HN user
North Korea became north korea because of censorship. It is the most censored country in the world. And the point is that there is not "extremism" in north korea because censorship allows only "authoritarianism". That's the world you want to live in?
I agree with you that censorship is extremism and it should be fought against.
There was an interesting video on youtube about global recycling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gNZtI7hbvI
Since china exports so much and we export so little, rather than send empty shipping containers back to china, we fill it with our garbage and send that back to china to recycle.
China exports goods. We export garbage to china. And it's been going on for decades.
Historically, a combined effort by corporate and government interests to take away your rights was called fascism. But I guess if it is the far left doing it, it's okay.
Of course not. They are going to promote it. They are going to give the pro-war "authoritative sources" preferential treatment.
It's funny how so many of the pro-censorship comments here reference ISIS. These same people would defend the pro-war news companies which has spread false propaganda leading to illegal wars that killed millions of innocents in the past few decades.
If these companies are going to censor "extremism", then they should start with the "authoritative sources".
I rather live with the remote threat of extremism rather than live in a censored world.
Would you rather live in North Korea with no extremism?
You have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning than dying from extremism and yet you'd give up your right to free speech for some remote threat?
That kind of thinking is the cause of north korea and nazi germany. Authoritarians always use remote threats to justify taking your rights away.
When Assange exposed Bush/right, the journalists and leftists loved him and the right hated him. He won a bunch of journalist/humanitarian prizes. Now that Assange exposed Hillary/left, the journalists and leftists hate him.
24/7 anti-assange propaganda by foxnews, cnn, msnbc, nytimes, wapo, etc and you get the current anti-assange sentiment.
Trump hates him, Hillary hates him, the establishment hates him because he exposed corruption. Corrupt people don't like their corruption exposed. Also, the elites want to start wars in venezuela, syria, etc so punishing assange and setting an example and possibly discrediting/getting rid of wikileaks is in their interest. Wouldn't want truth to get in the way of more wars.
Considering how politicized wikipedia ( like most of tech industry has gotten in recent years ), doesn't shock me. Jimmy Wales has pretty much come out and said wikipedia will no longer be user driven but ideology driven. Which is one of the reasons the other co-founder of wikipedia has criticized wales and wikipedia.
Wikipedia is great for most generic topics, but for "sensitive" topics, it's pretty much propaganda. Considering how heavily wikipedia is censored by wikipedia itself, maybe a taste of their own medicine will make them change their position, but I doubt it.
Sadly, as more and more people use the internet, it'll be censored more and more by the elites in china, US, russia, EU, etc. What we are seeing is the internet becoming an overt tool of propaganda rather than a platform of discussion or exchange of ideas. Even worse, it seems like there are tons of support for censorship, especially amongst the young "educated" demographics.
It is a declarative language like SQL. If you come from traditional imperative programming side, it is very difficult for you to get used to. I forgot who said it : "With imperative style, you code the precise steps to get what you want. With declarative style, you describe what you want and you let the language/runtime/OS/etc get it for you."
If you're used to C/C++/Java, then SQL or Prolog seems frustrating, unnatural and non-intuitive. But once you have the eureka moment and realize they are declarative, you appreciate the elegance and power of SQL or Prolog.
"Europe has a special place in the venture because it was the final destination of the original Silk Road."
Is this really true? Wasn't China the final destination of the original silk road. Isn't it why we call it the "silk" road.
My understanding was that the silk road was primarily a loose idea of trade links between the middle east, india and china. Europe was an afterthought.
You could argue Europe is the final destination today since it is china wanting to get access to europe. But in the past, wasn't it the other way around?
But more to the point, Europe ( especially western europe ) is significantly wealthier than China. Why is it that China is investing in poorer european countries and not the wealthy western european countries? They can find money to fund wars all over the world, but can't find money to invest in tech/science in central and eastern european countries?
You forget the key words in my comment. "Like a cow". I know you can process some vegetation. I eat a lot of vegetables. But your gut biome can't process vegetation like cows. Go try eating grass or vegetation exclusively and see how well you do.
Lets put it this way, you cannot survive on a locally sourced vegan diet. This is true whether you live in alaska or the amazon. The only way you can survive on a vegan diet by shipping vegetation from all over the world ( tons of environmental destruction and oil use for transport ).
