor's population is 89% African-American.