macksd

Not that it's any consolation, but it's definitely not a flaw unique to Britain. I think this is just increasingly the universal norm in our society. Mainstream news in the US is, as I'm sure you know, also pretty much entirely slanted one way or the other and appealing to emotion. Headlines that make value judgments, the choice in what to emphasize and what to ignore, etc. And I say mainstream news like the alternative media is any better, but it doesn't seem that way to me.

World news always seems very refreshing to me in this regard: BBC World, Al Jazeera, Reuters. But yes, national and local news just seems to be a cesspool in many places and spreading.

Oh you're thinking of Air Force One.

That's great if the server that sends the encryption keys is actually the server you think you're talking to.

The web page must be served from somewhere, even if the server it came from really wasn't involved in file transfers. It would be nice to have HTTPS for the client to rule out MITM attacks or the like.

This is how I feel. I'm all for encouraging potential victims to take reasonable precautions, but especially when the system could be fixed if a few people tried, it eventually gets tiresome. I've been given free "credit monitoring" a few times because of data breaches at places that should have done a better job of protecting my data. But there is so much noise impacting my credit score that I just don't even bother looking at it anymore. I would hope this property system does better, at least. The annual "no activity" email would at least be nice occasional dose of peace-of-mind.

But then we're back to people needing to purchase new items to accommodate sudden changes in lifestyle where it just didn't make any sense since the last major advance in technology / the last pandemic. Sure, we know we need to avoid disposable items right now, but as disposable items go paper products are pretty dang recyclable or compostable. Whereas at other times and places conserving water is far more critical.

I know several in person. I'm probably right of center and definitely live in a predominantly right area. They put it on their IG stories and they bring it up in person. Without cutting them off socially, not really sure how I can avoid hearing it from time to time.

> lacked a fear of consequences of being wrong

This is interesting. It used to be that some of the people we're discussing, let's use flat-earthers as an example, were just really, really committed to their idea. It was their whole identity and persona, and they would just never be able to accept anything different. This seems to me to be the opposite of what you describe. It's like they were terrified of being wrong, so they embraced not admitting it no matter what. They would never accept that they had been wrong. (With a few exceptions - I've engaged with A LOT of flat-earthers and some of them do give me the impression they just like playing devil's advocate, etc.)

Lately though, QAnon seems to have embraced this idea. They've made statements that will be very quickly falsifiable, and will actually say "Who cares if it's not true - we just support patriotism / freedom, etc. and what part of that do you disagree with?" They'll make statements that will be very quickly falsifiable (for instance, I saw a post claiming Nancy Pelosi had been arrested for high crimes, and Trump was now making his move - but a few days later obviously that wasn't true). That's what I call a lack of fear of consequences of being wrong. But to me it seems a new phenomenon.

No I wasn't under the impression it was a rule with legal penalties attached, but I mostly hear this as "can you confirm the last 4 numbers to verify your identity". It's a pretty clear cut case of using it for authentication. And rule or not - it's effectively a 4-digit PIN that probably half the services I have to call into re-use, so it's just plain stupid.

I've been asked for it by my health insurance companies, providers, and when donating blood. On the latter I saw they had a policy of issuing a different ID number to you on request, but it was a royal pain in the ass and a supervisor came out to ask me what my problem was

Yes. It even used to say on the card "not to be used for identification", but various agencies at all levels of government ask for it all the time.

Yeah that's fair, and I've seen that. I think the key is authenticity. As others have mentioned sometimes it's just a firehose of good things happening to other people. I've also seen a friend speak candidly about their struggle with mental health and suicide - again great to see everyone rally around them, and be aware of it. Probably a good way for them to get more support, and make other people aware that (a) current mental health resources kinda suck, (b) other people might be struggling just like you, and (c) everyone realize that their friend needs help.

But yeah - being vulnerable and open like that is hard and not for everyone. And it can also be faked for attention. Ultimately I don't know what a platform is supposed to do if everyone starts optimizing for the algorithm or is constantly consuming the very content that is bad for them but doesn't want censorship. There's no win - social media would be amazing if everyone was kind, honest and authentic. But I realize that's asking the impossible on a global scale.

