HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

varvar

2 karma · joined August 9, 2018

submissionscomments
varvar··on The level of Mac malware is not acceptable, says Apple exec at Epic trial
Don't you know, we're supposed to martyr ourselves for humanity. Profits bad.
varvar··on Man to pay £25,000 ($34,000) damages over negative TrustPilot review
So basically.. nothing out of the norm.
varvar··on Diamonds aren’t special and neither is love
Let's see if this comment is still too real for the current beliefs.

It's ok people. Mandatory romantic love is a few decades old social convention. Before that it still existed and it was optional, and it was understood that people appraise one another more on ego level, and materially first. You could have marriage and children with or without romantic love. It was an extra some people had the luck to have.

We still do these things automatically, but unfortunately in secret. Before that it was done openly.

varvar··on ‘Meme stock’ rally rescues AMC theaters from $600M debt
New regulations are implicitly a good thing? We are all supposed to be on board with this? How come?
varvar··on The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try
What you're missing in my opinion is how profitable drumming up existential fears about climate change in the population has been over the decades.
varvar··on Silicon Valley is shutting down speech loopholes. Latest target: live content
The philosophy that those who hold the power have will be the one winning, since they have the actual means to impose it, regardless of arguments.

In this case it is Utilitarian ethics.

varvar··on Earth Has Lost 28 Trillion Tons of Ice Since the Mid-1990s
Ahh, who cares, we're just drumming up another existential crisis narrative again. Governments must spend trillions now to fix the ice problem, otherwise we're all going to die terrible deaths being flooded by water in our homes while night browsing on our smartphones instead of sleeping..... Rather ask "how much should each person give to fix this terrible problem."
varvar··on The computer revolution hasn’t happened yet (1997)
That's just mostly viral hype thinking, maintained sometimes by key people in the industry through the press, because it drives money to them and willingness to work for less in certain cases.

The decades around 1900 were more innovative than what we've been experiencing the last decades.

And yes you can find people thinking the same thing way back in history, with the difference is that now it's been psychotically amplified by mass media, and it is actually annoying.

In popular press, and when people have things to sell, they do not include historical facts, because then they cannot drive the hype to new degrees, if they the include historical facts.

You may think that they have done their homework when they say "never before in history" but they have either never checked or deliberately ignored history.

I've had people I know, and the press swearing up and down that 'this time it's different' since the 90s when it comes to 'A.I' for instance. I'm sure older guys can go back even earlier and remember 'the impending A.I revolution'. Sweet money in that hyped narrative.

If you think that "this time it will be different" - congrats they got into your brain, and they do not care that they have done it just 10 years prior. With enough repetition of the same information, and the way the human memory works - it doesn't really matter.

You will help them every time by reliably assuming that someone else cared enough to check history before saying that something is "historical", "first time", "never before in millions of years of human civilization". They haven't, and it doesn't matter for their goals.

One of these times something will eventually happen. Until then PR money, clickbaits, VC money, startups.. the whole classical techno-utopian centrifuge.

varvar··on New six-film series from Adam Curtis
Democracy + Capitalism was supposed to bring freedom to the world.. instead it bought domination, and realization, that it all comes down to who holds the power. The typical classical reality fundamentals.

Techno-utopianism was supposed to bring freedom to the world... instead it bought domination by the Big Tech, and realization that it all comes down to who holds the power. The classical reality fundamentals.

There are a few more cases.. it's Faust all over again, that turns into kind of a half-scam along the way to attract VC money or your money, then culminates into a power grab.

"The next revolution in X"!, blah, blah.. blahblah.. blah.

"We're no better than believing in or living in a Harry Potter novel sometimes" is more like his message - but it's a fact that societies like to look at the least of all facts. After all, that might prevent the next high-yield psychotic mass scam from occurring.

I don't know - I'm not a westerner, so perhaps it's "normal" for high IQ individuals to create or mis-use abstract mini-ideologies, mini-religions really, dress them as a New world, a Revolution really, to exploit individuals like workhorses over the span of many decades, until they realize that this was an illusion.

Btw we can't spin it like "Ooh, but if it wasn't for this silliness, we wouldn't have computers or the internet now". I disagree. You can't know that. Perhaps the ideology wasn't needed at all for technological development. Maybe it made for inspiration here and there, but that's it.

So.. I don't think that "try again" is his message at all. Watch more of his documentaries and it will become clear.

varvar··on TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
The funny thing is that as long as you render any kind of services on any level, they are inevitably to society, you're already benefitting it. Society has exploited your skill, and you have benefitted its members with your services, and for that you get paid.

Nobody owes "society" past that point, but it's extremely profitable in the West, specifically, to double tax people with guilt trips into having artificial indebtedness to "society".

varvar··on 70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers
It's amazing isn't it? Principles, ethics.. all talk for a lot of people, situations like these show it. Watch them spin it as a good thing for humanity as a whole. Amazing.
varvar··on Wikipedia is 20
I think he is known for being the creator of Brave nowadays, and most likely that's how he will be remembered, thanks to the SJW-leftist overreaction to his rather insignificant donation of $1000, and his own subsequent creative output while working on Brave of course.
varvar··on In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice
Hah this article. Was this even wikipedia? So it concludes that we need to take down the Patriarchy and the Sexism in India.

