vintageseltzer

Can you share some links please? I'm morbidly curious.

In America, justice is only available to those who can afford it. If you can't afford months or years of lawyer's fees and don't have the ability to take time away from your job, family and other daily obligations, you're simply out of luck.

It does! It's called "rubber ducking" when applied to software engineering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

"Representatives" in the U.S. government no longer represent the citizens at all — they represent the lobbyists that pay for their votes.

Logically, this behavior should result in the representatives being voted out of office.

However, the two party system combined with the unbelievably high cost of running for office makes it nearly impossible for representatives who don't fall in line with the status quo to receive the campaign financing necessary to be elected.

It's a rotten system and won't go away until campaign finance laws are reformed.

Even if manufacturers behave nicely, there is still the possibility that the devices are eventually somehow compromised by bad actors and used nefariously.

For example, the CIA developed and deployed a program to use the built-in microphone on Samsung "smart" TVs to spy on targets, even when it looks like it's off: https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/7/14841556/wikileaks-cia-hac...

The Lightning Network is meant to address this: https://lightning.network/

Spoken like someone who truly knows nothing about scaling.

Corporations are enjoying record profits for years but wages have been stagnant since the 90s. The idea that when corporations receive more money they pass on a proportional value of benefits to their employees or customers is a laughable fiction. In fact, they will proudly say that this is a good thing, as their only responsibility is to the shareholder.

An uneducated society is easy to manipulate — easy to convince that climate change isn't real, that evolution is a conspiracy against religion, that creating a social safety net and investing in public education, health care and modern infrastructure is a bad thing.

I hate to turn social issues into black and white, partisan debates. But anti-intellectualism and the denigration of education is a uniquely right-wing phenomenon in the U.S. It's used often by the Republican party here to criticize "elites" and is employed by a long list of other power-hungry demagogues throughout world history [1].

Isaac Asimov wrote a column in January 1980 in Newsweek that describes this phenomenon in the U.S.:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

I encourage everyone to read the full column [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism [2]: https://aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_C...

Are there any examples of class-action lawsuits or legal consequences against companies that expose sensitive data like this in the U.S.?

Perhaps it's not the biggest factor, but it is likely to reduce employee benefits like education stipends, relocation stipends and dependent care FSAs.

Previously, employers were able to deduct the costs of these benefits from their tax bill, saving them money. The new tax plan eliminates these benefits (https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pa...).

Now that these benefits are much more expensive, you can except these benefits to reduced or eliminated, and the remaining costs to be take from your future salary.

My firm has been grappling with outsourcing the transcription of sensitive internal communications for years.

Our weekly sales calls are done over teleconference, but not everyone can attend. Obviously, a lot of information that we don't want to be public is shared during these calls, like sales figures and client status reports. The calls can last anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours.

Right now, our copywriters in marketing transcribe these calls, which they are not happy about. It can take half a day or more to transcribe one call, and it's not the best use of their time. Although they rotate each week, it still takes up a significant amount of time and is not really part of their job description.

Our COO does not want to use an external service to outsource this, as she is concerned about leaks. The fact that many transcription services exist where an NDA must be signed does not mitigate her concern. However, she also does not feel like hiring a full-time transcriber is worth the cost.

The copywriters have tried automated transcription tools but they are not good enough.

I have no idea how this can be solved except for hiring a full-time transcriber ...

Oatmeal is a savior. I can’t think of a breakfast food that is more satisfying and filling. 1/3 cup of instant oats, 2/3 cup water. Microwave for three minutes on half power. Add cinnamon, a dash of salt and berries. Tasty and full till lunch.

It’s obviously a mixed bag (and sometimes dreadful), but IMO it’s a lot more fulfilling to live and travel in the real world among real people than some aseptic Uber-only lifestyle (which many of my friends unfortunately prefer).

I am confident we are in the very nascent stages of cryptocurrency, and that it will be huge within ten years. I am not so confident that Bitcoin will be the predominant currency, but it's my best option right now. I invested an amount that I am comfortable losing completely and plan on holding long-term. Maybe it will turn into something big, maybe it will be worthless. No risk, no reward.

By that logic, gold would have crashed long ago and been replaced by all the other alt-rare-metals out there. It has not.

