wrren

Apart from the slippery slope problem, which is absolutely a factor in the evolving lanscape of social justice, these changes usually require cognitive overhead and engineering effort to switch to.

Ultimately, the positive impact is totally unproven. I think it ought to be up to advocates of these changes to prove that they provide any benefits to minorities. I've heard as much talk from members of minority groups saying that they find it infantilizing and performative as I have from those who approve of the change.

'Connect to an existing node' is likely implemented using ERTS (http://erlang.org/doc/reference_manual/distributed.html). So you're basically connecting to the runtime of the target node. The security model for ERTS isn't great, though, so your point stands. All you need is a matching secure cookie and you can connect and run any commands you want.

Some, yes.

Over a long enough timeline, all languages converge on the Erlang feature set!

You're leaping to an incredibly negative assumption of the speaker's intent, and then onto a form of punishment for that person. I think the "assume good intent" approach is more appropriate in these kinds of situations where it's incredibly ambiguous.

That's not an accurate analogy. These platforms were happy to cater to Trump over the course of his presidency because he enriched them, this is not some moral stance they're taking now, it's the output of a cost-benefit analysis.

Social media is now the public square, and these tech giants have incredible power to promote or suppress opinions. This isn't analogous to a bar admitting or rejecting clients, that's similar to likening the national debt to household debt; it masks a much more complex and consequential discussion.

Being on Substack solves the problem of censorship by way of one's editor or organization. It re-introduces the problem of unedited journalism; i.e journalism that isn't passed through a degree of peer review to ensure rigour. It seems as though it's no longer guarantee both full journalistic freedom and rigour at the same time.

It's likely that the author is running Windows 10 Home edition, which is probably more aggressive than the Pro version about annoying users.

I'd be extremely wary of adopting any new Google product given their tendency to abandon things that don't achieve immediate success.

Because it's an expression of a corrupt system where CEO pay is public, and thus it's easy for candidates to negotiate, but employees are strongly discouraged from sharing their own pay data or are prevented from seeing the company's own pay bands.

Where swathes of employees are let go when a company underperforms, but no-one is held accountable for making the strategic blunders that got them there.

Where employees who try to unionize are targeted by their employers and harassed out or outright fired because companies are terrified of collective bargaining.

Yeah, I'd also side with the CEO in terms of his Twitter reply, but not with shutting the site down. I think the OP going to complain on Twitter is going overboard; it's not as though he didn't get any warning at all before being upgraded and he is using features that he's expected to pay for.

A key difference there is that paying for your own military directly benefits your interests, whereas countries can engage in a race to the bottom with carbon removal wherein they rely on others to shoulder the burden while still enjoying the benefits.

Matt Taibbi's had a few good articles on this recently. Some excerpts:

"Cancelations already are happening too fast to track. In a phenomenon that will be familiar to students of Russian history, accusers are beginning to appear alongside the accused. Three years ago a popular Canadian writer named Hal Niedzviecki was denounced for expressing the opinion that “anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities." He reportedly was forced out of the Writer’s Union of Canada for the crime of “cultural appropriation,” and denounced as a racist by many, including a poet named Gwen Benaway. The latter said Niedzviecki “doesn’t see the humanity of indigenous peoples.” Last week, Benaway herself was denounced on Twitter for failing to provide proof that she was Indigenous.

Michael Korenberg, the chair of the board at the University of British Columbia, was forced to resign for liking tweets by Dinesh D’Souza and Donald Trump, which you might think is fine – but what about Latino electrical worker Emmanuel Cafferty, fired after a white activist took a photo of him making an OK symbol (it was described online as a “white power” sign)? How about Sue Schafer, the heretofore unknown graphic designer the Washington Post decided to out in a 3000-word article for attending a Halloween party two years ago in blackface (a failed parody of a different blackface incident involving Megyn Kelly)? She was fired, of course. How was this news? Why was ruining this person’s life necessary?"

I didn't say they were less important, just that they're more easily solved.

People expressing their opinions about one's ideas is not cancel culture: it's when critics go one step further and try to destroy the person they disagree with.

Many people have lost their livelihoods and even more are afraid to express their opinion at all because of the disproportionate cost they might incur.

