StevenRayOrr

An inquiry was organized by the Swedish Privy Council to find those responsible for the disaster, but in the end no one was punished.[1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)

Developing into what?

We are beginning to see that all these years we thought it was our constitutional right to free speech that was the major thing. Yes, it would be and will be if the government takes a turn for the worst, but really what we're seeing in the US is an erosion in the ethos of free speech, an attitude that in our society you are welcome to say something that I heartily disagree with.

When did American society have an 'ethos' of free speech (let alone an ethos of universal free speech)?

I'm more comfortable with Apple's decisions than some on Hackers News, so take this with a grain of salt... but the difference between what Google/Facebook does and Apple does is a difference. It may not be as vast a difference as Apple claims, but it's also not nothing.

I just finished _Reamde_ and was, overall, fairly satisfied with the way the story built towards the conclusion. It moves in unexpected directions, but I enjoyed the entire ride.

I started having a similar issue with Spotify a couple years ago. Eventually I discovered that someone else was using my (free) account to listen to bunch of Spanish-language music that I'd never heard of. I don't think my Spotify recommendations ever recovered.

it’s repugnant to characterize entire groups of people with the same brush.

No, it's not. This isn't about whatever imagined prejudice or discrimination you're talking about. As the synopsis makes clear, the piece is marking an argument about the how "There is no way to be a billionaire in America without taking advantage of a system predicated on cruelty." Warran Buffett is being attacked because he has been able to manipulate the American system of capital, which the piece suggests is fundamentally unjust, to his extreme advantage, while millions of Americans are pushed further and further to the margins.

You can disagree with that premise, but don't pretend that this is discrimination.

We don't have to go any further than the tweet that started this thread: McAfee claimed to be "getting subtle messages" from officials in the American government threatening to kill him.

He was a clearly unhinged individual.

his past statements still need to be taken seriously, and extra care and doubt need to be applied to the reported story.

Why? The fact that he had a paranoid fantasy of being murdered by the US government doesn't make it so. I don't have to take extra care with the ramblings of conspiracy theorists with a long history of outright bullshit.

Not that it undermines your overall point, but it might prove to disincentivize attacking smaller companies that aren't in as strong a position to use proxies -- which I would still count as a win.

Success is more random than we'd like to believe, and there is a risk when failure leads to victim blaming.

An excellent sentiment, if less common these days than it should be. Reminds me of a quotation from Chapter XXV[0] of Machiavelli's The Prince: "Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less."

[0] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm#link2H...

Given that we're just talking HTML, I don't see how you could meaningfully prevent bad actors, absent storing screenshots of the original text -- and even then (see any number of fake tweets that circulate). Hypothetically, instead of linking to the original source, I suppose it could link to the Wayback Machine version of the text, but I don't think that's a helpful default way to link to people's work. As a fallback when sites disappear, sure, but otherwise...

If you're looking for a crash course on him as a political thinker, you could check out the selections that seem of interest to you from his Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary[0]. If you want a more specific list (and a reasonably coherent reading order):

* 'That Politics may be reduced to a Science' ("It is a question with several, whether there be any essential difference between one form of government and another? and, whether every form may not become good or bad, according as it is well or ill administered?")

* 'Of the First Principles of Government' ("Nothing appears more surprizing to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few")

* 'Of the Origin of Government' ("Man, born in a family, is compelled to maintain society, from necessity, from natural inclination, and from habit.")

* 'Of Parties in General' ("As much as legislators and founders of states ought to be honoured and respected among men, as much ought the founders of sects and factions to be detested and hated; because the influence of faction is directly contrary to that of laws.")

* 'Of Passive Obedience' ("The maxim, fiat Justitia & ruat Coelum, let justice be performed, though the universe be destroyed, is apparently false, and by sacrificing the end to the means, shews a preposterous idea of the subordination of duties.")

* 'Of the Coalition of Parties' ("Liberty is a blessing so inestimable, that, wherever there appears any probability of recovering it, a nation may willingly run many hazards, and ought not even to repine at the greatest effusion of blood or dissipation of treasure. All human institutions, and none more than government, are in continual fluctuation.")

