notdonspaulding

> Thanks to legalized corruption ( lobbying ) the rich are able to twist laws and regulations more and more to their advantage.

What you are describing is regulatory capture, and you don't have to be against wealth inequality in order to be against this. This is common ground between traditional conservatism and traditional liberalism.

> ...who is talking about absolute equality here?

The principled/moral argument goes something like this:

    - Wealth inequality is a symptom of an unjust system.
    - We see wealth inequality.
    - Therefore, we *must* have an unjust system which 
      created it.
    - Therefore, we should *correct for injustice in the 
      system* by creating laws X, Y, Z to bring about 
      greater equality. )

Instead, you seem to be arguing that:

    - Wealth inequality is undesirable for some unstated 
       reason.
    - We see wealth inequality.
    - We would like to reduce wealth inequality for some 
      unstated reason.
    - Therefore, we should implement some laws Q, R, and S 
      to reduce wealth inequality (presumably to one of 
      your "shades between black and white").

The first argument is a moral argument. It says "wealth inequality is bad." When confronted with the fact that no two people start out in the same place in this life, it can fall back to "So? that doesn't mean they should be stuck with where they started, because wealth inequality is bad!" When confronted with the fact that freedom means people with different values being allowed to make choices with different outcomes, it can argue against that freedom, because it considers Wealth Equality to be a virtue.

The second argument is an argument of degrees. To what degree is wealth inequality acceptable, and at what degree does it become unacceptable? That's not a moral argument. It's lost its fallback position of morality. The person making the argument has already agreed with the principle that in some cases, under some circumstances, wealth inequality is acceptable. Now we're just arguing about where the line should be.

Reasonable people can disagree about where the line should be in an argument of degrees, but neither person can claim a moral high ground in such an argument, because they aren't disagreeing in principle.

You should either strengthen your position by making the moral argument, or agree with the GP who said that forcing absolute equality on everyone is a moral hazard. Where you seem to be at the moment isn't a very defensible stance to take.

> ...I'm certainly on the side of the those with disability.

In your mind, is it possible to be on the side of those with the disability and yet still against the ADA?

Put another way, given the two concrete examples mentioned (UCB and Stanford) did actual people with actual disabilities gain greater access to the content that was taken offline (in order to comply with the ADA)? Lots of laws have good intentions and bad effects. I think we should judge them by their effects, not their intentions.

> ...Gosling's account is false and defamatory, and omits the crucial background fact that the program he sold to Unipress was an imitation of a program Stallman had devoted the last seven years of his life to, …

So, was Gosling's program an imitation or a copy of Stallman's work? I'm unfamiliar with the actual history, but isn't that a relevant distinction in this case?

> ...and the subsequent fact that three months after the initial release of GNU Emacs, Stallman had removed the disputed code.

Is there a you-can-use-it-for-3-months exemption for copied works? Also, why remove it at all if it was an "imitation" of his original work?

Thanks for the tip! Updated my profile with my email address.

Fellow Normalite here, you still in the area? Would love to talk shop with a local Hacker Newser. Email in my profile if you're interested.

I don't remember when in my Python career I learned about names vs. values, but it finally clicked for me that I'm predominately just binding a value to a name with the = assignment. Now everything I read has become very easy to reason about and understand.

Ned Batchelder is a good resource for learning many things about python, and this talk he gave at Pycon some years ago is no exception:

https://nedbatchelder.com/text/names1.html

This (the USA, at least) is a constitutional republic. You have representation and you have constitutional rights. In a democracy, a plurality of the people can vote to do whatever they want to you. In a constitutional republic, a supermajority has to change the nature of your rights in order to violate them.

It's an important distinction.

Good advice, and I love your last tidbit in particular.

When I take on bedtime chores, my (stay-at-home) wife gets a second wind to accomplish whatever tasks of her own that she's been hoping to get to but has had to put off all day because she was taking care of the younguns. It's a great solution because the kids and I get time together, I get to share in the caretaking chores, and my wife gets a much-needed respite from managing 6 other people's lives for them.

Good point about guarding breakable things.

I can't type with my 16-month old on my lap because she just pulls the keys right off the keyboard. That caught me off guard the first time it happened. ;-)

My wife and I have 6 kids. I don't do remote work, but I can give you some protips on the aspects of parenting that I think help a house to run well.

(I don't think having 6 kids especially qualifies me to weigh in here, raising 1 or 2 kids can easily be just as much of a challenge as raising 6! Raising kids is hard!)

