34 karma · joined August 5, 2018
I still don't understand why firefox refuses to slightly gray out their background by default. Chrome puts less strain on my eyes and that's far more important than anything firefox does well.
Every time I try to stick with firefox, my eyes get strained and eventually I go back to chrome.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/i...
The same washingtonpost that recently got caught lying to the american people about syrian gas attacks and tried to dupe us into invading another country.
Next war that the lying media and politicians push, they and/or their sons should be on the frontlines and then the poor and downtrodden should be behind them.
To put things into perspective, about 4000 americans died as a result of the iraq war. Over a million iraqis died.
Hundreds of thousands of children died in the iraq war. And hundreds of thousands of iraqi children grew up without a father because of the iraq war. I guess it's all perspective. But I doubt most of the world would consider him a hero.
You get into an argument with someone in NYC and you can go your own way and never see them again even if you live in the same city or even the same neighborhood. Get into an argument with someone in a small town and everyone knows about it by the time you get home and battle lines get drawn.
Lately, there have been a vocal group defending corporate interests, globalism, monitoring/spying and censorship all over social media. Not sure why and where they came from but it's interesting how suddenly they appeared on the scene.
Spend time with your family? Time is the only thing you can't buy. How are you going to start a side business and earn income if you aren't willing to trade time with your family? There's only 24 hours in a day.
If you are a software engineer who is so poorly paid you need to look for side income, maybe look for another job? Unemployment is at all-time lows and companies are desperate for tech talent.
I can understand baristas looking for side income, why would a software engineer need one?
It's two fold issue. People question the level to which human activity contributes to climate and they question the remedy to it.
Obviously climate change has always happened. It happened before human existence, climate change occurred throughout human history and climate change will happen after humans aren't around. Nobody is denying climate change. Climate change denier is actually a propaganda term invented by one group to attack another. Similar to christ-denier and other "denier" attacks. I prefer the neutral terms "climate change proponent and opponent".
One of the major pushback against the human created climate change is that we were in an little ice age until the 19th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Com...
Climate change opponents say the warming is a result of the natural end to the ice age cycle as has happened for hundreds of thousands of years.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature....
As you see, temperatures have declined and risen for hundreds of thousands of years ( with negligent human input ). So climate change opponents claim that the current climate change is just part of the climate's natural cycle.
Climate change proponents claim that the current warming is a result of human activity ( particularly fossil fuel based industrialization ). After all, we started using oil in the mid 1800s and temperatures started to rise since then. To climate change proponents, that's too much of a coincidence and they believe humans triggered the warming with fossil fuel use.
The second part is the remedy to climate change. Climate change proponents believe it is a "tragedy of commons" problem and we need a global system to manage the problem. Their solution is a global carbon tax system which manages and controls fossil fuel use and the global economy. Climate change opponents are against the globalist policies of climate change since it infringes on national sovereignty and gives too much power to a small group of globalists who can profit by trading on carbon credits/taxes/etc ( essentially another product for traders to gamble on ).
I'm sure I'll be attacked by both sides but this is essentially the core issues of the climate change debate. Is it a natural cycle vs human created? Is the remedy worse than the disease?
SQL injections are child's play. Literally. It's last decade's "hack", if we can call it that. Using parameterized queries ( which you should be doing in the first place ) or simple defensive measures nullifies sql injection threats. The headline is clickbait nonsense.
Also it's a shame that defcon has turned into a "disney" event. Who even attends it anymore other than families and FBI agents and slimey salesmen peddling their software.
We handle it bad because the news scaremongers with hyperbolic exaggerations. The people get overly anxious and of course politicians rush to the worst possible "solutions".
I remember a while back there was hysteria over pilots not being screened. Then people found out that a pilot doesn't need weapons to take down a plane and screening pilots doesn't make sense. Common sense.
If everyone would just calm down and think things through, we'd come to more sensible solutions. And much of the time, the sensible solution is to do nothing. Bad things happen. Just the way life is. So we should weigh the options calmly and sensibly, not hysterically.
A lot of people are underwater when it comes to bitcoin.
Also, when the execs of a money losing company is wasting time with vegan activism rather than turning a profit, I suspect it's future isn't too bright.
If that were the case, the US, China, Japan, South Korea, Britain, France, etc wouldn't be major economic powers. Every major economic power today copied the US protectionist model of the 19th century to become rich. Every single one.
The US was explicitly protectionist well into the 1900s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_St...
Since 1945, we became implicit protectionists while touting free trade.
Without protectionism, japan and south korea wouldn't have toyota, sony, samsung, etc. Without protectionism, china wouldn't have baidu, tencent, etc. Without protectionism, our industries would be owned by britain and europe and we'd only be a raw materials supplier.