The network effect should not be underestimated. The world is filled with examples of inferior systems that exist simply because they have more momentum than others. Investors demand a “store of value” investment vehicle. Up until now, gold has led that role. Now Bitcoin will take over. Not because it is the best, but because it is first to market and has enough momentum and utility to replace it.

This might be a good companion for elderly people.

Fuck off with your tone policing [0] of the downtrodden. Oppression makes people angry, if you don't want people to be angry like that then stop oppressing them.

Take a breath and relax. No one is oppressing you. I simply ask that you adhere to this community's guidelines and use a civil tone.

That's a pretty rude comment. I'm sure cpncrunch understands that, literally, not everyone on the planet can afford to pay a dollar. Please adjust your tone.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

How widely is WordPress being used at NYT today? Seems like it was used a lot about five years ago but don’t see it much anymore.

There is also a long "tradition" in Germany to detach Germans from what they did in past. For example, average Dutch will not tell you "Germans start World War 2", he/she will tell you "Nazis Started World War 2". This goes very far. Before that, it wasn't Germans who were slaughtering Europeans, it was Teutonic Order.

That seems reasonable. A country's government and its population or cultural identity are different. Especially as time goes on.

I don't think they're saying we should stop eating all meat — just that it should be significantly reduced.

That's pretty much a no-brainer for our health, for the environment and to reduce the suffering of millions of animals at the hands of the industrial livestock industry.

Personally, I used to eat meat multiple times a day, and now I only eat it once or twice a week. It has really improved my life. I think everyone should try it.

Writing this as my wife and I are on the way to Ikea for the second time this week to choose a couch ...

You really need to see the couch in person before buying it. It’s really hard to judge quality otherwise. You need to feel the fabric of the sofa, sit and lay down on it to feel the cushions, and see the color in person. Our first trip to Ikea was meticulously researched, but when we saw the options we had chosen online in person we completely changed our minds.

We did find a couch we loved on Wayfair but there were few photos and the description of the item was incorrect. The item was a chaise sectional listed as reversible (the chaise could be switched between the left and right sides) but the item listed two separate prices for left vs. right. When I messaged Wayfair about the issue through their ‘Questions’ option on the item they responded quickly only to say that the item description was incorrect and it was not reversible. However, the item’s description currently remains incorrect and my question was not made public like the others. This, combined with the fact that no official dimensions are included in the item description makes me think Wayfair is a dressed up Alibaba for furniture, and not a serious online option like Article, which at least has a lot of good quality photos per item.

This is a very reasonable comment.

The primary difference between being socially liberal and socially conservative is the idea of the government’s role in our lives (and more generally, collectivism vs. individualism). The socially liberal concepts of universal health care, social security, welfare, public schools and universities, environmental regulations and others all require funding in the form of taxation and then spending in form of government programs.

This type of taxation and the growth of government spending goes against the basic principles of fiscal conservatism.

Until robot-powered post-scarcity and UI changes the fundamental structure of society and government, social liberalism and fiscal conservatism is a paradox.

That’s a great way to kill your page rank.

It's purposefully alarmist. "[Equifax] casually misplace[d] 2.5 million lives" sounds much more dramatic than "Equifax revised their estimate of the number of affected customers by +1.7%."

Early iTunes was pretty nice — a lightweight, focused music player and not much else. Over time it became slow, unusable bloatware — an iPhone/iPad backup / sync manager, an e-commerce / ad platform (iTunes store), a social media platform (Ping), a way for Apple to automatically tag/categorize/mess up your library, among others. I'm not sure if it's better now, I abandoned it years ago.

Thank you. VLC is a near-perfect product. I love the focus on utility, speed, and simplicity and nothing else. It is the WinAmp of video. It seems like you know what you're doing, but please resist pressure to iTunes-ify what you've built.

It's really not that simple. That's akin to saying the people of Russia and North Korea voted time and time again for Putin and KJU.

When 90% of media is either in prison or controlled by the state, when judges are appointed and dismissed based on their politics, when massive protest after massive protest is brutally crushed, when investigations into irregularities at polling stations are ignored, year after year after year, it can't be said that this is simply what the people voted for. The opposition has been being illegally and brutally suppressed for a decade.

It's likely your co-workers are just covering their butts.

At most companies it is more useful to your long-term employment prospects to outwardly support your company's mission than to be neutral or a critic. Whether that behavior is sane or in the best interest of the company is different.