Hacker News Reader

ceilingcorneron Delta wants U.S. airlines to share banned passenger lists

…and then they’ll share that list of banned passengers with credit agencies, and banks, and other orgs. Because being banned from airlines probably correlates with being less “reliable” or “trustworthy.”

This is how a social credit system comes to America.

ceilingcorneron Peter Thiel, Scourge of Silicon Valley

I don’t think it is that complicated. Thiel is at heart a libertarian and always has been. But if you listen to him speak, he is constantly lamenting the lack of hard tech development. “We wanted flying cars but all we got is 40 characters.”

It seems obvious to me that he has calculated the best way to get this hard tech and science development: from government investment. Much of the actual scientific and technological advancement circa 1940-1980 came out of military investment.

Thus he has continually tried to involve himself in government spaces where he has an opportunity to make an impact. Sometimes that works (Palantir) sometimes it doesn’t (his involvement with Trump.)

ceilingcorneron Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

Eastern Europe isn’t included with in “Western countries.” Hence the name, Eastern.

I really wouldn’t consider Latin America to be in the West either.

ceilingcorneron A Man Who Swam the Seine

Montparnasse is not trendy, arty, or in central Paris. No one who has spent any amount of time in Paris would say that it is.

Parisian studio apartments are also roughly the size of an American bathroom. It is not a luxurious life.

ceilingcorneron Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

The entire premise of “misinformation” is that a true media exists which gives accurate information, as opposed to the army of people out to nefariously influence the public. I’m simply suggesting that there is fundamentally no difference.

ceilingcorneron Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

Not a good example. Japan is famously insular and large enough to support a domestic audience.

Virtually every smaller country in Europe and Latin America consume American media voraciously.

ceilingcorneron Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

to be paid money to post and retweet things that they were told to post and retweet by some patron?

What do you think the network of “real media” is?

ceilingcorneron Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

Absolutely no difference. Just imperialism recontextualized for a new century with new profits to be made.

ceilingcorneron Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

I wouldn’t say I am cynical, merely realistic. In my opinion, it is a fool’s errand to think that accountability or unbiased news is even a possibility. It goes against the nature of the thing. An unbiased media has never been the case and never will be. Full stop.

Thus it is better to recognize that no single entity will ever be truly honest and to instead read a variety of sources and come to your own conclusions.

ceilingcorneron Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

NPR is just as biased and deliberately misleading as any other organization. The fact that they have a link on their website is not much proof of anything.

Replying to your edit: well, that is my point. They are all biased. This idea that having a public code of conduct means anything is nonsense.

When’s the last time a mainstream media organization was held accountable for anything? Even the people that helped sell the WMD lie are still in positions of power.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/iraq...

The reality of the situation is that there are no meaningful standards of conduct and everyone is biased. Legacy brands with elite clout are no different.

ceilingcorneron Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

accountability, transparency and formal ethics codices

Are you seeing much of this lately? Lately as in the last 40 years? I certainly am not.

ceilingcorneron Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

Mozilla has transformed into an activist organization over the last ~decade, with predictable consequences for their actual products and engineering.

ceilingcorneron Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

Sorry but unless you provide actual links to so-called misinformation, I’m going to assume that this is either overexaggerated or labeling anything against Western values as disinformation.

Especially when it is described as ”This industry’s main goal is to sway public opinion during elections and protests” which is different than every other media organization how, exactly?

ceilingcorneron A generation of American men give up on college

…but we aren’t still applying the strategy of 1900s. That’s the entire point of my posts.

ceilingcorneron A generation of American men give up on college

You have still missed my point. The American dream was an effective, real thing for a long period of time. Most Americans today are descendants of poor immigrants that worked hard and gave their children a better quality of life. This wasn’t “a lottery” and your characterization of it as such is both historically misinformed and just ideological in nature.

As I said, the issue is that this hard work no longer results in progress. The system has become broken. This is easily observable via a bevy of statistical measures like inequality and college costs.

ceilingcorneron A generation of American men give up on college

I am talking specifically about COVID and Zoom. I didn’t say anything about on-campus learning.

ceilingcorneron A generation of American men give up on college

There are plenty of decent houses in safe areas across the Midwest for $50-100k.

ceilingcorneron A generation of American men give up on college

> "you have to be hard or else you won't survive"-mentality

Europeans often have this opinion but I don't think it's an accurate reading of the issue. The issue is not that Americans work too hard, it's that this hard work is no longer actually amounting to anything. In the past, you could pay for college by working summers at the local restaurant. Today the average debt is $30K and you still won't get a decent job.