* 'Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences' ("What depends upon a few persons is, in a great measure, to be ascribed to chance, or secret and unknown causes: What arises from a great number, may often be accounted for by determinate and known causes.")

* 'Of Commerce' ("The greater part of mankind may be divided into two classes; that of shallow thinkers, who fall short of the truth; and that of abstruse thinkers, who go beyond it.")

* 'Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing' ("Fine writing, according to Mr. Addison, consists of sentiments, which are natural, without being obvious. There cannot be a juster, and more concise definition of fine writing.")

* 'Of Refinement in the Arts' ("We shall here endeavour to correct both these extremes, by proving, first, that the ages of refinement are both the happiest and most virtuous; secondly, that wherever luxury ceases to be innocent, it also ceases to be beneficial; and when carried a degree too far, is a quality pernicious, though perhaps not the most pernicious, to political society.")

[0]: Available on https://davidhume.org/

The initial page just shows the art, but after a couple seconds it pops up with an explicit credit to Michael Friesen and a link to his twitter:

Imagined by a GAN (generative adversarial network) StyleGAN2 (Dec 2019) - Karras et al. and Nvidia Trained by Michael Friesen on images of Modern Art

We just need to know that, even armed with all that knowledge, he still made the decision he did, and that we should not expect others with less knowledge of how software works to be any less human.

This is maybe one of the most important lessons of the 20th and 21st centuries (at least thus far): knowledge does not automatically prevent us from errors in judgments nor does it necessarily protect us from misfortune.

When doing my own writing, I try to remember a quotation from Kenneth Hudson's The Jargon of the Professions:

The best minds in any profession are never guilty of jargon, expect when they are very tired. Pedestrian minds are drawn towards it automatically and to the most frightening extent. Jargon, one could suggest, is the natural weapon of highly paid people with very little of any value to say. It is a sad and ironical comment on our society that many people feel released from the pressure to use jargon only when they have reached the top of their profession, by which time it may be too late to change one's habits. , however one might wish to. Ambitious people, still busy climbing the ladder, may well consider it professional dangerous to use straightforward language. One therefore has the paradox that only the person who has finally arrived, with [their] reputation secure, can afford to be simple and jargon-free. Lesser mortals appear to need their jargon, as a membership-badge of their profession. They do not have the confidence to face the world without it.

Do I escape the tendency towards jargon? No, not by a long shot, but pieces like this are a good reminder as to why it is worth the effort to keep trying.

When you say "implementation details", do you mean things like their Safari Privacy White Paper[0], their Photos Tech Brief[1], their Location Services White Paper[2], or their Apple Sign On White Paper[3]?

[0] https://www.apple.com/safari/docs/Safari_White_Paper_Nov_201...

[1] https://www.apple.com/ios/photos/pdf/Photos_Tech_Brief_Sept_...

[2] https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Location_Services_White_P...

[3] https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Sign_in_with_Apple_White_...

Lots of democracies have legal definitions for what counts as political advertising. Obviously Twitter doesn't have to use those definitions, but there are fairly clear guidelines in a number of jurisdictions. And it doesn't have to be a situation where they set rules for life: taking a firm apolitical stance on advertising likely requires reassessing the rules over time. But it is doable.

What will be really interesting is whether Twitter tries to work with governments or whether they unilaterally come to their own rules. There be dragons on both fronts.

On the topic of everyday life and improv, you might be interested a TEDx talk called, appropriately, The Way of Improvisation.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUO-pWJ0riQ

I apologize that you found my text length was too long but I thought the extra background was necessary to get state why deep reading is often a waste of time.

I read @EGreg as poking a bit of fun, rather than raising a legitimate complaint: simultaneously supporting your point, but also gently pushing at the limits of shallow reading.

You should have seen my camera roll on my phone while playing through some areas. It was an incredibly helpful tool for getting through the game.

