BinaryHobo
3mo ago
No, something went very weird for about 20 minutes
I wonder if things blowing up take ~20-30 minutes to work their way through whatever cache system twitter has in place (ok, really more of a CDN system with multiple places all over the globe, but still). A throttling system were if something is throttled for 15 minutes, it starts getting replicated seems like an 80/20 solution to the kind of traffic spikes twitter gets.
BinaryHobo
3mo ago
No amount of technical ability can protect you from the culture war, just ask Stallman.
I mean, you're not wrong. Stallman got ousted from MIT after the progressive/techno-libertarian split of the mid 2010s, it was only a matter of time.
But he ended up back on the board of the FSF. I think you're also ignoring that it's entirely possible to create parallel institutions that are resistant to this stuff. Especially for weird nerds with technical ability
BinaryHobo
3mo ago
She was tasked to solve the 2021 border problem, namely, migration originating from a few specific countries. In 2024 migration flows from those countries are way down, but migration from other countries has increased a lot. It’s basically two separate problems stapled together by the fact that both problems materialize for the US at the southern border.
On one hand, this is fair. On the other hand, it feels like the way someone who has only spent their life in a bureaucracy would frame the problem. You were given specific criteria, and you satisfactorily met those criteria instead of solving an underlying problem that's creating the specific problem you were tasked with.
However, if the voters see the underlying problem is that there's migration instead of migration from specific countries, the ultimate result is that the problem hasn't been fixed.
BinaryHobo
3mo ago
So, let's say Bob cheats on Alice. Alice divorces Bob. That's a fairly significant social consequence, and quite the negative one.
However, adultery isn't a crime in basically any modern society. No crime occurred. So is this illegitimate?
BinaryHobo
3mo ago
It is certainly a shame for people to wish suffering upon others, but it is no crime
Is the implicit argument here that there shouldn't be negative social consequences for things that aren't crimes?
Because then we have to re-do a lot of the last 50 years.
BinaryHobo
3mo ago
That pivot has to have some correlation with perceived likelihood of him dropping out, though?
I think it has to have some correlation with him doing badly. That could be dropping out or losing the election.
But if this is some managed kabuki theater before Biden steps down, I'd expect one of the names floating around to replace him to be solidified a bit before any of it actually goes down. Maybe I'm not plugged in enough, but that doesn't seem to have happened.
BinaryHobo
4mo ago
I just don't really see which extra votes this is getting for them.
People who were disengaged deciding to vote. Also, this gave Elon the cover to officially endorse Trump, so that's probably going to help sway some grey tribe members in the tech sector
BinaryHobo
5mo ago
The advantage of the software industry over hardware is that hardware is bounded by the laws of physics and the costs of making things and moving them around.
It does, but the downside is that your entire industry can be commoditized by a few people (fewer than people think) or completely destroyed by your competition exiting the market and just releasing their product. Effectively every area Borland was monetizing 30 years ago is completely free now.
Yeah, microsoft's product doesn't wear out naturally, but the other side is, how much more could they have taxed the industry if linux didn't exist? On the other hand, open source hardware has never really gone anywhere.
BinaryHobo
5mo ago
You might enjoy All Tomorrows
BinaryHobo
6mo ago
You need to be working with adults, not children, you need a certain level of respectability.
What time horizon are you working with? The reason people are so concerned with what is taught in school is because working with kids has a big impact on the long term. Working in children's entertainment is probably even more powerful. I remember blowing a lot of things off in school (especially high school) because it was mandatory and I had to be there, but this is what kids are seeking out in their own time.
BinaryHobo
6mo ago
That's a fairly reasonable explanation, but there's been a ton of things that started out as "a thing dumb college kids are doing" and ended up in the wider world. Some take longer than others.
BinaryHobo
6mo ago
Then do something that will lower their social status. Dress them up in a baby bonnet and spank them instead or something.
BinaryHobo
6mo ago
but the anti-semitic right arguably includes people like Elon Musk and has far more access to the corridors of power than the Columbia protestors do.