Mostly, I want to encourage you to be purposeful about a few things:

1. Be in your child's life.

I want to reiterate the suggestion others have made that having either you or your wife in your child's life full-time is probably the single biggest thing you could do for them. Children desperately need their parents' involvement in their lives. (There's another ditch to avoid here which is to make your children's lives your entire world. Your kids need to understand that the world doesn't revolve around them, but that they are unmistakably important and special to you.)

2. Start with the end in mind.

What kind of adult are you aiming for your child to become? How will you get them there? What values do you hope will define them? Answering these questions up front can make the in-the-moment decisions you will be faced with much easier to make. (e.g. "No, you can't go to that party because your room isn't clean." is something said in service of teaching a child responsibility.)

3. Don't be afraid to tell your child who they are.

Don't be too "hands off". Teach your kids your values and instill in them what it means to be a part of your family. It's popular these days to view kids as if they are just fully-formed tiny adults with their own preferences and desires who need to be consulted before any decision is made on their behalf. Children need to be molded into mature adults, it doesn't happen naturally. Sometimes they want things that are harmful to them and it's your job to disagree with them and tell them why they aren't getting their way. Maturity doesn't just come with age. Your job is to build an adult out of the pile of goo which is a 2 year-old screaming at the top of their lungs in the middle of Walmart because you didn't let them chew the used gum on the bottom of the cart seat.

4. Love your wife more than you love your kids.

This is good for you, good for your wife, good for your kids. You're embarking on a tough journey (raising a child into an adult) and you need a travel partner who will go the distance with you. She'll get tired and need your support, you'll get tired and need her support, and you'll both get tired at the same time and you'll each need to know that you're both in it for the long haul.

5. Guard your family's sleep schedule!

Babies often come out with their days/nights mixed up. Opinions are mixed on how and whether to have play/eat/sleep/change schedules, but I'll just say that we did Baby Wise and all of our children were happily sleeping through the night by 6-8 weeks old. That pays HUGE dividends. If you and your wife are well-rested, you'll be giving your child your best parenting. If the baby follows a schedule, it's much easier to tell what they need when they are crying.

There's lots of other good advice in here and it's great that you're seeking it out! Don't be afraid to ask people around you for help. It's a hard journey, but worth it!

I have been coding on a ThinkPad t460p with an i7, a 1GB SSD, and 32GB Ram for the past two years. I loaded it with Ubuntu Gnome and most everything I use it for just works. I also opted for the larger battery so I can easily go 4-7 hours unplugged, depending on usage. I got the matte 4K screen and all these maxed out specs for around $1800 new.

ThinkPad quality isn't what it used to be, but if you just want a solid, no-frills, easily upgraded Linux laptop, the thinkpad t-series and x-series laptops are still the best option out there, in my opinion.

This is an excellent point.

Along that same line of thinking, I think another historical American value/attitude is that a business is a person. More precisely, businesses only exist because individual people decide to take risks with their lives in the pursuit of whatever values they hold. Since they hold the risk privately, they get to hold the rewards privately.

That many people who take such risks value financial profit may be a concern to some, but is a non-concern to society as long as the marketplace is free of coercion.

How would you expect to impose any injunctions or damages on the LA Times for disregarding an EU law?

In other words, to what court will you take your case? A US court won't hold a US company to account for breaking a non-US law. A European court has no jurisdiction to impose any penalties on a non-European company.

Does the LA Times have EU offices? How are you tying the two together otherwise?

I've heard this argument several times now and it finally hit me what I dislike about it.

If you aren't context switching between your backend code and your frontend code (even when both are JS), you're probably incurring technical debt in your architecture to be paid in even greater numbers of dev hours down the road.

When you are writing an all-JS full-stack app, do you really feel like you're only working on a single app, as opposed to two different apps which happen to share the same repo?

The wheels of technological change in the Telecom space turn very, VERY slowly.

Not upgrading equipment and configs for 10 years is nothing in the ISP world.

The 4th amendment to the US Constitution reads:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

So, does that imply a skepticism of the state?

Yes and no.

Yes, in that if the police are interacting with you, they should have a reasonable belief about your involvement in a crime or that you have information which could reasonably aid their investigation.

No, because the reality is the vast majority of police interactions in the US are brief, professional, lawful, and friendly.

(Disclosure: this comment is more critical than I really mean it to be, but it's late and I'm too lazy to edit it into a more docile tone. I thought the article was interesting but simply wanted to raise the counterargument)

I've seen both sides of this, and this article paints with a broad brush without really considering any of the benefits of living in one place for an extended period of time. It's fine as far as opinions go, but if you're looking for life advice, I'd suggest taking it with a grain of salt.