People having been structurally shielded from mob justice in the past is a state worth returning to.

The current practices and thought-processes of social justice advocates are hyper-conformist in my opinion.

Because there's a mechanism for changing that government: the upcoming presidential election. Whereas changing a cultural movement like the one we're watching unfold is a lot more difficult.

Because we live in a society.

Even a dictatorship can be put under pressure if enough of its subjects take a stand. The relationship between employer and employee is a continuous negotiation. Facebook has put something new on the table: we expect you to look the other way when Trump calls for violence.

If enough employees push back it's very likely that Facebook will change its stance, regardless of whatever power Mark thinks he has.

The idea that Elon Musk would stop producing electric cars or solar panels in the event that he was made to stop questionable management tactics within his companies is an odd one. I realise that the U.S' regulatory appetite isn't what it used to be, so he'll probably keep getting away with this kind of thing, but you shouldn't have to accept his or any other leader's bad behaviour in exchange for the goods his company provides.

Sure thing boss, and maybe I'll drag the country over and connect it to the mainland and then see if I can seed the place with valuable ores, oil, etc. That'll solve the problem

As an Irish person, I consider this perspective to be hilariously naive. Without tax incentives, our ability to attract foreign direct investment is massively reduced and the jobs that need to attract will instead go to mainland Europe.

It might work if we started by establishing a framework of financial transfers between states, but without something like that in place Ireland and a bunch of smaller countries will keep vetoing attempts to normalise tax rates.

I'm not sure what this has to do with the article; it doesn't make any judgements on women's suitability for careers in STEM. Where it does talk about ability, it points out that women are, on average, better at science and maths than men. I think the article is making a similar point to that of Damore's memo; the difference in representation may be explained by a difference in preference. That's not a value judgement of capability.

Is Milo a white nationalist? I always thought he was just the Breitbart court jester. In any case, I don't agree with just discarding nuance in these discussions; "fully enlightened" could mean anything from his libertarianism to his support of Trump as a candidate.

Unless Thiel, or anyone else really, comes out with some statement on the superiority of whites or the need to get rid of non-whites, let's desist from rushing to slap these labels on them.

That's hardly definitive. People really should be more careful about throwing around these extreme labels; it completely dilutes their impact when you apply them on a whim.

I was responding to this element of the parent post: "The low point to me is how some (reference in the article) feel justified in leaking conversations and personal details of their coworkers to the likes of Breitbart.". Tit-for-tat tactics aren't justifiable, but they're hardly surprising and I was pointing out that by leaking the memo, one side legitimized that tactic. It's an observation, not a value judgement.

Something tells me it wasn't a conservative that originally leaked Damore's memo; I think it was likely a left-wing idealogue who're unable to tolerate alternative perspectives on the subject of diversity.

And let's be completely honest, Damore's memo was mischaracterized in the wider media; at no point did he say that women made worse engineers than men, and at no point were his suggestions regarding improving Google's diversity efforts (which is something he spent time and thought on) even glanced at by his detractors. I'd challenge anyone who thinks I'm misinterpreting the memo to prove me wrong; I would welcome being corrected as right now the coverage of Damore makes me feel like the only sane person in the crazy house.

Why didn't they say "Bigots should be fired?". By inserting race or gender into the statement, you're singling out a group as being the only offenders.

I like the syntax, but I have to say that I prefer JSX. The real advantage of JSX is that it's very similar to HTML and developers have been reading, mentally modeling and reasoning about HTML -> DOM translation for decades.

It's a bit disingenuous to say that those who agree with the memo focus only on individual merit and not team fit. Regardless of the importance of diversity to a given organization, every good interview process will evaluate how well a candidate will fit with an existing team and try to understand how that person will improve the team's performance.

Also, if I replace the term 'sausage fest' in your last sentence with 'clam bake' (apparently the opposite meaning), then it definitely comes off as sexist in my mind. I've worked with both genders throughout my career, and the only truth I've found is that you can't count on anyone to fit their gender's stereotypes with regards to personality. I've met plenty of men who are shy and quiet and plenty of women who are aggressive or assertive; counting on a person's gender to mix things up in a group setting is, in itself, sexist.