On one hand this is fair. Elon definitely has more strings to pull than the protestors right now, but that's a pretty short-sighted view. In 20 years, the current class of Columbia isn't going to have access to the corridors of power, they're going to occupy them. The attitudes at Columbia are going to be beltway consensus in 20 years. That's a much bigger issue than people mouthing off on twitter.
BinaryHobo
6mo ago
Sure, but anyone who's getting a sentence of a year is unlikely to be deterred by a single physical punishment.
The physical pain is a part of it, sure. But it's not the whole thing. These punishments are generally done in public (or in the modern day, probably televised/put on youtube). The embarrassment and/or loss of social status is a big part of it.
BinaryHobo
6mo ago
What rich people do is take out a loan using the asset as collateral. So long as the asset appreciates faster than inflation, you come out ahead and get to access the money without selling (I believe this is also not considered income in most jurisdictions).
BinaryHobo
7mo ago
I think you're ignoring that video games are big business these days, with large staffs. You're going to have a lot of people just phoning it in, along with a general regression to the mean. It's possible for a single person operation to knock it out of the park (or completely bomb, but you're probably not going to hear about that game). It's really hard for a 1000 person operation do do anything that far above average (average for a professional).
BinaryHobo
7mo ago
Both of those games are over a decade old. It could be a symptom of the drop-off that he's talking about that you aren't listing newer ones.
BinaryHobo
7mo ago
Either way I think the most important development in all of this is that post-internet, nationalism cannot really be a thing. It's hard to convince the youth to die for your government after years of telling them that the people who just arrived have as much of a claim to the country as they do.
That seems more like an argument that nationalism is incompatible with a modern, liberal, cosmopolitan society. Which, honestly, I don't think anyone on either side would argue with you on that.
That doesn't mean it can't necessarily be a thing in modern times, it just means that nationalists have to be willing to jettison at least one or more of of [modern|liberal|cosmopolitan]. And in the circles where nationalism flourishes online even jettisoning all three of them is quite popular.
BinaryHobo
7mo ago
You're attacking the bailey, not the motte.
The bailey is what needs to be attacked. The motte is generally defend-able position that may or may not have some merit, but is worthy of consideration. It's use in protecting the bailey is the problem.
BinaryHobo
7mo ago
Or what do you call bombing another country's consulate?
An act of war, probably. Generally speaking, that's what one state attacking another is considered.
There aren't good definitions of terrorism, but generally speaking, they require non-state actors (or possibly by people from a state pretending to not be state-actors).
BinaryHobo
7mo ago
meritocratic systems common in the modern world should churn out a reliable stream of competent generals
Most countries spend most of their time at peace. Meritocratic systems tend to produce generals that are really good at politics.
That's why countries spend the first couple years of a war (if they're lucky) fighting the war they prepared for.
BinaryHobo
7mo ago
The list above is non-exhaustive.
The person you're arguing with is probably worried about this part. Specifically that you'll keep adding items to the list until it hits "inhibitions are slightly lowered territory".
BinaryHobo
7mo ago
No, but they might be if you forced the NFL to sponsor beer league sports and give a bunch of time/resources to them.
At the very least, the prestige of the term "NFL player" would drop significantly. To bring this back to the original point, the prestige of being a player who beat *insert game* is significantly lower with games that have easy modes. You can be part of the group that beat *insert game* on hard mode, but human beings aren't great at modifiers, and I could see it dropping total prestige.
BinaryHobo
7mo ago
or screwing around until they find somethat works against pre-programmed monsters
I mean, that's how I got into software engineering (doubly so if we consider windows 98 to be one of the monsters).
Watching the clip. It looks like Jones's comments would be pretty close to the line in the US. Advocacy of violence is explicitly protected in the US by the 1st amendment (well, by supreme court precedent interpreting the 1st amendment, see Brandenburg v Ohio).
The two things that are more radioactive (legally) are that he's doing it in front of a crowd and pretty immediately goes into a chant (which generally has the effect of shutting off certain parts of the brain). This goes a long way to satisfying the "immediacy" requirement of restricting speech in the US. But you would still have to prove intent, which is really hard to do.
TL;DR: I'd expect a < 25% chance that this would result in legal consequences in the US. Social consequences, on the other hand...
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