My parents' families both moved around when they were kids, and so my family moved around when I was a kid. I married a farm girl who hasn't ever lived more than 5 miles from home, and we built a "forever home" on her family's land. Since being here, I've realized that the kind of urban living that is completely disconnected from any particular location comes at a cost. Namely, there are things which you can ONLY learn when you've stayed in one place for an extended period of time. Derek's article almost alludes to this...

    Form deep friendships with locals. Ask lots of 
    questions. Ask them to explain things, and show you how 
    it’s done. When they state a fact, ask how they know. 
    When they state an opinion, ask for examples.

I'm not sure how one could "Form deep friendships" without staying in one place for a significant period of time. Maybe we just disagree on what makes for a "deep friendship", but it almost certainly wouldn't happen if you keep moving on a regular basis.

    At first, their values and methods will feel wrong. 
    You’ll feel the urge to tell them how it could be 
    better. (Meaning: more like what you know.) But try to 
    understand a perspective where they are right, and you 
    are wrong. Eventually you’ll realize that your beliefs 
    were not correct — they were just the quaint local 
    culture of where you grew up. You are a product of your 
    environment.

The uncharitable reading of this statement indicates the author is a moral relativist, which is a wrongheaded and pointless belief to hold. Is the author really arguing for respecting the beliefs of a "local culture" which disapproves of interracial marriage, for instance?

Unfortunately, the more charitable reading is that he's not talking about "beliefs" so much as "cultural norms". That is, why do the Latin American countries take a siesta during the day? Or why do European countries drink so much tea? Or why does an Indian woman's sari reveal more skin than a traditional western woman's blouse? I say this reading is unfortunate because though it may be more correct, it's a much less interesting statement.

Of course cultural differences exist. Such differences must be fascinating for cultural anthropologists. And they are even interesting to curious tourists. But where did the "locals" get their cultural norms from? Was it from moving around every few years to a new place? Or was it from staying in one place, and having their ideas shaped by the land around them and their ancestral heritage?

The "fish don't know they're in water" metaphor is apt. Similarly, relocated fish may detect a difference in the water, but are unlikely to notice that even in their new environment, the "local" fish still eat plankton, and swim by moving their fins, and lay eggs to reproduce, just like the fish did in their old environment.

My overall point is this: don't dismiss your own culture as being somehow less significant simply because you didn't choose to be born into it.

That seems like an uncharitable reading of history. Even if technically correct, this interpretation of the effects of nuclear weaponry on the number of humans killed in war seems wildly off-base.

https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace

In the short-term anyway (by which I mean 1945 to the present day), the advent of nuclear weaponry seems to have decreased the number of humans killed. And that was certainly the most reasonable rationale for the use of nuclear warheads to end WW2.

I tend to think you're right that "God" (in the general sense) is not falsifiable.

But, as a Christian, and someone who studies the Bible daily, I can say that at the very least, the God of the Bible is falsifiable.

For instance, if you could prove any one of the following statements to be true, the Christian message would fall apart (and indeed, some of these are even called out in the Bible as essential to its message). If you want a roadmap to debate Christians, here you go:

    - Jesus Christ never existed as a real human being.
    - Jesus wasn't "sinless" (according to the Biblical 
      definitions of sin).
    - There exists at least one other person than Jesus who 
      has never sinned.
    - Jesus wasn't crucified by Roman soldiers at the behest 
      of Jewish religious leaders.
    - The resurrection of Jesus didn't happen.
    - Jesus' mother wasn't a virgin.
    - Jesus never actually claimed to be God.

Many falsifiable propositions are made in the Old Testament, too. These may apply to Judaism as well, though I claim no particular expertise in that religion other than where it overlaps Christianity. Proving these propositions false would go a long way to discrediting the God of both the Old and the New Testaments:

    - The Genesis account of creation.
    - The Genesis account of a great flood.
    - The Genesis account of the destruction of Sodom and 
      Gomorrah.
    - That Joseph interpreted a Pharoah's dream and became 
      second-in-command of Egypt.
    - That Egypt never had a 7-year famine which they 
      survived because of storehouses of grain.
    - That Egypt never enslaved Israel.
    - That the plagues mentioned in Exodus never befell the 
      Egyptians (notably the plague of the firstborn).
    - That Israel didn't walk across the Red Sea.
    - That the Egyptian army wasn't drowned in the Red Sea 
      in pursuit of Israel.
    - That Samson never existed.
    - That Esther never existed.
    - That Esther wasn't a queen who saved Israel from 
      genocidal annihilation.
    - That Ruth never existed.
    - That Jonah never existed.
    - That Jonah never preached in Nineveh.
    - That Jonah was never swallowed by a whale/fish.
    - That Daniel didn't serve in the court of the 
      Babylonian/Medo-Persian empires.
    - That Daniel didn't accurately predict hundreds of 
      years of political wars and intrigue in the Ancient 
      Near East before it happened [0].

