Hacker News Reader

skylan_qon “Evicted”, an ethnographic study of tenants in low-income housing (2016)

Poverty should be considered the natural state of humanity, not an anomaly that needs explanation.

This is the truth. But for clarification that's not to say that we shouldn't fight it.

skylan_qon U.K. Parliament Gives Theresa May Permission to Start Brexit

There was a referendum and a parliamentary vote. What else would need to be done to not make it an aberration?

skylan_qon U.K. Parliament Gives Theresa May Permission to Start Brexit

It doesn't matter how many votes there are or how many times it's done, it's not democracy if it's not the outcome you like.

skylan_qon Intel Is Trying to Manipulate AMD Ryzen Launch?

I sure hope Intel is not up to the same antitrust-worthy shenanigans again.

This is what it smells like to me. I hope they've learned from this, though.

skylan_qon I just deleted 36K tweets

Everyone I know from #FrogTwitter got banned so the remaining few went back and deleted all their tweets.

skylan_qon What I Heard from Trump Supporters

I'm curious to whether the Democrats will ever come to terms with reality here, or will they just double down and continue the blame game?

I've been following. They're doubling down on the Russia conspiracy theories, identity politics, alluding to Trump being Hitler. The party is in shambles, philosophically speaking. It's a shame. It's also ironic that Trump has pictures of President Andrew Jackson(D) in his office.

skylan_qon What I Heard from Trump Supporters

It means what it says it means. He's in an echo chamber and well-grounded counterfactuals are no longer worth considering anymore.

skylan_qon Expanding Fact Checking at Google

And what's the difference?

skylan_qon Expanding Fact Checking at Google

Fact checking is a good tool (critical thinking and self-verification would be better).

Humans don't act this way and don't respond to it. The media isn't out to inform people through content, but to program people through delivery.

The only result of this will be to have people say "SEE! GOOGLE SAYS IT'S TRUE/FAKE!" And they'll share the headline on Facebook/Twitter and be done with it.

People don't act rationally anymore, especially when it comes to media.

Media outlets have agendas. The press hasn't been free in a long time. https://medium.com/@SarahRRunge/amazon-the-washington-post-a...

skylan_qon Expanding Fact Checking at Google

Whether Google is good or not is irrelevant to whether your particular accusation is baseless.

The perception of whether Google is good or not is all that matters. This is how media and mass psychology works. This isn't about fact-checking stories. It's about using Google's brand to deem specific stories to be real or fake.

skylan_qon Expanding Fact Checking at Google

I'm for it.

I'm saying that it doesn't really solve the problem of lies in mass media and the impact of the lies. It's a mitigating factor at best, a polarizer at worst.

skylan_qon Expanding Fact Checking at Google

Google was good. Then Google was bad. Then the Democrats lost the election and Google was good again.

skylan_qon Expanding Fact Checking at Google

Cheap labor. There's plenty out there. Google will tell them what the facts are and they'll promote/hide stories based on truthiness.

skylan_qon Expanding Fact Checking at Google

He's right, though. Google itself cannot be trusted. The size of the organization itself along with how many state actors it's colluding with should set off alarms.

skylan_qon Expanding Fact Checking at Google

Rumours spread fast. Corrections to rumours don't fully negate the rumours.

Journalists are also held less accountable than even elected officials these days.

skylan_qon Expanding Fact Checking at Google

Agreed. An important part to this is transparency of the members working on this as well. Almost every fact-checker I've read up on has a conflict of interest on many of the "facts" they're checking.

skylan_qon Industrial Revolution Comparisons Aren't Comforting

I can't wait for automation to take away the jobs of people who write "automation will take away our jobs" articles.

We're not far off, right?

http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/about.php

Then again, maybe these are generated articles. Hmmm....

skylan_qon I say, damn it, where are the beds? New books on Orwell

Excellent analysis. Completely agree.

I have never seen a piece complaining about the usage in "insurgent" vs. "rebel" when the news speaks of foreign affairs, but that is a perfect example of newspeak.

Instead, we speak of newspeak because the new president doesn't like "politically correct" speech.

What?

skylan_qon I say, damn it, where are the beds? New books on Orwell

Political correctness isn't language control... attacking it is!!

skylan_qon George Orwell’s 1984 is currently the top selling book on Amazon

I don't get why everyone assumes that you can only be a female if you have a vagina

skylan_qon George Orwell’s 1984 is currently the top selling book on Amazon

but only the media can be right cause DRUMPF

skylan_qon Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out

What's your point? That not all terrorists are from abroad? We know that. Why is it necessary to bring in people who have high risks of radicalizing? Homegrown terror isn't a reason to stop trying altogether.

skylan_qon Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out

You're right. You've changed my mind.

They need to get rid of all counter-terrorism operations and ignore the problem because all attempts to stop any attacks have been without effect.

skylan_qon Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out

Your source (correctly) says they were mostly from Saudi Arabia, which has a rather extensive history over several decades of terrorist attacks

That's a detail that doesn't matter. What matters is that we open the doors to men who have high risk of radicalization and ties to rich Saudis, bigot.

skylan_qon Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out

An option: Stop immigration from places that are prone to terrorist attacks happening and then you won't have to give up nearly as much privacy in the name of fighting terror at home.

skylan_qon Obama Expands Surveillance Powers on His Way Out

https://twitter.com/WLTaskForce/status/819900557049597953?re...

He's giving intel agencies more power in an attempt to box in Trump.

skylan_qon Calling bullshit

Good job. This is an example of falling into the 3rd category and not the first.

skylan_qon A Threat to U.S. Democracy: Political Dysfunction

This practice has been in place for the past 50+ years and practiced by all advanced and developing economies.

The question is to what end will this be done, and will it be effective in reaching that end?

skylan_qon A Threat to U.S. Democracy: Political Dysfunction

He's a populist, which is bad, but lost the popular vote (which is probably the biggest marker of a populist) so therefore... what, where was I again?

skylan_qon Inequality and Skin in the Game

"capitalism"

That word is the problem. It means something different for every person. To you it means one thing, to him it means another. When people criticize capitalism their arguments are always convincing because you project your own negative connotations into the word.