So I was right. We need to intervene in their society, and change it to liberate their women. Because we know best. And whoever doesn't align with that, must be supportive of violence against women. Shame on them too.

varvar··on U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests
implying CNN and so on have any different motifs? Amusing.
varvar··on In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice
Liberating women from what exactly?

It all seems ridiculous myth making, considering what indians have shared here on HN about how much asymmetrical power indian women have available through the court system in India, and the sort of abuses they inflict regularly, the misuse of the assymetry for material gain etc.

But yeah I get it. It's the new Democracy + Capitalism freedom making program they NEED to go through for their own good.

varvar··on Chinese economy to overtake US 'by 2028' due to Covid
Ahh, back to the "Chinese economy to overtake US" narrative. I wonder why.

Reports, studies, facts, documentaries the whole circus to be resurrected as well I'm guessing.

varvar··on Operation Elop: The final years of Nokia’s mobile phones (2017)
That's the problem with anecdotes... they only represent your very narrow window of experience while ignoring literally every other person on the planet.
varvar··on The Essex Boys: how nine traders hit a gusher with negative oil
Who the heck is society? That's just us. But we don't come together and decide like that, so I don't think society exists in the abstract the way you think it does.

It's more like this is how reality is. You've probably never been a trader, most traders lose their money, it's an extremely risky profession. For every win you hear about there are at least 10 losers.

At the end of the day the activity of traders readjusts the asset prices on ongoing basis closer to their true valuation. The more trading occurs the more precise the price is. Without enough trading activity an end user might be forced to overpay for an asset.

varvar··on Apple has stopped providing standalone installers for macOS updates
When was HN into excusing Apple? It's pretty much run of the mill apple emotional hate club.

Quote from the thread

"Apple finally has shown their true colours and no form of hardware or software advancement will push me to use their products. Can you imagine the world without Linux or BSD alternatives? What a nightmare."

varvar··on Apple has stopped providing standalone installers for macOS updates
Apple Bad Fanboy Club
varvar··on Apple has stopped providing standalone installers for macOS updates
Naah, don't you see this is about Freedom vs Slavery for all of the US, and perhaps all of humanity, so all developers should quit Apple and join Google or Microsoft to save the humanity.
varvar··on Twitter limits users interacting with Trump's tweets about 'stolen' election
Yeah, mud them those waters.
varvar··on Isaac Newton’s attempts to unlock secret code of pyramids
Alchemy means "the process of transmutation by which to fuse or reunite with the divine or original form" which in reality doesn't deal with concrete materials, but it is about something akin to psychological transformation.

Practitioners of alchemy would uphold deceptive ideas about it, in order to protect themselves.

I highly doubt that Newton was as silly and foolish as misunderstanding what alchemy is fundamentally about. However supposedly he was found to have mercury in his hair upon being found dead, which certainly discredits the occult and esoteric part of his studies.

The public image of Newton is heavily shaped by the British Government, the whole thing about the Enlightement scientist that society is supposed to emulate and so on. It's quite the rabbit hole to investigate.

varvar··on Americans are more worried about their sons than their daughters
The pen is not mightier than the sword. I know a lot of intellectually inclined people like to think so. I know I used to too. Having a real world masculine power is the only way to live a non-avoidant, full life as a male.
varvar··on How does a video codec work?
Dem Ego Battles. Second most important thing in an Engineer’s life, after getting the job done. Keeps it all going nicely.
varvar··on If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011)
The myths are promoted as means to raise hope in the "little man" and to attract new blood (workers) to the specific industries, thinking they can also become as big as the stars of that industry, starting with very little.

This is very deceptive, and probably gets people into trouble more often than not, changing their long term orbits based on fantasies built on selective factology about what is enough for success.

varvar··on IPOs are expensive and cumbersome – Try a direct listing, like we did at Spotify
But you make a lot of specific efforts to keep them such society wise? If you keep them ignorant en masse, then you can introduce only partial services, charge, and then introduce a bit more, charge.. etc.

It is possible to start off in a great way, instead of this way which is very manipulative, and depends on keeping them ignorant.

Anyway maybe it was just the typical programmer arrogance, so then I am.. still not sorry.

varvar··on IPOs are expensive and cumbersome – Try a direct listing, like we did at Spotify
Yeah but it's kind of bad feel of slight deception to it, no?

The whole story thing, I think it's sometimes a bit of a excessive Western thing, that yes it works, that may at some point become even boring to listen to,

Yet another cooked story. Rags2riches and what not. The garage (but son of a lawyer or a banker) the rise to fame and glory (from the garage right) blabla.

It is damaging but it's too contextual and subtle to see in a civilization hat still currently likes to cut off a lot of context. Even a lot of such stories are possible only due to big de-contextualization culture wise, which forces everyone into this deception game. Which on top brings money, but must have negative effects which are very hard to grasp/see.

I don't know. This is too deep and "you" are not supposed to talk about how it works in public.. don't ask don't tell.. sneaky operators.