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It may go against the grain here, but I think advertisements in Windows 10 is crucial. It's strange, because you would expect the HN audience to be in favor of getting products in front of eyeballs.

Operating systems in 2020 have evolved into thought systems that enable our lives in the emergent digital economy. Think of it like real-estate in the "real" world. People hate billboards because they're gaudy, yet they relish Times Square. Operating Systems are like the Times Square of the computing world, allowing us to navigate and consume and vote with our dollars. It makes total sense for them to contain advertisements. In fact, I encourage it.

I am glad you mentioned China. Many people are too afraid to acknowledge the reality of that authoritarian country, for fear of reprisal from liberal do-gooders.

This acquisition is a shame.

That's the beauty of the free market, put your dollars where you believe they hold worth. I may disagree with your analysis, but I respect your essential freedom to vote with your money.

Pfft. Elon has always been my hero. :)

But on a more serious note, it is great that we are seeing thought leaders counter-act the media propaganda frenzy regarding this situation. The "big evil businessman" know best that our economy is on shaky ground, and that continuing social distancing measures will immeasurably damage America's position as a global power (and thus its citizens security and freedom) more than a few tens of thousands of deaths will. I, for one, am proud to go back to work. Staying at home isolated is merely fomenting unnecessary chaos and social unrest.

Thank you for being a diamond in the rough, Dan. Your tireless work keeping Hacker News a safe haven for free thinkers and polite politic is essential during times like these.

Some people are more motivated than others.

Just like some people are more intelligent than others, or more athletic than others... some are more self-motivated and can work through their own initiative rather than relying on external input (such as managers).

That's not a bad thing, either! We should encourage those self-motivated people to work however makes them the most productive members of our economy. That is incredibly crucial for the times that we live in.

This is a great idea!! We need to give these poor and low-income urban and rural students as much opportunity to "get connected" as we can. There are many thousands of gifted students out there whose potential is untapped, and I think this is a great opportunity to accelerate education and foster growth.

This, too, would help with the learn-to-code movement (a skills gap that I consider essential to close). This could have far-reaching effects and do wonders to lift the next generation of poor out of poverty and into more lucrative white collar jobs.

Elon has done more for climate activism and the green movement in the last decade than basically anybody. Besides perhaps Miss Thunberg.

His "guzzling" jets as you call them are a minor convenience in order to facilitate quicker, more efficient transport to enable the evolution and development of Tesla and SpaceX.

Do you expect him to drive everywhere? Not only would that be worse for the environment, but it would mean more of Elon's precious time wasted and thus also our time wasted because a brilliant man is stuck in traffic.

I hope Elon will be fine. The future depends on benevolent billionaires like himself to get us out of the financial mess the governments of the world have put us in. If we have any hope of tackling climate change, Tesla will be front and center in that battle.

Besides, he just had a child! What a wonderful gift to the world. I hope his child grows up to be as wise and down-to-earth as his father. :)

This seems... unnecessary? The free market guarantees fair contracts. If an individual is presented with an unfair offer, they merely seek employment elsewhere. It is just common sense that these sorts of things get sorted out by the free market; people just have to communicate when companies try to screw them, so that word spreads and the company either changes its behavior or (hopefully) goes out of business. The logic is simple and self-evident.

A startup to facilitate this is tantamount to government intervention in the economy: it is bastardizing a perfect natural order. This company idea seems naive at best and basically grifting at worst.

Vinyl records are perhaps one of the best examples of commodity fetishism; in fact, they perfectly illustrate Mark Fisher's notion of "lost futures" (by way of Derrida's hauntology). Even the discussion and detailed analysis of vinyl (so as to justify its supposed acoustic superiority) is to miss the forest for the trees.

Of course the rabid capitalists on this forum would fall over themselves to exploit this for financial gain. There may even be quite a few who see this sociopathy as a badge of honour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk8ibrfXvpQ

But are articles like this good or bad?

Articles like this make me want to sniff glue. What should be written — and disseminated widely — is the truth that climate catastrophe is on our doorstep.

Who gives a shit if Norway is warmer and warmer, or if some other place is colder due to the chaotic nature of weather? The point is, "global warming" is rapidly destabilizing — no, destroying — ecosystems that we depend upon for our survival, and unleashing feedback loops that we are helpless to stop.

It's only going to get worse. Most articles don't go far enough in explaining the severity of the situation, because it'll frighten the neoliberals and trigger the neocons.

If Hacker News is still around in the next decade, I can't wait to read all the comments by the people here who love to bikeshed about "optics" and bullshit when actual widespread famine is beginning to rear its ugly head. I'm afraid most of you will turn inside out with all that navel-gazing.

It looks like the neoliberal cult of "progress" has its acolytes on Hacker News, but that really shouldn't surprise.

What is sad, though, is the distinct lack of empathy that this ideology instills in its adherents. Leaving people behind is not a sign of progress; instead, it's a sign of an ill society.

Operation WizardOpium

Life is no longer distinct from a William Gibson novel.

In an environment with no judgement, nobody conforms, everybody does what they want.

And the problem with that is, when nobody conforms, no profit can be made. A large part of Silicon Valley is predicated on people conforming (Facebook/Instagram, Twitter,WeWork, Snapchat, Amazon, Microsoft).

Judgment has been carefully bred in us, otherwise neoliberal capitalism would be unable to function and so the fat cats wouldn't be able to get their salami.

There's a matchmaking problem here.

Absolutely agree. We need an efficient algorithm for matching based upon common interests, agreeability, and politeness.

I wonder if matchmaking algorithms from video games would come in handy for this? I think the League of Legends queue algo would be perfect for this.

You go Alex :) I think more people, even supposed "nonwriters," should write more! Jeff Bezos may be a chunk of hot garbage, but his bizarre writing policy is at least something good.

