BaronVonSteuben

I don't agree. "Diversity" has a commonly accepted meaning which in the US at least, means everything except white men. Female or non-white are "diversity." A great example are the statements and articles from 2020 when Biden announced the most diverse ever White House Communications Team which was 100% female. Biden talked about how critical diversity was and bragged about this 100% female communications team. All the articles I read about it had things like "most diverse White House Communications Team in history" to describe it. At least from a gender perspective, I don't see how they could make it more clear that diversity == women

Thanks, that's an interesting idea. We have developers in the US, Europe, and South America. I have no idea what the median incomes are (or how the salary bands were calculated) but I'll check and see if there are enough consistencies to give a meaninful number.

For those of us pain patients who had their opioid-based medication taken "because of the opioid epidemic" (even though we did nothing wrong and had been stable for many years or even decades) and were just told to "use cannabis" by all the non-pain patients on the internet, and when we said "cannabis doesn't work for me" and you called us liars or said we are using it wrong, this study is not a big surprise.

Meanwhile people I know have been driven to suicide as their only (legal) option to escape the pain, or spending their food money for illegal opioids that might do nothing for you at best or kill you at worst (fentanyl), instead of having reasonable lives and getting safe and known medication from a pharmacy. And these are people who did nothing wrong and hurt nobody. I suspect history is not going to look back kindly on the people who have mismanaged this in such a grotesque and inhumane way (such as politicians and bureaucrats who waved a magic wand and decided that all doctors should scale some percentage of patients down or face legal threats from the DEA or FDA and possibly loss of license), under the guise of trying to help.

Wow, I'm really disappointed by that in Next.js. I love the product, and I'm sure they're being ethical about what they collect and how they track it, but I deploy this on my production servers. The idea of them doing stuff on my production instances that I'm not aware of and don't approve of is not pleasant. Not to say it's fine if it's on personal machines, because I don't think that is either, but yeah.

What's the scene like for music piracy nowadays? It seems like it was mostly gone. I've looked in a few different places and finding music released in the last 10 years is somewhat difficult. Do you just have to know where to look or is music piracy just dead/dying?

I've made this argument to many progressive friends, and nearly all of them replied with a variant of "you're 'bothsides'ing this" which apparently is supposed to mean your argument is invalid. That then leads to me pointing out that world isn't a clear binary and "both (major) sides" can be wrong or have problems. For some reason though, that seems to be the end of the conversation and no progress toward reaching agreement is made.

Won't somebody please think of the children??

I'd say it's more of an act of civil disobedience meant to draw attention to the casually corrupt practices of the NYPD.

Didn't the driver call the police though?

In this particular case I agree with you. But how would you write this into a law that citizens and police can reference to determine whether a particular action is ok or not?

I'm a social ignoramus so wondering: is the cyclist in this case being a "Karen"?

I have little sympathy for the driver, but it does seem like the cyclist should have reported the driver to the police rather than taking the law into their own hands.

Interesting, thanks for sharing. If you haven't tried it, Alprazolam (Xanax) has been a miracle for panic attacks, although these days it's pretty difficult to get from doctors. Modern American society seems to have decided that any medication that can possibly be abused is evil and must not be used even if somebody could really benefit from it. If you get some though, do NOT take it all the time and build a physical dependence. Withdrawing from Benzos is worse than opioids. If you only take it occasionally though you won't have any issues.

If you are willing to take anti-depressants, definitely go.

low testosterone though, is something many men (including me) have, but practically no doctor is willing to treat. They have one enormous range of "normal" that is calculated including 80 year old men and 20 year old men in the same pool (even though testosterone levels plummet as you age), and if you aren't in the 90 year old man levels (even as a 30 year old) insanely low category they'll just tell you "you're normal" and won't do anything.

After 5 years of getting worse and worse I read something online about that, and even though my levels was right around 300 (I'm in my low 30s) the doc dismissed it. I found a doc who would treat it tho. I'm on a small dose of testosterone replacement therapy, and I am already feeling so much better I can't even believe it. It honestly fills me with rage the way the medical establishment failed me and continues to fail men in this.

