HN user
That depends on the structure.
There are no 1st Amendment issues with Amber Alerts or weather alerts pushed to my phone, for example. But if CNN or Fox News are allowed to post to this proposed service, now we've got a different animal.
And, if I may, I think the point is that is all well and good, but for reliability's sake, a publicly, not privately, controlled alternative to any of the above (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, etc.) should be carefully considered. Mastodon is perfectly set up to be a valuable ADDITIONAL option for local governments using Twitter -- that doesn't mean "stop posting to Twitter," it means "also post to Mastodon" and be certain that, whatever shortcomings that may have, it's not entirely susceptible to the whims of a billionaire. Similarly, are Facebook posts by local government failing to reach users because of some change Zuck made to The Algorithm? Maybe we need to start looking into effective alternatives. If not, then we don't.
Governments should earn their taxes the same as a person should earn their income
So you're coming from the perspective that individual minimum wage is wrong, and applying that assumption everywhere. Thanks, but I absolutely disagree. I don't see a reason to discuss further when we're so far apart on our base assumptions of reality.
This becomes a minimum wage for nations
Why is that a problem?
removes the incentive to compete to be the home of corporate headquarters
No, it shifts the means of incentives. It's no longer a race to the bottom tax rate.
As I understand it, the problem with a border adjustment tax is implementation overhead; it would be expensive to audit. Noting that the IRS in the U.S. is not funded enough to investigate tax fraud as it is, this seems to be a major problem. You would also likely need foreign cooperation. There's no reason to believe a corporation headquartered in the U.S. needs to be truthful about their foreign revenue, and how would you know if they were without a foreign government's assistance.
The problem with implementing a world-wide minimum tax rate is organization, getting all countries to agree and stand by it. This is something the world has been engaged in doing for around 100 years now. We've had failures (League of Nations) and successes. There's no guarantee of success, but importantly, tax havens can be isolated if 130+ countries agree to do so, until they follow suit.
Basically, even if global minimum tax is not the optimal solution (which remains to be shown), it's better to have a sub-optimal solution that can be implemented than an optimal solution that's impossible.
Exactly, pensions were considerably more common in the 1960s also, but at the end of the day, I don't really care if my retirement is actually funded by a pension or a 401k or by stuffing dollar bills under my mattress, I want to know when I can retire and how comfortably I can live when I retire.
Yes, getting into the weeds is valuable, but here we're talking about the money in your bank at the end of the day, and that CEO salaries haven't changed much doesn't say anything.
Yes, a CEO should be making more money than the average employee. The debate is over how much -- why do CEOs get absolutely massive bonuses and golden parachutes and stock options and for employees it's expected that you put in the work in the hope of future recompense in terms of bonuses, promotions, etc.
As is nearly always the case with these types of conspiracy theories, never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
More charitably, you can explain most of these actions (maybe excepting Robinhood's actions) by the mods of these platforms and locations being roughly as surprised by things as Melvin Capital.
Right, wrong, or whatever, welcome to America.
What, today, is stopping a billionaire from parking nearly anywhere they like and then just paying the fine, over and over? Or, beyond that, the quality of civil or criminal defense you can expect to receive is directly correlated to how much you're willing to pay.
Who decides when a mask is needed/not needed?
The elected authorities, whether local, regional, state, or federal, preferably as advised by trained and trusted experts.
Should we always be forced to wear masks going forward given that we've been made aware of the efficacy?
If that makes sense, as determined by the above answer.
Why stop at Corona? Flu is next.
If that makes sense. In fact, there would almost certainly be a net benefit to society for the majority of the population to wear masks during flu season, and literally no reasonable downside. But it won't happen, despite making rational, logical sense, because our society can't even get people to wear masks, maintain social distance, wash your hands, etc. during an actual, honest-to-God pandemic.
Who decides when we are required to wear masks?
See the first answer.
The value of your "slippery slope" argument doesn't seem to be there to me; you seem to have already decided that the buck of mask wearing or public health in general stops at the individual level, ignoring the fact that that's simply not true. Cue rehashed arguments discussing seat belts, nudity, etc. etc.
Forcing mask wearing probably won't go anywhere federally.
Here's hoping Biden can be persuasive https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/11/11/joe-bi...
That's kind of the thing though.