As a side note, I'm a little saddened when I see friends apologize for their posts. There's such a reaction to "influencer culture" that people feel like foodgrams and humblebrags are a terrible thing, and in excess they certainly can be, but I think from most people it's a billion times better than strawman political arguments and manipulative media that is far worse for our mental health than just comparing ourselves to someone's good day.

I had a friend post a picture of food made from ingredients they had made in their own garden, and it made them feel so good to eat it because they had had a rough year and it was a good personal win, so they apologetically posted a photo of it.

Forget the rest of the trash on Facebook - seeing a friend I haven't seen in a while experience something good and being able to share that with them is something we need more of in the world. I'd trade away all the "only geniuses can remember the order of operations for this future scam page" or "you won't believe how this person misrepresents their opponents views and tears that misrepresentation apart!" and keep stuff like this.

If you believe that everyone smart values the same things as you, sure.

In addition to smileysteve's comments, I'd also question the idea that the US is the #1 system in the world. By some metrics? Yes. By other metrics? No. It seems to be a subjective argument thrown around with about as much basis behind it as the people who seem to think we have a free market healthcare system when we obviously don't. We have a weird public / private mix that's incredibly complicated, not a free market at all, and honestly I've had so many problems with debt collectors coming after me for massive bills that nobody can explain for me (all stemming from either childbirth or routine preventative care mind you, like I said I'm pretty healthy) that I consider the panic attacks I get from the process my #1 health risk. I can't imagine what it must be like for people who get cancer, though I've heard horror stories.

The same reason the US can spend what it did on the war in Aghanistan and still end up with the Taliban taking control of Kabul as they're on their way out. Total incompetence, no decent end game, and human nature in people that they just won't be able to change. Just a bunch of people lining their own pockets along the way.

If the US has a culture of people making poor decisions for their own health, exploiting systems for their own benefit, and of government bureaucracies utterly failing to achieve the ends they're supposed to achieve with no accountability (and it does), no amount of tax revenue is going to suddenly provide everyone with world-class healthcare with no concern for their own money.

I'd love to never have to deal with my insurance company again, or take diagnostics or treatments without being able to find out how much I'll have to pay. I really would. I just have zero confidence that any of that would change no matter how much more of my money gets taken by the US government.

How would it be different from the monoclonal antibody treatments already available?

I certainly think the same argument applies, FWIW - I don't think Apple is being reasonable if they ban people from services for fixing their own devices or other people's devices. Not sure if you were implying I would feel differently about that instance.

Burning down Facebook? What on Earth are you talking about? It makes it easier for users to remove their own accounts across multiple services. It's a common interface to features the social networks themselves provide. This is the opposite of a bad actor.

Different people on the Internet will say different things. You can't really assign one collective motive to everything on the Internet and then say it's hypocritical.

And your own social network will fail because of network effects. If Facebook can be as terrible as they have been and retain their users, it's really because of their users that they're being propped up with a successful business. I gotta say at that point even I start thinking they owe their users more than a free market exchange would imply.

Not to mention we're talking about them sending a pretty formal legal threat. Would you philosophy in this case not be "if you don't like their browser extension, don't use it?"

Same as with an IRA, though, it's intended for retirement savings and there are penalties for early withdrawal. The issue here (right or wrong) is self-directed IRAs being effectively usable for things other than growth investments.

>> Its not.

No and that's really my point - we have this heavily regulated mix of public and private that I don't think anyone fully understands, makes it a nightmare for consumers, gives a heavy advantage to existing players, has massive amounts of overhead, etc. People who say things about wanting a free market don't seem to be pushing us in that direction, only pushing against reform.

I recently switched to an HDHP / HSA and I feel like it's much better. One of the problems is that insurance has stopped being about risk management because (almost) everyone has it and wants it to cover everything, so it's just a game of group negotiating on a group tab. I had the plan because my company negotiated it with the insurance company who had rates and networks negotiated and I was just supposed to go to the doctor and now pay whatever else was left but who knows what that was. But now my doctor's not even in-network. With an HSA, I can just pay her directly and forget the rest of it.