"Washington and Hamilton believed that political independence was predicated upon economic independence. Increasing the domestic supply of manufactured goods, particularly war materials, was seen as an issue of national security. In his Reports, Hamilton argued that the competition from abroad and the “forces of habit” would mean that new industries that could soon become internationally competitive (“infant industries”) would not be started in the United States, unless the initial losses were guaranteed by government aid (Conkin, 1980). According to him, this aid could take the form of import duties or, in rare cases, prohibition of imports. He called for customs barriers to allow American industrial development and to help protect infant industries, including bounties (subsidies) derived in part from those tariffs. He also believed that duties on raw materials should be generally low (Dorfman & Tugwell, Early American Policy, 1960). Hamilton explained that despite an initial “increase of price” caused by regulations that control foreign competition, once a “domestic manufacture has attained to perfection… it invariably becomes cheaper”."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_histo...
Washington, Hamilton and most of our founding fathers were protectionists because our industries were young and needed protection against more established industries of britain.
> There is a consensus among economists that protectionism has a negative effect on economic growth and economic welfare, while free trade, deregulation, and the reduction of trade barriers has a positive effect on economic growth.
When you have to lean on consensus it usually means they have no idea what they are talking about or are pushing political ideology. We have historical proof that protectionism works. It's called the US, China, Britain, Japan, South Korea, etc.
Always take evidence over consensus.
Ideas are ideas. And how do we understand the difference if one is censored? Also, there are plenty of exclusionism and hate in extremist LGBT, feminism, etc communities. It's not fair to compare extremism of one side, but not the extremism of the other side. There are feminists who believe men should be wiped out, there are lesbians who are against trans women and there are trans people who are against gay marriage. But that's not the point. The point is all ideas should be allowed to be expressed so that they can be debated, criticized, etc. It's the american way.
> In Europe, it's very common to have an exception to Free Speech when it comes to hate speech
Yes. That's why europe gave us such "wonderful" things like nazi germany, the soviet union, fascist italy, etc.
Do you know why these existed while US was immune from them? Nazi Germany censored everything they didn't like, soviet union censored everything they didn't like, fascist italy censored everything they didn't like. But we had freedom of speech. It's why the US is the symbol of freedom and not europe in the world.
You do realize that in much of western europe, if you criticize islamic fundamentalism or fundamental judaism, it's considered hate speech and you could go to prison for that right? Hell in some places in the world, criticizing religious fundamentalism is an offense worthy of the death penalty.
You sure you want to censor all hate or offensive speech? Because atheist speech and lgbt speech is the most censored speech in the world. Most of the world finds these type of speech the most hateful and offensive. Are you really advocating that we ban these speech since it offends so many?
How about we stick to principles?
Because we want the best and brightest attending these universities? People most capable of actually performing and graduating? Is this a serious question?
> Don't they inherently discriminate amongst people in such a way as to favor rich people who can afford to give their child the necessary nutrition, time and stability to perform all the rituals that college campuses look for?
No. No more than the NBA discriminates.
> We also have to undo the generation's of economic and social harm principle perpetrated by white people against other ethnic minorities in the US.
We have. It's called evening the playing field by ending discrimination. Punishing asians ( who haven't done anything ) or young white students ( who haven't done anything ) is the definition of evil.
> You can't simply wave away the US's obligations.
Once again, we have. It's called ending discrimination.
> I do agree that Asian Americans face a lot of issues in the US and it's unfair how they're treated as a managed ethnic minority that schools like Harvard can keep in a separate managed bucket.
Yes. Discrimination is evil. I'm glad we are agreed. Using your logic, in 20 years, are we going to have to discriminate against blacks to make up for the discrimination against asians/whites today? The neverending cycle of discrimination?
The condescending affirmative action ideology is a new form of "supremacy". The idea that minorities are incapable of overcoming and need "help" is another form of white supremacy. Only this time, it's leftist faction looking down on minorities for social cred.
Discrimination is wrong. Simple as that. You don't achieve equality by removing hurdles from one group of people and putting them in front of another group of people. That's illogical and it's wrong. No amount of rationalization is going to make it right.
reneweconomy's self-description.
"Australia's best informed and most read web-site focusing on clean energy news and analysis, as well as climate policy."
It's an advocacy organization probably funded by clean energy lobby. There are quite a few of these climate advocacy "news" organizations being spammed on social media along with their supporters in the comment threads.
It's such an absurd assertion when you consider that different people have different ideas on how to improve society.
Also, the NYTimes is eerily quiet about the role it and the rest of the media played in pushing for the war in iraq. No censure, no penalties, no nothing when they lied to the american people.
Also, so that good ideas can have their day in the sun. Lets not forget that most "good" ideas were once considered bad ideas.
List of ideas that was once considered bad.
Abolitionism. LGBT rights. Heliocentrism. Germ theory. Endless list.
The idea is that all ideas deserve discussion so that the good rises and the bad sinks.
Also, by allowing censorship when you have likeminded people in power, you also allow other people to censor in the future when power shifts.
This is just basic stuff you learn in philosophy 101. Unfortunately, we don't seem to be teaching basic principles in high school/college anymore.
People naively think that censorship keeps the bad ideas away. Most of the time, it is used to keep the good ideas away. Look at the censorship by the catholic church, soviet union, china, nazi germany, etc.
If your ideas have solid footing, you would be against censorship. It's when you can't defend your ideas that people advocate for censorship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
It's amazing how in a short period of time ( in geological terms though it seems like a lot of time for us ), how much of the earth changed.