Signer agrees to become contract murderer unless pre-empted by local laws and regulations.
I'm over-exaggerating, and I get the value when it's prohibitively expensive to write a TOS when it's essentially impossible to pre-emptively vet the legality of all possible clauses internationally as laws constantly change. But if the clause I wrote is technically valid, then what's the point? Just write a short phrase saying "We're going to do whatever we like, unless it's prohibited by law. Accept? Y/N"
You're arguing "slippery slope."
The answer to any slippery slope argument, when asked "when does it stop" is to just choose a point to stop.
(And in the case of a representative Democracy like the U.S., the choice mechanism is well documented if imperfect)
You seriously don't think "we should decrease the number of people born with Down Syndrome" is a morally defensible position either?
I don't think "we should decrease the number of people born homosexual" is a morally defensible position, but decreasing incidence of Down Syndrome, or autism, or Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, are absolutely morally defensible positions, and in fact, are regularly done -- people everywhere socially discourage pregnant mothers from drinking alcohol, for example, and I don't think the discouraging third-parties are the ones who are in the wrong in that situation.
I think having a child AT ALL, regardless of any other concerns, is an individual decision that should be made by mature, capable adults. I don't think it's necessarily a "morally defensible position" to have a third kid when you're struggling to take care of the previous two just because you belong to a religion that thinks prophylactics are immoral, and I would never, for example, judge a potential parent who decided to terminate a pregnancy because they were told it is unlikely their child will be born alive, and even if it is, would be unlikely to live for long.
Unless you have better evidence than Keith Olbermann to back your statement, I think we're done here. I'm not going to go back and forth about Twitter followers as a valid metric for gauging public opinion on genocide...
"not allowed to exist at all" doesn't mean what you seem to think it does. Nothing you have said bears any more discussion.
Keith Olbermann, currently hosting on the mainstream news channel of YouTube (/s) after being evicted from actual mainstream news, is the opposite of strong evidence. Further:
"The hate he has triggered, the Pandora’s box he has opened, they will not be so easily destroyed,” he said. “So, let us brace ourselves. The task is twofold: the terrorist Trump must be defeated, must be destroyed, must be devoured at the ballot box, and then he, and his enablers, and his supporters, and his collaborators, and the Mike Lees and the William Barrs, and the Sean Hannitys, and the Mike Pences, and the Rudy Gullianis and the Kyle Rittenhouses and the Amy Coney Barretts must be prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society while we try to rebuild it and to rebuild the world Trump has nearly destroyed by turning it over to a virus."
The implication "should not be allowed to exist" is very different from "prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society." So even taking a marginalized voice talking from his YouTube channel, arguing that the left believes the right "should not be allowed to exist" is a ridiculous stretch.
You need to read more than just the headlines.
People are alarmed by these moves because they represent a wider trend in which the left increasingly does not recognise the right as politically legitimate, i.e. they do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist.
Those two things aren't remotely the same. The legitimacy of the right in the U.S. is an open question when they participate in direct voter suppression, gerrymandering, continually lose popular votes but still gain controlling power of the strongest apparatus of the government, have used that power to appoint (shortly) 16 of the last 20 SCOTUS Justices going back to 1969 using rules they are quite literally making up on the spot. "Consent of the governed" is a valid question under these scenarios.
But you need to provide some very strong evidence "they [the left] do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist." You're using some very strong language based on very weak arguments.
The fact you, presumably, pass off things such as Russian interference in fair and free elections as "conspiracy theories" should, god willing, be absolutely damning to your credibility. Or that "herd immunity strategies," as mentioned in the tweet you link, should be presented as a valid and equal alternative strategy to NOT LETTING PEOPLE DIE; you're arguing flat-earthers should be given equal footing in a debate with NASA.
Sure, as long as we have the tooling available for students to get there too (which, I think we do, or pretty quickly can).
And just for encryption, you can self-sign.
Obviously that doesn't work for the web, but "TLS cert feudal lord" doesn't track for me at all.
googling for 'man date' to read the manual page on date always gives me a second thought.
If you want to say that something exists you need to define that thing first.
I have yet to say anything, in one direction or another.
You're saying a monopoly cannot exist given a free market. You define what you mean by "monopoly" and I can agree or disagree. You define what you mean by "free market" and I can agree or disagree. We can go from there. But YOU need to start.