It sounds stupid, but seriously dairy causes a lot of issues for people. I hit rock bottom several years ago and did an elimination diet and found a few things I need to avoid, but the biggest one is dairy.

If I accidentally eat some dairy, starting about 2 days later and lasting for a few days, I'll feel really terrible about myself and like there is no hope. Often times there's some suicidal thoughts in there too. Absolutely not worth it.

Rabbit is definitely interesting. How is the maintenance/management on RabittMQ? Is it comparable to say a Postgres instance, or is it more or less?

Oh interesting, no I don't have a source for that. Just something I've read a bunch of times. Probably falls into the "if you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes true" (although I don't know that there was nefarious motives behind it, could be honest mistakes like mine)

What do people use as an alternative to SQS? I've had Kafka mentioned a few times but that's way heavier/more complicated than I need. Just a simple queue is perfect, and SQS' API is gloriously simple.

Interesting, I don't think I've noticed the same criticism for Brave. But many times when it has come up in discussions at work, people will say they don't want to use it and don't trust it because Brendan Eich is behind it. He donated money to Prop 8 in California many years ago (which at the time, was very popular. More than half the people in California supported it), and he was fired/cancelled for it (long before the term "cancel culture" was a thing). Unfortunately for Eich, the culture shifted radically during that time, and he became a target (see OkCupid[1]). IIRC it was like 7 or 8 or so years after Prop 8 that the news leaked, and like most Americans Eich had changed his mind on it. But it didn't/doesn't matter, he has been branded and is forever tainted.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26868536

Oh absolutely. The reason the Boston Tea Party is celebrated is because their side won the war. Had the British won, it would have been one of the many wicked/evil "rebellions" against the King that got crushed.

But I'm not really seeing the connection here or why it invalidates the Unabomber example.

I don't think it's cynical at all, I think it's just accepting reality. Our advanced consciousness is just a very thin layer of abstraction on top of the same brain/mind that powers many other animals. Some of the best minds who study this, question if there's even any such thing as "free will" at all.

I don't think recognizing that is conflicting at all with a positive outlook, or the choice to be optimistic, or a humanist, etc. You can choose to believe it or choose not to believe it, and still value human life and try to progress humanity forward.

Also don't underestimate the value/incentive of following your conscience, acting out your beliefs etc. Cognitive dissonance (which results from not doing so) is deeply uncomfortable and a good motivator for being "altruistic."

If you have the power to do something and you don't, that's taking a side. You either oppose something or you enable it. At least own that. If you're saying you're neutral, you either agree with the unpopular side and are scared to admit it, or you can't form an opinion because you're uninformed and thus uncivil, or you feel unaffected by what's happening and thus discompassionate. Either way, that's pretty much the definition of "acting like a kid".

I think this is an interesting argument, and I think it translates to a real world example quite well. For example, if my older kid hits younger kid I have to either:

1. Punish the older kid, taking the "side" of the younger kid

2. Not punish the older kid, thus taking the "side" of the older kid

however I think there's more nuance here than just that, because either of the kids could be lying. I wasn't' there, I have no video footage or proof, so I can only investigate and interrogate, and at some point I have to make a decision. Often times it comes down to the question of which is worse? Punishing an innocent kid, or letting a crime go unpunished?

The answer to that is far from clear to me. As an authority and neutral arbiter, I have a duty to administer justice, and I don't think taking a view that punishing an innocence can be worse than not punishing a guilty (obviously individual circumstances really matter here).

I also have a full time job, and I can't arbitrate between my kids all day long. I have limited time/attention. Given that there are dozens of issues every day that come up, and I don't have enough bandwidth to handle them, some packets will by necessity have to drop.

How do you know which position on which issue is the "right" one to default too when you don't have enough information? Given your argument, you must default to one of them. What criteria do you use when you have limited info?

Perhaps I'm overthinking this, but open source malware is absolutely not new. It's been around basically as long as the internet has (and I mean pre-www). You could even argue that it pre-exists the internet since phone phreakers were sharing "code" earlier than that.

Yes but pointing out that the emperor has no clothes is mean, so we need to pretend not to notice. Despite our modern day knowledge that most human behavior is almost entirely incentive-based (the hard part is identifying the incentive), we're still supposed to pretend that it's altrusim.