You might be interested in reading about the history of the Australian ballot[0] to get a sense of we vote the way with do ("we" being fairly loose in this case, as many places outside the US use the Australian ballot -- and some American don't).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot#United_States

I find Origins can be a shaky entry point for folks trying Arendt for the first time. Especially for someone coming from Zarathustra. My vote here would be to try out Eichmann in Jerusalem as a good bridge into Arendt's thought, before making one's way to what I would call harder texts.

So I don't think that most of them are purposely intellectually dishonest but just lack awareness.

Some days I feel this charitable. Others not. Usually I suspect they're too intelligent for a lack of awareness to be a good enough excuse: there comes a point where ignorance becomes willful. Then again, this is precisely the problem we're talking about here: when our cognitive biases are so comfortable that our brains erect strong defenses to keep intruders out.

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I probably should have avoided being categorical with my comments on choice. While the capacity for such a choice appears to be unique to the human being, I am not entirely convinced it is, but that has more to do with intuitions about nonhuman minds rather than any sort of certainty. However I am incredibly cautious about the kind of research into free will that you're talking about, because, even if I doubt the inevitably of the endpoint you suggest, it remains an attempt to transform the human being into a calculation, into a process, and that reduces our affairs into mere administration. It's one of the (productive?) contradictions in my own thought that I am constantly pushing up against: my politics are such that I see the value in that kind of bureaucratic management, but my philosophy is such that I see it as dehumanizing. There is no natural equilibrium to be had here, so our duty is one of rebalancing, of maintaining the scales between the unique capacity for human choice and ensuring the conditions of life that are necessary for our biology.

The struggle here, not that this contradicts anything you've said, is how easily this turns into a fetishization of unhappiness or suffering: Lincoln's depression as a cost for his genius (or Beethoven's, as the article talks about). It is a sort of bastardization of Faulkner's point about how "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies: "The Gettysburg Address" is worth any number of depressive episodes. Which maybe it is to us, but was it worth it to Lincoln?

If we believe that suffering is valuable for the excellence of humanity (not just for individual human beings), it seems to justify a political system that actively neglects the welfare of its citizens. To say nothing of the intellectual dishonesty of claims that suffering builds character when said from the vantage point of those who can choose not to suffer.

In the end, I actually think Nietzsche's political philosophy is wholly compatible with something resembling the modern welfare state: insofar as we can understand suffering to be valuable, it is only so when it is an active, human choice. Those forced into such a position may find themselves closer to "the whole damn truth", but only incidentally. And human experience is rooted in the choosing. The power of Martin Luther's oft-(mis)attributed "Here I stand, I can do no other" is not in its truth -- he obviously could have done otherwise, but he chose not to. Without the capacity to make those decisions for ourselves, to be allowed to decide that truth is worth the loss of happiness, achievement, fulfillment, we are never ourselves truly human. That some (many? most?) may decide the 'easier' path of herd morality doesn't change this: we are, by virtue of our humanity, able to elect not to be human. That so many do is a tragedy, yes, but an understandable one; and the possibility and fact of this tragedy gives meaning to the choice itself.

Your first sentence isn't supported by your second and third. It is incredibly common to track not just interest but level of interest -- and lots of companies find it a valuable metric for marshalling their resources. Is this perhaps not the best way to get that metric? Now that can be a helpful question to ask and a good thing for this dev to think about, rather than outright dismissing the attempt.

Settings -> General -> Accessibility Shortcut -> Color Filter.

Not your misunderstanding. My misphrasing. That's what I was trying to say.

"Health data can be stored in iCloud. When configured for iCloud storage, Health data is synced between devices and secured by encryption that protects the data both in transit and at rest. Health data is only included in encrypted iTunes Backups. It is not included in either unencrypted iTunes backups or iCloud Backup."

https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf -- pg. 29 under the Health Data subsection.

Edit: @bobwaycott points out the significance of this quote in the below child comment.

Here's the Archive.org link for anyone else having trouble getting to the site: https://web.archive.org/web/20171130210154/https://blog.elco...