Based on your statement "socialism is as bad as genocide" (I'll let Norway, a country which has embraced state ownership or "socialism" while consistently having one of the highest per capita GDP in the world know they're to blame for the Holocaust???), as well as your obnoxious insistence that everyone else do the footwork for you, I don't particularly care what you have to say -- you appear to have disappeared up your own rectum frankly.
Regarding your edit
Unless granted by a government, monopolies don't exist in free markets.
You made that claim, it's your responsibility to prove it first, not everyone else's to disprove it after you've made a flat, unsubstantiated claim.
What is your definition of "monopoly" and "free market"?
If I define "free market" as any market which is incapable of forming a monopoly, then yes, your statement is trivially true. But it naturally dis-includes a wide variety of markets that actually exist and may actually have monopolies.
At least three of those four have an undeniable technological/VC subject matter, clearly relevant to HN (WeChat, Peter Thiel, and TikTok)
I'd have to read them all to be certain, but 2 stories on OP's side and the 4 stories you presented aren't convincing for either argument, 10 seconds of research or not.
Hackers talk about tech. Tech can't be separated from people and politics anymore than anything else can.
Why is this marked as a dupe, when the "original" doesn't mention the other 6 VPNs leaking data? Yes, UFO VPN's leak in this article is based on the "original" article, but I looked at this to see if it included any VPNs I use, and I never clicked on the UFO VPN article because I don't use UFO VPN.
Even under the most generous reading of Trump's statements, how in the world would it be remotely possible to "inject disinfectant" in any way?
His speculation, particularly in an area where he has no expertise (but of course he still thinks he knows what he's talking about), is wildly dangerous; but of course, he can't shut up and let experts talk.
That's not necessarily true. The article on MedPageToday barely notes it, but the actual study clearly spells out that only about 46% of patients were included in the study as having a final results (either death or discharge). As noted by ivanonymous, that's 320 patients requiring intubation (282 died) vs 831 still on ventilators, hopefully recovering.
TL;DR: looking at the headline and not the study itself is deeply misleading.
Going off the article alone, it would be hard to notice this, but the conclusions of the actual study are based on patients with a final results (either death or discharge), but that only includes about 46% of the cases. Specifically, as noted by ivanonymous, that's only including 320 patients on ventilators who died or were discharged versus 861 still on ventilators. If all 861 patients recover, that 90% would drop massively (it's hard to say how much without breaking the numbers down more completely).
Just to back up your statement, from the actual study, under Limitations:
Fifth, clinical outcome data were available for only 46.2% of admitted patients. The absence of data on patients who remained hospitalized at the final study date may have biased the findings, including the high mortality rate of patients who received mechanical ventilation older than age 65 years.
MedPageToday notes this, but unlike the study, they start with the headline of 90% mortality, and don't mention until the very last sentence "that clinical outcome data were only available for less than half of admitted patients." This just seems wildly irresponsible reporting; I don't know if the reporter didn't really understand the limitations, or what, but at the very least, that should not have been the headline, not without a major proviso included at the very beginning.
If you're treating FB as the arbiter of truth, that's a you problem.
The internet allows a wealth of information, and you should not trust FB as the arbiter of information anymore than you should absolutely-without-question trust Washington Post, Buzzfeed News or the freaking Daily Stormer.
FB 'censoring' some ridiculously unscientific and dangerous information, like COVID19 disinformation, doesn't completely hide that. You can still find it out there, but you have to look for it.
I would agree it opens up a door. You censor one thing, you think it might be worth censoring another thing and so on. But 'slippery slope' is a logical fallacy for a reason, and this disinformation is an inherently difficult problem, we can't just look to easy answers like "don't allow censorship."
This is a very disappointing thread on Hacker News.
First, the article is title "State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronavirus." Immediately sensationalizing the title to imply this coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan lab is not good.
Did the coronavirus leak from the Wuhan lab? Maybe, there's some evidence to suggest it's a possibility, but jumping on conspiracy theories, or unproven claims (e.g. "it was the wet market" -- it may have been, but many of the original infectees were not involved with the wet market) is just spreading fake news. Haven't we had more than enough of that over the last few years?
"We've noticed that Joe Everybody didn't make any rent payments prior to their birth or after their death. [HIGH RISK]"