Maybe some vegans have good intentions, but as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. While vegans virtue signal and pat themselves on their backs about being pro-environment, anti-oil, pro-animals, pro-health, pro-local source, pro-natural, their diet is the worst for the environment, kills 1000X more animals than any other diet ( admittedly "small" animals ), needs tons of oil for petrochemical fertilizers and transportation, is anti-local source ( there isn't a place on earth where locally produced vegetation can sustain you ), is anti-natural ( since you need lab produced supplements ), etc.
If you rather kill 1000 billion animals rather than 1 billion animals, then veganism is for you. If you'd rather use 1000X more oil, then veganism is for you. If you'd rather eat a globally sourced oil dependent diet rather than locally sourced diet, then veganism is for you.
Vegans are the worst people pretending to be the best. But that's not exclusive to veganism. It's true for most people who pretend to be the best. Every cult claims to save the world while being vicious and illogical.
That's only for city folk who essentially trap their cats or dogs in their apartments to help with their loneliness. Frankly I think pet ownership in cities should be made illegal because it's harmful to the pets and wild animals.
What a dog is like or a cat is like depends on setting. A dog is far superior to a cat on a farm or out hunting or in nature. You'll notice a lot more "quirks" out in nature with a dog than a cat.
It's why dogs were domesticated long before we domesticated any animal.
The only thing cats have over dogs is their athletic ability. But in terms of human qualities and interactions, dogs pretty much evolved to be with humans. People who think otherwise might have that parasite that cats give to their owners.
Simply not true because humans can't process vegetation like cows can. It's why we feed animals vegetation and we eat the animals.
Also, even if what you said were true, that only applies to human raised livestock. Even under you assertion, eating wild animals ( elk, moose, bison, etc ) would cause far less animal harm than a vegan diet which destroys thousands of animals for each bowl of salad.
So I'm guessing every Vegan Society member is a hunter?
Bull markets always draw retail. Smart money needs suckers to hold the bag.
I suspect most of the hate vegans get are from other "more pure" vegans. Purity is how vegan cult members judge each other. Not how normal minded people judge vegans.
As for "some good", you might really want to get off your high horse and objectively look into the catastrophic environmental damage that a vegan diet causes. Not to mention the long term harm it does to the human body.
You literally cannot survive in nature on a vegan diet. You'd starve to death. You literally cannot have a vegan diet without fossil fuel ( good luck growing avocados in alaska or NY ). You literally cannot have a vegan diet without killing nearly infinite number of bugs, worms, vermin, etc. I know truth can be triggering to a cult member, but this is agricultural and economic reality of a vegan diet.
Personally, I'd love to society move to a "hunter gatherer diet" as that's the most natural, healthy and environmentally friendly diet possible. Rather the elites want to put us on a diet akin to the "vegan diet" livestock on industrial farms are fed. It's funny how industrialization is turning humans more and more into livestock. Maybe the UN will recommend troughs filled with vegetables for human beings.
Or as Richard Feynmann wisely and correctly called it - pseudoscience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWr39Q9vBgo
It's pseudoscience used by people to push ideological and political agenda. Ever since science pretty much knocked religion down a peg or two, the activists created a new form of "religion" to further political goals.
That's the pathetic "liberal" sexist caricature you see on TV and media. And like most caricature in media, it's nonsense.
The problem is that both men and women are deciding to having less kids. And that trend has continued with maternity leave, paternity leave and even paying people to have children.
In poor countries, they have more kids. Is that because of your caricature or lack of it?
Europe has provided great benefits to women and men to have more kids. Birth rates have declined.
https://www.thelocal.it/20180627/italy-declining-birthrate-p...
Governments are even paying women to have kids and that hasn't helped.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/11/03/141943008/when...
The only thing that increases birth rates is an increase of poorer and less educated women. The wealthier and better educated women are, the less children they have. That is the only consistent correlation across ethnicities, cultures, religions, etc. Educate women and reach a certain level of wealth and birth rates drop.
It's true in japan
https://thediplomat.com/2018/01/japans-births-and-marriages-...
korea, china to iran and all the way to europe.