The article (and others) just show that American men are starting to put their efforts into places that do reward them; namely, the trades and entrepreneurship.

ceilingcorneron A generation of American men give up on college

COVID has accelerated this big time. Why spend $5,000 a semester to watch a Zoom lecture from an average professor when you can open YouTube in a new tab and see a world-class professor share the same information for free? It makes no rational sense.

The moment that a serious, legitimate credential system appears, every average university will disappear overnight. We'll be left with an oligarch class that attends the top ±30 universities and everyone else getting a AmaGoogBook certificate of completion.

ceilingcorneron Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)

We are already in a low-level Civil War and have been for quite some time. The important thing to understand is that digital / media / information warfare will be the future of warfare, both in the US and abroad.

Why? For better or worse, the average person in America is lazy. Arguing online is easy, but actually engaging in kinetic warfare over a sustained period of time is extremely difficult. Even the minor conflicts that erupt at protests are tiny and irrelevant compared to an actual civil war.

There's also not much money to be made in actually destroying things, as compared to drumming up outrage (which is how the media, large and small, Alex Jones to CNN, makes its money.)

My favorite conspiracy theory is that the CCP is sowing the division within us to drive us to civil war, whereby they win WWIII without ever firing a shot.

This isn't a conspiracy theory, it's basic geopolitics. Every large state does this to each other. The US to China, China to the US, US to Russia, Russia to US.

ceilingcorneron Ask HN: Is it possible to distinguish alt opinions from actual misinformation?

Your baseline assumption should be that everything is misinformation, if we define misinformation as “not telling the entire truth precisely in order to push a certain agenda or worldview.” This is simply the nature of communication technology.

The default legacy media is especially guilty here, as they pretend to be neutral but never are. Whereas much of the “alternate media” wears its bias on its sleeve.

The only solution is to read a variety of sources and come to your own conclusions.

ceilingcorneron Is a self-driving car smarter than a seven-month-old?

I did read the article, prior to posting my comment. My thoughts remain the same.

I encourage you to not assume you know what others are thinking.

ceilingcorneron Follow boring advice

Eat less calories than you burn. Spend less money than you make.

Boring advice, yet the majority of people are overweight and in debt.

ceilingcorneron Is a self-driving car smarter than a seven-month-old?

No, and the constant desire to apply the same scale of intelligence to dramatically different things is absolutely nonsense. A self-driving car does not need to understand the world in a way a human does, nor can it actually do so. It needs to understand the world in a way that enables it to successfully complete its assigned tasks. Full stop.

Is an orange as smart as a screwdriver? Is an ant as smart as a waterfall? Nonsensical questions. There is no such thing as a universal quality of intelligence.

ceilingcorneron Trump and Cesar – The Roots of Populsim

The flaw in the comparison is that America is largely built on its middle class, while no such thing existed in Rome. You would need the middle class to erode into a working class for the sociopolitical system to be similar.

ceilingcorneron Trump and Cesar – The Roots of Populsim

Don’t get caught up in the specific political allegiances. Trump is Sulla because he proved that a non-politician could take the presidency, but he himself was not the person to take this to its conclusion. I see him as the forerunner of a future populist candidate that will come from outside the political class. In the same way that Sulla was a predecessor of Caesarian action.

Caesar famously said that if Sulla could do it, then he could too.

Weird example but David Lynch the filmmaker said something very similar to this. I can’t find the exact quote, but he said something like “Trump has opened the door to future candidates like him, from outside the political class.”

ceilingcorneron Trump and Cesar – The Roots of Populsim

I don't think this is a very good analysis. If Trump can be compared to a Roman figure, it is most likely Sulla. He (Trump) proved that a non-politician could rise to power on a populist program, but ultimately ended up having little actual influence himself. If we are in a similar scenario to the late Republic, we still have a few decades before a Caesar is to appear.

This is still a huge stretch and I don't think modern America is very comparable to Rome.

ceilingcorneron How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

You have changed the goal posts about three times now. I said Puritans and Libertarians, not Anglo Christians.

ceilingcorneron How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

The western settlers were a quite diverse group. Many came from the South. They certainly didn’t all come from a narrow group in one region of the northeast? This is...basic history.

ceilingcorneron How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

Sorry but I think they are entirely different things with entirely different lineages. Woke comes from the Puritans, (American) libertarians come from the Western frontier.