Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44317167

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

For the people that haven't noticed, a global pandemic and lockdowns killed 40% of small businesses this year, forced many large businesses to take on new debts that will blunt future profits, and forced the government into unprecedented deficits. Stocks are "cheap" because risk went up.

I think you are close to part of an answer, but it isn't because Forth and Lisp expect one to do more work than other languages. If anything, they expect one to do less. The problem is programmers feel lost because there is no way to differentiate the bedrock of the language from higher abstractions. C has operators and statements and keywords that tell you there is nothing "underneath" what you are looking at. With Forth, everything is words. With Lisp, everything is lists.

You say visual programming seems to unlock a ton of value. What can you do with a visual language that is much easier than text? Difficult concepts might be easier to understand once there is visual representation, but that does not imply creating the visual representation is easier. And why should pictures be more approachable than text? People might understand pictures before they can read, but we still teach everyone to read.

I installed Linux Mint on my parents' computer and it's been running rock solid for three years. And they appreciate not being tricked into updates they don't want.

Anyone who thinks about politics seriously and argues politics with people needs to base their opinions on something besides personal preference. This means trying to develop moral and logical principles and goals on which to base positions. When people do this, opinions on many topics will be highly correlated.

I think the way Infogalactic solves the problem it is trying to solve is that people no longer have to argue if a particular fact is worth including in an article and have an edit war. It opens up a third option of recognizing that including or not depends on the circumstances of what the reader is looking for. I'm not sure what potential new problems you are thinking of.

As for corporate sponsors, they are bound by the same rules as the rest. I don't think explicitly recognizing corporate interest in the topic would be worse than trying to have an objective page which would probably be subverted anyway.

As for terminology, I don't see how "Infogalactic" as a name is more confusing to new users than "Wikipedia". Most people didn't know what "wiki" meant before Wikipedia. And I don't think new contributors would really have a problem figuring out "Galaxians" and "Starlords" with the obvious context.

All the examples of people who profit off fear: mass media, lawyers, politicians, and industrial pharmaceuticals have all existed for decades longer than the current age of fear. That makes them insufficient as a cause. There must be something else.

The current mac owners have no real reason to buy newer versions.

As it is, perhaps 5% of these comments know anything about what they are talking about. One of the biggest intellectual failings of the sort that frequents this place is mistaking being smart with being informed.

Yes, the media manufactures outrage for attention. This is not the problem. The media has done the same for as long as it has existed. The problem is that real people are willing to believe and act upon this "outrage", sometimes in an extreme manner, to avoid being on the "wrong side".

The action I care about isn't the media writing a libellous "story" about how "outraged" people are at some action of mine, though they are scum for it. What I care about is when people use it as justification to call my boss/family/friends and go after me personally.

It's not the media that doxxes, makes death threats, and gets people fired. Who does that is a population that increasingly cannot tell the difference between words and violence, a population that sees bad thoughts as assault and disagreement as evil. Even the smallest infraction is justification for ruining lives.

Brendan Eich was ousted from his position at Mozilla for his donation years ago. A pizzeria owner was threatened with death for merely saying he wouldn't serve gays. The mob retaliations are completely disproportionate to the "crime".

That's why people are afraid of the new outrage. They know one violation of the ever changing set of rules can now cause a mob to go nuclear on everything they hold dear.

That doesn't mean Westboro Babtist Church is not a problem. It just means the majority is sane.

Even if they don't intend to ban DD-WRT, their rules may indirectly eliminate consumer ability to use it.

Nonreligious children tend to be richer and come from richer countries. Having more wealth means they do not attach as much value to material goods, so they are more "altruistic". Likewise, wealth shields them from the consequences of negative actions, so they are less "punitive".

How many people know who Terry Davis is?