This is super cool! Based on this, the most popular CS textbook is (of course) CLRS. For physics, it's Halliday. And for calculus, it's Stewart, a demonstrably suboptimal choice.
> This class of disruption can be worked around using VPN services, which are able to circumvent government internet censorship measures.
Well, here's something for people who insist all VPN services are a "scam". VPNs play an important role by circumventing censorship in countries with more network level internet censorship.
That's.... not what people criticizing VPNs are referring to.
VPN's privacy claims are a scam. Reselling their own internet connection works, but advertising it that way doesn't.
The customer has no way of having any assurance of a privacy claim, and even past assurances can change at any time, and even if active monitoring or surveillance wasn't being done by the VPN provider, their data center, a third party along the way or the government, the VPN provider would still respond to a court order from the government undermining your privacy. Thats the part people call a scam.
Changing your reported location has nothing to do with that.
Well, that's right thing to do IMO. It may be true that what happens in people's bedrooms is not government's business, but it's also true that the state has no obligation to subsidize particular lifestyles, especially when it's tantamount to waging a culture war on it's population.
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of which ideology you favor. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
First of all, it would be nice of you to at least looked at the responses to this comment, and reminded users that many of those are explicitly against HN guidelines (which is objectively true, with comments like just "What on earth?" [1], and my comment is essentially stating an opinion clearly acceptable in e.g. Singapore, and I know one of your goals on HN is to not be completely US-centric). Browbeating is clearly not what HN is for, and IMO allowing it would cause a lot more damage than allowing accounts primarily used for politics. Curious political discussion has some real content, browbeating doesn't.
Secondly, the effect of that policy is to essentially ban accountants with unpopular political opinions on one side of the spectrum (because people don't want to associate it with their normal work, for obvious reasons). One evidence for this is that you've probably banned more accounts on one side of political spectrum with that rationale. That should be easy to check, since the politics of accounts which use HN primarily for politics should be quite clear from their commenting history. I'm not accusing you of personal conscious bias against right-wingers in moderation here, I'm just pointing out that policy would result in more of them getting banned, since more of them have no choice but to try to conceal their identity (due to "consequences" at work, etc.). Remember what happened to Brendan Eich?
Thirdly, I disagree with your characterization of my comments as "ideological battle". I'm merely stating my political opinions, I have tried to never escalate into personal attacks, and I have tried to always add something concrete and interesting to the discussion, along the HN'a norm of intellectual curiosity. To me, ideological "battle" would imply the kind of dogmatic political rallying I got in response to my comment.
Finally, it seems that you are banning my account on a first strike. I don't remember having any previous negative interaction with the mods.
P.S. After posting this, I also noticed that you have "shadow banned" me, in the sense that my comment looks completely normal to myself when logged in, but I can't find a trace of it when logged out. That's an unethical practice in my books, and something that you have explicitly stated that you reserve for spammers and serial trolls [2].
Shadowbanning means banning someone without telling them. I just told you.
I did look at the replies and it's true that some of them were terrible and against the site guidelines, but your account was by far the greatest problem, given that you initiated a flamewar and perpetuated it with 20+ comments. Pointing the finger at others, when you've broken the rules so badly yourself, is not a good look. One might mention individual responsibility as a value here.
I think you make an interesting point about ideological asymmetry. Maybe there is a systemic factor in that way—or maybe it's just that certain classes of account are more likely to fulminate and otherwise break the rules ("commit more crimes", as some might say in another context)—or maybe both? I don't know, and I don't see what difference it would make to moderation. Should the fire department hose two sides of a burning house equally, regardless of which way the wind is blowing, lest it give an appearance of bias? It's our job to prevent this place from burning itself down. For that we have certain rules and we apply them as evenhandedly as we know how. That involves pointing the hose where the fire is.
If you or anyone thinks the rules aren't optimal, I'd be happy to hear suggestions for better rules—as long as everyone understands that "better" has a clear definition in HN's context, because we're optimizing for one specific thing (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
Isn't this amendment adding an obligation on which lifestyles the state can subsidize though?