If we really wanted to increase birth rates, kicking females out of school and removing any and all benefits would be better than increasing benefits. It's counterintuitive, but it's true. Or maybe we could accept that population decline is going to happen and prepare for that? It's strange how we think we can bribe women to have more children. That's never going to happen, so we should learn to live with our current reality.
This article really isn't saying attention span is getting shorter ( or it's misunderstanding what "attention span" means ). It's that global interest timeframe is getting shorter ( aka how long a product or news is relevant is shrinking because we are getting more product, news, etc ).
"The authors evaluated a total of 43 billion tweets and analyzed the top 50 trending hashtags in the world every hour on the hour, from 2013 to 2016. They then calculated the time the hashtags remained popular and found that in 2013, a hashtag remained in the top 50 list for an average of 17.5 hours, but the figure had dropped to 11.9 hours by 2016."
This doesn't mean that attention span is shrinking. It just means that there are tons more tweets and hashtags in 2016 as there are in 2013.
Just like with movies, the article mentioned. It has nothing to do with "attention span" since Endgame is a 3 hour long film. It just means that the movie industry is producing a lot more movies/blockbusters and the time a blockbluster can stay at the top is limited because another blockbuster is bound to release soon after.
It's like in the past we only had the "classics" as college subjects. Now we have physics, biology, chemistry, computer science, etc. And the new subjects means that our attention span got shorter. Which is absurd.
I think human attention span got shorter, but the article isn't really arguing that or it isn't arguing it well. And I'm not sure if human attention span getting shorter is necessarily a bad thing. Why sit through commercials, intros and so much filler/fluff in most media? As long as you are able to concentrate on things that deserve concentration, nothing wrong with short attention span for fluff.
And Miami, NYC, LA, London, etc. But then again, dirty money ( opium wars ) is how modern banking in the industrial age got started. Though, we should expand "dirty" money to more than drugs and crime. Legally attained money could be dirty as well.
It's insane the level of vindicativeness that government can reach. Worse than any bully and more fanatical than any terrorist.
Of course the government is like this to mere peasants. If you are the wealthy elite, the government acts like a grovel servant rather than master. Expose war crimes - then you are public enemy #1. Be part of the wealthy elite who destroys the financial system and ruins the lives of millions - it's just good ol' boys being good ol' boys.
And yet, everyday, we give more and more power to governments and corporations.
Only 10% of you at the cellular level is you. The 90% of you at the cellular level is bacteria.
I said china is a multi-ethnic nation unlike south korea, didn't I. I highly doubt tibetans or ugyhurs would celebrate going through 90s russian life.
Tibet and Xinjiang ( and to a limited degree hong kong ) are interesting because europe in particular wants to use them to break china. And interestingly enough, the both tibet and xinjiang were invaded by foreign powers ( britain and soviet union ) in order to destabilize china. Both times, most tibetans and uyghurs sided with china.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Xinjiang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_expedition_to_Tibet
My point is that most people just care about their well being. As long as they are getting wealthier, they don't care. If china's economic situation worsens dramatically, then I suspect things might be different. But I doubt any chinese citizens of any ethnicity wants their family to experience 90s russia or 1800s china. Just like no one here wants to go through a great depression ( which was mild compared to what 90s russia and 1800s china experienced ).
It's propaganda. It's a caricature coming to life. A caricature created by the establishment media.
It's like if foxnews ran a story "What happened to my 13 year old daughter after consuming establishment media or democratic speeches". And then daughter turned out to hit every checklist of a "leftist" fanatic caricature. Or christian publications that would publish "stories" about how hollywood movies or rock 'n roll turned their child gay or in devil worshippers.
A lot of these "stories" involving children are even manufacture ( in order to write an article ) or sought out specifically. Just like the UVA rape story.
"A hypothetical Chinese transition to democracy would probably have followed the East Asian pattern, not the Eastern European one. In Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union didn't so much democratize as disintegrate. China might have started a transition to democracy in 1989, but it wasn’t on the verge of breaking up."
China would have disintegrated like the Soviet Union ( or like the china of the 1800s after the opium war ) rather than democratized like South Korea. You can't compare an ethnically and linguistically united country like South Korea ( buttressed by the US ) with a large multiethnic nation like China. Especially considering foreign powers, especially britain, europe and the US, have a vested interest in destabilizing china.