I feel a great frustration by those who argue against healthcare reform in the US, because most of the arguments against a socialized system resonate with me, but they also seem to be arguments against the current system.

I would be concerned about moral hazard leading to people not taking care of their own health. And yet, America has a disproportionately bad problem with weight and cardiovascular health. I get a discount for not smoking, sure, but I don't get a discount for going to the gym multiple times a week and adjusting my diet to keep my weight goals. I seem to be sharing a risk pool with a lot of very willingly unhealthy people.

I would be concerned about a DMV-like experience when trying to take care of my health care, except, that's what we have now. Bad incentives are created for providers, for insurers, and really it's all of them against me. And it's hardly a free market when there's still effectively a complete lack of transparency over pricing, and I can't very well shop around for where the ambulance should take me.

I'm very pro-immigration as long as we have some security / documentation process that people follow that we actually enforce, because I don't want a social healthcare system that just gets abused by people who have no intention of ever being a formal part of the system that funds it. Except we already have a drain on hospitals in many states where they have to provide life-saving care but will never get reimbursed for it. And that's exactly what Romney's major argument was in defense of his state's healthcare law, but Republicans ripped him to shreds over it.

I just don't understand what Republicans are arguing for here because the current system is not remotely giving any of the benefits of a free market and that doesn't seem to be changing any time soon. If the current system is privately-run healthcare, why is everyone so convinced that the vaccine is a government conspiracy? It seems to me we don't have either ideal, so we're stuck with a half-measure that isn't really working for anyone but insurers.

Are you possibly referring to something that isn't automatic detection of hardware features? I've been on Linux laptops for 13 years but almost always on something shipped by the vendor, and I've never had these problems of going to sleep or bad power management that I hear about from HN comments.

There actually was a legal challenge against this, and right before a deadline to respond the TSA clarified it's current policy: https://www.aclu.org/cases/bierfeldt-v-napolitano?redirect=c...

So if it happens, you can go to court for your individual case and possibly win, which according to this comment happens all the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28635430

So more is needed, obviously. It seems to me that the status quo is that you're effectively guilty until proven innocent, and the people accusing you don't have much of an incentive to stop.

You are perhaps right about what is implied here. But I have noticed the same trend outside of the media in general. There's currently an uproar in my town and I've seen 3 or 4 very outspoken people, including hearing it on a radio interview, say that the school board "quietly" reinstated mask mandates in school, and there's a lot of implication of secret, ulterior motives.

But I also don't understand it. You can't "quietly" enforce a policy against every kid in the school, especially if you expect them to come to school with masks in hand ahead of time. And the uproar started after a widely advertised meeting that was broadcast online and that had solicited public comment. There was nothing quiet about it.

I think it's just a cheap tactic used to convey a lack of trust.

To the dead comment that wrote "If you're a man and don't understand what I'm talking about above, then expect to be blindsided by your family after career changes": as if this thread didn't start by implying a "real man" would blindside the mother of his child with startup plans without considering her input. You condescendingly refer to female psychology and a need for security, without stopping to look at your own selfish motives that started all this?

It's all down to the specific brand.

Outsourced to Ping? Ok. Outsourced to some identity SaaS I never heard of that just closed their series B? Pass.

But then obviously I'd expect Microsoft to own their own identity story, and if they ever didn't I would immediately suspect I wasn't actually even dealing with Microsoft.

I remember an instance on HN maybe 9 years ago or so where the treasurer of a third-party on the US was detained at the airport and questioned about the amount of cash he was carrying. Probably seems reasonable, as I would imagine most people carrying massive quantities of cash aren't up to any good. But no one was able to tell him if he was actually required to answer the questions in order to be allowed to travel and retain ownership of the cash. He kept getting passed around until eventually someone told him that yes, he was required to answer the question. Which I believe is incorrect - I expect they got sued afterward.

edit: I believe this was the incident: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-sues-dhs-over-unlaw...

edit 2: It was $4700. Wouldn't raise eyebrows in a bank withdrawal. Not what I had in mind when I said "massive".