If the state should be free to choose, it should be free to choose, not be limited by the constitutional text.
You'll have to explain how gay people being allowed to visit their loved ones on their death beds as a culture war against "the population" though.
Are gay people not part of "the population" ? I'd expect the population to be the set of all people in the country, not some subset that you happen to like
Singapore has benefits for married couples with the intention of boosting fertility rate, such as better access to HDB's. It's inappropriate to apply this to pairs of men.
Also, note that it has two kinds of marriages already, with different rules -- civil marriage, and Muslim marriage.
Agreed, we should also make sure to ban interracial marriage since same culture marriages are universal among all the countries in the world. I don't know of any thriving culture which frowns on same race marriage.
There are definitely cultures where, for instance, polygamy is seen as the desirable goal (for men) and monogamy is the poor man's fallback. And cultures where abstinence/celibacy etc. is revered. I would be surprised if there'd never been a culture where heterosexual marriage (implying a life-long commitment etc.) was the exception rather than the rule. The Na of Yunnan is supposedly one such example though I know very little about it.
Then in your own country if the vast majority of the population approve of homosexual marriage, why is it particularly your business to be concerned about it?
Ok, so what gives you reason to think subsidisation (or even just recognition) of non-traditional marriages is going to damage your culture at all?
I actually thought marriage itself was likely to die as an institution until I saw just how much support there was for gay marriage in my own country (it has something close to 70% support now. Maybe not "vast majority" but pretty close). FWIW the lowest divorce rates in the last 50 years were all recorded after same sex marriage was legalised.
> Ok, so what gives you reason to think subsidisation (or even just recognition) of non-traditional marriages is going to damage your culture at all?
Traditional nuclear family is a tenant of many cultures, including the one I have a feeling of belonging to. Also, the amount of propaganda and censorship which is needed to push these things is quite worrying.
> I actually thought marriage itself was likely to die as an institution
That's unlikely, at the very least because of Lindy effect [1]. In the traditional sense, it is under attack though.
> something close to 70% support now
First, these things are measured by polls, and the outcome of course depends on how do you ask the question. Do you think you'd get the same outcome if it was phrased as "subsidising" instead of "the right to marry"? Plus, how much propaganda and censorship did that take? Are people free to make fun of these things or harshly criticise them without fear of "consequences"?
"Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?"
Official nation-wide referendum, in 2017, with 61% responding yes. 80% participation.
No censorship that I was aware of, and I would very much have been concerned if there were. Lots of propaganda, arguably more on the "no" side, but accepted, that's not an entirely objective view.
I'm saying there are gay men in all countries, whether they are in the open or not. Their existence might be underground or behind closed doors, but they are there.
> separating the institution of marriage and the state doesn't seem like a completely unreasonable idea
What does this mean precisely?
Marriage without the associated state components (shared property rights, child custody rights, inheritance, etc, etc) seems like it would be much less effective than our current approach.
Being able to legally form a union where are assets are shared is a really useful function of marriage, and that function relies on the state to work.
Well, that kind of comment adds nothing to the discussion. It's certainly not as an unpopular position among the "experts" as you probably think it is [1]:
> "For the Greeks, the concept did not meaningfully exist at all; the social identities we today understand in the West as a gay man or a bisexual woman, for example, simply weren’t something that people recognized."
Their cars per capita is about 2/3 of the US [1]. I bet if you correct for the effect of GDP per capita, they will rank near the bottom among European countries too.
> I bet if you correct for the effect of GDP per capita, they will rank near the bottom among European countries too.
If you start correcting for other variables, you'll have to look at demographics, size and flatness of the country, prices, public transport availability, population distribution between rural and urban areas etc. etc.
Relatively poor Romania has a lower number of cars per capita and if you live in Bucharest like me, you'd believe everyone owns a car (half being Dacias), nobody rides a bicycle.