If china "democraticized" in 1989, we'd probably see a replay of post opium war china. A country that large and diverse, with a weakened central authority, would have been dismembered and picked apart, like in China in the 1800s and the Soviet Union/Russia in the 1990s.
Looking at what the soviet union and russia in particular went through in the 90s to even today and what china went through in the 90s to today, I doubt any chinese citizen is upset at the crackdown. But it is an interesting "what if".
Why just facebook? Why not Amazon, Google, JPM, Disney, etc?
"Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, says the company is so big and powerful that it threatens our democracy."
"threatens our democracy". I've heard this talking point so much that it has no meaning any longer. It's just another of the oft-repeated talking point created by PR firms as part of a propaganda campaign.
If facebook is truly that powerful that it "threatens our democracy", then it doesn't say much of our democracy does it? I'd say the people attacking the constitution and our rights are the real "threats to our democracy". Facebook is far down on the list of "threats to our democracy". I consider censorship, money in politics, the congressional-industrial-military complex, the israeli/saudi/chinese/etc influence in our economic, media and government institutions, globalism, etc to be far greater threats to democracy than facebook. If facebook was truly as powerful as he says, the establishment and their media wouldn't be attacking facebook as vigorously as they have been. Lets be honest.
If Chris Hughes, "co-founder" of Facebook truly feels this way, why doesn't he just created a competitor to facebook. It isn't that difficult to create a social media platform. Though it may be difficult to get users.
It wastes time, space and energy, but it also lowers the bar for programming ( don't have to know or care much about memory ) and removes the potential for errors. It's like programming on training wheels. Sure it, there are costs upfront, but it also saves costs down the line.
Also, garbage collection doesn't iterate over all memory. There are lists, structures and variables that the runtime/GC manages.
And we already have languages that doesn't use GC and give us ways of "releasing memory" - C being one of the most famous ones. But C also has its share of problems.
The more control you give to the programmer, the lower the footprint but the higher the learning curve and the costs of bugs. The more control you give to the runtime, the higher the bloat and lower the learning curve, but lower the cost of bugs. The GC exists because it removes a class of bugs that human programmer seem prone to write and it theoretically allows programmers to work on more business/productive aspects of software development.
Software development is such a vast space that I think there will be room for GC and non-GC. And as you said, sunk costs ( on both sides ) almost dictate they both be around for a very long time.
Tech companies are deleting evidence of war crimes and everything else at the behest of media companies like the atlantic.
Youtube, facebook, reddit, google search, etc have all been targeted by the atlantic, nytimes, washingtonpost, cnn, etc and bullied into scrubbing content and direct their users to "authoritative sources". Ironically enough, in china, russia and most countries, "authoritative sources" are state propaganda organs. But we are different or so I'm told. Our "authoritative sources" are independent news organizations who strangely enough push the same message with the same talking points. What a coincidence. For "independent" "news" organizations, they sure are united in the same message.
This censorship has been going on for at least 5 years now. Maybe the atlantic journalists should investigate their editors as to why the atlantic has supported censorship? Or maybe the atlantic journalists should start investigating nytimes, washingtonpost, cnn, etc. Why so many government/intelligence agency people are working in media. Why so many children of politicians ( Bushes, Clintons, McCains, Cuomos, etc ) have prominent positions in the media?
Or is the atlantic only interested in war crime evidence that suit their agenda ( pushing for war in syria, venezuela, etc )?
This article is so weird. It's like an arsonist setting a house on fire and telling everyone that the house is on fire.
Zuckerberg copied Page and Brin's share structure. Page and Brin control Google just as much as Zuckerburg controls Facebook - totally. As for ego, I don't know these people personally so I'll take your word for it.
Would caching also be a form of "guessing" what's next? Cache hits could be considered guessing correctly and while cache misses is guessing incorrectly.
Google is a few years older, wiser and has far greater political clout. Being older, google went through what facebook is going through a few years ago. So they are much more savvy and also much more powerful ( politically at least ). I suspect Facebook is spenting their billions buying lobbyists, politicians and media/pr as we speak, just like google did. And microsoft did before them.
Incredible. I've never seen such a thing in the wild.
An actual dupe of a dupe.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19838320
And just like that, it's #1 of HN. Must be good to be king.