There's lots more than that, of course, but it's a start. In short, Christians believe in taking the Bible at face value. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of claims which the Bible makes which are definitely falsifiable. Claims of particular events happening to particular people living in particular places at particular times. There's nothing stopping you or anyone from falsifying those claims.

Not to do your job for you, but consider that there are several ways to do this:

    - Discredit the Biblical story's internal consistency.
    - Find contradictory archaeological evidence.
    - Find contradictory, reputable historical accounts.
    - Come up with valid textual criticisms.

... and I don't believe that's even an exhaustive list.

Good luck and Godspeed! ;-)

[0]: https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/869-amazing-prophe...

"Nobody will force you to sell your goods for a particular price, but if you pick the wrong price, there will be consequences."

Do you have some special definition of "force" that you are using which doesn't involve you deciding for someone else which course of action they will take and then making them take it at risk of "consequences"?

I don't think the main thrust of your argument is wrong, however, your sickness example is also a false equivalence.

There's nothing logically or philosophically or scientifically preventing both explanations for why we each got sick from being simultaneously true. You're attempting to draw a dividing line between "religious thinking" and "rational, scientific thinking". No such division existed throughout history. Even today many "scientists" think along religious terms while many religions are evidence-obsessed. Counter-examples abound.

> "It's clear that we need regulation until there is sufficient competition..."

I don't think it's as "clear" as you seem to think it is. What does seem to be a matter of historical fact is that the FCC has never been an organization which has had an interest in, or been able by fiat to, increase competition in the telecommunications industry. The US basically went for the entire 20th century with a heavily-regulated, government-enabled, monopolistic telecom network (AT&T, Verizon landline systems & DSL). The parts of the internet which have seen investment, growth, and improvement over the last 30 years? Yup, the unregulated, non-common-carrier networks (cable and fiber).

> "why get rid of regulation before competition exists?"

Because lowering barriers-of-entry into a market is exactly the best way to encourage competition in any industry. Before anyone starts an ISP (or any other business), they consider the costs of doing so vs. the expected payoff if they succeed. Regulatory compliance (especially FCC common-carrier compliance) is an added cost of doing business which absolutely could be enough to keep a business from starting up.

You don't need NN to get telcos to behave. When did Comcast lower their prices and up their speeds? When Google Fiber came to town. When did Google Fiber come to town? When they got the municipality to remove as many barriers-to-entry as they could

> The argument is that your carrier can now block you from getting information relevant to your rights

That's not an argument.

> So you may no longer be able to search for an abortion clinic, or newspapers that have negative articles about the government could be blocked, internet services in poor black neighborhoods may have their access to educational materials limited, etc.

None of these hypotheticals are being seriously contemplated as potential outcomes of the FCC relinquishing its Title II authority over ISPs. Let's focus on the likely outcomes, not the unlikely ones.

Aluminum was once worth more than gold.

https://gizmodo.com/how-aluminum-cost-more-than-gold-1575564...

You've not supported your conclusion that we "need" a non-human baby factory with any actual argument or facts.

Surely the simplest solution to the reproductive question during space colonization is to send along a doctor or midwife with the couples headed out from earth?

Humans are really good at making this happen.

I'll have a go. Here's a few that seem almost axiomatic to me but that I think might be somewhat less so to this crowd:

- Words are important. Choose them carefully. Hear them carefully.

- "Tolerating everyone but the intolerant" is no real tolerance at all.

- Only being "free" to hold your views in private, is no real freedom at all. Freedoms of speech and association and religion must be public freedoms if they are to be meaningful in any real sense.

- There's a continuum that exists between equality and freedom. Governments and society can more-or-less choose where they sit on the continuum, but can't move more towards one value without trading off some of the other.