Another interesting tidbit, we had a little ice age not too long ago which ended in the mid 1800s.
It really isn't. It's why wall street is selling on the news.
> This is a great accomplishment for NYT but I’m worried about what it means for the rest of the industry.
It really isn't. It's why their share price dropped nearly 7% on the news. Their subscriber growth declined. That's not a good thing.
> NYT switching its business model has to be one of the most public and well-executed digital transformations of an old company ever.
NYT "switch" isn't even the most public or well-executed in their own industry. I'd give that nod to news corp and their properties - not that they are doing much better. NYT is playing catch-up.
> In the age of leaders publicly gaslighting, unrefereed global forums of social media which can be bought, and massive concentration of wealth at the top, fewer and consolidated reporting entities will be bad for the republic.
That's true. But the NYT is just as bought as any forum and gaslights as much as any politician. After all the NYT was created by a politician and a banker. It's in their DNA.
I do agree that fewer media entities will be detrimental to the republic. Unfortunately, the NYT along with CNN/WaPo is at the forefront of taking out smaller independent media entities.
Considering most of the nation doesn't trust the NYT, not sure it was much of a trick. People trust foxnews more than the NYT. Think about that.
The real trick that the NYT ( along with CNN, MSNBC, etc ) pulled was forcing google, youtube, facebook and much of social media to give it an unfair privileged position to increase network traffic. They got a short term boost but it wasn't as significant as they'd hoped and it certainly won't last. Already, the subscriber growth has declined along with overall traffic.
Keep in mind that if we get a recession, the first thing the new subs will cut is the NYT subscription. I'm speaking from experience here. Also, as people get older and have more experience reading the NYT, their mistrust of NYT increases. Not a good sign for a trust based product.
And their activities ( hirings, stories and agenda pushing ) isn't helping.
What? Who is talking about graduation criteria?
> An effort is being made to provide opportunity to those with less access to it
That's fine, as long as the criteria is the same.
> but painting affirmative action as a free ride is a malicious category error that needs no debunking
That's called straw man. I said it is discrimination. This is called fact.
> simply a garbage argument that involves talking as fast as possible and hoping no one notices.
As far as I can tell, you are the one talking as fast as possible and hoping no one notices. This is something called projection.
I'm making fairly straightforward assertions. Discrimination is wrong. Simple as that. The japanese shouldn't discriminate against women. We shouldn't discriminate against asians and whites.
Yes. Discrimination is a value judgment and tedious one at that. We are agreed. Not sure why you support discrimination though.
> If you want to encourage women to have children, you need to create an environment where it is equitable for them to do so without being unduly penalized.
Actually, we already know that "equitable" society leads to lower birth rates. The more equal the society, the lower the birth rates.
> Again: if your approach worked then Japan would not have a birthrate decline.
You missed my point. It's not my approach. It's japan's approach. And I'm against that.
If you had paid attention, you'd realize that I am against discrimination, no matter what the ends. I don't believe the ends justify the means.
I just offered japan's rationale for discriminating against women, just like you offered your rationale against discriminating against people in the US.
I think all people should be treated fairly.
The only way we say one culture is "collectivist" and another "individualistic" is if we cherrypick data or history?
How we branded ourselves as an "individualistic" culture when for 500 years, our identifying cultural contribution was collectivist racism. The fact of the matter is that the west conquered the world because we were far more collectivist than anyone else. It wasn't the "rugged individual" who conquered africa, america, asia, etc. It certainly wasn't the "rugged individual" that wiped out natives, enslaved africans, etc.
It's funny how we took 500 years of our collectivism and then dumped it on the japanese, chinese, etc and branded ourselves as "individualistic".
All nations are individualists and collectivistic at the same time.
Not absolute mark. Just the same standards.
> If you are looking at ability to apply oneself as being the criteria you have to examine a lot more.
Which is fine with me as long as the same criteria is applied equally.
Equal being the key here.
We already have a legal system that advantages the wealthy ( more money for better lawyers, experts, etc ) over everyone else. But this bail problem is egregious and cruel.
But it isn't the poor who created legal system. It isn't he poor who write laws.
Both are equally dishonest.
> "We invited you in with your lower score because we recognize it is more difficult for you to achieve that score, and as such are more likely to succeed" versus "We didn't like how smart we were so we lied to you about passing the exam to hide the fact that we're biasing entry standards."
That's just rationalizations to justify your bias. The japanese made similar rationalizations. Female candidates are likely to get pregnant and society is better off with females getting pregnant because japan has a low birth-rate problem.
Their justification is just as "good" as yours. Both are discriminatory and evil.
We tell ourselves that there is a separation of government and private enterprise, but that hasn't been the case since day 1 when george washington's first move was to use tariffs to protect US companies. When our military was used to exterminate the natives to clear the way for railroads. When the US government annexed territory from texas to hawaii for corporate interests. Or when our government toppled latin american regimes so that our corporations could gain access to new markets.
Just like now all modern cities look like american cities ( skyscrapers ) and they have all same companies, all major economies ( especially the asian economies ) modeled themselves after 19th century US economy. China pretty much copied our playbook.