Heck, I recommend everyone set up a blog. It can be totally pseudonymous, that's fine. Just collect your thoughts and write little personal think pieces that you publish into the void. If they gain traction somewhere like HN, great! But it's not the main attraction.

Doesn't this also prove, by proxy, that this fact can potentially (if not certainly) apply to other AI & associated fields?

Forgive my ignorance, but this seems to lend credence to the popular idpol claim that the white guys programming AI are ignorant of the inherent bias their models might have.

Creativity is as much a numbers game as Monopoly (the literal board game) is a numbers game: it is and it isn't.

Sure, I mean you can use statistics and wave your magic eugenics wand around but I see right through you. It's a disgrace that in the modern neoliberal hegemony a crock of shit like this gets published in an outlet like Scientific American.

Hell yeah Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't is my favorite damn YouTube channel.

Like everyone else here, I sing high praise of Tony. His absolutely lovable one-in-a-million combative yet beautifully intelligent personality is perfect. I've developed a recent intense interest in revisiting my garden, which I attribute exclusively to stumbling upon his videos. Sometimes YouTube's Big Algorithm does something right. :)

This is nothing new. Influencing elections is a part of having elections -- this liberal idea that "bots" are somehow poisoning the electoral process is beyond out of touch.

The TV you watch, whether it's CNN or FOX or MSNBC or CNBC has more of an outsize effect on how you develop your personal beliefs than any of this nonsense. The biggest thing to come out of America's Second Red Scare is that people are more likely to listen to others when they spout propaganda that they already believe.

To think it's the FSB or GRU is somehow responsible for a defect in the design of elections in a democratic republic is laughable. If anything, the "Russians" are doing what Siberia and their rough country taught them: make the best of a bad situation.

People love to hate David Foster Wallace. The irony is palpable when reading critics of his writing; they at times perfectly channel Wallace in their very critique of him. Heck, I was accosted (well, maybe the recipient of a snide remark) on the subway in Boston while I was reading a DFW novel on my commute. The person said that only coddled, white suburban men read his work -- when I am none of those things and sitting right on front of the person. I immediately forgave the cynic, though, once I caught a peek of their Boston University sweater hidden inside the crevasse of a parka's open zipper. :)

David Foster Wallace is the embodiment of a particular 20th and 21st century zeitgeist, and one that if you read between the lines, predicts all the ailments we will be facing in the decades ahead.

but I'd argue that is (in most instances) the only class of people who likely have to deal with a barrage of negative news coverage to begin with.

They experience a barrage of negative press because they deserve it. The ultra-wealthy of the world (I'm not talking SV tech salaries, those are practically working class in comparison) are the ones doing the majority of harm to this pale blue dot we all have to live on. Climate catastrophe is well on its way to undermining society, and it could have easily been addressed decades ago if the ultra-wealthy weren't Biblical levels of greedy.

coherent

That I can agree with you on. It is certainly dense material that frightens away those unwilling to be linguistically challenged when reading a book.

interesting

Absolutely not. Look, I get Stirner is neat for being a proto-anarchist and all, but his value ends there. You seem preoccupied with the "fashion" of it (which itself raises questions) instead of with the philosophy being discussed. Engage with the ideas instead of resorting to this rhetorical BS that we both know you're pulling.

For example, your point that Stirner grounds his philosophy merely in self-interest -- what exactly does that prove? That his ideas are derivative and trite? I understand that Baudrillard's writing is a tough nut to crack, but to think that his work (and the rest of the French canon) is irrelevant because it requires more than egotism as its foundation is absurd.

That's rich coming from somebody who's username is literally Der Einzige. :) It's hard to believe you deign to label Baudrillard a crank yet identify enough with Stirner to make the title of his most well-known work your nom de plume

Edit: See this [1] lovely video to learn why it's a common misconception that his work has any relevancy to the Matrix franchise beyond superficial pop philosophy.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf9J35yzM3E

It definitely can, however I'm not optimistic about people's willingness to adopt it. From my anecdotal experience, the people who are grossed out by the thought are really bothered by it. I see no way of converting those people to consumers/customers & thus leaving a large chunk of the market on the table.

There is a lovely side narrative in the movie A Serious Man about this phenomenon. Although the characters in the movie were Korean, it is an excellent example of this phenomenon in Asian cultures.

What intrigues me the most is that it is sort of implicitly the de facto standard. Curious how cultural mores develop!

Most people would think the government is responsible for all these drug epidemics: the DEA jailing minorities on minor infractions or the CIA hustling cocaine between countries (look it up).

But really the true culprit is just the youth, and always has been. Ever since the early 1900s traditional family values and social community/cohesion has been seriously on decline. Say what you will about Ted Kaczynski, but his essay/book Industrial Society and its Future is a wealth of knowledge on this subject (strange I know coming from a Christian woman).

But look at it this way: people resort to drugs because reality sucks. Why does reality suck? Well, we live in a society, and this very society (and its implicit social network) causes our youth to suffer.

Just look at how much the new Joker movie resonated with kids, teenagers and young adults! Heck, my niece of 12 years was itching to put on a mask and march in the street after she walked out of the theater. It was terrifying.

I like this idea; current functionalities in most of my communication apps is seriously out of date. There's got to be more to that than just a little "away" badge! Good on this devs for trying something new.

Now just to have an "I'm not actually at my desk I just ate too much Mexican food for lunch and so will work out of the bathroom for the afternoon." lol

Finally a country not afraid of eating critters! Or at least, not afraid of feeding them to their animals...

Seriously, I've eaten protein processed from insects plenty of time and it's in no way disgusting. People need to get over their ridiculous culinary phobias.

If we are to survive climate apocalypse and accelerating population growth, we're gonna need to learn to eat bugs instead of cows.