> The parties have agreed that an extra tier will be introduced, whereby a lower 25% tax rate will be applied to the car’s value up to DKK 65,000 in 2021. The 85% tax rate will then be applied up to the slightly higher value of DKK 202,200 in 2021, with the 150% rate above that level.
So you can buy a 80k DKK car and pay only 25% tax.
(Which is the sales tax rate in Denmark for all consumer goods)
As of today, 65,000 DKK amounts to about 8,800 USD. I don't know of any (new) regular cars you could buy at that price.
Also, I'm not sure where did that 80k number came from. If you're using it just as an example, then I think the effective tax rate on that would be 36.25%. [1].
> many Danes drive cars that cost a bit over DKK 100k
Interesting, I'm curious to know what kinds of car are popular there. I searched a bit, and it seems like after Tesla Model 3 (which is expensive), the most popular car models are Peugeot 208 and Nissan Qashqai [1]. I wasn't able to figure out how much they cost in Denmark through a quick search though.
With the improvement that the new name is a more proper anagram of "Scott Alexander". The old name was almost an anagram of "Scott S Alexander", with the blemish of missing an N. [1]
> I am amazed the women of America did not rise up and slaughter your political classes and judges in your red states and the federal courts
Then perhaps you probably don't know much about American politics. Until recently, there wasn't a huge gender gap on the issue. [1]
> You are to all practical purposes at this time in many ways an illegal theocracy operating in a nation state which constitutionally forbids it.
The declaration of independence explicitly says that our fundamental rights are endowed to us by our Creator. [2] The pledge of allegiance calls the US "one Nation under God". [3] The US, unlike France [4], isn't afraid of God.
The pledge of allegiance dating from the 19th century has no constitutional status, and "under God" is a product of the 1950s cold war.
A previous generation of the Supreme Court upheld it's complete irrelevance. Maybe that will change again, but I struggle to see it really. This current court is black letter law, if the 1770s didn't require it, then it takes heavy process to make it happen, for them.
The stats on views of abortion were fascinating! Thanks. I am unsure yet they go to my side of things or yours. The definitely legal and sometimes legal count, appears to me to be consistently pro abortion rights. They've just had flat denial from the court on a federal right and a push back to (often distorted) states rights. You think this isn't going to hurt electorally? You know what: I don't know. I think it foolish for me to even try.
Because tech has a left-wing bias [1], and HN is mostly a tech forum.
I personally think that will change in the coming years though. There's a limit on how much tech and denial of reality can coexist. Perhaps the reason that they have been able to coexist for while is that most tech workers tend to work in fields adjacent to computer science. They live in the world of bits, not atoms.
By denial of reality I mean things like denying the enormous role of genetics, or basic economics (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory), or insisting on human equality at every level (which is of course utterly untrue, e.g. von Neumann was smarter than almost all of us here), or the war on merit (i.e. "affirmative action"), or heavy use of propaganda and censorship and doublethink to avoid social stigma for particular groups, or denial of basic biology (when it comes to fitness, or gender differences), or even Orwellian [2] insistence on the "fact" that 2 + 2 = 5. [3]
Pretty good list. Don't agree with it, but it's a list indicative of a different world view. You think tech will swing to this reality? I doubt it. But you know, time will tell.
I think the bitter economic reality will swing to more radical views and towards increased collective views. That's because the wreck of AGW is going to be so disruptive, it will be necessary.
Fair. Maybe? How do you know it didn't reach the end of its swing back already? It's one of those "you can tell after"
I'm pretty sure the swings have not got in phase worldwide and I have to tell you I am delighted, because when they synchronise the shit gets scary, real fast.
Tech and finance have flipped market cycle dominance and influence since the dollar was debased from gold. Wall Street will be taking its pound of flesh for the next ~decade.
Honestly, I don't think this is true. Tech people tend towards a libertarian bias in my experience, and I'm old. I've been a professional programmer for about 30 years now. I've met more libertarian tech people than progressives, by far.
Given that the Democratic party isn't particularly libertarian, and the fact that most libertarians vote Republican [1], how do you explain the employee donation data?