The Svelte banner looks ok on desktop, but yeah seriously problematic on mobile.

I think this is an outgrowth of the "use whatever power you have to push for change" culture. It has been highly effective in the past, particularly with gay marriage, and I think those victories gave it enough gas to run for many years even without success. There's also the social points that one gets from it as well. I know of at least one project that added a BLM banner to their site because of social pressure, even though they felt that much of the protesting had gone too far (burning businesses, looting, blocking traffic, etc). The whole "not to take a side is to take a side" is a powerful social pressure to conform. I know of one other project that added a BLM banner so they could get on an "awesome list of BLM supporting software" or something like that which drove them a lot of traffic. Anyway my point is that there are lots of motivations for such, and I suspect many if not most aren't because the person has a deep and abiding passion for the cause (though without a doubt, some do).

Thanks for the perspective and the laugh. It's very easy to see a trend that isn't there in an aberration.

I think the main problem is that we are increasingly operating with different definitions of "dick move."

To many people, the idea that a small business owner would have their store burned to the ground because someone else in their town (or on the other side of their country) did something bad, is a massive dick move. Yet, this happened numerous times during the summer of BLM in 2020 and it was widely defended with things like, "everything is political" and "not to take a side is to take a side" and "you're either with us or you're against us" and "mostly peaceful protests." There was even a famous "looting is reparations" in articles and at least one book called "In Defense of Looting."

Either you or I misread GP, because I don't see any disagreement. GP points out that FLOSS movement was and is inclusive by design, while this modern development is exclusive by design against people who disagree with the person's opinions.

Once your hard drive is wiped, you're supposed to automatically realize it must be a legitimate open source developer protesting the war, rather than some other type of malware. Then, rather than the natural human instinct to blame the person who did it, you're supposed to realize that your government must be lying to you and must actually be evil, and you're supposed to start a revolution to overthrow Putin.

I guess that's the thinking?

Indeed, by this logic, the Unabomber was a pretty effective "protester."

Yep, absolutely. My doctor of 10+ years recently retired, leaving me in search of a new doc. I've been managing my pain for 15+ years just fine with 10mg Hydrocodone. In 15 years I only once asked to increase the dose, and it was only from two pills per day to three to help me get through the afternoon/evening better. A minuscule dose.

After doing "new patient" appointments (which by the way were like $200 to $300 each) and not having a doc willing to take me on as a patient unless I dropped the opioids, and making several calls (who refused to tell me over the phone whether the doctor was even open to controlled substances without that $300 "new patient" appointment) I gave up. Since coming off the opioids my quality of life has plunged. I struggle with depression and thoughts of suicide now, especially when I'm unable to leave the house or my bed. I went from stable and productive and what doctors used to say is the model patient, to being miserable. Every doc has offered to give me additional antidepressants or crank up the doses of those, but none are willing to treat the pain that is exacerbating it.

I absolutely believe that what the medical establishment is doing to people like us (withholding treatment that we know works) is cruel and borders on torture. It is the epitome of taking macro-level stats and explanations and applying them broadly on the micro-level, regardless of the harm caused.

I believe Hippocrates would be rolling over in his grave to hear that these people took an oath to "do no harm."

For the record. I mostly don't blame the doctors. They are protecting their medical licenses, which the DEA and FDA have proven they are willing to revoke over the slightest anomaly. When the feds started throwing pain specialists in federal prison because some tiny percent of their patients were abusers, it really drove home that individual doctors are not allowed to think anymore. You implement government policy, or you risk financial ruin and even jail time. I don't blame them for being cowards. I probably wouldn't risk imprisonment on a stranger either.

Could not agree with you more. That's what bothered me the most about the article. I consider myself a leftist as well and power dynamics are one of the main things that makes me so. I have a big dislike for most traditional power systems, especially where "power" is inherited (as wealth, but also just connected names that make you a celebrity just for being born). But if the "solution" to leveling out this power is exercising your own to force everyone to conform, the solution is worth than the disease (and in my opinion not necessary as there are better more democratic options out there).