nvrgrls posted:

Are more people posting in slashdot or in the forums these days

ally oop

Cybernetic Vermin posted:

read phoronix comments for the old slashdot grognard feel without it being quite as depressing

constant flamewars about how wayland and systemd is terrible, that sort of thing. very light and breezy entertainment content.

hobbesmaster posted:

you’d think they’d all be angry about snaps now

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I think the level of racism and sexism on HN is roughly optimal. It isn't enough to drive people away, but discussions are still allowed. Too much and you create a racist/sexist monoculture.

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t2hrow 1 hour ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]


Taking a shower is easy, but performing mental gymnastics 24/7 not to be have a sexist or antisemitic thought would drain my energy.

nudgenudgetilt posted:

quote:

Beliefs that are labelled as racism, transphobia, and sexism are often sensible beliefs. Combined with smelling bad, they imply to me in a person a prioritisation of sincere intellectual pursuit over popularity and financial success/social success more generally.

Qwertycoatl posted:

my god that thread

Qwertycoatl posted:

my god that thread

quote:

1attice 24 minutes ago | unvote | parent | prev | next [–]

[EDIT: 2023-03-19@20:12PDT : s/esteem/respect/g, to match Rawls' usage.]

The anger you notice is not context-free. People are shouty because:

- There are livelihoods at stake

- Worse, there are systems of respect at stake, many of which underwrite people (artists, coders, etc) feeling good about themselves. Rawls is a great reference point for this; feeling like you can contribute meaningfully (in a way that is meaningful for you) is one of the prereqs for social stability (said Rawls: https://academic.oup.com/book/32571/chapter-abstract/2703665...)

- We tech bros (or bras, in my case) do have a notable pattern of disrupting-for-profit. I mean, even middlebrow fare like _Glass Onion_ now casts us as villains at worst, and stooges and best, and it would be good to slow down for a moment to consider if they might be seeing something real about us. (Ask an NYC taxi medallion holder.)

- Creatives, especially, were already at a profound breaking point, one that is not easily communicated to those outside the disciplines in question; see https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53935644-the-death-of-th... . It was created by, yes, our industry, and began in the nineties, before at least some of the readership here was born, and picked up steam ever decade thereafter.

Much like the early days of climate change reportage in oil/gas sector, the historic & intersubjectively verifiable externalities of our industry's (frankly incredible) progress feel ego-dystonic. It doesn't seem fair that something as fun as what we do could cause immiseration.

This --- to draw a tidy circle --- is because tech progress is part of our self-respect. And non-harming is part of most non-sociopathic self-respect, including our own. This is, in a word, a threat to our sense of self. A threat to our identity, and worse, a risk of moral injury.

'Moral injury' -- the harm to the self that comes from having done something wrong or harmful to someone else -- is one of the most profound roots of, e.g. PTSD in soldiers, and most humans intuitively avoid it at any cost.

One inefficient way of avoiding it is to avoid admitting that you did anything wrong, for example, by shouting back that you didn't do anything wrong.

In the long term, this works out about as well as you'd expect.

--

A quick closing word about the comments on the parent that advocate a sensible calm sit-down to work out solutions:

People are absolutely not going to have a quiet sit-down about how to fix this problem because we all know full well that very few liberal democracies remain functional enough to stickhandle everyone through such an enormous change. The USA, for example, can barely pass a budget; you think that you can get UBI through? Which would still do nothing about that Rawlsian self-respect, which, again, is just as significant to a healthy human as air, water, or food (and is therefore vital to social stability, in the same way that a steady supply of food is vital.)

Shouting is one of the few avenues left for self-expression, and thus, self-respect. No one wants to go quietly, and 'going' -- whether it be from a job, a career, a family, or even a home -- is quite clearly what is now in the cards for a great many.

And they are shouting at us because we do this poo poo on the regular. But never like this before. We went large with it. Did we ever.

fritz posted:

thrown123098 4 hours ago | undown | parent | context | flag | on: Ask HN: Why do many CS graduates lack foundational...

My computer is very much a Turing machine since each time it runs out of disk space I can buy more disks. The fact you think a Turing machine has infinite memory rather than finite but arbitrarily large memory tells me all I need to know about the sorry state of your theoretical education.

fritz posted:

thrown123098 4 hours ago | undown | parent | context | flag | on: Ask HN: Why do many CS graduates lack foundational...

My computer is very much a Turing machine since each time it runs out of disk space I can buy more disks. The fact you think a Turing machine has infinite memory rather than finite but arbitrarily large memory tells me all I need to know about the sorry state of your theoretical education.

fritz posted:

thrown123098 4 hours ago | undown | parent | context | flag | on: Ask HN: Why do many CS graduates lack foundational...

My computer is very much a Turing machine since each time it runs out of disk space I can buy more disks. The fact you think a Turing machine has infinite memory rather than finite but arbitrarily large memory tells me all I need to know about the sorry state of your theoretical education.

Maximo Roboto posted:

euroderf 5 days ago | root | parent | prev | next [–]

All this implies that shields and/or "lasers" employ massive amounts of energy. Yet both are man-portable. What gives ?
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wordyskeleton 5 days ago | root | parent | next [–]

big worm on sand planet make spice that give prophetic ability. yet this is not how worms work. what gives?

fritz posted:

hn thread: IBM’s role in Germany in the 40s was horrific, but it proved their ideas of tabulations and files were promising.

Neon Noodle posted:

fritz posted:

bertil 2 hours ago | next [–]

I’m all for holding companies that have supported dangerous regimes to account. However, when it comes to data management, totalitarian regimes rarely indicate inadequate implementation. IBM’s role in Germany in the 40s was horrific, but it proved their ideas of tabulations and files were promising. Just like with rocketry, there were many valuable things to learn that defined the rest of the XXth century.
The FSB likely has a lot of crimes to atone for. Still, suppose one of their specialists publishes something on data management or how to manage hundreds of sock-puppet social media accounts. In that case, I’d be tempted to listen and learn from a likely expert—unless you suspect that they think this article is not sincere and meant as a distraction from actual good practices.
Similarly, the CIA has done very problematic things, but the people who worked in the disguise department have a creative take on changing your appearance. I’m unsure when I would have to do that, but I’m always curious about how data is stored efficiently. And yes, like the FSB, the NSA has opinions about that, and those are typically well-informed.
Was their practice constitutional? Seemingly not, IANAL. But do they have good insights into caching video files at scale? Definitely.
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