- Prices agreed to by individuals in a free market (read: without coercion) are a statement each individual is making about the value of the good or service being traded. What's a "fair wage" for mowing lawns? What's a "fair price" for a watermelon? How much is "too much" profit for a legal firm? Capitalism is nothing more than a recognition that built into humanity is a desire to trade what you have for what you want, and a declaration that the Free Market is the most economical (read: efficient) way for humans to fulfill that desire. Following on from the previous axiom, you can certainly declare a "fair price for watermelon", but you're removing the freedom of individuals to decide for themselves how they value the world around them.

- Be highly skeptical of anyone handing out pitchforks. And learn to recognize when you're being handed one in a news article, youtube video, reddit comment, political ad, etc., etc.

- When you feel like the world is full of people who aren't changing their values fast enough, remember Chesterton's Fence[0]. In the main, the world around you exists the way it does for a reason (or for a plethora of reasons), and if you don't understand that reason, you're less likely to understand what the right fix is.

- Debt (of all kinds: student, mortgage, business) is a promise you're making about your future. The older, more formal term for a loan is a "promissory note".

- Before you make any promise, consider your ability to predict and control the future.

- Constraints are natural pressures, disadvantages, and discomforts that can be helpful in decision-making. Don't avoid painful situations.

(I think those last three make a powerful argument for bootstrapping startups instead of chasing VC funding or debt.)

- We will always have "bad" laws. There is no one set of guidelines which humanity will ever discover that will cleanly cover all use cases and will be agreed upon as being right by everyone.

- Humans are moral creatures. Whenever anyone uses the word "should" or "ought" in a sentence, they're making a moral statement. Hawking may be a world leading physicist, but when he declared philosophy to be dead, there's a reason philosopher's all around the world shot milk out their noses[1].

- You can't legislate morality. But in a democracy, legislation is the lowest-common-denominator of the morality of the governed. This means that just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's moral. It also means that in a society which encourages diversity of values, you'll have less common ground upon which to legislate.

- Don't act surprised when someone is ignorant of a fact or subject which you know. Help them understand it with humility.

- Don't hesitate to disclose your ignorance of a subject to someone who can help you learn more about it. They may not want to point out your ignorance, and silently pretending you do understand it only keeps you from learning new things.

- Corporations are people. Or more precisely, its impossible to separate out the corporate entity's values and behavior from its owners' values and behavior.

- As much as possible, have your mind made up how you will handle pressure to compromise on your values before you're in a tenuous situation.

- Don't worry about "missing out". FOMO is terrible justification for doing things you wouldn't otherwise do. Though this isn't an argument against spontaneity.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton.27...

[1]: https://www.quora.com/How-are-philosophers-reacting-to-Steph...

PSA: Death is coming. You are going to die. Your parents are going to die. Your kids are going to die. Everyone you know is going to die.

Are there things which you can do to reduce your risk of dying earlier than the average person born at the same time as you? Sure.

Are there things which you can do to definitely prolong your life? No.

Death is a statistics game and 1 out of every 1 people will die at some point in their life.

I don't begrudge anyone their interest in dietary/health news, but articles like this get tossed about as justifications for making huge swings in your diet or telling others to do the same. Whenever I see things like this, it strikes me the same as an article like "The next iphone will use transparent, flexible, waterproof plastic".

Like engineering, your diet involves making tradeoffs about the food you input into your body, optimizing for a desired result (in terms of longevity of life, physical capability while alive, enjoyment of food you are eating, scarcity of resources, environmental impact, cruelty to animals - perceived or otherwise, etc.). Also like engineering, there are hard constraints which hem in the possible solution space. Pick your desired result, and make the tradeoffs you want, just don't forget the hard constraint that death is coming, my friends.

Anecdotally, this might be more on-my-mind than usual because my 66-year-old uncle, who eats fish, fresh fruit and vegetables, and jogs every day, collapsed this weekend from a heart attack and is now in the hospital in a coma. I would have said the above regardless, but it's a rather poignant reminder for me at the moment.

Yes.

- There are fewer white men in the NBA because they are biologically unsuited to it.

- There are fewer tall fighter pilots because they are biologically unsuited to it.

- There are fewer women as pitchers in the MLB because they are biologically unsuited to it.

These are descriptive statements about reality. The world in which we find ourselves. You may not like that world, you may think we should change the rules of that world, but it is the world as it exists today. Calling it out as such can not rationally be considered offensive.

Yes, we wouldn't want to mischaracterize what the main thrust of someone's message is by putting up a straw man argument and then criticizing them for it. /s

Zunger's response makes it clear that the promulgation of ideas in the memo are unacceptable, but is strangely silent on judging the actions of the hypothetical face-puncher.

And as we now know from Google, taking no action is tantamount to endorsing the opinions of those under you.